An Artist in Treason: The Extraordinary Double Life of General James Wilkinson

American Republic; Reed, Life and Correspondence of Joseph Reed; William S. Hanna, Benjamin Franklin and Pennsylvania Politics (Stanford, CA: 1964); and Ireland, “The Ethnic- Religious Dimension of Pennsylvania Politics, 1778–1779.”

62 JW’s ownership of Trevose: Jacobs, Tarnished Warrior, 55–59.

62 land “sold for three pounds an acre”: Benjamin Franklin, “Information to those who would remove to America,” September 1782, Writings, 8:603–14.

62 For Arnold’s time in Philadelphia, see Randall, Benedict Arnold.

62 “borrowed a sum of money of the Commissaries”: JW to Joseph Reed, May 1779, quoted in Hay, Admirable Trumpeter, 45.

63 “If your Excellency thinks me criminal”: Arnold to Washington, May 5, 1779, quoted in Randall, Benedict Arnold.

63 “If we review the rise and progress”: Silas Deane to Robert Morris, quoted in Linklater, Measuring America, 166.

64 “Men without Cloathes to cover their nakedness”: Washington to John Bannister, April 21, 1778, GWP.

64 The duties of the clothier general were a work in progress until the last years of the war. For their changing nature, see Wright, Continental Army.

64 “The clothing department has occasioned more trouble to me”: Quoted in Hay, Admirable Trumpeter, 48.

64 “For when a Soldier is convinced”: Washington to James Mease, April 17, 1777, quoted in Wright, Continental Army.

64 “I am again reduced”: Washington to General William Heath, November 18, 1779, quoted in Erna Risch, “Supplying Washington’s Army,” Special Studies Series, ed. Maurice Matloff (Washington, DC: Center of Military History, 1981).

65 “I shall expect to see you”: Washington’s correspondence with JW is quoted in Hay, Admirable Trumpeter, 50–52.

65 For JW’s Philadelphia distractions, see Hay, Admirable Trumpeter.

66 “Is it not a possible Thing to revive”: General Huntington to Jeremiah Wadsworth, May 5, 1780, quoted in Royster, “Nature of Treason.”

67 For the profound shock of Arnold’s treason, see Royster, “Nature of Treason.” Next to Washington himself, no one could be thought more patriotic. In 1776, Mercy Otis Warren thought “the name of Washington and Arnold [would be linked] to the latest posterity, with the laurel on their brow.”

67 “Address of Confidence”: Jacobs, Tarnished Warrior, 62.

68 “Direct the Commander-in Chief”: New York’s 1780 petition cited by Baack, “Forging a Nation State.”

68 “I should be wanting in Personal Candour”: JW to Samuel Huntington, president of Congress, March 27, 1781, PCC.

69 “I think General Wilkinson too desponding”: Reed to General Lacy, commander of the Pennsylvania militia, quoted in Hay, Admirable Trumpeter, 52.

69 “It is a pity so good an officer is lost to the service”: Nathanael Greene to Clement Biddle, June 26, 1780, quoted in Reed, Life and Correspondence.

69 without “cash or credit”: Wilkinson to Henry Lee, quoted in Davis, “By Invitation of Mrs. Wilkinson,” 156.

CHAPTER 7: THE KENTUCKY PIONEER

For JW’s early years in Kentucky, the Harry Innes Papers are indispensable. Yet the chaos of land titles as illustrated in Abernethy, Western Lands and the American Revolution; Aron, How the West Was Lost; Sakolski, Great American Land Bubble; and Dunaway, “Speculators and Settler Capitalists”— allied to JW’s habitual exaggeration— lend mystery to his speculations.

71 “The vallies are of the richest soil”: John William de Braham, “De Braham’s Account,” in Early Travels in the Tennessee Country: 1540–1800, ed. Samuel Cole Williams ( Johnson City, TN, 1928).

71 “more frequent than I have seen cattle in the settlements”: “The Adventures of Colonel Daniel Boon,” in John Filson, The Discovery, Settlement and Present State of Kentucke (Wilmington: James Adams, 1784).

71 “The country might invite a prince” quoted in Archibald Henderson, The Conquest of the Old Southwest etc, 1740–1790 (New York: Century, 1920).

72 “A person not quite tall enough”: Humphrey Marshall, History of Kentucky, 1:165.

72 For JW’s links to Hugh Shiell, see Hay, “Letters of Mrs. Ann Biddle Wilkinson.” 73 JW’s “wonderful address” in borrowing money: William Leavy, “A Memoir of Lexington and Its Vicinity,” Kentucky Historical Society Register 40 (April 1942).

73 JW’s traveling hardships were described in “Letters of General James Wilkinson,”

Kentucky Historical Society Register 24 (September 1926).

73 John Lewis dealings: July 3, 1784, agreement with JW for locating land, John Lewis papers, First American West:The Ohio River Valley, 1750–1820, LoC.

73 “Be sure you bring a double stock of great variety”: JW to Scott, July 4, 1784, ibid.

74 “Our country is now a continued Flower Bed”: JW to Scott, quoted in Hay, Admirable Trumpeter, 62.

74 “It is impossible for me to describe the torture,” “I feel so Stupid”: Ann Wilkinson to John Biddle, February 14, 1788, Hay, “Letters of Mrs. Ann Biddle Wilkinson.”

74 A detailed study of Kentucky’s chaotic system of land registration and confusion over multiple claims appears in Wilma A. Dunaway, “Speculators and Settler Capitalists,” in Appalachia in the Making: The Mountain South in the Nineteenth Century (University of North Carolina Press, 1995). In 1821 Judge Joseph Story attributed the confusion to the decision to allow settlers to appropriate land “by entries and descriptions of their own, without any previous survey under public authority, and without any such boundaries as were precise, permanent, and unquestionable.” “An address delivered before Members of the Suffolk Bar” (Boston, 1829).

76 “And when arrivd at this Heaven in idea”: “Memorandum of M. Austin’s Journey from the Lead Mines in the County of Wythe in the State of Virginia to the Lead Mines in the Province of Louisiana, 1796–1797,” American Historical Review 5 (1899–1900): 525–26.

76 “The titles in Kentucky w[ill] be Disputed for a Century”: Quoted in Dunaway, “Speculators and Settler Capitalists.”

76 “under the necessity of employing about ?40 of your cash”: JW to Shiell, “Letters of James Wilkinson.”

76 “far from affluent”: Memoirs, 2:109.

77 The many Danville conventions were made necessary by the impossibility of achieving any agreement between the large speculator settlers and the smaller landholders whose titles were less secure. The arguments could be as fierce as they were inscrutable.

77 “There is nothing which binds one country”: GW to Richard Henry Lee, August 22, 1785, GWP.

77 “The People of Kentucky alone,” “I pleased myself”: JW to James Hutchinson, “Letters of James Wilkinson.”

78 “They shall be Informed”: JW to unknown correspondent, April 1786, quoted in Hay, Admirable Trumpeter, 77.

79 “throw them into the hands eventually of a foreign power”: James Monroe to James Madison, quoted in Harry Ammon, James Monroe: The Quest for National Identity (Richmond: University of Virginia Press, 1990).

79 “this country will in a few years Revolt”: Harry Innes to Patrick Henry, quoted in Linklater, Fabric of America, 98.

79 “an outrage . . . generally disavowed”: JW to Francisco Cruzat, quoted in Whitaker, “James Wilkinson’s