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

189 Absolutely no evidence suggests that JW was responsible for the War Department fire—except for the answer to the age-old question asked of any unsolved crime: Cuibono? Who benefited from the fire?

191 “It is understood on all sides”: Thomas Cushing to JW, February 26, 1800, quoted in Crackel, Mr. Jefferson’s Army.

191 “The Army is undergoing a chaste reformation”: Jefferson to Nathanael Macon, May 14, 1801, ibid.

191 “possessing a knoledge”: Jefferson to JW, February 23, 1800, PTJ.

192 Opinions differ about the effectiveness of Jefferson’s policy of political cleansing (JW was ultimately the chief beneficiary), but no one could doubt the result he intended. 193 “What do you think of the surveyor-general’s office”: JW to Ellicott, March 1801, Ellicott Papers.

193 “I now find that I am inevitably ruined”: Quoted in Linklater, Fabric of America.

193 Ellicott wrote Jefferson: Ellicott testified on January 30, 1808, that he had sent this letter to Jefferson in “the month of June 1801,” Clark, Proofs, 148.

194 “I was determined not to [cut my hair]”: Bissell to D. Bissell, July 9, 1802, quoted in Jacobs, Beginning of the U.S. Army, 1783–1812.

194 In the battle of Butler’s queue, what must have most hurt Wilkinson’s vanity was the ridicule directed at him in Washington Irving’s satire Diedrich Knickerbocker’s History of New York, published in 1809. Irving caricatured JW as the bombastic General Jacobus Van Poffenburgh, with “large, glassy blinking eyes which protruded like those of a lobster.” The best line in the book went to Butler, who told his friends on his deathbed, “Bore a hole in the bottom of my coffin right under my head, and let my queue hang through it, that the d—d old rascal may see that, even when dead, I refuse to obey his order.”

195 “placed under the protection of faithful officers”: Elbridge Gerry to Jefferson, May 4, 1801, PTJ.

196 “ ‘To which of the political creeds do you adhere?’ ”: Quoted in Crackel, Mr. Jefferson’s Army.

196 On October 7, 1802, the result of JW’s boundary-making was a treaty with the Choctaws signed at Fort Confederation, containing the following clause: “The said Choctaw Nation, for, and in consideration of one dollar, to them in hand paid, by the said United States, the receipt whereof is hereby acknowledged, do hereby release to the said United States, and quit claim forever, to all that tract of land [in southern Alabama measuring about a million and a half acres].”

197 JW’s application for the surveyor general’s post was made on May 30, 1802.

197 “In the first case . . . my intimacy with the inhabitants”: Quoted in Hay, Admirable Trumpeter, 195.

198 “If Mr Monroe succeeds all will be well”: JW to Jacob Kingsbury, February 27, 1803, quoted in Crackel, Mr. Jefferson’s Army.

198 “If anything professional is to be done”: JW to Dearborn, ibid.

198 “I have extended my capacities for utility”: JW to Hamilton, undated, quoted in Hay, Admirable Trumpeter, 199.

199 “to act towards him so as to convince”: Hamilton to Adams, September 4, 1799, quoted in Memoirs, 2:157.

200 For the reception of JW and Claiborne in New Orleans, see Hay, Admirable Trumpeter, 204–6.

CHAPTER 20: AGENT 13 REBORN

The meticulous researches of Isaac J. Cox and Arthur P. Whitaker in the first half of the twentieth century underpin the narrative of JW’s later connections with the Spanish.

202 “It was hardly possible”: Pierre- Clement de Laussat, Memoirs of My Life, quoted in Hay, Admirable Trumpeter, 210.

203 The battle of the ballroom is taken from Hay, Admirable Trumpeter, 205– 6.

204 “I apprehend no Danger”: JW to Dearborn, January 6, 1804, American State Papers, Military Affairs, L.C.

204 Nolan’s cinematic life is described in Cox, “Louisiana-Texas Frontier I.”

206 JW’s intricate maneuverings with Folch and Casa Calvo are the subject of Cox, “General Wilkinson and His Later Intrigues with the Spaniards.”

207 The importance attached to “Reflections” is best gauged by the readiness of Casa Calvo to pay the massive sum of twelve thousand dollars in one installment. It clearly played a significant role in forming and reinforcing Spanish border policy.

209 “You have taken no notice of any of my letters”: Dearborn to JW, February 1804, quoted in Crackel, Mr. Jefferson’s Army.

209 “It is so important that Wilkenson’s [sic] maneuvers”: Jefferson to Dearborn, February 17, 1804, PTJ.

209 Twenty-two-page strategy document: Sent to Dearborn, July 13, 1804.

211 Cox’s three articles on the Louisiana-Texas frontier explore Spain’s border strategy in detail.

212 On the day that he was to meet Humboldt, Monday, June 11, 1804, JW bombarded Jefferson with detailed queries to be put to Humboldt about routes leading into Texas and Mexico. He signed himself “Jabeil Kingan,” a pseudonym that was in some ways the equivalent of Agent 13, in that he seemed to use it mostly for communicating secret information about Mexico to Americans.

Wilkinson copied Humboldt’s chart and passed it on to young Zebulon Pike when he set out on his expedition to the west in 1806. And Pike, knowing no better, later published it as an American map, provoking Humboldt to protest angrily to Jefferson at the use of information “which he undoubtedly obtained in Washington with the copy of my map . . . a quick glance at Mr. Pike’s map may prove to you from where he got it.” By then years had passed, and Jefferson brushed the matter aside, although he certainly knew how Pike came by his information.

CHAPTER 21: BURR’S AMBITION

The wealth of excellent studies of the Burr Conspiracy poses its own challenge. While juggling JW’s, Burr’s, and Clark’s competing versions, all remarkable for their tendentious way with information, Roger Kennedy’s Burr, Hamilton, and Jefferson: A Study in Character, and Gordon Wood’s “The Real Treason of Aaron Burr,” have been useful correctives. But I still incline to Henry Adams’s view in History of the United States of America that Creole unrest was, next to the loyalty of the army’s commander, the critical ingredient.

215 “To save time of which I need much and have little”: JW to Burr, May 23, 1804, quoted in Jacobs, Tarnished Warrior, 191.

216 “never known, in any country, the prejudice in favor of birth, parentage, and descent”: Quoted in Wood, “Real Treason.”

216 “Mr. Burr’s career is generally looked upon as finished”: Quoted in Adams, History of the United States.

217 “his conduct very soon inspired me with distrust”: Jefferson, “Conversations with Aaron Burr,” 1804, PTJ.

217 “He is sanguine enough to hope every thing”: Hamilton to Gouverneur Morris, December 24, 1800, WAH.

218 “to effect a separation of the Western Part of the United States”: Anthony Merry, quoted in Adams, History of the United States.

218 “You have appointed General Wilkinson”: Joseph Daveiss to Jefferson, January 10, 1806, PTJ.

219 “one of the most agreeable, best informed, most genteel, moderate”: Gideon Granger to William Easton, March 16, 1805.

219 “Of the General I have no very exalted opinion”: Albert Gallatin to Jefferson, February 12, 1806, Writings of Albert Gallatin, ed. Henry Adams Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1879. Gallatin’s comments were evidently in response to Jefferson’s query about his loyalty. In his next sentence Gallatin refers specifically to Ellicott’s warning, demonstrating that Jefferson had not only received his message, but remembered its contents.

219 “in the meantime I can only say the country is a healthy one”: JW to Charles Biddle, March 18, 1805,