Nevertheless, watching Wilkinson being assailed by his attorney’s unrelenting cross-examination, Harman Blennerhassett noted with satisfaction, “He exhibited the manner of a sergeant under courtmartial rather than the demeanor of an accusing officer confronted with his culprit. His perplexity and derangement, even upon his direct examination, has placed beyond all doubt ‘his honor as a soldier and his fidelity as a citizen.’ ”
The general’s case was not helped by the decision of the government’s lead attorney, George Hay, to throw him to the wolves. “My confidence in him is shaken, if not destroyed,” Hay admitted to Jefferson. “I am sorry for it on his own account, on the public account, and because you have expressed opinions in his favor.” As a result, the prosecution rarely challenged the defense’s use of unsupported allegations, leading questions, and hearsay evidence to indict Wilkinson.
In his summing-up, Marshall accepted the central thrust of Burr’s defense that the two men were inseparable: “It is obvious that Col. Burr, whether with or without reason, calculated on his co-operation with the army which [Wilkinson] commanded, and that on this co- operation, the execution of his plan greatly, if not absolutely depended.” When the jury found Burr not guilty, they also implicitly cleared Wilkinson. But in popular opinion, both were judged to be treacherous to the core.
THE PRESIDENT’S EXTRAORDINARY efforts to see Burr convicted, and his endorsement of Wilkinson’s unconstitutional regime in New Orleans, suggest how gravely he viewed the threat presented by the conspiracy. It was the ultimate test of the republican democracy he had tried to foster in the Mississippi Valley, where central government was denuded of power in favor of the states and the citizen. Addressing Congress on January 31, 1807, he declared that the conspiracy had been defeated by “the patriotic exertions of the militia wherever called into action, by the fidelity of the army, and energy of the commander- in-chief.” In reality, however, these were not the vital ingredients.
Apart from the small detachment of Ohio militia that descended on Blennerhassett’s island, and the thirty men of the Mississippi militia who arrested Burr at Natchez, the citizens’ army was conspicuous by its absence. The fidelity of the regular army was unquestionable, but the soldiers would have marched to war with Spain as readily as they patrolled the streets of New Orleans. Equally the commanding general would have given the same bravura display in an attack across the Sabine as in his role as savior of the nation. What makes the Burr Conspiracy a pivotal event in American history lay in the evidence given by every witness who was invited to aid Burr in his enterprise. Sooner or later, each one made it plain that he was prepared to join the expedition only if it was part of the United States’ war with Spain.
That was the transformation in the western settlers that Burr, the easterner, never appreciated. Trying to recruit Colonel George Morgan’s family, Burr had told the old man “that our taxes [in the west] were very heavy, and demanded why we should pay them to the Atlantic parts of the country?” as though he were talking to the whiskey rebels of the eighteenth century. But in the Mississippi Valley the border mentality that had allowed Rogers Clark, Blount, Sevier, and especially the younger Wilkinson to switch loyalties to serve their own advantage had gone. The certainty of the national frontier drawn by Andrew Ellicott in 1798, the pride in the sudden doubling of the U.S. landmass through the Louisiana Purchase, and the guarantee of property rights under U.S. law that each settler depended upon had created something new, a clear attachment to the nation.
The change was unmistakable in the response of the Morgans because Burr specifically told them of his efforts to recruit men “who had been engaged in the western insurraction,” meaning the 1794 Whiskey Rebellion. Not only did the son, John, advise his father “to apprize the President of the United States that something was going forward,” but the old colonel, who in 1788 had been ready to become a Spanish subject, went out of his way to express to Burr his pride in “our fine country.” He was not alone. Time after time, those that Burr and Blennerhassett tried to recruit made it clear that they regarded the exploitation of their country as unpatriotic.
Andrew Jackson expressed the emotion in histrionic fashion: “I would delight to see Mexico reduced, but I will die in the last ditch before I would yield a foot to the Dons, or see the union disunited.” More soberly, Lieutenant Jacob Jackson, in command of the garrison at Chickasaw Bluffs, said that he had agreed to join Burr “provided I found him patronized by the United States.” Even Maurice Belknap, one of Blennerhassett’s messengers, who had nothing to lose by enlisting, refused to do so because, as he testified, “I stated to him that I believed that the expedition was an unlawful one.”
That was the dilemma that faced James Wilkinson from the moment Swartwout entered his camp. Would he side with the past or the future? At that point, the fate of the United States had hinged on his choice. John Adair was surely correct in assuming that an attack across the Sabine would have triggered the cascade of volunteers that Burr counted on. No one, perhaps not even Burr himself, knew what he would then have done with thousands of men at his back, money needed, New Orleans at his mercy, and Veracruz beyond. However disreputable Wilkinson’s motives, his decision to oppose Burr was crucial in determining whether the American states remained united or not, whether they moved into the future or not. It was, in consequence, the depth of irony that after twenty highly successful and rewarding years of treachery, one single act of loyalty and patriotism should have plunged the rest of his life into ignominy.
27
THE WAR WITH RANDOLPH
ICAN DISTINCTLY TRACE the source of my persecutions to the celebrated John Randolph of Roanoke,” James Wilkinson wrote in his Memoirs, “who is entitled to all the credit, to be derived from the cunning, zeal, perseverance, and perfidy displayed in his complottings against the character of a man, whom he feared and hated.” Wilkinson overlooked, however, his own considerable contribution to his downfall.
In his attempt to indict Wilkinson for treachery, Randolph had termed him “a rogue,” an insult that festered until, on Christmas Eve 1807, the general challenged Randolph to a duel for a comment “injurious to my reputation.” His challenge was swept aside contemptuously. “In you, sir,” Randolph replied, “I recognize no right to hold me accountable for my public or private opinion of your character . . . I cannot descend to your level.” Frustrated, Wilkinson responded by plastering Washington with posters that boldy proclaimed, “In Justice to my Character, I denounce John Randolph, Member of Congress, to the world, as a prevaricating, base, calumniating scoundrel.”
This imaginative retaliation tarnished Randolph’s standing in the eyes of the Virginians who had elected him. But it also secured his inveterate hatred. Members of the Tenth Congress had more pressing issues to consider. They had reconvened early at the president’s urgent request to consider how best to respond to the unprovoked attack in June by the British warship Leopard on the USS Chesapeake after the latter refused to allow a British search party on board to look for possible deserters. Without waiting for Congress, Jefferson had authorized additional spending to strengthen defenses, which, he admitted later, “were illy provided with some necessary articles,” but his decision created a host of questions about defense, the Constitution, and the budget. Yet all this took second place after the posters appeared.