Unfortunately for General Wilkinson’s calculated defiance, and tragically for the well-being of his men, the rain that had held off for most of June began to fall again. The river that had shrunk until it was half a mile from the camp began to rise until it lapped the levee only fifty-five yards away. Above and below Terre aux Boeufs, it broke through the embankments until the lower ground became lakes and swamps. Trodden down by hundreds of men, the clover fields turned to mud. Within the tents the men lay in pools of water until in mid- July the boats were broken up to make wooden floors. The latrines, long, makeshift ditches known as sinks, which had been dug at the back of the camp, overflowed, and raw sewage spread over the ground, contaminating water supplies, spreading disease, and attracting clouds of flies. The coffins of those that died could not be buried more than a few inches below the surface, and the corpses soon putrefied in the heat.
On July 16, Captain John Bentley of the military police inspected the camp and gave Wilkinson a devastating report on what he found: “The whole camp abounds with filth and nastiness of almost every kind . . . The kitchens are generally in a very bad state; in some instances holes have been dug to form them, which have become the receptacle of all manner of filth, and on the left of the dragoons, it is not uncommon to see men in the day time, easing themselves within a few yards of the kitchens! I beg leave to suggest the propriety of procuring necessary tubs for the use of the sick, who are not able to go to the sinks. The sewers have become the receptacle of stinking meat, refuse of vegetables, old clothes, and every species of filth. It is necessary that a number of new sinks should be dug, in place of those covered, and those that ought to be covered. You will be assailed with a very unpleasant smell, in walking down the levee, from the front to the flank guard . . . The burying ground requires immediate attention; the lids of many of the coffins are but very little, if any, below the surface, and covered with but a few inches of earth; the stench arising from the burying ground is sensibly observed on the left of the dragoons.”
Missing from Bentley’s report was anything about the food being prepared in the filthy kitchens, and that caused more complaints from soldiers than the filth. No one disputed that the flour was “generally mouldy, lumpy and sour” and infested with mealie bugs and worms, and that the bread was no better. The salted meat, usually pork, turned out to be a rusty brown color when it was ladled out of the barrel and often covered in mold, while the fresh meat, taken from cattle slaughtered close to the camp, was stringy and, on two occasions, proved so inedible that the provisioning officers took the salt meat instead.
Selfish and greedy though he was, Wilkinson responded quickly to Bentley’s findings. He transferred his headquarters from New Orleans to be onsite and ordered new drains to be dug, and shading to be constructed for the guard posts and on the paths between the tents. He also overrode the existing food contract, ordering a hundred barrels of fresh flour, and regular supplies of fresh chickens for the sick.
These measures, however, brought a compromising response from the food supplier, James Morrison: “You know whether the contract is profitable depends on the commander-in- chief . . . Be as serviceable to me as you can, where you are, keeping the public in view, and it may be in my power to be in some way serviceable to you . . . Should a part [of the flour] become unfit for use, I have directed [my agents] to purchase and mix with sweet flour so as to make it palatable. Don’t I pray you order an examination unless in the last resort.”
On top of this witches’ brew of cheeseparing, military mismanagement, and bad weather came the intervention of William Eustis. In an apoplectic response to Wilkinson’s move downriver, the secretary of war issued a direct order “immediately to embark all the troops . . . and proceed to the high ground in the rear of Fort Adams and Natchez.” The months at Terre aux Boeufs saw 145 losses from death and desertion. In an operation that eventually saw the force lose more than 1,100 men, approximately 750 of them died or deserted after the move ordered by Eustis. At his court- martial, Wilkinson insisted, probably correctly, that had the men been left where they were, with the river level falling, the ground drying, and the food improving, it would have cost fewer lives. But he had gambled on the weather before, and lost.
The navy, manned by militia sailors, had been ordered to provide all twenty-four of its gunboats to carry the army, but only supplied four. The military boats in Natchez that were supposed to supplement them turned out to be rotten and unseaworthy. Accordingly the troops were crammed onto the few boats that could be hired in New Orleans and, with agonizing slowness, were rowed upstream in the sultry summer heat. One regiment as well as the sickest on board were left behind in New Orleans, and another hundred invalids were put ashore at the army post at Pointe Coupee. Not until mid-October did the first boats reach Fort Washington behind Fort Adams, and the remainder were landed at Natchez near the end of the month. More than two hundred men had succumbed on the boats, but weakened by disease and recurrent fevers, including malaria, another five hundred died after they reached dry land.
Inevitably, the officer in charge of such a catastrophe would face a public inquiry. On December 19, 1809, before any conclusion was reached, President Madison suspended General James Wilkinson from command of the U.S. army pending the outcome of a congressional investigation.
28
MADISON’S ACCUSATIONS
ICONFESS, THE STRENGTH of my mind was shaken,” James Wilkinson admitted when he learned of President James Madison’s decision. For the first time in his career, the general had no allies in government. He faced an unfriendly Congress, and an administration that was downright hostile. Yet he soon recovered his mental alertness, thanks to a sense of “conscious rectitude, an implicit reliance on my Creator, an invincible flow of animal spirits, and a firmness of resolution which had supported me under almost every vicissitude of human life.” Of these, the flow of animal spirits, meaning his remorseless, bounding energy, counted for most. That was apparent in early 1810, once command had formally been handed over to Brigadier Wade Hampton in Natchez. Instead of heading straight for Washington, Wilkinson first turned south for New Orleans and the embrace of Celestine Trudeau.
They were married on March 5. The ceremony took place in the chapel of the fashionable Ursuline nuns who, the groom must have been uneasily aware, had been enthusiastic supporters of Aaron Burr’s. The honeymoon was brief, but indubitably passionate since Celestine bore him a daughter nine months later. Yet not even a young bride could keep him away from the battle to save his career. Less than a week after they were married, he sailed for Washington, and he and his wife would not see each other again for more than two years.
The long delay in bringing him to face a court was largely deliberate, a device adopted by Madison and Eustis to force him out of the army, but the process was also slowed by the long list of offenses that required investigation. During the disastrous summer of 1809, Daniel Clark’s Proofs of the Corruption of General Wilkinson and His Connexion with Aaron Burr had been published, containing every document that Clark and Power could unearth in New Orleans that pointed to the general’s guilt. Although the Spanish records escaped them, the impact was more powerful than their piecemeal presentation the previous year. Accordingly Congress appointed two committees to investigate the separate issues of the general’s role as a Spanish agent, and his responsibility for the army’s loss of life.