Thus when John Armstrong drew up the list of charges for Wilkinson’s third court-martial, they ranged from his failure to ensure the army’s swift departure from Fort George and Sackets Harbor through the fiasco at La Colle Mill, and for good measure included drunkenness, conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman, publicly disparaging the army, and cowardice. Those, however, were not the crimes with which he should have been charged. The war itself, the ultimate prosecutor and judge of military misdoings, revealed where he was truly culpable. The humiliations of 1812 and 1813 would not end until a properly funded, professionally trained army took the place of the starved constabulary that Jefferson and Madison had espoused. Wilkinson should have been tried for colluding with his political masters.
The first attempt to organize a court- martial a month after his suspension from duty collapsed when he protested that of the five officers available to try him, only three were generals. “General Wilkinson declines being tried by a court of the smallest legal number unless wholly composed of General officers,” Armstrong regretfully explained to the president, “and the court not being so composed was dissolved.” It left Wilkinson, as he assured his friend Solomon van Rensselaer, “quite at ease, a man at large, and a Maj. Gen. without a command.” Leaving Albany, he and van Rensselaer made a poignant visit to the hillsides of Saratoga, where Wilkinson had first tasted real military glory. From there he traveled by steamboat down the Hudson to New York City, where another friend, General Morgan Lewis, in charge of the city’s defenses, welcomed him. In June, he at last rejoined the divine Celestine in Frederick, Maryland, but no one could suppose that Wilkinson would be at ease until his trial took place.
During the summer, he and Celestine suffered the loss of their seven-month-old girl, Marie, who had been born in November 1813 while the general was in the north. For Wilkinson, it was in a sense a double tragedy, because the girl had taken the place of James Biddle, killed two months earlier on September 17 in Florida on active service. Yet the general’s grief was soon dissipated by the larger shock of a British fleet sailing into Chesapeake Bay.
As early as July 17, 1814, Wilkinson was convinced that British threats of retaliation for the burning of the Parliament House in York were more than mere words and had raged that Armstrong’s “malignant spirit” prevented him from taking any action to defend the capital. The secretary of war himself firmly denied that Washington was in danger, although he had seen the ships sail into the Patuxent River. “They certainly do not come here!” he insisted. “What the devil will they do here? No! No! Baltimore’s the place.” On August 17, while General William H. Winder in command of six thousand militia still debated whether to throw up defenses on the Bladensburg road leading into the city, and Armstrong remained incapable of recommending any action, Wilkinson pleaded with the secretary of state, James Monroe, to be allowed to intervene: “Could my arrest be suspended and my sword restored for a short period, I would take command of the militia and save the city or forfeit my life.”
There was no reply. On August 24, in less than three hours, General Robert Ross’s column of forty-five hundred British regulars scattered Winder’s force from the vital Bladensburg bridge, which had been left unfortified and intact. By nightfall, flames were rising from the Capitol. In the aftermath of the catastrophe, Armstrong at last resigned, leaving James Monroe to run the War and State departments in tandem.
In such circumstances, the task of finding enough generals for Wilkinson’s court-martial hardly ranked as a priority. It was not until November, after the general had sent Madison a personal letter begging for his trial to begin, that a date was set. The place selected was Utica, New York, uncomfortable and cold in winter, but convenient for the senior officers of the Ninth Military District, who would have to attend. On January 3, 1815, General Henry Dearborn opened the proceedings of a court-martial made up of six other generals and six colonels and prepared to listen to one of the most experienced and skillful military lawyers conduct his own defense. Everyone in the court knew the general, most had served with him, and some, such as General Morgan Lewis, were his friends. The man on trial was the incarnation of a military ethos discredited by the war, but since each of his judges had subscribed to the same compromised values, they were not likely to find him guilty.
At the outset, Wilkinson disposed of the danger presented by the special judge advocate appointed by Monroe to prosecute him, Martin Van Buren. Arguing that a civilian could have no standing in a military court, Wilkinson had the brilliant advocate thrown out, thus ensuring that he would not fall victim to unexpected legal booby traps. On the military charges, his defense was a straightforward claim that the handicaps imposed on the commander of the Montreal expedition by the weather, the secretary of war, and a treacherous colleague made success impossible. The official correspondence supported him, and Wilkinson had no difficulty in showing that the deficiencies of the supply system, patchily supervised by General Swart-wout among his other duties as an infantry brigadier, could not be blamed on the commander. And although the action at La Colle Mill undoubtedly could be, Wilkinson diminished its significance by suggesting his force was conducting an armed reconnaissance and simply turned back having discovered the enemy’s strength.
The more serious accusations Wilkinson had to face were the personal ones of intoxication, swearing, and cowardice. Yet here, too, the court was unlikely to find against him. The general’s record of taking harsh measures against drunkenness was well- known, and no one questioned his assertion that it was “a vice my soul detests and which I have always exerted my authority to eradicate from the army.” That he should instead have been taking laudanum, as Colonel Swift suggested, was a different matter. Not only did Swift testify that “the campaign was in no wise influenced” by its effects, every officer in court had at some time suffered from diarrhea and been forced to make use of the drug’s binding properties. Colonel King’s story about the general’s damning the army must have raised a secret smile among generals often driven to still worse profanities by subordinates who had let them down. As to the imputation of cowardice, four grizzled generals and colonels with more than a century of service among them testified to his courage, and Colonel Jacob Kingsbury recalled that at Fallen Timbers two aides standing next to the general had fallen to enemy fire while Wilkinson “had exposed himself more than necessary” to the bullets.
The verdict of the court-martial delivered by General Henry Dearborn on March 21, 1815, was not a surprise: “He is hereby honourably acquitted of all and every one of the charges and specifications against him.” On April 15, this was formally approved by the president. But while the court was still in session, a more damning judgment had been brought in, not just on General James Wilkinson but on the entire era that he represented.
IN DECEMBER 1814, the Treaty of Ghent brought an end to the disastrous war. Before the news arrived, General Andrew Jackson, defending a strong position in front of New Orleans with six thousand militia, routed an attack across open ground by eight thousand seasoned regulars led by General Edward Pakenham on January 8, 1815. His victory was taken by most civilians, and many historians, to be the war’s crowning achievement. For professional soldiers, however, what mattered in military terms was the change that took place in the north.
During 1814, the experience of war coupled with an intense system of training instituted by General Winfield Scott had brought about a material change in the ability of the troops to withstand the shock of battle. It was first apparent at the battle of Chippewa on July 5, 1814, when the superiority of Scott’s troops in infantry maneuvers and artillery fire won what an exultant General Jacob Brown declared to be “the first victory gained over the enemy on a plain”—that is, without advantage of ground or surprise.