For the first time in his life, he was forced to live economically, but as he boasted to Dearborn “most agreeably and independently at $5 a week.” Between assembling his book, he fired off letters to van Rensselaer, either denouncing Armstrong as a “rascal” and his successor, James Monroe, as a “big liar,” or fishing for a job as De Witt Clinton’s military adviser—“You will perceive I am still a temporizing office hunter,” he confessed. In January 1816, he achieved some financial security by persuading Maryland’s legislature to commute the half- pay due to him as a colonel in the Revolutionary War to a lump sum of thirty- five hundred dollars. But his real hopes rested on the book. Not only would it expose Madison’s treachery, but “protect my old age from penury.”
The publication of the Memoirs in 1817 created an immediate impact. Aurora applauded the attack on the administration—“they unmask imposture in a spirit worthy of Sallust, and with an energy worthy of Tacitus”—and William Duane organized an author’s tour, where the general was guest of honor at a series of political dinners and introduced as “the meritorious persecuted veteran.” Wilkinson claimed that the first printing of fifteen hundred quickly sold out at $12.50 retail, and as a special deal $10 direct from the author. Recklessly he invested the profits in a second printing.
Its virtues are less immediately obvious to a modern reader. The first volume of what begins as a conventional autobiography abruptly breaks off when he resigned from the army in 1778; it then awkwardly resumes in 1797, shortly after his appointment as commanding general; and the last section is simply a reprint of his 1811 Burr’s Conspiracy exposed and General Wilkinson vindicated. The second volume consists entirely of his defense to the charges assembled by Madison and Eustis in 1812, while the third is his defense to the charges drawn up by Armstrong for his 1815 court-martial. As a result the Memoirs lack continuity and any sense of historical development; the long list of charges and convoluted refutations emphasize the author’s unreliability; and the obsessive, paranoid tone, occasionally reminiscent of Thomas De Quincey’s Confessions of an English Opium Eater, suggests that some at least was written under the influence of laudanum.
Yet they contain a mine of information about military and political life Most people telling the story of their life rely on their integrity to make the account credible. Because James Wilkinson’s double life was based on invention, he felt bound to back up assertions with documentary proof. Consequently, much of the Memoirs consists simply of correspondence, depositions, contracts, and army regulations, which together offer an inimitable view of the stage on which he acted. Thus for all their faults, the Memoirs succeed in illustrating Wilkinson’s historical importance in the two arenas for which he deserves to be remembered—opening up the Mississippi to western settlers, and ensuring that a restive army remained subject to civilian control.
In his preface, he admitted to a small regret, that having devoted so much space to “the illustration of my persecutions . . . I have not been able to touch the last twenty- five years of my service.” Even the brief summary of what had been left out—eight voyages by sea, four descents of the Mississippi, and “I traversed a trackless wilderness four times from the borders of Louisiana to the frontiers of Georgia”— suggested the physical resilience that helped distinguish him among the generals of his time. The omission would, he promised, be made good in future volumes.
ON THE FRONTISPIECE, the general had printed a couplet from Richard Savage’s play Sir Thomas Overbury that he felt applied to his experience:
For patriots still must fall for statesmen’s safety,
And perish by the country they preserve.
The target, as he made obvious, was “cold, selfish, timid” James Madison, but the statesman for whose safety the patriotic Wilkinson ultimately fell escaped any hint of criticism. Unlike every other authority figure in Wilkinson’s life, Thomas Jefferson was immune to even private attack. Their relationship dominated Wilkinson’s career and clearly went further than was apparent on the surface.
Occasionally, the general would hint as much. In January 1811, he sent Jefferson a letter denying a rumor that he had boasted, “As to Long Tom— meaning you— he dare say nothing, for I have got him under my thumb,” to which the president replied dismissively, “My consciousness that no man on earth has me under his thumb is evidence enough that you never used the expression.” But Wilkinson returned to the topic. A year later Monroe heard it said that when the general intervened with Morales in 1803 after the withdrawal of American rights to use New Orleans as a depot, he did so at the president’s suggestion. Jefferson’s alleged purpose was not to discourage Morales, but to encourage him in his high- handed action in order to manipulate public opinion in favor of U.S. intervention. This time Jefferson reacted with fury. Which was more likely, he demanded of Monroe, “that I should descend to so unmeaning an act of treason, or that [Wilkinson] in the wreck now threatening him [his court-martial], should wildly lay hold of any plank.”
Yet Wilkinson was not the only source of such rumors. One evening in January 1797, the adventurer John D. Chisholm, who was making detailed plans on behalf of William Blount to capture West Florida and Louisiana, went to Blount’s Philadelphia house and was shown by his son into the dining room. “Instead of finding him alone as usual,” Chisholm reported, “I found Mr Jefferson and Genl. Wilkinson at Table with him.” What they were talking about, Chisholm could not tell, but he made a guess. “It immediately struck me, but I might be wrong, that [Blount] sent for me in order to open my Plan to these Gentlemen.”
Chisholm kept his mouth shut and learned nothing more, but it is plausible that the three men were indeed discussing how the Spanish colonies might be taken, and in particular the best way to reach Santa Fe. Later that year Wilkinson sent his personal assistant to Jefferson with a message that ran, “In the Bearer of this Letter— Mr. P. Nolan, you will behold the Mexican traveler, a specimen of whose discoveries I had the honor to submit to you in the Winter 1797.”
Jefferson was always eager to acquire Spanish territory, not by war but by economic and diplomatic pressure. Often the first point of contact had to be unofficial, and sometimes more probing than could be admitted. This must have been one motive for appointing Wilkinson governor of Louisiana Territory, and for the unofficial permission to send out exploration and spying parties. A similar impulse led him to select Wilkinson to discover whether Captain General Someruelos might be ready to take Cuba out of the Spanish empire. In short, the general’s sinuous morality made him the ideal candidate for the dirty and deniable work that an upright president needed doing without knowing how it was done.
Naturally enough, Jefferson always remained aloof. “I have ever and carefully restrained myself from the expression of any opinion respecting General Wilkinson, except in the case of Burr’s conspiracy,” he told Monroe. “As to the rest of his life, I have left it to his friends and his enemies, to whom it furnishes matter enough for disputation. I classed myself with neither.” It was a wise way to treat someone whose likes and hatreds were so unpredictable, and operationally necessary. And it was presidential in tone. But considering how much the general had done for him, it lacked warmth.