15
DEATH OF A RIVAL
CONFIRMED IN HIS POST and convinced of Wilkinson’s treachery, Major General Anthony Wayne made it his mission to deny his fellow general any part in the army’s business. Wilkinson, he told Knox, was “a vile assassin,” “the worst of all bad men,” who intended to break up the United States with the help of the British in Canada and of secessionists in Kentucky. So far as the major general was concerned, his subordinate “had no command in the army, and if he had any modesty he would resign.”
Thus, while negotiations with the western confederation continued at Wayne’s headquarters in Fort Greeneville, Wilkinson was effectively sidelined in Fort Washington. He missed the steadily increasing pressure that was brought to bear by the Legion’s powerful presence in the Indians’ heartland. He had no part in the negotiations with Blue Jacket, Little Turtle, and other leaders of the western confederation. Finally, on August 3, 1795, he was absent when they assembled at the fort and accepted a new boundary that opened up the first prairies to settlement, including most of western Ohio and much of Indiana. In keeping with Knox’s vision of coexistence, a binding guarantee was also given in the Treaty of Greeneville that “the United States will protect all the said Indian tribes in the quiet enjoyment of their lands against all citizens of the United States.”
That same year, Wayne’s decision not to attack Fort Miami was vindicated when diplomatic negotiations in London resulted in the Jay’s Treaty and Britain’s peaceful withdrawal from all forts on U.S. territory. Quite suddenly, the northern frontier was opened up. Wayne’s triumph completed the humiliation of his subordinate.
Knox, who probably understood Wilkinson as well as any American, had resigned at the beginning of the year. The last two messages Wilkinson sent the former secretary of war concerned Wayne and perfectly reflected the split between his private feelings and public behavior. In reply to Knox’s formal letter offering a court of inquiry, Wilkinson formally promised on January 1, 1795, to drop all public complaint against Wayne—“My Lips are now Sealed, my Pen is dismissed from depicting well founded grievances”— but on January 2 he sent an answer to the secretary’s private letter in which he repeated all his denunciations.
Knox could accept such contradictions, but not his successor, the bald, Puritan disciplinarian Timothy Pickering. Caught between a military rock and a political hard place, Wilkinson found himself unable to plot openly against Wayne. Fearing that a head-on confrontation might bring the risk of his expulsion from the army, he abandoned his call for an inquiry.
IN FORT WASHINGTON, he and Nancy still kept up their lavish displays of hospitality, to the admiration of the Kentucky Gazette. They still ran their carriage through the muddy streets of rapidly growing Cincinnati, despite the presence of hogs scavenging among the refuse and despite the seasonal flooding of the lower part of town. They now had three children being educated in Philadelphia and had to find money for the necessary clothes, shoes, and tutors.
Economic stability had eluded Wilkinson all his life, but the prospect of Carondelet’s dollars had briefly seemed to bring it within his grasp. In the fall of 1794, he had begun buying land again, this time from John Cleves Symmes, whose million acres lay on the northwest side of the Ohio River. Away from the stranglehold of lawsuits and chicanery that was killing Kentucky’s land market, Ohio property was rising in value so fast that in 1795 the Pittsburgh Gazette reported, “Land that two or three years ago was sold for ten shillings [$1.50] per acre, will now bring upwards of three pounds [$9].”
It should have provided the sort of profitable investment in land that Wilkinson had sought ever since he first came west. But by the sort of bad luck that seemed to dog the general’s real estate deals, a surveyor’s error meant that the valuable acres he had bought from Symmes turned out to belong to the U.S. government and were not for sale. Since he had paid with borrowed money and Symmes had run out of funds, Wilkinson again found himself facing creditors, but this time without land he could sell.
In April 1795, a lifeline arrived in the shape of Captain Joseph Collins, who came downriver from Pittsburgh, thereby escaping Major Doyle’s eagle eye. Yet here, too, it seemed that fortune was against Wilkinson. In a message to Gayoso, Wilkinson revealed that Collins had somehow contrived to lose $2,500 in a land speculation that went sour. Since Wilkinson continued to trust Collins as a messenger, he was probably lying slightly and this was actually money owed on the Symmes deal. Nevertheless, once travel expenses, incidental debts, and Collins’s fee as a courier had been paid, Wilkinson was left with just $1,740 instead of the $6,333 he had expected. Altogether, less than one seventh of the money that he had been promised by Carondelet the year before had actually arrived in his hands.
“If my very damned and unparalleled crosses and misfortunes, did not uncash me, I would be with you in flour,” he replied regretfully when an old friend, John Adair, invited him to join a trading expedition to New Orleans that summer. He still hoped to recoup some of the stolen money— “this sum is not lost, but is not within my control”— but even when it was eventually paid, other demands would be made upon it. He was still being sued for $3,000 by his former partner Peyton Short, and Harry Innes continued to demand money to pay off bonds he had underwritten. Small wonder that Wilkinson should have scrabbled so desperately to retain his dual role as general and spy.
HECTORDE CARONDELET had many reasons for treating the general generously, and all were conneected to the fragile defense of Louisiana. Its protection depended heavily on alliances made with the Cherokee, Choctaw, and Creek nations, which lived along its borders. With a stiffening of Spanish regulars and militia operating from forts along the Mississippi, the threat of Indian war parties provided a deterrent to the sort of expeditions that bellicose settlers often talked of sending down the river to attack New Orleans. But the awesome power exhibited at Fallen Timbers by the Legion of the United States was on a different scale. Against such an army Caron-delet had no defense.
The threat it posed became more real when Jay’s Treaty was ratified in June 1795, signaling the imminent withdrawal of British troops from the forts they occupied south of the Great Lakes. Once the distraction on its northern border had been removed, the United States became free to enforce its interests in the south. At the same time, the risk of an attack from France had suddenly increased following the invasion of Spain by French armies in 1795. In such circumstances, Louisiana became a legitimate target. From the standpoint of those in New Orleans, her most useful resource appeared to be the secret information and hidden influence of a senior American general.
Wilkinson had already proved his usefulness in several specific ways. Although Carondelet mistakenly attached particular value to his role in undermining the George Rogers Clark expedition, the most valuable results came from the flow of intelligence he provided about U.S. military intentions and capability, and from the insights he offered about how they might be countered. The most obvious example was his recommendation to Miró to build a fort at New Madrid. Its construction immediately curbed U.S. expansion down the Mississippi and encouraged a surge of settlement into what would become Missouri, not just by Anglo- Americans but by more than a thousand Shawnees and Delawares, who were given land, as Gayoso explained, “with a view to their rendering us aid in case of war with the whites as well as with the Osages.” And as Carondelet found, the fort became increasingly useful as a jumping-off point for agents and couriers who needed to enter the United States.