James Wilkinson

This message to Cuba, forwarded to the court of King Carlos IV in Madrid, was signed by Vincent Folch, the Spanish governor of West Florida. In reality, Folch was only the translator. The original version was written in English by James Wilkinson, Commanding General of the U.S. Army. For this covert advice, and a promise of more to come, the Spanish paid Brigadier General Wilkinson $12,000 in newly minted Mexican silver. Forwarding the message to the Marquis of Casa Calvo, his paymaster in New Orleans, Wilkinson wrote on 12 March 1804: “The Memorial which accompanies this Letter has its origin in the anxious solicitude which I feel for the prosperity of the two Powers, which I love equally … ” He also gave instructions on how future contacts should be made: “My name or condition shall never be written, and always shall be designated by the number 13. All our correspondence must be carried on in cypher; in general it shall be with Your Excellency alone, or in case that is impracticable, with Governor Folch … “^[3]Wilkinson to Casa Calvo quoted in Abernethy, Thomas P., The Burr Conspiracy (Oxford University Press, New York, 1954), 11-12. The original is in the Archivo Historico Nacional, Madrid.

This wasn’t Wilkinson’s first sellout to Spain. In fact, Number 13 claimed Madrid owed him an additional $8,000 in back pay for previous services, which stretched all the way back to a 1787 plot to convert Kentucky into an independent ally of Spain. Wilkinson kept finding ways to live well on a soldier’s pay. An officer in America’s Revolutionary army, he later fought Indians in Ohio and through seniority rose in the Adams administration to one-star rank, the highest then authorized by Congress. Both business and military duties made him a frequent visitor to New Orleans, where a French official tagged him as “an illogical fellow, full of queer whims and often drunk … “^[4]Pierre Clément de Laussat, French prefect at New Orleans, 7 April 1804, quoted in Robertson, Louisiana, 2:53. As one painfully balanced biography put it: “His important services as a soldier, Indian administrator, pioneer trader, and Western expansionist were frequently forgotten in the opposition caused by his tricky unscrupulousness. “^[5]Hay, Thomas R. and Werner, M.R., The Admirable Trumpeter: A Biography of General James Wilkinson (Doubleday, Garden City, 1941), ix.

Lewis and Clark Connection

In the small world of Federal service, both Lewis and Clark were well acquainted with Wilkinson. During the army’s 1793–95 Ohio campaigns against Chief Little Turtle, Lieutenant Clark was one of the junior officers who admired the flashy Wilkinson more than the top commander, General Mad Anthony Wayne. In 1807, Wilkinson had made himself so unpopular as governor of Upper Louisiana that Thomas Jefferson decided to replace him with Meriwether Lewis, the returned hero of the Rockies.

Of course, Lewis and Clark knew nothing of Number 13’s specific treachery of urging Spain to intercept their expedition in 1804. At least partly in response, Spanish officials tried to find the American explorers with Indian surrogates or Mexican troops, but were foiled by the immensity of the Western plains.

Suspicion about a cozy tie with Spain actually had swirled around Wilkinson for years. In 1797, a tip about the general’s seeming involvement in the Kentucky plot came to Washington from a Federal boundary surveyor in Natchez, Andrew Ellicott, who later coached Lewis on celestial navigation.^[6]Hay and Werner, 171-172. In 1810, during a House of Representatives inquiry into charges that Wilkinson “corruptly received money from the government of Spain or its agents,” surveyor Isaac Briggs (another of Lewis’s astronomy teachers) said the general admitted receiving “about” $10,000 from Spain back in 1804.^[7]Briggs deposition to the House of Representatives, 13 April 1810. Isaac Briggs Papers, Library of Congress.

History’s Verdict

But nobody could ever quite corner the slippery general. Jefferson had heard all the rumors, but seemed eternally grateful to Wilkinson for his role in blowing the whistle on the murky Western intrigues of former Vice President Aaron Burr. Treasury Secretary Albert Gallatin conceded in 1806 that the rumors should “induce caution” about Wilkinson, but added: “Of betraying his [country] to a foreign country I believe him to be altogether incapable.”^[8]Gallatin to Jefferson, 12 February 1806, quoted in Malone, Dumas, Jefferson the President, Second Term. (Little,Brown,Boston, 1974)p. 224.Editor’s Note: The original source sheds more light on … Continue reading

Not until a century later did the smoking-gun documents showing the depth of Wilkinson’s guilt turn up in the archives of Madrid and Seville. There, American historian Isaac Cox and others found a letter from Don Vincente Folch identifying Wilkinson as the true author of the 1804 “Reflections on Louisiana,” and the “Number 13” cover letter from Wilkinson to the Marquis de Casa Calvo. Cox disclosed his findings in a paper read at a meeting of the American Historical Association on 30 December 1913, and published the following year in the American Historical Review.^[9]Cox, Isaac J., “General Wilkinson and His later Intrigues With the Spaniards,” American Historical Review. Vol. 19. No. 4 July 1914, letter from Gov. Folch to the Captain-General of Cuba … Continue reading

Had Spain actually stopped Lewis and Clark, history’s verdict on Wilkinson’s role doubtless would be harsh indeed. But as things turned out, his spying merely produced the kind of irrelevant fizzle that so of ten plague undercover intrigues by governments. “We may doubt if the Spanish got their money’s worth,” concluded Jefferson biographer Dumas Malone. “He seems to have told them little they did not know already or could not have easily ascertained, and he may have suggested little or nothing they would not have thought of anyway.”^[10]Malone, 219.