An Artist in Treason: The Extraordinary Double Life of General James Wilkinson »

Andro Linklater is the author of the highly praised Measuring America and The Fabric of America. He lives in England.

For almost sixteen years, from 1795-1811, James Wilkinson was the senior general in the United States army. He was also Agent 13 in the Spanish secret service at a time when Spain's empire dominated North America. Wilkinson's audacious career as a double agent is all the more remarkable because it was an open secret, circulated regularly in newspapers and pamphlets. Indeed, the republic's first four presidents turned a blind eye to his treachery and gambled that the mercurial general would never betray the army itself and use it to overthrow the nascent union-a faith that was ultimately rewarded. Wilkinson's saga illuminates just how fragile and vulnerable the young republic was in its early decades, its survival in no small measure dependent on its unpredictable senior general.

The Barnes & Noble Review

In my battered copy of Arthur Schlesinger's Almanac of American History, James Wilkinson, commanding general of the United States Army, is introduced, with professorial blandness, simply as the man who, in November 1806, "reveals the Aaron Burr conspiracy to carve out an empire in the American Southwest and Mexico.

But in his wonderful novel Burr, Gore Vidal pulls the middle-aged general snorting and belching into the spotlight and sits him down on the other side of the table for the reader to see: "a fat, soft man with loose jowls and a concentrated fierce gaze, rather like that of a sow about to cannibalise her piglets." Wilkinson's once clear voice, Vidal notes, "had grown harsh from drink." He "guzzled port." He wears a fantastically elaborate blue-and-yellow uniform he had designed himself, "calculated to make a Napoleonic marshal look drab as a Jesuit."

Maps

East of the Mississippi River vii

West of the Mississippi River Viii

Introduction: A Test of Loyalty 1

1 The Penniless Aristocrat 7

2 Citizens and Soldiers 15

3 Wooing General Gates 24

4 The Triumph of Saratoga 33

5 Betraying General Gates 44

6 Love and Independence 60

7 The Kentucky Pioneer 71

8 Spanish Temptation 81

9 Cash and Conspiracy 93

10 Enshackled by Debt 103

11 A General Again 113

12 Discipline and Deceit 124

13 Poisoned Victory 134

14 The Battle for Command 140

15 Death of a Rival 148

16 The New Commander in Chief 163

17 Ellicott's Discovery 177

18 The Federalist Favorite 182

19 Jefferson's General 188

20 Agent 13 Reborn 202

21 Burr's Ambition 214

22 Betrayer Betrayed 225

23 The General at Bay 238

24 His Country's Savior 247

25 The General Redeemed 256

26 Two Traitors on Trial 264

27 The War with Randolph 276

28 Madison's Accusations 289

29 The Last Battle 301

30 The Changing of the Guard 312

Acknowledgments 329

Appendix 1 331

Appendix 2 333

Notes 335

Bibliography 367

Index 377