Wilkinson. On the face i emphasize. What else can be said for a man who combined his carrier of United States army his career of United States army with agent 13 in the spanish secret service. 11 years he commended the nations forces. He patrolled its frontiers. For most of that time he also fed americas military secrets to the largest power in the hemisphere. If spain had acted more vigorously on the warnings he passed on they would have captured the lewis and Clark Expedition and put a halt to westward exploration. They did heed his advice about fortifying the border with taxes. They cap the United States out of texas for about a generation. He was an effective agent, it has to be said. Then there is his reputation as a man who founded the spanish conspiracy designed to split away kentucky and tennessee from the rest of the country. A guy like that, he makes a snake seem like a model arrested two, millions look good compared with wilkinson. And, i referred to him as an artist in treason. He was the most consummate artist in treason the nation has ever possessed. Rollover benedict arnold. Here comes James Wilkinson. I should apologize. I really enjoyed writing about him. In my defense, two possible explanations. There is something psychologically compelling about somebody who can lead a double life in the glare of public for so long. The other is that he played a role that was extraordinarily important to the survival of democracy in a very new and very vulnerable state. Im going to suggest that despite his despicable behavior James Wilkinson did a lot of which we should be grateful. What is surprising about his career as a spy is that almost everyone suspected him of being one. [laughter] he mustve been one of the most out of secret agents in history. My contemporaries called him the spanish pensioner. And pamphlets accusing him of being a traitor. There was a newspaper devoted to exposing him. Each of the first four president s, george washington, john adams, james madison, with cabinet colleagues were all aware of his unconscionably close contacts with the spanish authorities in new orleans. They discussed question should be done with him. The Founding Fathers were no fools. Clearly there was something that wilkinson did that was more important than the threat of his treachery. It is not just the psychological puzzle of what made him do it. There is this historical mystery to it all. Im just going to give you a quick outline of the first half of his life. He is born the son of the penniless maryland tobacco grower. His father, Joseph Wilkinson died when james was eight years old. The boy takes him as the model for the way in maryland gentlemen should live his life. Its pretty obvious joseph was a swindler. He borrowed from his friends never paid them back. He built up huge debts and he died bankrupt. This is not really a very good model on which to build your life. After his fathers death he was brought up by a dohring grandmothers who spoiled him hopelessly. On her he practiced his dominant talent, his ability to charm people. Charm is a quality history tends to ignore. We know how important it is when we meet a charming person, how immediately you warm to them. That is the effect he had on people. He was vigorous. He was energetic. He had a prodigious memory. He talked about himself that stories are very good. He had a nice turn of phrase. Another report about you being a spanish pensioner. Wilkinson said this is the sort of thing that happens in an era when slander on stilts stocks over the fences of reputation. Thats a good phrase. A nice tribute paid to him on being eve of the battle of saratoga when he was a 20yearold general to Horatio Gates. They came from a militia colonel. They dont really care for regular officers particularly but this is what he said about young wilke. That is what he was known as. This young kid. He his conduct in dear tim timmy. He seemed to be the life and soul of the headquarters of the army. He governed headquarters. This the part of what he really contributed, the extraordinary victory when gates armie trapped general john bitcoins armie against the banks of the hudson river and forced surrender. Gates certainly felt wilkinson played a major role. This is not exact portraiture but we are assuming the guy holding the flight behind gates is wilkinson. He was so close to gates professionally and personally. Gates referred to him as my son. When the news of the great victory was taken to congress it came with strong recommendations , and insistence that this kid of 20 years old should be made a general. He became the youngest American General in the army. That is part of the power of his charm. The other part, his personality. This is his wife, nancy. Its a miniature of her. A very good portrait but i cant find the original. Take a look at that little mouth, and those bright eyes. Shes a quaker. That is no ordinary quaker. She is delicate and sensitive. She writes beautifully comic letters, always requiring some little luxury to be sent to her. When become to the motivation, one of the things is this golden couple. He is charming. She is civilized, flirtatious, wanting luxury. He always insists she has a carriage. The best clothes. He spends a great deal of money on her. They are a very charming couple. Out in the front here, this is more valuable because the front here is a place where there isnt much entertainment. If you have two people like this, they are very welcome. They are very expensive. So he has to borrow money. The great thing is, on the frontier, people are straight talkers. They are very susceptible to charm. Charm is worth its weight in gold. One oldtimer his neighbor lent him Something Like 250. He went around to see wilkinson to demand his money back. The neighbor came out having lent him another 200. It is not surprising really that his personality played a part. In 1787 he went to meet his spanish handler in new orleans. He took a flat book of kentucky produce down. He met these very experienced administrators. He proposed them something extraordinary. If he was given a trade monopoly on the mississippi he would guarantee to split off the western straits from the rest of the country. Thats an absurd proposal. His ability to charm people plays its part. Baroque, writing back to the king of spain said here is a young man of 32 years of age. He looks older, of agreeable appearance married with children, he shows that he has had a very good education, which is uncommon talents have taken advantage of. They suggested that he should take up this extraordinary offer. They linked him 7,000. In order to secure his talent. He was still technically a civilian when he made the deal. He had left the army and the end of the revolutionary war. He was trying to make it on the front tier. He was a hopeless businessman even with this monopoly. He was approaching bankruptcy four years later. He had to rejoin the army. That is a critical moment. If you rejoin the army you have to swear an oath of allegiance to the United States. At that moment, he technically becomes a traitor. In 7091 he rejoins as a kernel. I think it is terribly important that the money is they are he doubles his salary. There is something else. He liked the feeling of being important. Of knowing a secret that nobody else in their. Nobody else knew. He took care to make sure his secrets did remain a secret. But everyone did suspect him of being a spanish pensioner nobody really knew. I want to give an example of the care he took. One is when you are sending information out, and when you are getting paid for it. This is a message that wilkinson sent in 1794, after a new Spanish Government wasted replaced marone. It told his handlers how many troops he commanded, how much he was being paid, and how much he expected to be paid by the spaniards. You may remember on the timeline, his salary was increased to 4000 a year. This is the message that triggered his pay rise. If you found that message you wouldnt tell you very much. There was a firstclass guy who in the 1920s looked at wilkinsons codes. This is what he figured it meant. 2000 select troops composed of musketeers. Light horsemen, and artillery. I will quickly show you how he was able to break it. If you look at the numbers to the left of the. , you will seem for the letters which are artillery at the beginning of the alphabet the numbers are small. As we get to the w things near the end of the alphabet are large. He figured out quickly it must refer to a dictionary. That is what they are using. A is page number two. The numbers to the left of the dot at the page numbers. From that, you deduce he wants to the right must be the line numbers. The actual dictionary was the spelling dictionary. That has two columns. You will see beside some of the numbers a double line over the second number and that tells you the line on whatever it is from the second line of the second column. Its a pretty neat way if you like of passing information. Nobody ever did break the code. It wasnt until the 20th century when a succession of historians began digging through 200,000 documents in the spanish archives related to the United States, they came across, i have look to the archives. There are hundreds if not thousands of pages. I will go back to show you. These spanish decoders had to decode each message. They are frequently overwhelmed because wilkinson is verbose. 60 page reports in this thing. One occasion they wrote back i like this message, in spite of your direct shins, and the efforts of its all, we get nothing from your communication. We can only guess at the meaning of the first five lines. Sometimes he was so clever with his code c defeated his codes he defeated the spaniards. The archives are filled with these messages. The other area of vulnerability is getting paid. When youre getting some of these large sums 4000 dollars a year, it doesnt come in paper money. It comes in silver dollars. If youre putting 4000 or 6,000 in silver dollars, it has to be transported. It was transported in casks. There was a possibility the boat carrying the cask may be stopped and searched. Anyway, you can hear the silver jingling. They filled it in with coffee and sugar so it looked as if it was normal cargo. Even so, one occasion this messenger bringing up 6,000, you go in a big boat up the mississippi and transfer into smaller boats because wilkinson had headquarters in cincinnati, and the boat man could hear the clink of coins pray they murder the messenger and took the silver, and ran off across kentucky. Immediately they found out and arrested and taken before the master straight magistrate. Wilkinson is done. He has found out. But no. They can only confess and spanish. Nobody could understand spanish. They sent down to the nearest spanish fort to get an interpreter. The guy was tom is our. An irish man in the hay of the spanish secret service. When he came to translate he left out the bits about the silver going to general wilkinson. The guys that were sent to prison, one of them were hanged. Wilson got away scott free. He was stopped by a lieutenant just outside of four mastech. Fort mastech. He is a bit suspicious. The man said if he had looked into a bucket on the top of the boat containing old tobacco he would have found papers enough to hang wilkinson. He finally waved them through. When he was talking about it afterwards he used a fortnight of rom to keep his oarsmen rowing at. He. He had had ive fallen into his hands a second time i was lost. There are some close shaves but he got away with it. That is the psychology of wilkinson. He is charming, duplicitous, and he loves the idea of secrecy. He is also extremely energetic. He is a very good soldier. That is what the first three president s valued him for. Thomas jefferson value to him for something else. Just take a look at the bold type at the bottom. 1804. He appoints wilkinson territorial governor of louisiana. Why . That is the historical mystery. For jefferson, it was a point of democratic principle that the military had to be under the control of a democratically elected government. Otherwise there was no control over them. A general could not there had been occasions where it was suggested he should be made a governor. He must be under a civilian governor. Yet here he appoints wilkinson to the governor of upper louisiana. You will notice immediately after he had taken 12,000 on this occasion just to give you an idea of how powerful that position made him, take a look at this map of the louisiana purchase. Put wilkinson in control of the upper two thirds of the purchase. All of that sensitive land nobody knew where the boundaries lay. It was a source of aggravation. Drivewhy did he take the gamble . Putting a man so deeply suspected of being a traitor in position of such overwhelming power and influence . He received to specific warnings concerning wilkinson. One came from a kentucky judge named davis who wrote an alarm you have appointed general wilkinson, who im convinced has been for years and now is a pensioner of spain. Another in a way was even more seceding. It was in the beginning of his presidency. He come across specific information about the money paid to wilkinson. He wrote to jefferson with this information and said he is not a man to be trusted. Continued in employee he will one day involve the government in his schemes. What is the reason . It is important to remember the army after the war of independence was reduced to a tiny size. 3000 men. It was quite small. It was washingtons army. It was a federalist army. That is a matter of significance. To the federalist, jefferson was a man who could not be trusted. He was a man who applauded against washington when he was president , and try to undermine adams. He had encourage these divisions that brought an end to federalist administration. When jefferson became president many republicans knowing how well he was hated by the federalists assumed there would be a military coup. He warned jefferson every fort and arsenal should be placed under the protection of faithful officers in order to prevent the seizure or destruction by a desperate faction. This wasnt just paranoia. In the 18th century they all have this nightmare of a standing army. The government with an armie, a fulltime army could make it through whatever it wanted and overrule democratic institutions. It happened five years before in 1799 in france when the army under napoleon overthrew a government which had been elected by one million votes 12 months earlier. That was very clear in peoples minds. One of the first measures jefferson did when he became president was to ask wilkinson to release captain Meriwether Lewis for special duties. A special duty was to go through the list of officers, noting down political affiliation marking of those who were opposed to the administration or most violently opposed to the administration and still active in its vilification. The most extreme federalists on the lists were the smiths. Nothing guarantee the safety of the Administration Like the presence of a sympathetic commander. James wilkinson made it plain he was jeffersons general. One angry federalist officer said that he was the only senior officer friendly to the politics of the reigning party. He showed his sympathy by posting the critics of jefferson to horrible outposts far away so they couldnt do any damage. He also devised his own way of weeding out at her list. The critical thing is the pigtail. That was the ornament of the federalist army. It was difficult to keep looking smart. You had to powder it and the flower turn brown. It was nasty, and everyones to cut it off. That was his reason. The real reason was that cropped hair was the republican way. It was a plane plain republican hairstyle. The federalists hated it. I was determined not to cut my hair provided i sacrificed my feelings. I wrote my resignation and showed that i refuse to accept it. If ever you see me again you will find that i have been closely cropped. This particular man we have here is promised butler. Thomas butler. Colonel Thomas Muller refused to cut his q off. He was reprimanded. He became the subject of a satire by Washington Irving who pictured him on his deathbed saying to his comrades bore a hole in the bottom of my cotton coffin so that my q can hang through so that i still refuse to obey his orders. Boulder did died. Everyone else fell into line or resigned. What happened after a year was that you had a close cropped republican army. The paradox running through his career is while he was unmistakably betraying his country to spain he was also performing a service that was vital to democracy, keeping the army under the control of a democratic government. The reason why wilkinson is so little known is that he is the example of the case of the dog that did not bark. Almost every revolutionary government sooner or later was overthrown by its army. It happened in france, every other revolutionary country. The army moves in. It did not happen in the knotted states. That is very much to wilkinsons credit. There is another even more secret reason for jeffersons favor. This is a famous map made by alexander from the secret charts kept in mexico city. It show better than anyone else what that bit of southwest of the United States looks like. You can see the inaccuracy. The land is too narrow, and then there is this single Mountain Range going through. For jefferson, that was extremely interesting indeed. He saw it as another route to the pacific. It looked so easy. Once you are over that range of mountains there would be bound to be another river. That would be the way there would be a second route to be found. He borrow the map, and gave it to wilkinson. Wilkinson copied it and shared it with his proteges who used it to years later when he explored into that area. It was more wilkinson than just the map. He knew what was happening down there. He had a wonderful protege philip nolan and used to go into that area to roundup wild mustangs and break them for the spanish army. He had direct information about how you might go in there or turn to the south and you might very well find a way into mexico. I dont know how complicit jefferson was. He was seen on one occasion having dinner and discussing something secret. The entire table fell silent. Around the table wilkinson philip nolan, and thomas jefferson. Wilkinson had written to jefferson saying i know you are interested in this part of the world. My friend philip nolan knows more than anyone else. We should meet. What were they discussing . We dont know. Certainly, his appointment of wilkinson to this sensitive place suggest he wanted to find a route to the pac