the life of james wilkinson the aid to benedict arnold who

revealed his superior secret allegiance. mr. wilkinson would later assume a similar life and espionage known as agent 13 for the spanish secret service. politics and prose bookstore here in washington is the host of this hour-long event. >> i fear i should begin with an apology because i spent the best part of three years the last two intensively to reading and researching and writing about a masterpiece of work and there is on the face a very little good to be said in favor of general james wilkinson. on the face of it i emphasize what else can be said you would save for a man who combined a career as commander in chief of the united states army, and that was how congress does it made him commander in chief with his second existence as agent 13 in the spanish secret service. 11 years he commanded the nations forces, he dowson its

forces, patrolled its frontiers and for most of that time, he also said america's military secrets to the largest power in the hemisphere. and if spain had acted a little more vigorously on the warnings of agent passed on they would have carried the lewis and clark expedition and put a halt to the expedition. and they did heed his advice about fortifying the border with texas and so they kept the united states out of texas for about a generation things to his warnings he was a pretty effective agent it has to be said. and then there is also his reputation as the man who founded the spanish conspiracy, and the spanish conspiracy was designed to split away kentucky and tennessee from the rest of the country. so a guy like that, you know, he makes snakes seem like a model of rectitude and chameleons,

chameleons look good, ideals of consistency compared with wilkinson. and i simply refer to him as an artist, in the words of frederick tracks and turner he blessed the most consummate artist in trees in the nation has ever possessed. rollover, benedict arnold, here comes james wilkinson. and i shall also apologize because i really enjoyed writing about him. in my defense there are two possible explanations i could offer. the first is the psychologically compelling about somebody who can lead a double life, absolutely in the public for so long. and the other point curiously is that he played a role that was extraordinarily important to the survival of democracy in a very

new and very vulnerable state. in short i am going to suggest that despite his despicable behavior james wilkinson did a lot for which we should be very grateful. now what's so surprising about his career as a spy is that almost everyone suspected him of being one. he wants to be one of the most out of it secret agents in history. i refer to him as wilkinson the spanish pensioner which meant he was in spain there also are pamphlets printed accusing him of a traitor and in kentucky there was an entire newspaper that was devoted to exposing him. and each of the first four presidents, george washington, john adams, thomas jefferson and james madison did with a cabinet colleagues were all aware of wilkinson's uncomfortably close contact with the spanish

authorities and new orleans. and they discussed repeatedly what should be done with him. the founding fathers were no fools and so clearly something wilkinson date that was more important than the threat. so there's not just the psychological puzzle of what made him do it, there is this historical mystery to be solved. yes, there's the historical mystery. i'm going to give a quick outline of the first half of his life. he is born the son of a penny less tobacco growers. his mother died when james was barely eight. the boyda durham. quote endlessly how he should read his life, takes as the model for a way that a maryland gentleman planter should live his life.

but it's pretty obvious joe who was a swindler borrowed from his friends, never paid them back, he built up huge debt and died virtually bankrupt. in short this is not a very good model on which to build your life. after his father's death he was brought up by devoted and adoring grandmother who spoiled him hopelessly and it was unheard that he practiced his dominant talent that's his ability to charm people. charles is a quality history tends to ignore. dot but we know how important it is when we made a charming person how we immediately adorn them and that is the effect that he had on people he was vigorous, he was energetic, he had a prodigious memory, he talked mostly about himself but the stories during good and to

get a nice turner praised as washington said i received another report about your being a spanish pensioner and wilkinson said this is the sort of thing that happens in five era this is his quote when a slander on stilts stocks over the fences of reputation. that is a good phrase. there was a nice tribute paid to him on the eve of the battle of saratoga when he was a 20-year-old general to general horatio gates and it came from a new militia colonel and the militia colonels don't care for regular officers particularly. but this is what he said about young wilkinson, and that is what he was known as, he was just this young the effervescent cade, and this is what the militia said. wilky's conduct during that memorable campaign endeared him to me. he seemed to be the life and soul of the had border of the army. he in the capacity of the general governed the

headquarters. and this is the part of what he contributed to was the extraordinary victory at saratoga when the gates at the army trapped general army up against the banks of the hudson river and forced the surrender. ann gates certainly felt wilkinson played a major role. this isn't an exact portrait as you can see behind me but we are assuming that by holding the flag behind gates is indeed wilkinson because he was so close to gates, both professionally and personally. gates used to refer to him as my son, you are as a son to me, he wrote on several locations. and when the news of the great victory was taken to congress it came with strong recommendation, absolute insistence that this kid of 20 should be made a general. and so he became the youngest

american general in the army. so that's part of the power of his charm. i think the other part, again, of his personality, this is his wife nancy more formally known as ann bidle. it is just a miniature portrait by can't find the original. but just take a look at her. take a look at that little mouth and those bright eyes. she's a quaker. look at the hair piled on her head. that is no ordinary quaker. she is still look good and sensitive. she writes beautifully, wonderfully funny comic letters always actually requiring some little luxury to be sent to her. and i think that when we come to the sort of motivation of one of the things is this golden couple, he charming, she delicate come sliced, flirtatious wanting in little luxury.

he always insists she has a carriage and the best clothes. he spends a great deal of money and she loves it and they are very, very charming couple. and so out on the frontier and this is even more valuable because after all the frontier is place where there isn't much entertainment so if you happen to be a couple like this they are very welcome but very expensive, and so he has to borrow money. he borrows a lot of money and the great thing is that out on the frontier people of course are straight talkers, but they are very susceptible to charm. one old timer as late as 1834 when a wilkinson came out and his neighbor had a plan to him something like $250 haven't been paid a long time, he went to see wilkinson to demand his time to become money back and remember the neighbor came back after 20 minutes after landing another $200 million. [laughter] so it's not surprising really

that his personality also played a part, and you remember that in 77 he went to meet his what turned out to be spanish handlers down in new orleans. he took a flat bolt of kentucky rogers down to new orleans and mideast to a very experienced administrative man called nevado and one called marrow and he proposed them something extraordinary. he said he was given a trade monopoly on the mississippi he with a guarantee to split off the western straits from the rest of the country. that is and how absurd proposal in a way, but again, his ability to charm people plays its part, and muroe riding back to the king of spain and madrid said here is a young man of about 33 years of age, although he looks older, looks seemingly agreeable appearance married with three small children, and his manners and address, he shows he has had

a very good education, his uncommon talents have taken advantage of. and so they suggested that spain should take up this extraordinary offer, and they lent him, which is really important somebody so in debt as wilkinson, the wind $7,000. in order to secure his talent. now he was still technically a civilian when he made this deal. he had left the army at the end of the revolutionary war and he was trying to make it on the frontier. he was a hopeless businessman, even with his monopoly which had given him even with the some $7,000. he was fast approaching bankruptcy about four years later. and so he had to rejoin the army. and that is a critical moment because if you are going to rejoin the army you have to swear an oath of allegiance to the united states. and at the moment he technically becomes a trader. 1791 he rejoins as a colonel.

i think it's terribly important the money is there. he virtually doubled his salary but there was something else he really liked that feeling of being important, of knowing a secret nobody else knew and he made -- took extraordinary care to make sure the secret did remain a secret also everyone did suspect him of being a spanish pensioner nobody really knew and i want to give two illustrations of the sort of care he took there are two points a secret agent perhaps more secret agents so you will notice anywhere but two points when it's dangerous. one is when you're sending your information out and the other is when you are getting paid for it. this is a message that wilkinson cent in 1794 soon after a new spanish government came in to replace monroe and wilkinson wanted to impress him.

told his spanish handlers how many troops he commanded, how much he was being paid by the united states government and by implication how much he expected to be paid by the spaniards. you may remember on the timeline his salary was increased from $2,000 a year to $4,000 a year. well, this is the message that triggered his pale eyes. and if he found that message it wouldn't tell you very much. i have to say there was a first-class guy named samuel rhodes who in the 1920's looked at wilkinson's codes. this is what he figured it meant. 2,000 subject troops composed muskett your, i think it is light horsemen and artillery men and i will quickly show you how he was able to break it. if you look at the numbers to the left of the full stock of the got you will see the letters

and, artillery, the beginning of the alphabet, the numbers are quite small. if we get to the w the things near the end of the alphabet. they are quite large and roads figured out quickly it must refer to a dictionary. that is what they are using because a is i think page two. so what we are talking about is the numbers to the left of the dogs are the page numbers and from that deduce pretty quickly the ones to the right must be the line numbers. and the actual dictionary he was using was the spellings dictionary, and that has two columns on each page, so you will see beside some of the numbers there is a little double blind over the second number and that tells you the line is on i think whatever it is shall we say the second line of the second column. so it is a pretty neat way if you like of passing on information and nobody ever did break the code. in fact it wasn't until the 20th

century when a succession of doggett historians began digging through estimated 200,000 documents in the spanish archives which related to the united states and can across, i mean i looked at the archive both in madrid and the library of congress and there are hundreds if not thousands of pages, sorry i will just go back, like that. and these spanish decoders had to decode each message and they are frequently overwhelmed because wilkinson was incredibly for both, produced 60 page reports in this thing. there was one occasion they wrote back and i like this particular message. in spite of your directions and multiplied efforts of all together and separately we get nothing from your communication of april 8th.

we can only guess the meaning of the first five lines. so sometimes he was so clever with the code he defeated even this spaniels. there are very efficient bureaucratically in the archives are filled with these messages. now the other area of vulnerability you remember is getting paid and when you are getting sort of some of these quite large sums, $4,000 a year it doesn't come and paper money, it comes and silver dollars and if you are putting $4,000 on one occasion $6,000 silver dollars it has to be transported. it is what was transported in casts and clearly there's a possibility that the boat carrying the cast might be stopped in any way you could hear the sulfur jingling so they felt it in with coffee and sugar so that it looked as though it was a normal cargo.

but even so, one occasion messenger bringing up $6,000 a boat in mississippi no matter how you transfer into a rather smaller but because wilkinson's headquarters in cincinnati. and the boatman, obviously here the clanking of the claims inside the cast and the murder of the messenger, took the silver and ran off across kentucky. they immediately found out and arrested and taken before the magistrate and a confessed the murdered this guy and had taken the sulfur that was going to general wilkinson. and welcome that, wilkinson has found out. but they could only confess in spanish and there was nobody who could understand spanish. they sent down to the nearest spanish fort to get an interpreter and the guy who came out was a man named thomas power, who is an irishman who

happened to be an irishman in the secret service and so when he came to translate the he carefully left out in a little bit about the silver going to general wilkinson. and so the guys sent to prison one of them was hanged, but wilkinson got away scot-free and in fact there's another location power himself brought up some perils of sulfur and was stopped by lt. steel just outside fort matsuzaka and he looked at these costs and power said on in the spanish merchant taking coffee to louis -- louis phill and steel is suspicious that the steersman said if steele had looked into a bucket on the top of the boat containing old tobacco, he would have found peepers enough to hang a wilkinson himself. but he was rather dozy lieutenant and so he finally waved them through.

and power when he was talking about the incident afterwards he said he used up a fraction as a reward to keep his men waiting for speed in case he changed his mind and came after them because powers said had led fallen into his hands a second time i was lost. so there are close shades getting the money and to wilkinson. but he got away with it. so, that is the psychology of wilkinson. he is charming, duplicitous, and he loves the idea of secrecy. but he is also extremely energetic. he is a very good soldier, and that is what the first three presidents any way valued him for. thomas jefferson value him for something else. just take a look at the bold type down at the bottom.

1804 president thomas jefferson a point wilkinson territorial governor of louisiana. why? and that is the historical mystery because the verge of person it was a point of a space principle that the military had to be under the control of the democratically elected government. otherwise there was no control over them in general could not, they're had been a previous occasion suggested the general should have been made governor and it had specifically said there will be nobody to control him. he must be under a civilian government reject here he appoints wilkinson to be governor of lubber louisianan and you will notice immediately after wilkinson has taken $12,000 on this occasion from the spanish and new orleans. and just to give you an idea how powerful that decision made him

take a look at this map of the louisiana purchase being the governor of upper louisianan, but wilkinson in control of the upper two-thirds, all of that sensitive land between the united states and spain nobody quite knew where the boundaries late and there was an organization that started to come to the war but he was in charge of it all and he was commander in chief of the army. so why did jefferson take that gamble? that incredibly foolish gamble of putting the man so deeply suspected of being a traitor in a position of such overwhelming power and influence? and he had received to specific warnings we know about concerning wilkinson. one came from a kentucky judge called joseph davis who wrote to the president you have appointed general balkans and a governor of st. louis? who i am convinced has been for years and now is a pensioner of

spain. and the other in a way that is even more specific is at the beginning of jefferson's presidency can from a man called and recall of three upright quaker, and he had come across specific information about the money that had been paid to wilkinson and he wrote to jefferson he was a friend of jefferson and with all this information at the end he said general w. isn't a man to be trusted and discontinued and employed he will one day or other disgrace and involved the government in his schemes. what is the reason? well, it's important to remember that the army after the war of independence was reduced to a tiny slice it was about 3,000 men, the size of a brigade, it was quite small but it was washington's army, that is to say it was a federalist army. that is a matter of significance because to the federalists

jefferson was a man who could not be trusted. he was a man who plotted against washington when he was president, he had tried to undermine adams when he was president and he encouraged these factional divisions at the end of the 12 years of the federalism administration. so when jefferson became president many republicans knowing how well he was aided by the federalists assumed there would be a military coup and jerry warned jefferson every four to an arsenal should be placed under protection of faithful offices meaning republicans to prevent destruction by disparate factions meeting federalists. and this wasn't just paranoia because in the 18th-century they had this nightmare of a standing army, that is their professional full-time army because the government with an army with a full-time army could make it do what ever it wanted and it could

overrule space institutions and it had happened just five years before in 1799 in france when the army under napoleon bonaparte overthrew the government that had been elected by 1 million votes just 12 months earlier so that was very clear in people's minds and so one of the first measures jefferson did when he became president was to ask wilkinson to release meriwether lewis for a special duty and this was to go through the list of offices noting down the political filiation of marking of those who were, quote, opposed to the administration or, quote come most violently opposed to the administration and still active in its nullification and the most extreme federalism.

i think guaranteed the safety of the administration like the presence of a sympathetic and james wilkinson made it plain that he was jefferson's general. one angry federal list officer said he was the only senior officer friendly to the politics of the smell of reading a party. and he should his sympathy with various ways he posted the critics of the jefferson to were all outposts far away so they couldn't do any damage but he also devised his own way of weeding out federal lists, and this is 83 the critical thing is the pigtail for the queue, and that was the ornament of the federalist army. it was incredibly difficult. you had to smear it with lard and it went rancid and the flout were turned brown and a look disgusting and as wilkinson said was a nasty and everyone was to cut it off.

that was a sensible reason, but the real reason was cropped hair was the republican way. it was a plane down to earth republican hairstyle. and the federalists hated it. this is one officer, i was determined not to cut my hair provided my feelings would have sufficed. i rode my resignation and showed it, but the counter of used to accept it, so i was obliged to submit to the act i despise and if ever you would see me again you will find i have been closely cropped. [laughter] and this particular man we have here is thomas butler. i'm sorry i had to blow it up because it was a tiny little thumbnail silhouette which was a popular way of portraits at that time. thomas butler refused to cut his hair off and he was suspended and reprimanded and court-martialed and became the

subject by washington who picked him on his deathbed scene to his comrades durham a hole in the bottom of my coffin so my que can hang the through so that balkans and will know i still refuse to obey his order. welcome the of, really was butler did donner and everyone else fell into line or resigned. so what happened after a year is you had a close crop republican army. is the paradox running through wilkinson's career it was on mistakenly betraying his country to spain. he was also serving -- performing a service of vital to democracy. that is to say keeping the army under the control of a space government, and i think the reason why wilkinson is so little known is his perfect symbol of the case of the bald that did not bark. almost every revolutionary government sooner or later was

overthrown by its army. happened in france and every other revolutionary country in the hemisphere. the army moves in. it did not happen in the united states. and that is very much to wilkinson's credit. but there's another secret reason for jefferson's fever and this is it. this is an incredibly famous map made by alexander humboldt from secret trip kept in mexico city and it showed better than anyone else than any other map with that bit of southwest what i call the united states but was then mexico looked like. you can see the inaccuracies to it. it shows the land too narrow and there is just a single mountain range going through. but for jefferson that was extremely interesting indeed because he saw it as another

route, the southern great to the pacific and it looked so easy. once you are over the range of mountains you're down to the river to the other side and that will be the way the second route will be found. and so he borrowed the map from humbled and gated to wilkinson. wilkinson copied it and shared it with his protege who used about two years later when he explored into that area. now it was more wilkinson new more than just the map. she knew more than anyone else what was happening down there because he had a wonderful protege called philip noel and who was a horse breeder and used to go into that area to round up wild mustangs and break them from the spanish army. so he had direct information about how you might very well go in there. or alternatively he could turn

to the south and you might very well find a way into mexico. i don't know how complex it jefferson was. he was seen on one occasion having dinner and discussing something secretive that the entire table fell silent when this witness came in, but there are around the table was wilkinson, philip newland and thomas jefferson. and wilkinson had written to jefferson saying i know you are interested in this part of the world. my friend, philip, knows more than anyone else. we should all meat. what were they discussing what we don't know. but certainly his appointment of wilkinson to this very sensitive place at least suggests he wanted to find a route through to the pacific possibly he also wanted to see if there could be a way of expanding into mexico. wilkinson you remember had this

need to be liked. he wanted to be approved of. and he responded enormously. he responded to jefferson's promotion with an absolute doglike adoration. he wrote to one friend soon afterwards tell the president i would gladly give my life for him and counted a loss of i have but one to give. and you begin to see happening in the beginning of a terrible morass of the tail wilkinson who has always been prone to treachery has found somebody that he is going to be loyal to. and what is really terrible for him is that just one year earlier before he was promoted from he and his friend aaron burr had started to plot a little conspiracy to carve out some kind of a kingdom partly in

louisianan, partly certainly in mexico what is but expects it is so valuable is this mother lode of silver running through the sierra mountain that produces about one-third of all the silver in the civilized world. get your hands on that and it's really like being in charge. nobody quite knows what aaron burr had in mind. but quite certainly it could only happen with wilkinson's help. clearly he had the control of the army but more importantly have the ability to go to war with spain. if there was war withstand all contact amongst the militia generals and for jackson had said all but spain we will go to war with spain and bring you out or 5,000 people, 10,000 people, and so that was a critical thing and in the summer of 1806 it looked as though the war would break out because spanish troops crossed into what was taken to be united states territory.

they moved down just like that, negative -- the united states american line. and it's effectively about 65 miles. now, you could have war with no trouble at all, indeed in october, 1806 wilkinson was discussing with the second in command how they could go to the war, how they could do a sudden surprise attack. and at the moment, the fate of the united states was in his hands if they had made their attack the army would be engaged, war would have broken out, the militia would have come out coming down the mississippi. aaron burr certainly intended to take new orleans whether it was a huge rebellious population waiting to give him gold and guns.

ostensibly he was going to go on to invade mexico. and who knows, who knows. and on october 8 while wilkinson was talking to his second-in-command a young man came and with a letter from aaron burr will come and that was the moment at which wilkinson had to decide was he going to be loyal to jefferson or was he going to be loyal to his liking treacherous friend aaron burr? i want to read how terrible the letter was for wilkinson. it came from aaron burr and said i have obtained funds but comments the enterprise detachments from different points under different pretences will rendezvous on the ohio. wilkinson should be sent to aronberg only. he should dictate the rank and promotion of his officers. he guarantees the result of his life and honor.

and for ten days wilkinson agonized which we will he jump, which way would he go, and finally he made the choice absolutely critical choice october 21st he wrote a letter to jefferson announcing the discovery that in numerous powerful association with the design to levy and rendezvous eight or 10,000 men in new orleans is coming down the mississippi. so he had given the secret away. he had made his choice. he had been loyal from the first time in his career. he had been loyal to jefferson. he said to frustrate the plot he proposed to make the best piece with spain in my power and to throw myself with my little army into new orleans to be ready to defend that capital against usurpation and violence. if you are going to be a traitor, stay a trader. if you're going to be loyal this is what happens.

aaron burr was arrested. he came to trial. he immediately accused balkans and not being spanish pensioner again if not for the first time, but this time it was a lot more evidence to suggest that he was. and specifically aaron burr said the only reason he didn't come with me on this enterprise was because the king of spain had paid him so much money. more and more people joined in. there was not one but two, but three, but for tribunals of inquiry into wilkinson's behavior. jefferson became cool, he did support any of the formal assistance, and then there was a terrible moment when the camp wilkinson had recommended, terrible loss of life from disease. he was forced to resign.

well he wasn't quite finished because another tribunal thanks to the trade as an agent could find anything to pin on him. so he was always find, not guilty. when the war broke out he was reinstated and in a clever little campaign he forced spain to hand over west florida and you will see this tiny little bit of west florida just nearest the white bit of the map. that is what wilkinson concord. it was the only territorial gain during the war of 1812. and on the basis of that he was promoted to be, to command, and this one was total disaster. the third was a man died of disease and he was again forced to resign and his military career. and after that his life declined very rapidly. he tried to grow cotton in the

south, didn't really succeed. he was never good as a businessman said he went to mexico, and he tried to gain land there. but really there was very little to wilkinson in the and who was he? nobody really knew of the one thing that really was made constant in his life was this extraordinary obsession with jefferson, wanting jefferson's approval. and he broke repeatedly to jefferson asking him just send me a pleasure. that is all, just reply to my letters. and they piled up and you can see them, see jefferson did receive them because clearly by 18 twenties, which is when we are talking about, 1824, jefferson is very old indeed and do can see is shaky can't write and endorsing the envelopes coming from wilkinson that same may 21st, and he doesn't reply. he doesn't get the approval

wilkinson wanted, and i think it really broke wilkinson's heart. he became almost addicted and on christmas day he died, and i want to read some nice little code that occurred because in a sense if you are going to be the life of secrecy that is where your real life is going to be and the outside life is a disguise so it is difficult to tell where you exist. was he a trader? will see a patriot? was a spanish, was the american. he died on december 28 come 1825 the age of 68. she would have been gratified to learn that the distinguished congregation including the future president of mexico and the american ambassador assembled in the church of mexico city for his funeral.

the outward appearances were always important for general wilkinson to read the in were reality was less easy to discern. the general had never accounted for much, thus the final disposal was all the appropriate. in 1872, the symmetry of the church of st. michael where wilkinson was buried was scheduled for development when the news reached washington such a distinguished soldier deserved a falling all resting place orders were given to exhume his body for transfer to the national cemetery of mexico city the embassy sent an official supervisor ceremony with honor but when they arrived they discovered that the braves had already been dug up and the bones consigned to a common fault. american bones were mixed with mexico and there was no longer possible to tell one from the other. friend from any, patriot from treat her, general from spy. whoever was behind the old court

appearance once known as james wilkinson had simply disappeared thank you. [applause] if you have any questions about this mysterious character i would be glad to take them. >> first of all is this live? in my life? okay. i enjoyed your presentation. two questions if i may. could you explain briefly the first contact wilkinson had with the spanish authorities where he became their person, and the phrase spanish pensioner, i guess that means something different than we would use the

term today. >> just to explain that it just means he has been paid by spain and i think it means also it is a regular payment. it is receiving a salary. but yes, the first contact really was when he took a flatboat of kentucky produce a incipient is a city was spanish river, controlled by the spanish fort, spanish galleys, running up and down of course technically the eastern bank was american territory. but in practice the spaniards had total control and they put a ban on american boats coming down the mississippi. and i think he just decided to try to as a way of breaking the

ban on american shipping. but he clearly just the force the attractiveness of his personality allowed him to sort of get under the skin if he'd like of the spanish authorities, and he sensed that they had an agenda of old and their agenda was to build up the wealth of louisianan because they were very nervous about this huge growth of american population. and i think he understood that. he said i have got a solution to your problem. i am going to detach these new states and that will solve your problem. and he always -- it is said by his defenders that actually it was just a way of extracting money from the spaniards. but i think that it is perfectly true certainly after he rejoins the army that he was giving them a lot of valuable information.

and i think they got a very good bargain out of it. yes, sir. >> how was it discovered he was actually a from when you were saying he was never caught but quite clearly from the evidence you have presented it is unquestionable that he was, so when did that come out and how did that play? >> it really didn't come out until the 20th century. i mean really it was remarkable let one point he was always terribly nervous the spaniards would leak the information because obviously they had the smoking gun, not just one smoking gun, they had hundreds of smoking guns in the form of these reports. and one of the last of the handlers said don't worry, we will send the papers off to havana and long before madison was then president or anyone

else discovers your secret the papers will be far away. there will be no way you will be discovered and was true. there was already a wonderfully dog year historians in the 20th century that had started going through these piles of absolutely disordered document. but the library of congress got copies and scores of copies of these coded messages and they were very exciting to read because it is laid out but you need time because they are very long. but you can read about them in the book. >> is there any information about his family life? it looks like they were uprooted a number of times. >> that is a good question i'm glad you asked. i'm sorry i have to skip over ann bidle, his wife, because i am fond of her and to his credit james wilkinson was fond of her,

too. but he used to write love letters saying how much she was missing heard jimmy, she called him, and i think the question that was always in my mind is how much he knew he must have guessed because they were getting an awful lot more money than a general pattern and to a certain extent she blinded her eyes to it. she came from this very sophisticated wealthy philadelphia family and one of them became the second american bank and so she liked that. and i think she just sort of characterized it. the terrible thing is she was dying during the conspiracy. i think that she had tuberculosis, something like that, and these awful scenes where she is upstairs in the house i imagine what a hero and

coughing her lungs out, and he is downstairs writing these reports to jefferson st. i will be down my life to defend you and the united states and whatever i can give will. at the same time knowing of course he planned to do the opposite and so she died fairly soon after the defeat of the american conspiracy and after about ten years he had remarried a young french girl and i think that he was very happy with her. yes, mancebo is quite a wonderful woman. thank you for asking about her. >> three questions if i may. do you know spanish or have you communicated with the spanish and english?

>> he wrote in english and so conveniently from my point of view i do read some spanish but conveniently from my point of view, the report's are decoded in english. they are written with this spelling dictionary which is an american spelling dictionary so they are decoded. and certainly what was very interesting from my point of view, and i could read most of them are the reports from madrid to new orleans talking about the value of his information and madrid took a bit of convincing it has to be said that he was valuable in its constantly new orleans is saying he can give us all this territory and information worth having. >> being under suspicious how come there was never

investigation and another question, how [inaudible] >> just to deal with the investigation he was under four investigations in the conspiracy, and as i say nobody found any hard evidence, and of course he was always able to say i have been treating with spain before this, that, or the other and so he was passed off as a legitimate business expense. his relationship with arnold is interesting because arnold was one of the people worshiped early on because arnold in the first years of the war was easily the most effective and aggressive military general that there was, and he was regarded as the star and particularly during the canadian campaign. wilkinson became at the age of

something like 18, but then along came horatio gates and wilkinson sword of transfer his loyalty and immediately turned against arnold ann gates and arnold quarreled bitterly because they were different people and wilkinson absolutely stitched arnold up while they were both in the army and the then leader again did the same thing when arnold was appointed military governor philadelphia and wilkinson said, you know, he is a trader, he is a spy. virtually forced him into the hands of the british. so she was quite a dangerous person to have as an enemy, wilkinson, but he was a very early spotting that arnold's loyalties were in the balance. yes, sir. >> thank you for an excellent presentation. you've brought the the general to light. a couple of and related

questions. you reside in england, did you do most of your research in europe and spain? how did you put it all together? >> qassam and spain because the of originals are the documents of spain, but a lot here because the library of congress has a wonderful collection of spanish documents relate to the united states but there's a wonderful collection of spanish documents in any case but specifically those and they have in fact as i realized later the have duplicates of all of the archives in madrid to read but i have been writing -- this is my third book of american history and gradually you acquire a lot of information about that period and something which you had written about, i had written about andrew for instance, and

so i was familiar with what wilkinson looked like from his point of view, and it's very funny seeing him from wilkinson's point of view because wilkinson really pleased with him like a cat place with a mouse. so that is how i did it and i have to say the third element is the internet. there is so much information. you can see original documents on-line and for instance the particular thing off jefferson's commesso shaky handwriting, there is, it's all online. i never saw that are original. i simply saw the internet picture of the original. so those are the three ways that i approach. >> my last question is you spoke of the importance of his loyalty to jefferson and not using the army to basically establish the

coup. but earlier when general washington resigned as commission of the general of the army of annapolis i guess now the state house, the sort of institutionalized the principal of civilian control over the military. did that carry through in that period? did that impact any on general wilkinson or do we just think of this later on that that's where it started? >> it was hugely important that the annapolis state house of general washington laying down his commander. in reality most of the army had been either followed were sent back to civilian life, so there wasn't much army to resign. nevertheless it is a critical importance, but it was extraordinary. i don't know how well you know

the last few months of the revolutionary, the continental army but there was strong feeling that the congress hadn't paid them enough, they haven't paid the warrant and there was talk of mutiny and washington went there and tried to read the document, and he said my hair has gone gray in the surface of my country and my eyes, too. it was such an intense personal bond that he had, and for the federalists, that was the wheel if you like that was the bond. that was really why they found jefferson so hard to stomach because from washington second administration he had been forming his own faction and he was distrusted deeply by that federalist.

i mean i have no doubt jefferson would not have gone to the extent of weeding out federalist officers. he would not have gone to the extent of trusting wilkinson had he not felt there was a genuine possibility the space government might be under threat from the military. >> thank you so much. [applause] >> andro linklater is the author of measuring america and the fabric of america. find out more. visit walkerbooks.com and search andro linklater. john maxwell hamilton come at louisiana state university and former correspondent you have written a new book called journalism's roving of the eye.

why don't you tell about your own journalism first. this is a history of foreign reporting. when did americans go outside their borders and start reporting from foreign countries? >> how americans actually going abroad in an organized and consistent way didn't happen until the end of the 19th century. but as i make the case in this book american for and reporting began really in the colonial period. in fact that is the high point of american -- for news and american papers. there were not foreign correspondents, there were journalists but people that wrote letters home and colonial printers ran down to the ports of returning ships came in and they took newspapers off the ships and reprinted the stories abroad. so foreign news reporting goes back a long way. but the idea of foreign reporting as we know with real

foreign correspondents in an organized fashion is a relatively recent concept. >> you talk about the key players in tough foreign correspondents. can you talk about them and what they do? >> there is an amazing array of characters involved. some are felons, some were showman and show women and some were very serious, as we have people on one end of the scale like paul scott who worked for the chicago daily news and won the first pulitzer prize for foreign reporting in the 1920's, and he was really considered himself and really was in many ways almost like an ambassador. he was that skill that what he did and that knowledgeable. then we have people like vince and sheehan, one of the most creative writers, and i mean creative of in the sense of making stuff up but literary figures and a true genius as a foreign correspondent that could anticipate what was going to happen abroad. so there is a wide range of characters, and then you can go to another kind of person like

richard halliburton, who went abroad with a kind of a loaf and wonder style of reporting that probably had more readers than all the others combined because he was so entertaining. >> i keep hearing about the shrinkage of the american newspaper. we keep thinking about the shrinking of the american newspaper and that affects foreign correspondent offices. what is the future of american foreign reporting? >> i think foreign news gathering contrary to what people think is not in decline. it's always been short supply. foreign news gathering is a very precious commodity because it is the most expensive kind of news to get and has the lowest readership the worship and listenership. foreign news reporting and gathering is going to continue. the traditional foreign correspondents will still exist may be a smaller number of them but there are all kind of niches for new correspondence many of whom have antecedents back in the past. for example, we can talk about these colonial newspapers that