An Artist in Treason: The Extraordinary Double Life of General James Wilkinson (review)

James Wilkinson is perhaps the least recognized of the major players in early nineteenth-century Texas history. Ironically, he apparently never set foot in Texas territory that we know of, but he was responsible for two of his protégés, Philip Nolan and Zebulon Montgomery Pike, being part of the Lone Star State's history. Through the "Neutral Ground Agreement" that he signed with the Spanish military commander in Texas, Colonel Simón Herrera, which became the basis for negotiations that eventually produced the Adams-Onís Treaty of 1819, he helped give Texas its eastern and northeastern boundaries. Those are not the only ways Wilkinson is an intimate part of the Texas story, however, for between the 1790s and his death in Mexico City on December 28, 1825, he was involved in one way or another in American efforts to acquire all or part of Texas territory.

Wilkinson's double life has long been known to historians. As Andro Linklater's new biography makes clear, Wilkinson deserves to be better remembered—for his life is a great example of the uncertain and conflicted loyalties shared by many an early American in the revolutionary and early national periods. A "hero" of the American Revolution who went west to seek his fortune after the war, Wilkinson found himself outside his element as a merchant and turned to working for the Spanish government ("Agent 13"), which was trying to prevent the aggressive United States from usurping its North American possessions. When he managed to renew his military career, he found it difficult to shed his Spanish connections, which haunted him to the end of his career after the War of 1812. Despite the rumors and considerable circumstantial evidence of involvement with both the Spanish and with Aaron Burr, Wilkinson nevertheless served as the commanding general of the U.S. Army under presidents Washington, Adams, Jefferson, and Madison. Brought to trial on three different occasions, he managed always to clear himself of the charges, if not of suspicion. When Madison finally dismissed him, he turned to farming but proved no better equipped for that endeavor than he had been for business. He went to Mexico shortly after its independence seeking a pension or land in Texas, and he died still believing he could serve that new nation by settling Catholic families in the land whose borders he had helped establish.

Andros Linklater interprets Wilkinson as a man who sought in a series of men to whom he became attached but later betrayed—all but Thomas Jefferson, who leaned on Wilkinson to carry out his western policy—that paternal bond missing in his own life following his father's death. Not surprisingly, the author links these personal betrayals to Wilkinson's greater betrayals of his country and his military oath. Whether one agrees with this interpretation entirely, the book makes a strong case for Wilkinson as a man whose only loyalty was to the image of himself as indispensible. Indeed, Linklater makes Wilkinson central to the story of westward American expansion, in a way not to be found in the most recent literature. For instance, J. C. A. Stagg's scholarly and dense Borderlines in Borderlands: James Madison and the Spanish-American Frontier, 1776-1821 (Yale University Press, 2009), gives Wilkinson only a very minor role.

An Artist in Treason is marred by some errors of fact, particularly at the end of the book, which might have been avoided had the manuscript been subject to careful review. There is no excuse for confusing interim Texas governor Antonio Cordero y Bustamante with later Mexican president Anastasio Bustamante y Oseguera. One can also quibble with his assessment of what Wilkinson was and was not guilty of but, overall, it is a fascinating story of a man who played an important role in Texas history without ever visiting the place...