The Perpetuation of our Political Institutions, Part VI: The Lincoln Fallacy

    Earnest though Abraham Lincoln most definitely was in his desire – circa 1838 – to aid in the preservation of his homeland’s political institutions, and insightful though he was to pinpoint the growing disparity between law in theory and law as practically applied as a fundamental threat to the integrity of American republicanism, his understanding of the problem at hand and the nature of his solution were in neither case entirely without fault. He had claimed, for example, that one of the factors which had historically kept certain Americans from completely giving way to their personal ambitions – but which had since abated – was the omnipresent threat represented by Great Britain and its global empire. With the British ever ready to pounce on any internal weakness that the United States might have shown, he argued, generations of Americans had learned to subsume their selfish desires for the sake of preserving their nation’s liberty and integrity. But was this strictly true? Were there no cases one could point to from the period in which Britain represented the greatest threat to the American republic’s existence of ambitious Americans offering to undermine their nation’s security in exchange for wealth, prestige, or power? Lincoln had also asserted that the living presence of the Founders served a similar stabilizing function – which had likewise since abated – throughout the first several decades of the American republic’s existence. The affection and respect which the various members of the Founding Generation enjoyed, he claimed, prevented their countrymen from acting strictly out of self interest for fear of besmirching the former’s legacy and thus earning their opprobrium. But was this any truer? Did no one across the length of this entire era ever allow their ambitions to get the better of them? And were the Founders, to a man, as unimpeachable as Lincoln seemed to think?

    And then, of course, there was Lincoln’s purported solution. With Britain having shifted into the role of begrudging equal, and the Founders having almost completely died off, he believed that the United States of America had accordingly lost two of the essential pillars of its internal cohesion and stability. And if casual disrespect for the law was a symptom of this development – as Lincoln seemed to think it was – then the only logical solution must have been a scrupulous obedience of the law on the part of all Americans. “While ever a state of feeling such as this shall universally or even very generally prevail throughout the nation,” he thus affirmed, “Vain will be every effort, and fruitless every attempt, to subvert out national freedom.” Sound though this may have been in theory, however, it was bound to run into certain complications in practice. While still urging his countrymen not to judge for themselves which statutes to follow and which to disregard, Lincoln did show insight enough to acknowledge that not every law was necessarily good or just. But what about laws that were manifestly unjust? Laws whose continued enforcement would inevitably lead to the suffering of potentially millions of human beings? Laws for which there existed no moral justification whatsoever? Were these to be followed scrupulously as well? Was it as inadmissible as Lincoln claimed for laws such as these to be violated or ignored? The man who would at length become the 16^th President of the United States seemingly had no answers to these questions as of 1838. And while he can surely be forgiven for being a little shortsighted at the tender age of twenty-eight, the implications of his basic argument should nevertheless be explored in full.

    But let us first step back for a moment to address some of the holes in Lincoln’s other claims. The ongoing presence of a shared enemy in Britain, he said, served the function throughout the first decades of the American republic’s existence of stifling the ambitions of individual Americans. But how true was this, really? Were there no examples one could point to from this period of ambitious Americans seeking to enrich themselves by effectively selling their services to their homeland’s enemies? The answer to the latter question, in point of fact, is that there absolutely were. Two names in particular come to mind, one well known, the other less so. James Wilkinson (1757-1825) was the latter, being an American military officer who served during the Revolutionary War (1775-1783) and the War of 1812 (1812-1815), was the appointed Governor of the Louisiana Territory between 1805 and 1807, and who became an agent of the Spanish Crown in 1787. And the former, of course, was that most infamous traitor; the man whose name continues to be spoken with the utmost disdain; who has become synonymous in the American cultural lexicon with the very concept of betrayal; none other than Benedict Arnold (1741-1801).

    Arnold, recall, was a merchant by trade from Norwich, Connecticut whose business interests suffered over the course of the 1760s as a direct result of the British tax regulations embodied by the Sugar Act (1764) and the Stamp Act (1765). It was for this reason that he joined the local New Haven chapter of the Sons of Liberty, began engaging in smuggling, and responded avidly when hostilities between Britain and the Thirteen Colonies finally commenced in 1775. He participated in the Siege of Boston (April 1775 – March 1776) as a member of the Connecticut militia, petitioned for and received a colonel’s commission in the Massachusetts militia in time enough to help lead the Capture of Fort Ticonderoga (May, 1775), proposed and then led one half of the ultimately fruitless Invasion of Quebec (June 1775 – October 1776), and fought with marked cunning and aplomb at the Siege of Fort Stanwix (August 1777) and the Battle of Saratoga (September/October 1777). During the disastrous Battle of Quebec (December, 1775), it bears noting, his left leg was partly shattered by a British musket ball. This same leg was struck again at the Battle of Ridgefield (April 1777), and then for a third time at Saratoga. Rather than have his battered limb amputated, however, he instead opted to have it rather crudely set, leaving his left leg significantly shorter than his right. The result for the already gout-prone Arnold was that he spent the rest of life in some degree of physical pain. But while the cost of his service on behalf of the American cause might accordingly have been characterized as somewhat severe, he certainly received his share of plaudits and rewards. When he arrived at the Continental Army’s winter camp at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania in May of 1778, for example, after having mostly recovered from his most recent wounding, he was heralded as a hero by those who had served under him at Saratoga. And when the British finally abandoned their occupation of Philadelphia the following June, George Washington opted to make Arnold the city’s military governor. The capital of Pennsylvania was a wealthy, bustling, cosmopolitan town; seemingly the perfect assignment for man of mercantile leanings who was still recovering from serious injury. As it happened, however, Philadelphia would ultimately prove to be the site of Arnold’s undoing.

    No one can know for certain why Arnold chose to betray his oath of service to the Continental Congress, of course. His thoughts were his own, and remain so, notwithstanding whatever his told those closest to him or recorded in his own hand. But there were certain things about the man – his personality and his experiences – that do rather serve to put things in perspective. He had been a merchant, as aforementioned, before joining the war effort, and always seemed to have about him a certain grasping entrepreneurialism. Personal wealth was important to him, and status, and public recognition. He wanted to do well, in short, and wanted others to see him do well. And he was also – perhaps as a result – something of a grumbler. He got into disagreements with business partners more than once, and easily challenged those whom he believed had slighted him personally or professionally. He got on very poorly with Ethan Allen (1738-1789), one of the leaders of the Green Mountain Boys militia and his nominal collaborator during the Capture of Fort Ticonderoga. Arnold apparently resented the fact that he possessed no formal authority over Allen or his men, and the two submitted rival claims to Congress as to which of them deserved credit for the victory. Later, during his governorship in Philadelphia, he became embroiled in a feud with local politician Joseph Reed over repeated efforts to use his knowledge of war-related supply contracts to turn a quick profit. Most of the charges which Reed brought against him were ultimately dismissed following the court martial which he himself demanded, but Arnold nevertheless rankled at the relatively slight reprimand which he received from Washington as a result of his business dealings. Indeed, by the spring of 1779, he was feeling particularly bitter and dejected. “Having become a cripple in the service of my country,” he wrote to his commander, “I little expected to meet ungrateful returns.”

    Now, at this point, according to Lincoln’s purported theory of American history between the 1770s and the 1820s, what Benedict Arnold logically should have done is stifle his personal ambitions, swallow his resentments, and acknowledge the fact that his country was engaged in a war for its very survival. Yes, his professional fortunes had suffered as a result of his military career. And yes, he had nearly lost his leg in service to a cause which it as yet wasn’t clear was actually going to succeed. But the British were really the ones who were responsible for his misfortunes. It had been the heavy-handed application of British commercial policies which prompted him to become involved in the colonial opposition movement to begin with, and Britain’s intransigent response to American petitions for redress that thrust him into the role of serving military officer. British troops had tried to kill him more than once, had they not? And had they not been British musket balls which repeatedly shattered the bones in his leg? Granted, Arnold had reason enough – in his own mind, if nowhere else – to feel a certain amount of resentment towards some of his countrymen as a result of his business dealings or the events of his military career. But he arguably had even more reason to feel poorly disposed towards the whole of the British nation. On top of threatening the essential liberties of the community to which he belonged, Britain had done injury to his professional prospects, exposed him to repeated near-death experiences, and effectively sentenced him to a life of severe and chronic pain. Why should he have regarded them with anything other than suspicion and hatred? Why should Benedict Arnold have gone down in history as anything other than an ardent Patriot?

    The answer, as aforementioned, is a complicated one, though some few things may be said for certain. Clearly, Arnold neither hated the British nor feared them enough to discount the idea of rendering them his services. His personal ambitions, it seemed – or else his petty, personal hatreds – were evidently stronger than his sense of loyalty to the United States of America. He quarreled often with his fellow officers over tactics and authority, credit for victories and blame for defeats. He worked well with George Washington, it seemed, but poorly with the aforementioned Ethan Allen and his followers, and poorer still with a number of his nominal collaborators during the disastrous campaign in Quebec. One of them, a lawyer from Massachusetts named John Brown (1744-1780), notably remarked of him in a handbill which he had printed following Arnold’s public conflict with another officer that, “Money is this man's God, and to get enough of it he would sacrifice his country [.]” At the same time, Arnold also showed a pronounced streak of jealously regarding certain of his ostensible compatriots. He may have formed decent working relationships with the likes of Philip Schuyler (1733-1804) and Horatio Gates (1727-1806), but he also bitterly and publicly complained when those he felt hadn’t warranted the recognition were promoted by Congress ahead of him. Indeed, the reason he participated in the Battle of Ridgefield at all – during which he was wounded in the leg for the second time – was that he was on his way from Boston to Philadelphia to petition Congress after he was passed over for a promotion to major general. His first reaction had actually been to resign his commission, and it was only Washington’s refusal to accept that sent him to Philadelphia to plead his case. When his finally did arrive before Congress and received his desired promotion, however – largely in respect to his recent service and his fresh wounds – he still found reason for discontent. Though now, as he had long wished, a full major general, he nonetheless found it distasteful that those promoted to the same rank before him were still technically his superiors.

    In the end, it seemed, Arnold was not content merely to serve as an apostle of the liberties of his countrymen and their progeny. He had elected to join the military, it was true, because he felt that the rights of the American people demanded nothing less of those who possessed them then that they rise unquestioningly to their defense. But the flush of patriotic fervor which first motivated him to risk his life in service of his country faded fairly quickly in the face of repeated hardship. When push came to shove, it seemed, what Benedict Arnold wanted even more than for Parliament and the Crown to recognize and respect the fundamental liberties of the American people was promotion, recognition, wealth, and status. He did not want to serve under those whom he believed to be his inferiors or risk his life at the behest of a body of men who had to be cajoled into granting him the rewards he was due. He had done great things on behalf of his countrymen; fought well, scored key victories. But the knowledge that the cause for which he labored and bled was a just one was apparently not enough. Arnold wanted more. Tellingly, when he finally began to communicate with British authorities about the possibility of his rendering service to the Crown in the summer of 1779 – a process facilitated by his young, ambitious, and decidedly Tory wife, Peggy Shippen (1760-1804) – his demands included a sizeable cash payment and a general officer’s commission in the British Army. The specific sum he requested, for the record, was ten thousand pounds sterling, the same amount which Congress had agreed to pay for the services of Arnold’s fellow officer Charles Lee (1732-1782). Envy clearly ruled the man’s heart far more than love of country. Britain may have threatened his business, threatened his life, and even crippled him bodily, but as far as he was concerned, the British could have America if they wanted it. So long as he got paid and petted, it made not one jot of difference to him.

    James Wilkinson, to be sure, did not betray his country to its most hated enemy like Arnold did during the Revolutionary War. His service during that selfsame conflict might not have been particularly impressive – indeed, he was compelled to resign amidst a furor in 1778 after his boastful account to Congress of the Battle of Saratoga garnered him a promotion to the rank of brigadier general at the age of only twenty – but he never showed himself to have the makings of a traitor. And in the end, the foreign power for which he ultimately abjured his oath of loyalty to the United States was Spain and not Great Britain. But in light of Abraham Lincoln’s aforementioned claim that the threat posed by Britain between the 1770s and the 1820s served to unite all Americans in service to their country, Wilkinson’s case would seem nevertheless to stand out.

    Having settled in what was then the Kentucky region of Virginia in 1784 following a brief stint in Pennsylvania, Wilkinson became deeply invested in the fortunes of his adopted community, particularly as they stood to impact on his own fortunes as a prominent local landowner. On the one hand, there was the growing movement in favor of separating Kentucky from Virginia and acclaiming it as a separate state, a cause for which Wilkinson began to actively campaign. And on the other hand, there was the somewhat tenuous trading relationship which existed between the western territories of the nascent United States – Kentucky chief among them – and the Spanish authorities which at that point controlled the territory of Louisiana. American, as of the late 1780s, were permitted to trade on the Mississippi River, but significant tariffs were levied on their cargoes by Spanish officials. In an effort to alleviate the resulting economic burden – as much for his own sake as on behalf of his neighbors – Wilkinson accordingly travelled to the territorial capital at New Orleans in April of 1787, there to meet with Louisiana’s governor, Esteban Rodriguez Miro (1744-1795). The resulting discussions proved fruitful, if rather more for Wilkinson than for Kentucky. The latter was granted a monopoly on American trade on the Mississippi. The former became an agent of the Spanish Crown in return for financial compensation.                             

    Granting that Wilkinson’s subsequent service to Spain hardly served to bring about the collapse of the United States of America, the mere fact of his active collaboration with a nation actively hostile to American interests would nevertheless seem to cast doubt on the validity of Lincoln’s aforementioned argument. According to Lincoln, Wilkinson should have been too conscious of the fact that Britain stood ready to seize on American weakness to place his personal ambitions ahead of the welfare of his country. In point of fact, however, the man did precisely the opposite. Pursuant to his oath of allegiance to Spain, Wilkinson attempted to manipulate the ongoing debate in Kentucky over the prospect of statehood in such a way as to fracture the nascent American republic. Specifically, he floated the idea that the region should first gain its independence before deciding whether or not to join the union of states, encouraged his fellow Kentuckians to make their support for said union conditional on Congress negotiating a comprehensive trade agreement with the Spanish in Louisiana, and at length even ventured to introduce the notion that Kentucky might be better off becoming a province of the Spanish Empire. And in return, he devised a plan by which Spanish authorities could both compensate him for his services and provide a safe haven if his true purpose were ever discovered. By way of Spanish funding, Wilkinson proposed to buy a parcel of sixty thousand acres in what is now the state of Mississippi which would serve as his payment, his pension, and a potential refuge for himself and his supporters. While this arrangement was being discussed, Wilkinson also received a payment of seven thousand dollars for himself and requested assorted amounts for various prominent Kentuckians whose favor he felt it important to gain.

    In the end, the land purchases never went forward and the assorted sums were never paid out. By the end of 1788, the Spanish evidently no longer considered Wilkinson to be a particularly useful asset. At this point, all things being equal, he would have been well-served if had he simply put the whole “Spanish venture” out of his mind. He had betrayed his country, to be sure, by taking an oath to a foreign power and then plotting on their behalf to help dismember the United States. But little actual harm had been done, he’d been paid for what little he’d actually been able to achieve, and he somehow managed not to be found out. Arguably, from the perspective of a traitor, this represents something of a best-case scenario. The years that followed, it bears noting, were also exceptionally kind. Wilkinson’s military career resumed in the 1790s as a result of a sudden demand for experienced officers to lead a punitive expedition into the Northwest Territory. He quarreled, much like Arnold had done, with his superiors, and in particular with the expedition’s commander, Anthony Wayne (1745-1796). But on Wayne’s sudden death in December of 1796, he found himself thrust into the position of Senior Officer of the United States Army. During the Quasi-War with France (1798-1800), this entitled Wilkinson to the third rank overall behind only the re-activated George Washington and his erstwhile deputy Alexander Hamilton. And upon Washington’s death in 1799 and Hamilton’s departure in 1800, he was again granted overall command. This latter tenure lasted the better part of twelve years, during which time Wilkinson served under two presidents, presided over the completion of the Louisiana Purchase (1803), and helped organize and launch the Lewis and Clark Expedition (1803-1806). But in spite of the prestige which he undeniably enjoyed during this time – made doubly precious for his having previously betrayed his country – Wilkinson just couldn’t leave well-enough alone. Notwithstanding his own professional success, the extent to which he had helped to advance his homeland’s various political interests, and the threats which empires like that of Spain and Britain still presented, the man somehow found it in himself to place greed above all else.

    Though the Spanish had attempted to dispense with his services not long after first securing them at the end of the 1780s – and though his life and career proceeded quite satisfactorily thereafter without any Spanish assistance – Wilkinson nevertheless sought to renew his role as an agent of the Spanish Crown on several occasions over the course of the 1790s and 1800s. At the time of his service under Anthony Wayne during the aforementioned Northwest Indian War (1785-1795), for example, he reached out to Francisco Luis Héctor de Carondelet (1748-1807), Miro’s replacement as Governor of Louisiana, in an attempt to exchange information on American troop movements for further compensation. Then, after narrowly avoiding a court martial brought about by Wayne’s discovery of his Spanish payments – an outcome made possible only by Wayne’s sudden, opportune death – Wilkinson proceeded to funnel yet more information to Spanish authorities using his newfound position as Senior Officers of the United States Army. He renewed this relationship again after regaining the office in 1800, providing Spain with insight into America’s territorial ambitions and giving Spanish negotiators privileged information during the settlement of the Texas-Louisiana border. Then, in 1804 he became involved with the so-called “Burr Conspiracy.”

    The details of this latter plot are sketchy at best. Its nominal instigator, former Vice-President Aaron Burr (1756-1836), claimed his intention was only to lead a group of settlers to a parcel of land which he had agreed to purchase from Spanish authorities in Mexico. Burr’s political career was in shambles following his duel with Alexander Hamilton in 1804, and there would seem to be a certain amount of sense in his desiring a kind of self-imposed exile. But when news of Burr’s efforts reached the ears of the Jefferson Administration, this planned migration was transformed into a military expedition intended to separate the western states from the Union and establish an independent nation with Burr at its head. In his capacity as Governor of the Louisiana Territory, Wilkinson would have been a useful contact for whatever it was that Burr had actually intended – be it emigration or conquest – and the two apparently consulted with each other on several occasions. Likely as not, Wilkinson saw in Burr and his plans yet another opportunity to either fracture the union of states on behalf of his Spanish masters or at the very least facilitate a gradual shift in population and loyalty away from the America republic’s western frontier and into the orbit of the Spanish Empire’s American provinces. Whatever plan Wilkinson ultimately concocted may not have much chance of success, but Spanish authorities in Mexico would doubtless have paid him well for keeping them appraised.

    As it happened, however, Wilkinson’s priorities underwent a sudden and dramatic shift. When news of Burr’s activities finally reached Washington and charges of treason were levied against him, Spain’s “Agent 13” – so-called because of the numbered cipher he used to write his coded dispatches – became in an instant the most ardent and tireless of patriots. Burr, he wrote to President Jefferson, was indeed a traitor of the highest order who had attempted to entice him into betraying his oath of office and helping bring about the dismemberment of the American republic. He had appeared to indulge the man, it was true, in meeting with him and corresponding with him, but this was all a ruse intended to ferret out such details as could be used to charge Burr with treason. Arrest Burr, and Wilkinson would testify against him. Ask for evidence, and Wilkinson would produce it. A coded letter; details of conversations; a self-serving account of his involvement in the plot. Wilkinson, suddenly, became a font of information, and all to the end of seeing Burr successfully convicted. He even went so far as declaring martial law in New Orleans and issuing arrest orders for certain individuals whom he believed might come to Burr’s aid. His true object, of course, was to allay any doubts as to his own personal allegiances.

    Though he had escaped investigation during his service in the Northwest in the 1790s, Wilkinson had nevertheless – or, indeed, consequently – developed something of a reputation for unreliability. His service record was a lengthy one, for which reason he seemed to enjoy the benefit of his superiors’ doubts. But his association with Spanish authorities in Louisiana and in Mexico were the subject of some suspicion. His colleagues did not necessarily believe him to be a paid agent in Spanish service, or else he would not have repeatedly been appointed to positions of respect and authority. But if evidence presented itself that he been engaged in certain suspect activities, doubtless a number of his contemporaries’ lingering misgivings would have neatly clicked into place. For that reason, from Wilkinson’s perspective, it was imperative that he do everything in his power to ensure that Burr appeared the villain. By throwing his entire weight behind securing Burr’s conviction, however, Wilkinson really only succeeded in drawing attention to himself. The coded latter which he produced as evidence of Burr’s supposedly perfidious intentions, while authentic in itself, had plainly been altered in order to reduce Wilkinson’s apparent involvement in the proceedings at hand. His testimony at Burr’s trial, as aforementioned, was also nakedly self-serving, and his actions in New Orleans were patently excessive. Indeed, his efforts succeeded only in making Burr appear to be the sympathetic victim of an overzealous government, the result of which was the supposed traitor’s acquittal in the late summer of 1807. Wilkinson, meanwhile, was removed from his post as Governor of the Louisiana Territory, twice investigated by Congress, and finally subjected to a court martial in 1811. He was cleared, somehow, of all the charges against him, and his career in the military continued more or less unharmed, but his actions on behalf of Spain largely ceased thereafter.

    James Wilkinson, as aforementioned, was rather unlike Benedict Arnold in certain key aspects. For one thing, he was obviously far more adept as a double agent. Arnold first began funneling information to the British in the summer of 1779, and by the fall of 1780 he had been exposed and forced to flee to the safety of the British lines. Wilkinson, by way of comparison, gave his oath of allegiance to Spain in 1786 and apparently continued to receive a pension from the Spanish until his death in 1825. Arnold’s betrayal also seemed to speak more powerfully to the man’s sense of avarice. Over the course of the 1760s and 1770s, he suffered financial losses at the hands of the British Parliament, was nearly killed numerous times by British soldiers, and was left crippled and in chronic pain by British musket balls. And yet, in spite of all of this, he still saw his way clear to selling his allegiances for British coin. Wilkinson conversely had no particular reason to dislike the Spanish. They stood in the way of Kentucky’s economic viability, it was true – for which reason he sought of their representative in Louisiana to begin with – but they have never injured him personally or professionally. His betrayal on their behalf, therefore, while most definitely treasonous, arguably spoke less to his overwhelming greed than to a sense of unprincipled opportunism. What these two men did have in common, however, was the essence, timing, and significance of their actions. They were both traitors, they both became so during the period when Britain represented the single greatest threat to the existence of the United States of America, and they were both apparently unmoved by any fear that their actions might ultimately result in the dissolution of the same.

    As argued by Abraham Lincoln in 1838, this kind of behavior should have been prevented at the outset. “The jealousy, envy, and avarice incident to our nature,” he said,

And so common to a state of peace, prosperity, and conscious strength, were for the time in a great measure smothered and rendered inactive, while the deep-rooted principles of hate, and the powerful motive of revenge, instead of being turned against each other, were directed exclusively against the British nation. And thus, from the force of circumstances, the basest principles of our nature were either made to lie dormant, or to become the active agents in the advancement of the noblest of causes [.]

But clearly, as the actions of Arnold and Wilkinson show, this was not always the case in practice. Their “jealousy, envy, and avarice” were plainly neither smothered nor rendered inactive. Arnold had more reason than most people of his generation to feel a deep and personal sense of enmity against the whole of the British nation, and even this did not stop him from swearing an oath to the British Crown. Nor were the “basest principles” of Wilkinson’s nature “made to lie dormant” by the sheer presence of Great Britain as a threat to the American republic’s existence. On the contrary, Wilkinson seemed to view the emerging competition between Britain, Spain, and the United States over regional dominance in North America as an opportunity for personal enrichment. If the Spanish were willing to pay him, he would tell them whatever they wanted to know. He’d betray his fellow officers, his co-conspirators, the political leaders who appointed him to positions of authority, and the Constitution itself, all for the promise of personal wealth. Wilkinson would doubtless have avowed that this was a noble cause indeed, but not Lincoln. It was his stated conviction that the presence of a common enemy between the 1770s and 1820s acted as a cohesive force upon the American republic and its inhabitants, bending the restless energies of the latter towards promoting stability and general prosperity. Granted, the existence of two prominent exceptions across a span of several decades may not seem like a very damning counterpoint. But the mere fact that men like Arnold and Wilkinson, who behaved entirely contrary to what Lincoln described, did exist would seem to indicate that his conception of how and why the United States of American had theretofore functioned was less comprehensive than he made it out to be.