WILKINSON, JAMES ( 757-1825) , American soldier and adventurer, was born in Calvert county (Md.), in 1757. At the outbreak of the War of Independence he entered the American Army. He served with General Benedict Arnold in the Quebec campaign and was later under General Horatio Gates from May 1777 to March 1778 as adjutant general.
In 1784 Wilkinson settled near the Falls of the Ohio, Louis ville, where he became a merchant, farmer and man of influence.
He took an active part in the movement for separate statehood for Kentucky, and in 1787 took an oath of allegiance to Spain and began to intrigue with his fellow Kentuckians to detach the western settlements from the Union and bring them under the influence of the Louisiana authorities. His commercial connec tions at New Orleans enabled him to hold out the lure of a ready market there for Kentucky products. He neutralized the in trigues of British agents then working in Kentucky. For these various services he received until i800 a substantial pension from the Spanish authorities, being officially known as "Number Thir teen." At the same time he worked actively against the Spanish authorities, especially through Philip Nolan. Wilkinson's ven tures were not so lucrative as he hoped for, and in Oct. 1791 he was given a lieut. colonel's commission in the regular army, possibly to keep him out of mischief. In 1803 Wilkinson was one of the commissioners to receive Louisiana from France, and in 1805 became governor of that portion of the Purchase above the 33rd parallel, with headquarters at St. Louis. In his double capacity as governor of the territory and commanding officer of the army, reasonably certain of his hold on Jefferson, and fa vourably situated upon the frontier remote from the centre of government, he attempted to realize his ambition to conquer the Mexican provinces of Spain. For this purpose in 1805 he entered
into an agreement with Aaron Burr, and in 1806 sent Z. M. Pike to explore the most favourable route for the conquest of the south-west. Before his agent returned, however, he had betrayed his colleague's plans to Jefferson, formed the Neutral Ground Agreement with the Spanish commander of the Texas frontier, placed New Orleans under martial law, and apprehended Burr and some of his alleged accomplices. In the ensuing trial at Rich mond, the prisoners were released for lack of sufficient evidence, and Wilkinson himself emerged with a much damaged reputa tion. He was then subjected to a series of courts-martial and congressional investigations, but succeeded so well in hiding traces of his duplicity that in 1812 he resumed his military command at New Orleans, and in 1813 was promoted to the rank of major general and took possession of Mobile. Later in this year, by mak ing a miserable fiasco of the campaign against Montreal, he finally brought his military career to a dishonourable end. He died at Mexico City on Dec. 28, 1825.
See Wilkinson's Memoirs of My Own Time (1816), untrustworthy and to be used with caution ; W. R. Shepherd, "Wilkinson and the Beginning of the Spanish Conspiracy" in American Historical Review, vol. ix. (1904) ; Bemis, Pinckney's Treaty (1926). (I. J. C.)