“Despite these horrendous losses, Wilkinson was never held accountable for his incompetence and corruption.”

By Howard W. Cox

SOLDIERS enlist in the army with the full realization that they one day may have to face dangers to life and limb from hostile enemy action. What they do not expect however is to suffer illness, starvation or even death resulting from incompetence and corruption by their own commanders. Yet this is precisely what happened in 1809 when almost one half of the entire United States Army was lost, through sickness and desertion, as a result of one general’s criminal negligence. The Terre aux Boeuf scandal remains the greatest peacetime loss of life in American military history.

The primary cause of the debacle was the disastrous leadership of Brigadier General James Wilkinson, the army’s commanding general. For almost 20 years, Wilkinson had been the senior career officer in the United States army, and for over 10 years had been its commander. Wilkinson had achieved this position through the betrayal of virtually everyone he served for, with or even near.

Despite only being a staff officer during the Revolutionary War and having never led troops in battle, he was offered a commission by President George Washington to lead the newly created Second Infantry Regiment in 1791. It was an especially bewildering, even foolish, appointment considering that during the war, Wilkinson was directly involved in the secret plot to remove Washington from command of the Continental Army, a conspiracy known as the Conway Cabal. He was even forced to resign his brevet general officer commission as a result.

After accepting his commission in 1791, Wilkinson was subsequently promoted to brigadier general and chosen to be the deputy to Major General Anthony Wayne in the Northwest Indian War. He spent most of that conflict conspiring to bring about the failure of his superior’s plans, which would allow him to replace Wayne as commanding general.

While his campaign to remove Wayne failed, following Wayne’s death in December 1796, Wilkinson became the army’s commanding general under presidents Adams and Jefferson. During these years, Wilkinson survived multiple political purges of the army, demonstrating a unique chameleon-like capability to appear to be a political supporter of whatever administration was in power.

In 1803, Wilkinson was stationed on the lower Mississippi River valley, which made him available to serve as a senior federal official in New Orleans at the ceremony where the French turned over the Louisiana Territory to the United States.

Wilkinson used the opportunity to approach Spanish authorities in New Orleans to solicit a massive bribe, in return for his betrayal of each of the military expeditions Jefferson ordered to explore the new territory, including the one famously carried out by Lewis and Clark. Wilkinson provided the Spanish with information regarding the timing and direction of these expeditions, in order to allow the Spanish to capture or kill those taking part.

Unaware of his status as a Spanish spy, Jefferson appointed Wilkinson to serve as both an army commander and the territorial governor of the Louisiana Territory. In the latter position, Wilkinson conspired with former Vice President Aaron Burr in his unlikely plot to create a new country, with Burr as its head. This would be achieved by attacking the remaining Spanish colonies in North America, and separating the western states from the United States.

When Wilkinson decided to betray Burr to Jefferson, Wilkinson and Jefferson reached an unspoken agreement: the general would provide whatever evidence the president required, including perjury, that would achieve Burr’s conviction for treason. Jefferson would in turn provide whatever whitewash was needed to shield Wilkinson from any accountability for his treachery and incompetence.

In accordance with their agreement, Wilkinson provided evidence and testimony against Burr, resulting in Burr’s indictment in Richmond in the summer of 1807. However, because of his close relationship with Burr, Wilkinson narrowly avoided being indicted too. Due to his terrible presence as a witness, Wilkinson did not testify in the two trials that resulted in Burr’s acquittal. Despite this, Jefferson stuck to the bargain; when congressional critics demanded that Wilkinson be investigated, the president convened a sham military court of inquiry that exonerated the general for any role with Burr, as well as from any spying activities with Spain.

After evading censure from the court of inquiry, Wilkinson was directed by Jefferson in the fall of 1808 to take the newly expanded U.S. Army to New Orleans to defend the lower Mississippi from an expected invasion by Great Britain.

While tensions with the British continued to mount in 1809 (and would escalate until the United States’ declaration of war in June 1812), the army’s deployment to New Orleans in the spring of 1809 was based on flawed intelligence that the British were building up forces in the Caribbean to invade the Mississippi. The actual target was the French island of Martinique. Yet to counter the perceived threat, Congress increased the strength of the army by authorizing the raising of eight new regiments. These troops and their newly recruited officers were directed to seek transport from various posts in the north and west, and travel by ship or riverboat to New Orleans where they were to be deployed as General Wilkinson saw fit.

While Wilkinson had significant experience in commanding military forces in the lower Mississippi, he apparently never shared with the new political leadership of the War Department the challenges that would be faced in deploying the army to the region during the hottest months of the year.

Much of the responsibility for contracting and logistics belonged to the secretary of war. When President James Madison took office in March 1809, he chose William Eustis for the role. A northern Democratic-Republican and physician by training with no prior military leadership experience, Eustis was quickly overwhelmed with his responsibilities (there were only eight clerks in the War Department). His struggles were compounded by the fact that the bulk of the army was involved in the deployment to New Orleans, 1,500 miles away. Eustis also had no understanding of the challenges posed by providing food, shelter, equipment and medical supplies to the largest deployment of American troops in 15 years.

Wilkinson reached New Orleans in April 1809 and found that no advanced arrangements had been made for the housing and support of the army. As the green regiments arrived in the city, each unit was responsible for finding its own quarters and provisions. They were told to pay out of pocket and charge the War Department for any incurred expenses.

When Wilkinson arrived, he concluded to move the army out of the unhealthy fleshpot of New Orleans, where the city’s many diversions would “divert our green officers from due attention to their profession….”

It was at this point that Wilkinson entered into a corrupt relationship with the contractor that had been hastily chosen to supply food to the army. In return for a hefty bribe, the general agreed to overlook the deliveries of spoiled provisions. Wilkinson was also distracted by his courtship of a much younger woman who was the daughter of a former Spanish official in New Orleans.

Next, the general assumed the sole responsibility for finding a suitable location for the army away from the vices and diseases of New Orleans. After a search that lasted a few weeks, Wilkinson chose a site south of the city, Terre aux Boeufs or “Land of Oxen.” While the area had some tactical advantages, it was located in a pestilential swamp that would require significant improvements in order to be habitable. There were also rumors, never fully explored, that Wilkinson rented the site in return for a kickback from his future father-in-law, who may have had a hidden ownership interest in the land.

In June 1809, Wilkinson commenced the redeployment of the army into an encampment that would soon turn into a living hell. Troops were housed in tents on the bare ground that was subjected to frequent flooding when the Mississippi overflowed its banks. Field sanitation was virtually non-existent and the food was rancid or inedible, resulting in malnutrition and a variety of maladies that only worsened the sanitary conditions in camp.

A 1976 Walter Reed Army Institute of Research concluded that the troops suffered from a combination of vitamin deficiency, starvation, and malaria, that resulted in diarrhea, dysentery, hepatitis, typhoid, and pneumonia.

As more and more soldiers fell ill, medicine failed to arrive on time. Just as seriously, there were insufficient staff to treat the sick.

Within weeks of taking office, Secretary Eustis was confronted with troubling news from the southern territory. The reports revealed not just that Terre aux Boeufs camp desperately needed to be moved but that the entire deployment in Louisiana was fiscally out of control.

In response, Eustis concluded that the army’s horses were too expensive to maintain and directed that they be sold off, even the ones used to move artillery. How the batteries were supposed to function without horses was never addressed. Eustis refused to authorize more funds to buy food for the sick and instead sent off orders directing Wilkinson to move the army to a healthier location. Wilkinson ignored these increasingly distressed directives, perhaps to keep his agreement with his prospective land-owning father-in-law intact.

Finally, in September 1809, Wilkinson commenced the redeployment of the army to Natchez, 300 miles upriver from the swamps of Terre aux Boeufs. During the move, sickness, death and desertion continued to plague the army.

Each night, the river fleet hired by Wilkinson came ashore to bury the dead. Because of the absence of medical supplies, officers took up a private collection to construct a hospital to care for the sick troops. Claiming to be ill himself, Wilkinson left his army so he could recover — and complete the courtship of his new wife. Wilkinson was finally relieved of his command in November 1809.

Overall casualties from the deployment were horrendous. Of the 2,036 enlisted troops in the field, over 900 of them died from diseases and malnutrition. Another 160 soldiers deserted. Over 40 officers died or resigned their commissions rather than continuing to serve under Wilkinson. It remains the worst peacetime disaster ever to be suffered by the U.S. Army.

Despite these horrendous losses, Wilkinson was never held accountable for his incompetence and corruption. A series of congressional committees examined the debacle but failed to hold him to account. Hoping to avoid a scandal, Wilkinson, Eustis and Madison determined that another sham trial would absolve the general from blame for Terre aux Boeufs, as well as quash mounting concerns over Wilkinson’s relationship with Spain and Burr.

In the fall of 1811 came the show trial. Wilkinson was court-martialed for numerous charges relating to these matters, but he himself was allowed to select the charges and was directly involved in the selection of the military jury.

During the court martial, almost half the jury testified on Wilkinson’s behalf, and he was acquitted of all charges in February 1812. He was restored to command in time to lead an army in a failed invasion of Canada in 1813. He was again court-martialed and again acquitted, but eventually forced into retirement as part of army downsizing in 1815. As one historian later observed, James Wilkinson was a general who never won a battle, but never lost a court-martial.

Howard W. Cox is the author of American Traitor: General James Wilkinson’s Betrayal of the Republic and Escape from Justice from Georgetown University Press. He is a former trial attorney in the U.S. Army Judge Advocate General’s Corps, former staff counsel of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, and former federal prosecutor and assistant inspector general for investigations at the CIA.