This will be delivered to you by Noland, who, you know, is a child of my own raising—true to his profession and firm in his attachments to Spain. I consider him a powerful instrument in your hands, should occasion offer—I will answer for his conduct. I am deeply interested in whatsoever concerns him, and I confidently recommend him to your warmest protection. I am, evidently, your affectionate
WILKINSON.
A copy.
MAN. GAYOSO DE LEMOS.
N. B.—Don Gayoso was then Governor of Natchez, and the same year was made Governor of Louisiana.
Mr. Randolph stated the following to be an extract of a letter signed “T. Power,” whose handwriting, he said, could be identified:
“On the 27th of the same month [October last] appeared in the Richmond Enquirer a certificate given by myself to General Wilkinson in New Orleans on the 16th of May preceding. Immediately on my getting sight of this piece, which was the same or the next day, I addressed a note to his Excellency General Wilkinson, [No. 3.] Of this I did not keep a copy, and therefore dare not vouch that it is an exact literal transcript of the original; but I will be bold to say that it is nearly (or, to make use of the General’s own language, substantially) the same.
“Between my repeated declarations to many of my friends and acquaintances (I must say it with a blush) and this certificate, there is a manifest contradiction. And between this same certificate and the deductions to be drawn from my declaration before the Richmond Court, there is an apparent inconsistency, which it is now my task to clear up and reconcile.
“During General Wilkinson’s residence in New Orleans, last winter, I used occasionally to visit him. A few days before he left New Orleans, I waited upon him one morning, and after some conversation on certain transactions that had taken place at a former period in the Western country, and on the delicate situation in which his conduct during the winter was likely to place him, he asked me if I had any objection to give him a certificate that might help him to silence that foul-mouthed Bradford, and refute the assertions of the editor of the Western World. I replied without hesitation that I had none, and would give him one with pleasure, provided he promised me it should not be published. On this he assured me that the only use he proposed to make of it was to lay it before the President, with the view to prove the falsehood of the charges circulated against him, vindicate his character, and secure the confidence of the Executive. This, if not exactly, is substantially what the General said. He then desired me to sit down and write the certificate. I observed that I might not make it out entirely to his satisfaction; and that, as he best knew the points he wished should be embraced in it, he had better make it out himself, and I would copy it. To this he agreed. Next morning, I waited on his Excellency, and he presented me the certificate, which I copied, as it has been published, with a few alterations. One—a very material one—is that, after these words: ‘Do most solemnly declare that I have at no time carried or delivered to Gen. James Wilkinson’—I erased the words, ‘either directly or indirectly,’ and declared to the General I could not insert those words. He did not insist, and contented himself with saying that he wished me to insert them if my conscience would allow it, but not otherwise. This is ingenuously exactly what passed between the General and myself at that time.
“Now let me with the same frankness and ingenuousness, without referring to any preceding or subsequent event, narrate the transaction of 1796, alluded to in my certificate, and concerning which I offered to give testimony in the federal circuit court in Richmond. It is the same that is the subject of the affidavits of Messrs. Derbigny and Mercier. That of the former gentleman is correct as to substance, for I actually did receive from Captain Don Thomas Portell, commandant of New Madrid, the sum of $9,640 for General Wilkinson, towards the latter end of June or beginning of July, 1796, which was packed up in the manner described by Mr. Derbigny, and when I was stopped and my boat searched on the Ohio by Lieutenant Steele, under the orders of General Anthony Wayne, I had other sums on board, but this was the only one I had received for General Wilkinson. On my arrival at Louisville, determined not to expose myself a second time to military insult, and fearful of being overtaken by Steele on his return, and of being again overhauled, I landed my cargo, purchased a horse, and proceeded by land to Cincinnati. As I passed through Lexington, I published in Stewart’s Kentucky Herald my affidavit concerning this outrage, supported by those of the spectators of the transaction, Welsh, White, and Sansom; preceded by a few strictures on this military piracy, signed Impartial. And I now take this opportunity of clearing General Wilkinson of the charge of being the author of it, as is asserted by Bradford, of New Orleans, and declare it was written by myself, and that excepting Captain Campbell Smith, no person ever saw it before it was put into the hands of the printer.