Abridgment of the Debates of Congress, from 1789 to 1856, Vol. 3 (of 16)

by United States. Congress

I remember about the same time to have seen a list of names of citizens of the Western country which was in the handwriting of the General, who were recommended for pensions, and the sums were stated proper to be paid to each; and I then distinctly understood that he and others were actually pensioners of the Spanish Government.

I had no personal knowledge of money being paid to General Wilkinson or to any agent for him, on account of his pension, previously to the year 1793 or 1794. In one of these years, and in which I cannot be certain, until I can consult my books, a Mr. La Cassagne, who I understood was Postmaster at the Falls of Ohio, came to New Orleans, and, as one of the association with General Wilkinson, in the project of dismemberment, received a sum of money, four thousand dollars of which, or thereabout, were embarked by a special permission, free of duty, on board a vessel which had been consigned to me, and which sailed for Philadelphia, in which vessel Mr. La Cassagne went passenger. At and prior to this period I had various opportunities of seeing the projects submitted to the Spanish Government, and of learning many of the details from the agents employed to carry them into execution.

In 1794, two gentlemen of the names of Owens and Collins, friends and agents of General Wilkinson, came to New Orleans. To the first was intrusted, as I was particularly informed by the officers of the Spanish Government, the sum of six thousand dollars, to be delivered to General Wilkinson on account of his own pension, and that of others. On his way, in returning to Kentucky, Owens was murdered by his boat’s crew, and the money it was understood was made away with by them. This occurrence occasioned a considerable noise in Kentucky, and contributed, with Mr. Power’s visits at a subsequent period, to awaken the suspicion of General Wayne, who took measures to intercept the correspondence of General Wilkinson with the Spanish Government, which were not attended with success.

Collins, the co-agent with Owens, first attempted to fit out a small vessel in the port of New Orleans, in order to proceed to some port in the Atlantic States; but she was destroyed by the hurricane of the month of August of 1794. He then fitted out a small vessel in the Bayou St. John, and shipped in her at least eleven thousand dollars, which he took round to Charleston.

This shipment was made under such peculiar circumstances that it became known to many, and the destination of it was afterwards fully disclosed to me by the officers of the Spanish Government, by Collins, and by General Wilkinson himself, who complained that Collins instead of sending him the money on his arrival had employed it in some wild speculations to the West Indies, by which he had lost a considerable sum, and that in consequence of the mismanagement of his agents he had derived but little advantage from the money paid on his account by the Government.

Mr. Power was a Spanish subject, resident in Louisiana, till the object of his visits to the Western country became known to me in 1796, when he embarked on board the brig Gayoso, at New Orleans for Philadelphia, in company with Judge Sebastian, in which vessel, as she had been consigned to myself, I saw embarked under a special permission four thousand dollars or thereabout, which, I was informed, were for Sebastian’s own account, as one of those concerned in the scheme of dismemberment of the Western country.

Mr. Power, as he afterwards informed me, on his tour through the Western country, saw General Wilkinson at Greenville, and was the bearer of a letter to him for the Secretary of the Government of Louisiana, dated the 7th or 8th March, 1796, advising that a sum of money had been sent to Don Thomas Portell, commandant of New Madrid, to be delivered to his order. This money Mr. Power delivered to Mr. Nolan, by Wilkinson’s directions. What concerned Mr. Nolan’s agency in this business I learned from himself, when he afterwards visited New Orleans.

In 1797, Power was intrusted with another mission to Kentucky, and had directions to propose certain plans to effect the separation of the Western country from the United States. These plans were proposed and rejected, as he often solemnly assured me, through the means of a Mr. George Nicholas, to whom among others they were communicated, who spurned the idea of receiving foreign money. Power then proceeded to Detroit to see General Wilkinson, and was sent back by him under guard to New Madrid, from whence he returned to New Orleans. Power’s secret instructions were known to me afterwards, and I am enabled to state that the plan contemplated entirely failed.

At the period spoken of, and for some time afterwards, I was resident in the Spanish territory, subject to the Spanish laws, without an expectation of becoming a citizen of the United States. My obligations were then to conceal, and not to communicate to the Government of the United States the projects and enterprises which I have mentioned of General Wilkinson and the Spanish Government.

In the month of October, of 1798, I visited General Wilkinson by his particular request at his camp at Loftus’ Heights, where he had shortly before arrived. The General had heard of remarks made by me on the subject of his pension, which had rendered him uneasy, and he was desirous of making some arrangements with me on the subject. I passed three days and nights in the General’s tent. The chief subjects of our conversation were, the views and enterprises of the Spanish Government in relation to the United States, and speculations as to the result of political affairs. In the course of our conversation, he stated that there was still a balance of ten thousand dollars due him by the Spanish Government, for which he would gladly take in exchange Governor Gayoso’s plantation near the Natchez, who might reimburse himself from the treasury at New Orleans. I asked the General whether this sum was due on the old business of the pension. He replied that it was, and intimated a wish that I should propose to Governor Gayoso a transfer of his plantation for the money due him from the Spanish treasury. The whole affair had always been odious to me, and I declined any agency in it. I acknowledged to him that I had often spoken freely and publicly of his Spanish pension, but told him I had communicated nothing to his Government on the subject. I advised him to drop his Spanish connection. He justified it heretofore from the peculiar situation of Kentucky; the disadvantages the country labored under at the period when he formed his connection with the Spaniards, the doubtful and distracted state of the Union at that time, which he represented as bound together by nothing better than a rope of sand. And he assured me solemnly that he had terminated his connections with the Spanish Government, and that they never should be renewed. I gave the General to understand that as the affair stood, I should not in future say any thing about it. From that period until the present I have heard one report only of the former connection being renewed, and that was in 1804, shortly after the General’s departure from New Orleans. I had been absent for two or three months, and returned to the city not long after General Wilkinson sailed from it. I was informed by the late Mayor, that reports had reached the ears of the Governor, of a sum of ten thousand dollars having been received by the General of the Spanish Government, while he was one of the Commissioners for taking possession of Louisiana. He wished me to inquire into the truth of them, which I agreed to do, on condition that I might be permitted to communicate the suspicion to the General, if the fact alleged against him could not be better verified. This was assented to. I made this inquiry, and satisfied myself by an inspection of the treasury-book for 1804, that the ten thousand dollars had not been paid. I then communicated the circumstance to a friend of the General, (Mr. Evan Jones,) with a request that he would inform him of it. The report was revived at the last session of Congress, by a letter from Colonel Ferdinand Claiborne, of Natchez, to the Delegate of the Mississippi Territory. A member of the House informed me that the money in question was acknowledged by General Smith to have been received at the time mentioned, but that it was in payment for tobacco. I knew that no tobacco had been delivered, and waited on General Smith for information as to the receipt of the money, who disavowed all knowledge of it; and I took the opportunity of assuring him, and as many others as mentioned the subject, that I believed it to be false, and gave them my reasons for the opinion.