Designs on Spanish territory
were not new, and it is impossible to ignore the role of the arch frontier
schemer, General James Wilkinson, and his possible role in the Gutiérrez-Magee
Expedition. There can scarcely be any doubt that the general’s influence on the
filibuster was strong. His own words and deeds convict him as far as a motive
is concerned, and his fingerprints are found not infrequently. The first of
these fingerprints is Magee, Wilkinson’s protégé, who led the Americans in the
raid, though Wilkinson eventually threatened to arrest him, either as bluster
or to buff out the tarnish on his own loyalty created by the Burr affair. Also,
as we have seen, Magee had his own independent reasons to choose a Mexican
revolutionary army over an American frontier one. Another Wilkinson fingerprint
was the Santa Fe traders, including Reuben Smith, a probable relative of the
general. Next is Josiah Taylor, the former army quartermaster under Wilkinson,
who apparently traveled to Texas and was imprisoned in the Alamo shortly before
the expedition was launched. The biggest Wilkinson imprint is Gen. John Adair,
who clearly was involved in the organization of the filibuster and was offered
command but refused it. Adair was a confidant of Wilkinson and Burr who wrote
the former in 1804 that “the Kentuckians are full of enterprise, and although
not poor, as greedy after plunder as ever the old Romans were. Mexico glitters
in our Eyes – the word is all we wait for.” Wilkinson later wrote to Adair, “The
time looked for by many and wished for by more has now arrived for subverting
the Spanish government in Mexico. Be you ready to join me; we will want little
more than light-armed troops…”[1]
This characterization, written in 1806, closely describes the men of the
expedition that eventually took place six years later.
On the surface then, they
would seem the agents. But this strong desire aside, by the time the filibuster
kicked off in 1812, Adair and Wilkinson were both men under watchful eyes, and
moreover had a strained personal relationship between themselves. Wilkinson had
arrested Adair in the Burr affair and Adair had counter-sued Wilkinson. Their
careers had been rocked by scandal and if they were not chastened, they were at
least cautious. Neither man was in a position to take a lead role, and may
indeed have thought the filibuster to be impractical. After all, the proposed
numbers of men that had been conceived for the Burr affair were generally
reckoned in the thousands. In the end, the Republican Army of the North had
only around 130 men at the outset. Spain was weak, but the generals may have
thought, probably not that weak.
Nonetheless, Wilkinson,
Adair, and other frontier leaders and intriguers of various stripes had been
sowing seeds of the expedition in the West for years, and now some of these
seeds were growing on their own, without the necessity for an individual to cultivate
them. The impulse to dismember Spain was common to frontiersmen and presidents
alike, but was particularly ingrained in the people of the West, who long
remembered the Spanish intransigence over navigation of the Mississippi and
other slights, and who daily lived with evidences of Spanish vulnerability.
There was no single author of the Gutiérrez-Magee Expedition, except perhaps
Gutiérrez himself, although he was probably little more than the grain upon
which the pearl grows. The heterogeneity of the members makes this clear. No
one but Gutiérrez controlled the recruitment process, and what is dramatically
lacking in any of the existing sources is any indication of recruits being
turned away, as one would expect if an authority had a particular desired ideal
type of filibuster in mind. On the contrary, all volunteers were embraced,
regardless of connections or motives. The only exception to this is Shaler, who,
fearful of French influence, tried to prevent Gutiérrez from meeting with
Napoleonic agents. Given the conditions on the frontier and the strong
sentiment against Spain, it is not surprising that the expedition was as big as
it was. It is rather, surprising that it was so small. A larger number of
frontiersmen who did not take up arms may have been sympathetic, but held back
because the effort lacked official government sanction. The same effect had
been seen with the Burr raid, and was evidenced in Reuben Kemper’s reticence to
join the effort without the administration’s support.
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