the Revolutionary War ended and with his checkered army career reduced to gossip fodder, Wilkinson looked westward toward the frontier. Though strapped for cash, Wilkinson looked to launch a new life chapter in a region where he was unknown and where the status of being a retired general would impress the unsuspecting. According to the superb biography of Wilkinson written by Andro Linklater, titled An Artist in Treason: The Extraordinary Double Life of General James Wilkinson, “Despite having limited funds at his disposal, within three months Wilkinson had bought 12,550 acres on the Kentucky River and filed claims for another 18,000 acres at the Falls of the Ohio, the future Louisville …”4 Included in the Kentucky River parcels were 260 prime pastureland acres, strategically positioned one mile above Leestown on the north side of the river. Wilkinson called the settlement “Frankfort,” a gesture said to be in homage to the slain pioneer Stephen Frank, who years earlier had been the unfortunate victim of a native war party raid on a salt-boiling group along the Kentucky River. The spot of the attack, a shallow crossing, was originally dubbed “Frank's Ford” after the assault.
In 1791, Wilkinson returned to military activity by leading a band of Kentucky militiamen to the Northwest Territory north of the Ohio River to help combat the restive and rampaging native tribes in the ferocious Indian War. The Northwest Territory was still in shock from the nightmare of the Battle of the Wabash, an epic military disaster that was fought near the headwaters of the Wabash River in the morning mists of November 4, 1791. Over 1,000 Delaware, Wyandot, Shawnee, and Kickapoo warriors were led by three seasoned and wily warrior chiefs: Little Turtle, Blue Jacket, and Buckongahelas. For four desperate hours, the native warriors brutally destroyed, hacked, scalped, gutted, and shot a panicked, undisciplined army of ill-equipped and untested journeyman soldiers. The resounding defeat, considered to be one the most savage battles in North American history, left only 24 white soldiers unscathed, out of 1,000 officers, scouts, and soldiers. It remains the biggest, most famous victory of Native Americans over Euro-Americans in history. After his time serving in the Indian War, James Wilkinson departed from the army, this time with the rank of lieutenant colonel, commandant of the Second U.S. Infantry.
Wilkinson's mission in founding Frankfort with its close proximity to the key river landing at Leestown was twofold. First, he wanted to become the region's singular political powerhouse and arbiter. Second, Wilkinson longed to create a base of operations from which he hoped to make a fortune by wheeling and dealing his way through trade and commercial shipping agreements that pitted the American and Spanish governments against each other. Prior to the Louisiana Purchase when the United States doubled its size by buying the Louisiana Territory from France in 1803, the immense tract and its key highway, the Mississippi River, were controlled by Spain. In an audacious effort to have Kentucky secede from the United States in order to join the territory controlled by Spain, Wilkinson plotted and manufactured a dangerous game of treachery, spying, and double-dealing. To help grease the tracks for his negotiations between the new United States and Spain, Wilkinson secretly renounced his American citizenship in 1787, thereby swearing allegiance to the Spanish Crown, led by His Catholic Majestic Carlos IV. His nerve knowing no boundaries, he even persuaded the Spanish Crown to grant him a pension.
Wilkinson's acts of duplicity occurred at a fragile time of heightened tensions between the young, awash-in-debt United States of America and Spain because the Spanish had stationed a significant number of troops in places that, according to the 1803 agreement of the Louisiana Purchase, belonged to the United States. By wearing one hat as the architect of Frankfort, a representative of Kentucky, and a former officer of the U.S. military, and another hat doing business under the table on behalf of the Spanish crown, James Wilkinson, for all intents and purposes, was acting as a double agent. Incredibly and as stark proof of his narcissism, he even invented the code name “Agent 13” for himself under which he conducted his nefarious business and geopolitical dealings for the Spanish. Wilkinson's clandestine relationship with Spain was investigated by no less than four official inquiries conducted by the U.S. government. He later became involved with the War of 1812, remarkably serving once more as Major General, though his tour of duty was tainted and undermined by backroom whispers of more unpatriotic and duplicitous behavior.
Eventually, Wilkinson vacated Kentucky and was named as U.S. Envoy to Mexico. He died in 1825. He was, not surprisingly for him, buried in Mexico City, not Frankfort, not Maryland, not anywhere with an American address. As much as his founding of the city of Frankfort, Kentucky, Wilkinson's penchant for double-crossing behavior, chicanery, and self-absorption colored his legacy in bright, rainbow-like hues. Today, the city of Frankfort is not shy about telling his story, even if it is a somewhat sanitized version. As the local magazine titled FRANK freely admits, “It's true, Gen. James Wilkinson was a scoundrel, but he was our scoundrel.”5
How James Wilkinson's establishment of Frankfort, the municipality where Buffalo Trace Distillery resides today just off Wilkinson Boulevard, affected Buffalo Trace Distillery is straightforward. Though as a Bluegrass municipality Leestown preceded Frankfort, its small, unsophisticated citizenry was no match for Wilkinson's style of major-league conniving, backroom dealing, and unbridled ambition. After a storehouse was at last built in Leestown, Wilkinson erected his own warehouse and started a ferry service across the Kentucky River, which curtailed traffic to Leestown's ferry. When Kentucky was granted statehood as the 15th state on June 1, 1792, Frankfort was named its capital, besting Leestown, Lexington, Danville, and Harrodsburg, even though the well-respected Hancock Lee had lobbied hard on behalf of Leestown.
In 1794, Frankfort opened its own post office; Leestown never had one. As Wilkinson grew Frankfort into the prominent business community of the Bluegrass next to the city of Lexington, even designing Frankfort's downtown district, Leestown merchants battled to stay relevant. “Leestown was long an important stopping-place for those traveling on the Kentucky River,” wrote Judge Samuel Wilson in 1931, “but it is evident the building of public roads, which, for one cause or another, failed to follow the old ‘Buffalo trace,’ the establishment of Frankfort by General Wilkinson, in 1786, as so near and formidable a rival, with the consequent diversion of travel and traffic, detracted seriously from the growth of Leestown.”6
Yet, in the interest of fairness, not all of James Wilkinson's follies concerning Frankfort placed Leestown at a disadvantage. Some, for a while at least, enriched it. When Wilkinson opened up trade to New Orleans for commodities, such as tobacco, hemp, whiskey, corn, and smoked meats, for several years he shipped some of them on flatboats from the landing and warehouses at Leestown. After 1800, a factory that manufactured hemp was built at Leestown and warehouses did appear for the housing of common trade goods, including whiskey. Eventually, the powerful and influential city of Frankfort, the capital of Kentucky and the brainchild of rascal and swindler extraordinaire James Wilkinson, annexed humble Leestown. Today, National Landmark historical marker #103 in Frankfort commemorates the existence of Leestown precisely at 113 Great Buffalo Trace … the address today of Buffalo Trace Distillery.
Notes
1 1 Theodore Roosevelt. The Winning of the West: From the Alleghenies to the Mississippi – Vols. 1 & 2. New York: G. P. Putnam & Sons, 1894.
2 2 Andro Linklater. An Artist in Treason: The Extraordinary Double Life of General James Wilkinson. New York: Walker & Company, 2009, p. 3.
3 3 Alfred Henry Lewis. An American Patrician, or The Story of Aaron Burr. Lector House, 2020.
4 4 Linklater. An Artist in Treason, p. 72.
