[cruikshank] FROM ISLE AUX NOIX TO CHATEAUGUAY 59 



ton on July 6 and brought matters to a crisis. Congress had been 

 sitting for a month. The discontent and anger of the leading supporters 

 of the administration could no longer be suppressed. A committee, 

 composed of Henry Clay, then Speaker of the House of Representa- 

 tives, and two other influential members, was appointed to call upon 

 the President and demand the removal of General Dearborn and the 

 appointment of a more competent commander. Mr. Madison was ill 

 but they were received by the Secretary of State who told them that 

 their request would be granted. Dearborn was instructed to turn 

 over the command to Brigadier General Boyd, the next senior officer. 

 Although Boyd was an officer of undoubted courage and some ex- 

 perience in actual warfare, the Secretary for War did not consider 

 him capable of conducting operations on a large scale. Major General 

 James Wilkinson, lately in command of the Department of the South, 

 was next in rank to Dearborn, and therefore selected as his successor. 

 He had already been ordered to report at Washington for service 

 in the north, and might be expected to arrive any day, although his 

 movements were known to be leisurely. He had served with Arm- 

 strong in the Revolution, on the staff of General Gates, who had selected 

 him to deliver to Congress his despatch announcing the convention 

 of Saratoga. He had been educated as a physician and possessed 

 considerable natural ability combined with a courteous and agreeable 

 manner. His military service had been practically continuous since 

 the organization of the army. When he took possession of Louisiana, 

 nearly ten years before, the French Commissioner described him as a 

 vain, rattle-brained fellow, who had been guilty of innumerable 

 foolish acts and had a bad reputation everywhere. He had since 

 been tried and acquitted by a court martial for complicity in the 

 conspiracy of Aaron Burr. His reputation had not improved since. 

 The senators from the three states included in his department had 

 so little confidence in his fidelity that they demanded his removal. 

 The order relieving him from the command was dated March 10, 

 but did not reach him until May 19. He did not leave Mobile until 

 three weeks later and actually arrived in Washington on July 31, 

 nearly five months after the order was written. A historian of eminence 

 has styled him "the most infamous man then wearing the uniform 

 of the United States." 1 He was undeniably sensual, unreliable, 

 vain, and an irrepressible liar and braggart. His health as well as 

 his character had suffered from constant dissipation. 



Major General Morgan Lewis, then commanding at Sackett's 

 Harbour was a brother-in-law to Armstrong, and owed his rank 

 entirely to political and family influence. He was junior to Hampton, 

 1 McMaster, History of the People of the United States, III, 26, 545. 



