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History’s B-Listers
Biography is probably the most popular — and certainly the most accessible — way of learning about history. For obvious reasons, most of them focus on the star figures of their day: hundreds of books have been written about Alexander of Macedon, Augustus, Napoleon, Abraham Lincoln, and Winston Churchill, and hundreds more will be written in the centuries to come.
But for every Great Man, there are always a number of ancillary and supporting characters whose lives are equally fascinating — and just as illuminating about their eras — as those of the superstars. I don’t simply mean the other well-known figures of the day — the Dariuses, Marc Antonies, Wellingtons, and Jefferson Davises — or the millions of common folk who are the subject of social history: I mean the genuine supporting characters who were important in their day, but whose names have understandably faded from memory. Think of them as “Best Supporting Historical Figures.”
One such character is Gen. James Wilkinson (1757-1825), who recently found a biographer in Andro Linklater. As the title of An Artist In Treason implies, Wilkinson was undoubtedly one of the slimiest, most perfidious characters of his day and widely suspected of being in the employ of the Spanish government, then one of America’s biggest rivals (the Spaniards confirmed Wilkinson’s well-compensated treachery decades after his death). That, however, did not prevent him from serving as America’s highest-ranking military officer under each of America’s first four presidents, and as the United States’ first governor of the Louisiana Territory. His military career began with the Siege of Boston in 1775 and ended — with a few gaps as a Kentucky politician/statesman/scoundrel — thirty-seven years later 1812. He died while serving as the American Envoy to Mexico.
Wilkinson appears in many histories of the era, but is usually only given a few paragraphs, often for comic relief: his antics during the Revolutionary War included a (likely) invented story of George Washington shaking his hand at realizing that they’d won the Battle of Trenton, escaping the capture of General Lee by climbing out a window, getting promoted to Brigadier General at the tender age of twenty by inflating his role in the Battle of Saratoga in a report to Congress, and then divulging the details of a conspiracy to replace Washington with his patron, General Gates, while blind drunk. Biographers of Aaron Burr will devote a full chapter or two to Wilkinson, mostly because of Wilkinson’s participation in — and exposure of — the Burr Conspiracy, the precise nature of which has been a matter of controversy for nearly 200 years (I tend to go with the slimier interpretations of Wilkinson’s behavior, but my sources have been overwhelmingly pro-Burr).
I’m only a few chapters into Linklater’s book, but I’ve already learned more — unsurprisingly — about Wilkinson’s upbringing and early character than I have from about two dozen other books I’ve read on the era: the youngest son of (very) minor Maryland gentry, he left the family plantation early to study medicine in Philadelphia, practiced briefly as a doctor in his late teens, then joined the army after Lexington and Concord to make his fortune. I can’t wait to see how the a book-length treatment illuminates his later actions.
Wilkinson is just one of many such B-List historical characters from his era, and every period has a few delicious ones. Who do you think deserves a little time in the spotlight?
Image Credit: “James Wilkinson” by Charles Willson Peale – Independence National Historical Park Collection in Philadelphia, PA.. Licensed under Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.
Update: An earlier version confused General Gates with General Gage.
Published in General
Dickinson and Root both need reappraised and well document fresh biographies. Two essential men in the history of our nation.
Dickinson just gets written off, but his writings are very brilliant. Root is mostly a footnote, one who shouldn’t be. Great suggestions in this list.
Yes, I’ve thought a fair biography of him and his role in developing mass communication would be a great thing to have, but would likely turn into, “see, here are the roots of conservative talk radio/fox news, fill in the blank” even though he was a radical socialist.
Root’s 1913 Princeton lectures on the Constitution (which I quote from in the linked post) are as relevant today as they were a century ago. They are particularly interesting coming from someone who supported TR on the initial path of Progressiveism but broke with him as he grew more radical (and more like today’s Progressives).
And speaking of B-listers I’ve been meaning to ask you what’s the truth about you and that Mozart guy?
While not a biography I thought Voices of Protest: Huey Long, Father Coughlin and the Great Depression by Alan Brinkley was interesting. The book is about the populist movement during the Depression.
Huey Long is another good historical example. Pretty reprehensible guy, but what funny stories there are about him.
I’ll have to pick that up! I love Ricochet, always pointing me toward new books.
Mozart, Mozart, that name seems familiar…oh, yes, I remember, little guy, funny laugh, died young…a tragedy really…if you ask me…
As soon as I end this break (cough, cough) procrastinating, and finish my semester grades today I’ll take a look at it!
John MacDonnell was Brock’s aide-de-camp at Queenston Heights, where the Americans were attacking in the fall of 1812. Brock fell; MacDonnell took over, and almost made it, i.e., came very close to repulsing the Americans from Redan Heights.
Stan Rogers was casting about for themes for lyrics, 170 years later, and his grandmother suggested local history, which for him meant the Maritimes generally, and all Canada especially relating to Maritimer diaspora. The 1984 tune is a favorite:
All I know about this is from Stan Rogers and Wikipedia, so I’d appreciate book suggestions from the well-read historians around here.
Thanks for bringing up this topic, Editor Meyer. It has done me no end of good to think for a while on an Attorney General who fought for his country.
Stephen Decatur, hero of the Barbary War and a key figure in the War of 1812. Still the youngest man to date to become a Captain in the US Navy, which he achieved at the ripe old age of 25 after a successful mission to destroy the USS Philadelphia after its capture by the Barbary pirates, a mission in which he did not lose a single man. Famous for his quotes, “Our country!…May she always be in the right, but our country, right or wrong.” A very key figure in early American naval history and to an extent in political history, he seems to have been completely forgotten.