It would
seem so, because, although this was the very aim of all Miro's
activities so that, had he been assured of the sincerity of the
offer, he must have grasped at it, yet nothing definite was done.
And Sevier was presently informing Shelby, now in Kentucky, that
there was a Spanish plot afoot to seize the western country.
Miro had other agents besides McGillivray--who, by the way, was
costing Spain, for his own services and those of four tribes
aggregating over six thousand warriors, a sum of fifty-five
thousand dollars a year. McGillivray did very well as
superintendent of massacres; but the Spaniard required a
different type of man, an American who enjoyed his country's
trust, to bring the larger plan to fruition. Miro found that man
in General James Wilkinson, lately of the Continental Army and
now a resident of Kentucky, which territory Wilkinson undertook
to deliver to Spain, for a price. In 1787 Wilkinson secretly took
the oath of allegiance to Spain and is listed in the files of the
Spanish secret service, appropriately, as "Number Thirteen." He
was indeed the thirteenth at table, the Judas at the feast.
Somewhat under middle height, Wilkinson was handsome, graceful,
and remarkably magnetic. Of a good, if rather impoverished,
Maryland family, he was well educated and widely read for the
times.
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