He sold,
indeed, whatever and whomever he could get his price for. So
clever was he that he escaped detection, though he was obliged to
remove some suspicions. He succeeded Wayne as commander of the
regular army in 1796. He was one of the commissioners to receive
Louisiana when the Purchase was arranged in 1803. He was still on
the Spanish pay roll at that time. Wilkinson's true record came
to light only when the Spanish archives were opened to
investigators.
There were British agents also in the Old Southwest, for the
dissatisfaction of the Western men inspired in Englishmen the
hope of recovering the Mississippi Basin. Lord Dorchester,
Governor of Canada, wrote to the British Government that he had
been approached by important Westerners; but he received advice
from England to move slowly. For complicity in the British
schemes, William Blount, who was first territorial Governor of
Tennessee and later a senator from that State, was expelled from
the Senate.
Surely there was never a more elaborate network of plots that
came to nothing! The concession to Americans in 1796 of the right
of navigation on the Mississippi brought an end to the scheming.
In the same year Tennessee was admitted to the Union, and John
Sevier was elected Governor Sevier's popularity was
undiminished, though there were at this time some sixty thousand
souls in Tennessee, many of whom were late comers who had not
known him in his heyday.
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