Last Years
In 1821 Wilkinson visited Mexico in pursuit of a Texas land grant. While awaiting government approval of his Texas scheme, Wilkinson died in Mexico City, where he was buried.
Wilkinson's involvement with the Spanish (Agent 13), although widely suspected in his own day, was not proven until 1854, with Louisiana historian Charles Gayarré's publication of the American general's correspondence with Rodríguez Miró, the Spanish governor of Louisiana. Other historians would subsequently add to the catalog of Wilkinson's treasonous activities. According to recent Burr biography by David O. Stewart, Wilkinson was severely condemned in print by then-New York Governor Theodore Roosevelt, some 65 years after the general's misdeeds, with this judgment: "In all our history, there is no more despicable character."
Read more about this topic: James Wilkinson
Famous quotes containing the word years:
“Where has it all gone? I remember that twenty years ago there were geese and cranes and ducks and grouse here, clouds of them!... And there are far fewer animals. Wolf and fox are rare, brother, not to mention bears or mink. There used even to be moose!”
—Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860–1904)
“During those years in Stamps, I met and fell in love with William Shakespeare. He was my first white love.... it was Shakespeare who said, “When in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes.” It was a state of mind with which I found myself most familiar. I pacified myself about his whiteness by saying that after all he had been dead so long it couldn’t matter to anyone any more.”
—Maya Angelou (b. 1928)