Gen. James Wilkinson, Kentucky’s “Agent 13”

He moved to Kentucky in 1784 and threw himself into the fight to separate from Virginia. He bought land at Frank’s Ford on the Kentucky River from Humphrey Marshall, won Virginia’s approval in 1786 to lay out a town there, and drew the street plan of what became Frankfort; about 1786 he also built the house later called the Love House, where the legislature first met in 1793.

In April 1787 he made a trading trip down the Mississippi to New Orleans, capital of Spanish Louisiana, where Gov. Esteban Miró agreed to let Kentucky trade on the river in return for Wilkinson’s promise to serve Spanish interests. On Aug. 22, 1787, Wilkinson signed an expatriation declaration and swore allegiance to the King of Spain. His “First Memorial” urged Spain to take Kentuckians under its protection, and his letters were written in a cipher called “Number 13,” the source of his nickname, Agent 13.

He chaired a committee at the November 1788 separation convention but could not swing it toward Spain, and in 1792 he sold his Frankfort land to Andrew Holmes. He went on to serve twice as the senior officer of the U.S. Army while still secretly taking Spanish money. Historian Charles Gayarré published his letters to Miró in 1854, proving what many had suspected.

Theodore Roosevelt wrote that “in all our history, there is no more despicable character,” and Frederick Jackson Turner called him “the most consummate artist in treason that the nation ever possessed.” The map pin marks the site of the Love House at Wapping and Wilkinson streets in Frankfort (KHS marker #1182).