Wilkes had arrested Johnson for refusing to lead the expedition from Puget Sound to Grays Harbor. Johnson’s lawyer, who all agreed was one of the best they’d seen in a navy court-martial, chose to ignore the fact that Johnson had improperly given away a government-issue pistol. Instead, it was Wilkes who was put on trial as Johnson’s lawyer pulled apart his account of the confrontation between himself and the lieutenant on the deck of the Vincennes. It had occurred during what is always a hectic, noisy, and distracting time aboard a sailing vessel—the weighing of the anchor. As the men worked the capstan and the huge anchor rose up out of the water amid the deafening screech and clatter of chain, Wilkes and Johnson had squared off. For Wilkes it was all black and white: either Johnson was going to lead an expedition to Grays Harbor or he was going to be guilty of disobeying orders. For Johnson, it was much more complicated. Wilkes had inserted a clause in his orders requiring him to gain Passed Midshipman Henry Eld’s approval before he dispensed with any more government property. In the navy, an officer was not supposed to submit to the judgment of an inferior officer, and Johnson wanted to discuss this aspect of Wilkes’s order. But Wilkes was in a hurry; he was already annoyed at Johnson; and rather than talking it over with him, he placed Johnson under arrest.
Johnson’s attorney asked Wilkes, “Have you during your experience in the service known of an instance of an officer receiving an order containing a clause similar in character to the one referred to?” Wilkes admitted that he had known of “no such instance in the Naval Service.” But, he continued, the U.S. Ex. Ex. was unlike any operation the navy had ever mounted before. In fact, he had received “private instructions” directing him that “rank was not to be regarded on special duties on the Exploring Expedition.” Johnson’s attorney pressed Wilkes to reveal the nature of these mysterious instructions. Reluctantly, Wilkes told of the letter he had received in Honolulu from Secretary Paulding that urged him to put down “Cabals of discontented officers.” Johnson’s attorney demanded that the letter be made part of the public record, but Wilkes claimed “there were portions of these instructions relating to private matters between myself and Mr. Paulding.” At the court’s insistence, Wilkes was required to make available only the relevant portions of the letter the following day.
“You are engaged in a great undertaking,” Paulding had written, “which has excited the interest of the civilized world, and is looked upon by all your countrymen with great solicitude as one which, if successful in its objects, will redound to the credit of the United States. For that success you are in a great degree personally responsible, and are, in my opinion, fully justified in enforcing those measures which you believe best qualified to ensure the attainment of the great objects of the expedition.” Later in the letter, Paulding specifically stated that “the fantastical claims of rank” were not to interfere with the Expedition’s goals.
Paulding’s letter would be reprinted in newspapers across the country, and at least one naval officer would angrily insist that the secretary’s instructions were at odds with that most sacred of institutions—rank. No wonder the Expedition’s officers had become embroiled in controversy; a voyage organized on such misguided principles was doomed to failure. It was a theme that would be returned to more than once in the days ahead.
Shortly after the reading of Johnson’s defence on August 2, the judges turned their attention to the trial of surgeon Charles Guillou. Guillou was accused, among other things, of failing to account for the disappearance of a tiny metal mortar used in mixing medicines; he had also torn out several pages from his journal, claiming that they contained “private matter.” In a blistering protest of Wilkes’s charges, Guillou’s counsel pounced on the commander’s earlier unwillingness to divulge the full contents of Paulding’s private letter as proof that Guillou’s mutilation of his journal had been justified, but the protest was denied. As the trial dragged on, it was revealed that much of Guillou’s refractoriness had to do with Wilkes’s refusal to grant him a promised promotion. This did not absolve him, however, of having failed to obey several of his superiors’ orders. Guillou admitted as much, insisting that “if he had done any thing wrong it had arisen from misapprehension of [naval regulations].”
Guillou was regarded by Reynolds and his friends as an extremely intelligent and capable officer, and expectations were high for his final defence. On Saturday, August 6, the fourth day of his trial, the great cabin of the North Carolina was crowded with spectators. Many of the officers brought along their wives to witness what was to be a lively and damaging attack on the commander of the Ex. Ex. But Guillou’s defence proved a disappointment. The best the Herald reporter, whose sympathies were clearly with the officers, could say about the defence was that it was “somewhat long.” Since Guillou would be the chief accuser in Wilkes’s court-martial, it did not bode well for that trial’s eventual outcome.
The court-martial of Robert Pinkney began with visual aids. One of the six charges Wilkes had brought against the lieutenant claimed that he had not properly followed his instructions when surveying the south shore of Upolu, requiring that the squadron return to the island more than a year later to redo the survey. Wilkes held up two charts—one based on Pinkney’s flawed survey; the other showing what it looked like after it had been done properly. He also read a letter from Pinkney in which the officer admitted to destroying his journal in Tonga. But the testimony of the day was overshadowed by the announcement that at 9:30 the next morning, William May’s sentence would be read on the quarterdeck of the North Carolina.
The following day the quarterdeck was filled with people, some, according to the Herald, “attracted by curiosity, and others by sympathy for the accused, whom they judged from the reports of the evidence . . . to be quite innocent of any disrespect to Lieutenant Wilkes, besides having formed the opinion that Lieutenant Wilkes was a tyrannical and overbearing officer, and very insulting in his deportment to his subordinate officers.”
At precisely 9:30 the gig of Commodore Matthew Perry, commanding the steam frigate Missouri, came alongside the North Carolina. Perry was received with “all the honors,” and Passed Midshipman William May was ordered to come forward. Standing in the center of what was described as “a wondering circle of Middies, Lieutenants, Captains, and Commodores, besides a goodly number of civilians,” May waited as Perry unfolded the letter he had received from the secretary of the navy. To the surprise of everyone but the judges, May had been found guilty of disrespect to a superior and sentenced to a public reprimand. “The offense of which you have been found guilty,” Perry read, “although it involves no moral turpitude, strikes at the foundation of all discipline. A respectful deportment is part of the duty of obedience, and obedience is the first law of military service. It is impossible, therefore, that the Department can fail to look with displeasure on the conduct of an officer who so far loses his self-control as to suffer himself to be betrayed into disrespect to his superior.” The letter was handed to May, the crowd dispersed, and by ten A.M. Pinkney’s trial had resumed.
As the day of his own court-martial approached, Wilkes did his best to ignore Upshur’s repeated demands that he turn over “the whole of the Books and Instruments, etc. used by the Exploring Expedition.” Finally, in early August, he responded, “your order will be obeyed the very moment I am relieved from the ominous and responsible situation in which I am placed and can attend to them in person.”
It was during Pinkney’s trial that the judge advocate attempted to force Wilkes’s hand. While testifying about the survey at Upolu, Lieutenant George Sinclair requested that he have the opportunity to consult his journal. It was the moment the judge advocate had been waiting for. “I have a letter,” he declared, “from the Secretary of the Navy, in which he says that he has sent Lieutenant Wilkes three orders to deliver up those journals, none of which he has regarded.”
Since there was little the court could do about the matter that day, the trial continued, with Sinclair stating, to t
he amusement of everyone but Wilkes, that the Expedition’s surveying instructions were so poorly written that “the more I read them the less I understood them.” The following morning, Wilkes requested that he be given the opportunity to respond to the Herald’s account of the previous day’s testimony. The president of the court, Commodore Stewart, reminded Wilkes that what was printed in a newspaper had nothing to do with the testimony allowed by the court. Wilkes blurted out that it was the Herald’s statement concerning his not having turned over the Expedition’s journals that he wished to counter. Stewart repeated his earlier statement, to which Wilkes replied that “he cared little about what the newspapers said, he was thickskinned so far as they were concerned.” The following day, the Herald would report that Wilkes subsequently used testimony that had appeared in the newspaper to assist him in examining a witness, “thus acknowledging the correctness of the reports which the reporter understood him to impugn at the commencement of the proceedings.” Wilkes had managed to anger not only the judge advocate and the judges, but also the popular press, and his own trial had not yet begun.
On Saturday, August 13, Pinkney’s counsel, the Expedition’s assistant surgeon James Palmer, read his defence. The trial had shown that Wilkes was willing to go to any length and pursue just about any course if it would strengthen his case against the lieutenant, a perfectly competent officer against whom Wilkes had taken a violent and inexplicable dislike. Over and over again during the Expedition, Pinkney claimed, Wilkes “tried to goad me into rebellion.” But why? Pinkney had a theory, and it involved the issue of rank.
From the very beginning, the officers of the Ex. Ex. had recognized that the schooners were “of all vessels, most likely to distinguish themselves on the Exploring Expedition.” “The history of the Flying Fish’s first Antarctic cruise,” Pinkney continued, “and the subsequent survey of the mouth of the Columbia by Lieutenant Knox, justify all the hopes which were entertained of those admirable schooners.” But instead of putting the Flying Fish and the Sea Gull under the command of his senior lieutenants, Wilkes had assigned them to passed midshipmen. “[T]he obstinacy with which he maintained a decision so injurious to the Lieutenants,” Pinkney insisted, “and so little in accordance with his own solemn assurances, to be guided, in all appointments, by rank alone, at once annihilated confidence.” Pinkney claimed that when the Sea Gull was lost off Cape Horn, it made even Wilkes aware of the injustice of his actions, and he placed Pinkney, a senior lieutenant, in command of the remaining schooner. “[B]y this act, Lieutenant Wilkes tacitly acknowledged his former error,” Pinkney maintained. “The mortification which he seemed to suffer from this circumstance, is the sole cause to which I can trace his strange animosity to me during my subsequent service in the Squadron.” It was a difficult theory to sell to a military tribunal, but it came as close as anyone had so far to unlocking the motivations of the Expedition’s commander. Reynolds would subsequently send a copy of Pinkney’s defence to his father back in Pennsylvania. “It is certainly an able one,” he wrote, “& must have hit Wilkes very hard. Even thro’ his ‘thick skin.’”
What Pinkney and Reynolds had no way of knowing was that prior to the Expedition’s departure, Wilkes had also been denied what he perceived to be his due—an acting appointment to captain. Although many of Wilkes’s subsequent actions were indefensible, the truth was that Paulding and Secretary of War Poinsett had failed to give him a rank commensurate with his responsibilities as leader of the Expedition. It was inevitable that a man of Wilkes’s temperament would turn his hurt and frustration on his senior lieutenants, and it was with the dismissal of Craven and Lee that the unraveling of his relationship with his officers began. One can only wonder how differently the voyage might have turned out if the Expedition’s young and insecure commander had been given the rank he deserved at the outset.
Wilkes’s court-martial was scheduled to begin on August 17, just four days after the conclusion of Pinkney’s. In the interim, William Reynolds intended to get married. “I do not expect this announcement to surprise you much,” he wrote his father on August 14, “as I mentioned to you that if I could make such an arrangement, I should adopt it, without delay.” Two days later, Reynolds and Rebecca Krug were married in Lancaster; Reynolds’s sister Lydia was a bridesmaid. Almost immediately following the ceremony, the couple was on their way to New York City to spend their honeymoon at Wilkes’s court-martial.
Upshur had ordered that Wilkes must return to Washington and retrieve the requested journals and documents before the trial could begin, but Wilkes’s counsel Philip Hamilton claimed that the secretary’s order required his client “to produce evidence to be used against himself on the trial, contrary to all the rules of law and evidence.” The long journey to Washington and back would also “deprive him of his right to a speedy trial.” Besides, Wilkes had already sent “a confidential agent” to Washington to obtain the journals, which should be arriving in New York in the next few days. Reluctantly, the court agreed to continue with the trial.
Reynolds was dismayed that Guillou’s charges against Wilkes and their myriad specifications were as long-winded and disorganized as his defence had been. When read in the courtroom, they made for a confusing litany of accusations: illegally attacking natives, excessively punishing sailors and marines, falsely claiming to have seen Antarctica, dressing as a captain, flying a commodore’s pennant, refusing to forward Guillou’s letters to the secretary of the navy, along with a host of other allegations. “We all regret that Guillou’s charges were so wordy,” Reynolds wrote his father. “We think he has weakened his grounds very much. We would have been better satisfied had he stuck to the Strongest part of his known wrongs, & let other matters alone. There are some errors in his dates, also, which entirely destroy some & weaken other specifications.” Luckily, Pinkney had kept his charges brief and to the point, and Reynolds was confident that they “can all be proved.”
On the second day of the trial, Wilkes reported that after a thorough search of his home, the man he had sent to Washington had returned with only a few of the requested logs and none of the documents. He was now certain that he had forwarded the papers to the Navy Department when the Expedition was still at sea. When Guillou testified that he knew for a fact that the documents were not in the department’s files, Wilkes’s counsel turned the surgeon’s testimony against him by asking how he had gained such an intimate knowledge of the Navy Department. Guillou had no choice but to admit that he had spent close to two weeks at the department under the orders of the secretary of the navy “to furnish the Judge Advocate with information upon the subject of the accusations I had made against Lieutenant Wilkes.” When one of the court’s judges voiced his concern about possible “collusion between the Secretary of the Navy, the Judge Advocate, and Doctor Guillou, in preparing the charges,” even Wilkes’s detractors had to admit that the Navy Department had lent credence to his claims that a nefarious cabal had tried, and was continuing to try, to undermine him and the Expedition.
The case against Wilkes began to look even more suspect when the judge advocate appeared the following morning with one of the disputed log books under his arm and shamefacedly admitted that he had had it all along. Du Pont now wished for a “riper lawyer” in the role of judge advocate. Many in the courtroom—both behind the bench and in the gallery—were annoyed that the judge advocate had not stricken the charges related to the actions taken against natives at Fiji and elsewhere. Just about every officer in the Expedition, including Reynolds, felt that while these measures had been lamentable, they had been completely justified. Wilkes’s instructions had stated that, unless it was a case of self-defense, he should refrain from any violent encounters. When the judge advocate asked Lieutenant Robert Johnson if the attack on Malolo “was necessary for self defense,” he heatedly responded, “It was not self-defense. I was ordered to go on shore to revenge my messmates, who were murdered at the island before our arrival.”
Wilkes’s attor
ney Philip Hamilton recognized an opportunity to win sympathy for his client. George Emmons was asked to describe what he found when he first landed at Malolo. “On arriving there we found the bodies of Lieutenant Underwood and Midshipman Henry on the beach, close to the water. Midshipman Henry was entirely naked, and Lieutenant Underwood had on a pair of thick canvas trousers they could not tear off. They were both wounded in the head. All the crew were wounded, and one of the men was crazy on the beach.”
Hamilton: “Did not Lieutenant Wilkes endeavor to restrain the seamen from killing the inhabitants of Malolo?”
Emmons: “He did.”
Hamilton: “Have you not expressed a belief that Lieutenant Wilkes was moderate in his punishment of the inhabitants?”
Emmons: “I thought so at the time, and have often said so. I received an order from Lieutenant Wilkes on that day to cease hostilities and felt mortified, because I thought they had not been punished enough.”
Hovering over the court-martial, but left unstated throughout the many days of testimony, was the close connection between Wilkes and one of the officers killed at Malolo. It was a rare example of restraint that was calculated to work to Wilkes’s advantage, for all knew that his nineteen-year-old nephew had died on that beach.
While the focus of Pinkney’s charges was much narrower than Guillou’s, the incidents, when contrasted with the life-and-death exploits at Malolo and elsewhere, inevitably came across as petty and inconsequential. The near-collision between the Flying Fish and the Vincennes in the Tuamotus was rehashed over and over again as more than half-a-dozen officers testified as to whether or not Wilkes had been guilty of using the phrase “God damn it” when addressing Pinkney. In each instance, Hamilton would attempt to prove that the witness’s testimony had been influenced by his dislike of Wilkes.