Armstrong had seen service in the Revolution, and was the author of the anonymous "Newburg Addresses," which had given Washington so much trouble. Although he planned the expedition in February, he allowed the entire summer to go by before attempting its execution, and it set out in October, the worst time of year for such an undertaking. The first requisite for any military movement is, that it shall be under the supreme command of some one man. But the left wing of the army {150}which was to make this one was commanded by General James Wilkinson, at Sackett's Harbor, while the right wing was under General Wade Hampton, at Plattsburg, and between these two officers there was not only no cordial friendship, but a positive jealousy that rendered it almost impossible for them to act in concert. Although Wilkinson was the ranking officer, Hampton maintained that his own must be considered as a separate and independent command, and himself not subordinate to anybody but the Secretary of War. He thus put in practice on a small scale a vicious principle whose advocacy on a vastly larger scale has since given some of his descendants an unenviable prominence. So old a soldier as Armstrong should have known that the first thing necessary to the success of his scheme was the removal of one or the other of these officers, and conferring upon some one general the absolute command of all forces that were to take part in it. As he had stationed himself and his War Department at Sackett's Harbor, he perhaps imagined that he could direct the expedition from there, and, holding both generals subordinate to himself, cause the two wings to act in concert. If so, he was wofully mistaken. A man sixty years of age, who owned three thousand slaves and was accustomed to no check upon his least caprice, who {151}now had four thousand troops under his command --a large number in that war--and was distant a hundred and fifty miles from his superior, with a wilderness between, could not be expected to hold himself subordinate to anybody.