His record fails to disclose one commendable trait.

He was inordinately avaricious, but love of money was not his whole motive force: he had a spirit so jealous and malignant that he hated to the death another man's good.

He seemed to divine instantly wherein other men were weak and to understand the speediest and best means of suborning them to his own interests--or of destroying them.
Wilkinson was able to lure a number of Kentuckians into the separatist movement.

George Rogers Clark seriously disturbed the arch plotter by seizing a Spanish trader's store wherewith to pay his soldiers, whom Virginia had omitted to recompense.

This act aroused the suspicions of the Spanish, either as to Number Thirteen's perfect loyalty or as to his ability to deliver the western country.