by H. W. Brands
Jackson also wrote to Jefferson. Bypassing both Governor Sevier and the federal secretary of war, Jackson told the president that Tennessee stood eager to defend American honor. “The public sentiment and feeling of the citizens within this state, and particularly within my division, are of such a nature and of such a kind that I take the liberty of tendering their services. . . . At one moment’s warning after your signification that this tender is acceptable, my orders shall be given conformably.”
Just days later, Jackson received the shock of his life. A young army captain named John Fort arrived in Nashville bearing reports of treasonous activity in the far Southwest. Adventurers, he asserted, were plotting against the United States. “Their intention was to divide the Union,” Jackson recalled Fort saying. He asked Fort how they would do this.
He replied, by seizing New Orleans and the bank [of the Mississippi], shutting the port, conquering Mexico, and uniting the western part of the Union to the conquered territory.
I, perhaps with warmth, asked him how this was to be effected.
He replied, by the aid of the Federal troops, and the General [James Wilkinson, governor of (Upper) Louisiana Territory] at their head.
I asked if he had this from the General.
He said he had not.
I asked him if Colonel Burr was in to the scheme.
He answered he did not know nor was he informed that he was: that he barely knew Colonel Burr but never had had any conversation.
I asked him how he knew this and from whom he got his information.
He said from Colonel Swartout in New York.
It was at this point that Jackson’s shock occurred.
Knowing that Colonel Burr was well acquainted with Swartout, it rushed into my mind like lightning that Burr was at the head.
Jackson now realized that Burr’s trips to New Orleans had involved more than sizing up the Spanish. He was estimating western sentiment in favor of secession from the Union. The former vice president apparently planned to become president—or king, or emperor—of his own new country, carved from the southwestern United States and northeastern Mexico and centered on the lower Mississippi and New Orleans. There was geographic logic to the audacious plan. The Mississippi was an obvious organizing principle for a political entity. Even Nashville felt its pull, which in turn reflected nothing more complicated than the gravity that drew the Cumberland to the Mississippi and the Mississippi to New Orleans and the Gulf of Mexico.
But geography couldn’t disguise that any such scheme was treason, pure and simple. Jackson sought what served Tennessee, but his first loyalty was to the Union. If what Jackson suddenly suspected of Burr was true, the man was a traitor.
And Jackson was an accomplice, if an unwitting one. As his mind reeled from the lightning bolt of recognition of Burr’s nefarious plan, he understood that he had compromised himself. He frantically dredged his memories for the encouraging words he had offered Burr, the letters he had written, the actions he had undertaken in support of Burr’s scheme. Jackson blamed himself not for moral failure; he had done nothing that pained his conscience. But he cursed himself for stupidity, for not seeing what Burr was up to. He knew that a clear conscience might not protect him if Burr’s perfidy became manifest. Jackson was lawyer enough to know that ignorance was nearly impossible to prove, and politician enough to realize that ignorance could be as damning in its own way as witting culpability.
Angry at Burr and angrier at himself, he sounded the alarm. “There is something rotten in the state of Denmark,” he wrote to William Claiborne, governor of Orleans Territory, at New Orleans. “You have enemies within your own city that may try to subvert your government and try to separate it from the Union. . . . Be upon the alert.” Jackson didn’t retreat from his desire for war against Spain, but it mustn’t be at hazard to the United States. “I hate the Dons. I would delight to see Mexico reduced, but I will die in the last ditch before I would yield a part to the Dons or see the Union disunited.” To Tennessee senator Daniel Smith at Washington, Jackson delineated how the conspiracy must have been designed to unfold.
A difference exists between our government and Spain. Their minister at open war with our executive, a designing man forms an intrigue with him to regain the purchased Territory [Louisiana]. . . . The Spanish forces under pretext of defending their frontier (where there has been no encroachment) marches a formidable force within two hundred miles of New Orleans. Your governor of New Orleans [Claiborne] organizes the militia to help defend your Territory, but your general [Wilkinson] orders him home at the very moment that he is advancing to take possession of a position on the right bank of the Sabine. The two armies are near enough to make arrangement and to form plans of cooperation. At this moment a descent is made [by Burr and accomplices] from the Ohio and upper Louisiana on New Orleans, which is in a defenceless situation, two thirds of its inhabitants in to the plan. The town falls an easy prey to its assailants, and the two armies protect the conquerors with the aid of Spain, shut the port against the exportation of the West, and hold out allurements to all the western world to join and they shall enjoy free trade and profitable commerce.
Jackson granted that he was conjecturing details. But he didn’t doubt that something akin to this was afoot. “I as much believe that such a plan is in operation as I believe there is a god. And if I am not mistaken, there are in the plan many high characters from New York to New Orleans.” He urged Smith to inform Jefferson—but not others in the administration, who might be conspirators themselves.
Jefferson didn’t need Jackson to warn him about Burr or about the western conspiracy. People had been telling him about both for months, which was precisely the president’s problem. Hardly had Burr shot Hamilton before Federalists, some Republicans, and persons who preferred to keep their identities secret began raining rumor and innuendo on the White House. “He is meditating the overthrow of your Administration,” one anonymous writer told Jefferson of Burr in December 1805. “His aberrations through the Western states had no other object. A foreign agent, now at Washington, knows since February last his plans and has seconded them.” A few weeks later Joseph Hamilton Daveiss, the federal district attorney for Kentucky, wrote Jefferson, “Spanish intrigues have been carried on among our people. We have traitors among us. A separation of the union in favor of Spain is the object finally.” Daveiss named Burr and Wilkinson as the arch-conspirators on the American side.
If Jefferson hadn’t been distracted by other events, he might have paid more attention to the stories about Burr. His resounding reelection in 1804 nearly swept the Federalists from the field of American politics, promising decades of Republican rule, but the international troubles that had vexed America since the early 1790s broadened and intensified. The conflict between Britain and France allowed pirates operating out of North Africa to prey on American merchant ships, seizing the vessels and their cargoes and taking their crews hostage. Jefferson responded by ordering raids against the Barbary states, as the pirate-hosting princedoms were called. In the autumn of 1805, the British navy smashed the French fleet at Trafalgar, raising British hopes that Napoleon could be crushed and prompting London to order a blockade of France. Shortly the British blockaders began capturing American ships by the dozen. The pacific Jefferson protested diplomatically; his more belligerent supporters demanded war.
For such reasons the Burr conspiracy took time to bubble to the surface of Jefferson’s agenda. Yet by the summer of 1806 the president had to pay attention. In August Jefferson received a letter from Thomas Truxton, a navy veteran of the Barbary conflict, explaining that Burr had approached him about joining the conspiracy. In September George Morgan, a Jefferson loyalist, informed the president that Burr had laid out his separatist scheme during a recent dinner at Morgan’s home near Pittsburgh. In October William Eaton, another Barbary veteran, added his voice to the conspiracy chorus, asserting what Andrew Jackson was concluding at about the same time: that Burr and Wilkinson were aimin
g to carve the West away from the United States and attach it to a part of Mexico similarly severed from Spanish control.
Burr wasn’t oblivious to the leaking, but, on the principle that he hadn’t broken any laws yet, he proceeded unfazed. The first serious wrinkle in his plans occurred when federal prosecutor Daveiss attempted to indict him for making preparations in Kentucky for war against Mexico. Burr hired Henry Clay, an ambitious young attorney, and fended off the indictment. But he decided not to tarry in Kentucky and went south to Tennessee.
In Nashville he encountered Jackson again. The meeting was strained yet more cordial than it might have been. After hearing from John Fort and inferring Burr’s design, Jackson had written to Burr insisting on an explanation. Burr’s reply has been lost, but Jackson paraphrased it in another letter, saying that Burr gave “an express pledge of honor that he had never had any ideas hostile to the Union or its interest.” The subsequent refusal of the Kentucky grand jury to indict him lent weight to Burr’s disclaimer. And Burr in person was as plausible as ever. He assured Jackson of his loyalty to the Union. His intentions, he said, had never gone beyond those of Jackson himself: to smite Spain and expand the realm of American liberty.
Jackson didn’t know what to conclude. He had to admit that the evidence against Burr was indirect and largely partisan. And whatever Burr might have been thinking, he hadn’t done anything illegal. And if he had dreamed of a southwestern empire, surely the recent hue and cry had put him off that. He might still be useful in a war against Spain, which Jackson continued to believe necessary and just.
Jackson may have been willfully fooling himself. If Burr wasn’t guilty, then Jackson wasn’t as stupid as he feared he had been, and his good name and future weren’t in such jeopardy. Maybe he had overreacted. Maybe Burr was as innocent as he claimed. In any event, Jackson didn’t have authority to arrest Burr or otherwise stand in his way. So he held his breath and hoped for the best. The two men parted on apparently friendly terms.
Yet Jackson determined to keep an eye on Burr. And he would be ready to move against him at an instant’s notice. “Should danger threaten you,” he told Governor Claiborne at New Orleans, “write me, and under your notification, on the wings of patriotism I will hasten to the point of danger, to support the Union of our country, the prop of freedom, with the arm of vengeance that shall burst on treason and on treasoners’ heads.”
Things didn’t come to that. The conspiracy unraveled before Burr got anywhere near New Orleans. James Wilkinson, whose loyalty was, if anything, less certain than Burr’s—Wilkinson was still on the Spanish payroll—decided to betray his partner to save himself. He wrote to Jackson asserting that treason was afoot. He said he had intercepted a letter to “Burr’s chief agent here . . . which letter is evincive of his being a party to the conspiracy which agitates your country”—Tennessee—“and is intended to destroy the American nation.” Should Burr’s plans develop as intended, Wilkinson said, “this country”—Louisiana—“will be ruined.” Wilkinson was aware that certain persons had linked his name to Burr’s in the conspiracy. Wilkinson denied the charge as an utter calumny and demanded an opportunity to dispel “the delusions and villainies by which I have been misrepresented, persecuted and defamed.” He declared that he “would steel through my father to defend the integrity of the Union. . . . I have no secrets except when necessary to the national interests.”
Wilkinson also wrote to Jefferson, less straightforwardly. He sent the president a document describing “a numerous and powerful association extending from New York through the western states to territories bordering on the Mississippi.” This association hoped to raise “eight or ten thousand men in New Orleans at a very near period.” The ostensible aim of the irregular army was to attack Spanish Mexico at Vera Cruz, to which end its leaders had arranged the cooperation of the British navy. But Wilkinson was certain that more was involved. In a letter accompanying the document he told Jefferson, “I have no doubt the revolt of this Territory”—Louisiana—“will be made an auxiliary step” in the attack on Mexico. Wilkinson didn’t identify Burr by name, but he knew he didn’t have to, given everything that had been rumored of the former vice president.
Several weeks later Wilkinson forwarded to Washington what was intended to be the most damning evidence yet of Burr’s perfidy. Burr had written Wilkinson a ciphered letter asserting that the plans were rapidly taking shape. “Everything internal and external favor our view,” Burr wrote, in code. “Naval protection of England is secured. . . . Final orders are given to my friends and followers. It will be a host of choice spirits. . . . Our project, my dear friend, is brought to the point so long desired. I guarantee the result with my life and honor, with the lives, the honor and the fortune of hundreds, the best blood of our country. . . . The gods invite us to glory and fortune.” Wilkinson sent this letter on to Jefferson, decoded but edited in a way that removed signs that Wilkinson was involved.
The mere fact of the ciphering, as much as the letter’s contents, made it politically explosive. “Burr’s enterprise is the most extraordinary since the days of Don Quixote,” the president declared. “It is so extravagant that those who know his understanding would not believe it if the proofs admitted doubt. He has meant to place himself on the throne of Montezuma, and extend his empire to the Allegheny, seizing on New Orleans as the instrument of compulsion for our Western states.”
The encrypted letter finally drove Jefferson to action. Stories about Burr were rifer and more lurid than ever in Washington, and the president’s enemies taxed him for tolerating treason. Jefferson’s Republican allies fretted that all their party’s gains might be lost if Burr weren’t brought to justice.
But catching Burr wasn’t easy. Wilkinson had guessed it wouldn’t be. “He might be hid in a greatcoat pocket,” the general said, referring to Burr’s slipperiness as well as his small stature. A manhunt began and encompassed much of the West. After several leads failed, the searchers tracked their quarry to Mississippi Territory, where Burr was run to ground and forced to surrender. But he lulled his captors into complacency and escaped. The hunt resumed, with a large bounty offered for the capture of the fugitive. In February 1807, Burr was retaken. He was transported east under armed guard. In South Carolina he again attempted escape but failed. He and his guards arrived at Richmond in late March.
The treason trial of Aaron Burr was the sensation of the summer of 1807. Jefferson weighed in heavily, bringing to bear all the power of the executive branch to ensure conviction. The prosecution, led by the United States attorney for the Virginia District, George Hay, compiled a list of 140 witnesses to testify against Burr. To encourage useful testimony, Jefferson sent Hay a sheaf of blank pardons for those who turned state’s evidence.
Jefferson had reason to believe he’d need help, for the judge in the trial was John Marshall, the chief justice of the Supreme Court, who had been appointed by John Adams and had crossed swords with Jefferson more than once. Supreme Court justices in those days rode the circuit, and Marshall’s circuit included Richmond, his hometown. Marshall was no friend to traitors, but he was only marginally more friendly to Jefferson and had no intention of letting the courts be coerced by a chagrined and vindictive president. Marshall’s life goal was to establish the independence of the judiciary and its coequality with the executive and legislative branches. The Burr trial became an early battlefield in that struggle.
Jackson played a bit part in the Jefferson-Marshall fight. Summoned from Tennessee to testify before the grand jury, he explained that Burr had visited Nashville a number of times, inquiring about speculative opportunities in the West and talking of the likelihood of war with Spain. Jackson said he had told Burr that before he—Jackson—would ready the militia to march, he needed orders from the federal secretary of war. “Burr said surely he would produce the orders of the secretary,” Jackson told the grand jury. Jackson recounted his interview with John Fort and explained that the army captain had implicated
not Burr alone but Wilkinson too.
To Jackson’s annoyance, the prosecution—which was to say, the president—heeded only part of his testimony. Jefferson spared neither effort nor expense to convict Burr yet ignored what seemed to Jackson the equal guilt of Wilkinson. In fact, the more Jackson considered the matter, the more he came to believe that Wilkinson, not Burr, was the one who needed to be punished and that the president was engaged in a vendetta that had nothing to do with national defense. “I am more convinced than I ever was before that treason was never intended by Burr,” he wrote a friend. “If it ever was, you know my wish is, and always has been, that he be hung.” But if Burr was guilty, so was Wilkinson. “Whatever may have been the projects of Burr, General Wilkinson has and did go hand in hand with him.” Politics—between Republicans and Federalists, between Jefferson and Marshall—had fatally intruded on the sphere of justice. “I never deemed it just, nor never shall, to make the sacrifice of any individual as a peace offering to policy, and especially when others are permitted of equal guilt to pass with impunity.”
Against inclination, Jackson found himself agreeing with the Federalist Marshall against the Republican Jefferson. And it was Marshall who triumphed in this test of will and savvy. Marshall so sifted the evidence and so instructed the jury as to render conviction impossible. He ruled that intent to commit treason—if in fact Burr had so intended—wasn’t the same as treason itself. And he held the prosecution to the strict constitutional standard of two eyewitnesses to the treasonable act. After the prosecution failed to produce the witnesses, the jury deliberated less than half an hour before acquitting Burr.
The result was a signal victory for Marshall and the courts and a stinging defeat for Jefferson and the presidency. It was also an education for Jackson. Jackson muttered against Jefferson the whole way back to Nashville. The Republican president, the man who was supposed to represent the people, had shown himself to be no better than other politicians. In some respects he was worse, for the prosecution he perverted to politics touched the most sacred responsibility of any president: to preserve the Union. In obsessing about Burr, Jefferson disregarded Wilkinson, the greater threat. This wasn’t how presidents were supposed to act.
