The Burr Conspiracy in History and Story
One of the most dramatic and strange stories in the early United States - as historian Joseph Ellis puts it in his Founding Brothers - is the later life of Aaron Burr. After his murky role in the contested election of 1800, while still in office as Vice-President, he killed prominent politician Alexander Hamilton in a duel. After that, he raised a private army that he may or may not have intended to use to form a new country in the American West.
We don't know what he meant to do in any of this, but everyone at the time considered him a traitor. He and his conspiracy quickly took on a place in America's popular discourse and mindset likely far beyond what his actual actions would have suggested. As one writer from the 1830's said, Burr's actions had "secure[d him] a place in history, equally conspicuous as a warning and an example."
There are actually two stories here - what we know Burr did, and what he could have done and was taken to be doing. I'd been generally aware of both of those for a while, but I recently read a book that called out that discrepancy even more to me - The Burr Conspiracy by James E. Lewis.
After the contested election of 1800, where Burr didn't firmly place himself on Jefferson's side, Jefferson never trusted Burr again. Burr served out his term as Vice-President, and was praised for his even-handed presiding over the Senate, but - as Roger Sherman had said in the Constitutional Convention about the Vice-Presidency - he was otherwise without any responsibilities. In 1804, Jefferson was of course running again for a second term as President, but he refused to have Burr as his Vice-President again.
So, after hearing that, Burr ran for Governor of New York - and lost overwhelmingly. He partly blamed the influential Alexander Hamilton (who had opposed him in 1800, and campaigned against him here too) for this defeat, and when Hamilton refused to retract his statements abot Burr, this escalated into a duel. We don't know what happened - there were no witnesses to the shooting itself - but after two (total) pistol shots, Burr was uninjured and Hamilton was dying.
To Burr's dismay, there was a swift popular outcry against him for murdering Hamilton. An indictment soon followed. It was legally murder - dueling was technically illegal in New Jersey - but dueling was still widely practiced and hardly ever prosecuted. Even the New York governor (Burr's former rival) called the Burr's indictment "ungentlemanly." But, the public mindset disagreed.
So, Burr fled - first south, appearing at Washington City1 to preside over one more session of the Senate (before his term as Vice-President expired), and then west down the Ohio River and Mississippi eventually to New Orleans. There he made new friends and new allies, and considered plans. He was still energetic (only fifty years old), he still had some social standing and a decent amount of money (thanks in part to having cofounded the Bank of the Manhattan Company six years before), and he refused to accept the disgrace he'd fallen into. Surely, in the West, he could reinvent himself for new things? And for a while, it seemed to work. He started raising an army of young followers...
And here we face another gap in history. We don't know what Burr's motives were, or what he was planning to do with that army. His papers have been lost, or perhaps intentionally destroyed - either drowned in a shipwreck (along with Burr's daughter), or destroyed by Burr himself or his later authorized biographer. The musical Hamilton portrays Burr as advising "Talk less; smile more; don't let them know what you're against or what you're for" - and the real Burr seems to have followed that advice.
Later, while Burr was on trial for treason, he claimed he'd been organizing a group to settle some even-farther-west lands, or perhaps a private army to invade Mexico. Other people claimed (with some evidence) that he'd been planning to direct that army against the United States and form a new nation around the Mississippi River. With all the evidence murky, most modern historians throw up their hands and admit they have no idea which of these plans Burr was actually planning to carry out with his army.
The people at the time, though, had no such doubts. Everyone believed that Burr was planning treason. President Jefferson sent out a proclamation warning everyone to prepare against Burr's treasonous plans. The people in the west fell over each other to proclaim their loyalty to the United States. The regular United States army at New Orleans threw up fortifications against Burr's incoming army, and the territorial governor called out the militia (as well as using the excuse to suppress criticism). Everyone reviled Burr. The only visible disagreements were over how many secret supporters he might have, and whether the government had prepared enough to defeat him.
As it was, they'd done far more than enough. After the Ohio militia raided Burr's camp, most of his army dissolved; Burr and a small remnant - it's unclear how many, but less than a hundred - headed downriver to Bayou Pierre, Louisiana, where they learned a warrant and bounty was out against Burr. They abandoned their plans without any fight, and Burr fled inland in Mississippi where he was soon captured.
Just looking at the bald facts, Burr's Conspiracy was a flop. If he had been planning treason, he clearly wouldn't have been able to actually succeed at it. It's unclear how many men Burr had gathered, but there were probably a few hundred, not even all of them armed. A single raid of the Ohio militia scattered them. People feared Burr might lure onto his side General Wilkinson, who commanded the American army at New Orleans, and Burr was indeed writing letters to him. But, Wilkinson betrayed these letters to the American government - and even if he hadn't, Wilkinson's troops had no personal loyalty to him; there's no sign they would have followed him into any alliance with Burr.
Burr had no visible support. Earlier western disaffection with the federal government had almost vanished after Jefferson's triumph in 1800, the consequent repeal of the whiskey tax, and the Louisiana Purchase. When it was whispered Burr was planning treason, every influential voice in the West was falling over themselves to declare allegiance to the United States. This does not look anything like the setup for a successful coup or revolt. If Burr really had planned treason, and if he had gone through with it, he would have almost certainly miserably failed.
Yet, this conspiracy electrified the nation. In part this was because people didn't know how small it was. Many people, even in Congress, were convinced that Burr had supporters everywhere across the West who would rise up to join him. Various newspaper reports inflated Burr's army to up to twenty thousand men, gave him widespread support across the west, and alleged that General Wilkinson and the whole American army at New Orleans would join him as well as a foreign fleet (variously supposed to be French or Spanish). This journalism was the fitting heir of the wild rumors from 1800 claiming (from both sides) that one or another political party was planning to create a monarchy.
But what made people keep referring back to the conspiracy - what made Burr a byword for treason - is that it filled a persona that America needed. At the time - up until the Civil War remade America's self-image - American public discourse was focused around republican virtue and self-government and loyalty to one's community. They had plenty of models of good behavior in the Founding Fathers. From ancient sources - primarily Ancient Rome; the repeated references to Rome in the Federalist Papers were quite typical - they had more good examples, and also some bad examples as well. There were many Romans who neglected their duty for personal ambition and sometimes even betrayed the Republic. In the popular reading at the time (if not in reality), this was what brought the Republic to collapse into the Empire.
But where were the modern negative examples? There was Benedict Arnold, but his treason was before the Republic fully won its independence. Republicans might cite Adams, and Federalists Jefferson (though rarely after he proved innocuous and popular in office). But Burr provided the first example everyone agreed on as someone who had betrayed the Republic and republican virtue. One reviewer of Burr's later ghostwritten memoirs said "a higher tribunal had passed an irreversible judgment on [Burr's] conduct"; another said that "There are two classes of men, the study of whose lives is especially profitable - the signally good, and the remarkably bad."
Burr was indicted for treason and tried, with Chief Justice John Marshall - a Federalist, and political enemy of President Jefferson's - presiding.2
The trial was avidly reported on, with journalists across the country breathlessly talking about each participant's demeanor and the content of witnesses' testimonies. They mostly left out the lawyers' dry legal maneuvering. However, several weeks in, that legal maneuvering rendered null all the colorful testimony: Marshall ruled that regardless of what Burr might have planned to do, his private army hadn't actually done anything, so he could not have actually committed treason. Maybe he had planned for or attempted treason, but (at the time) that wasn't a crime. Burr was legally innocent.
This anticlimax left people shocked and angry. Editorials across the country lambasted Chief Justice Marshall for twisting the law and letting Burr free. When Burr passed through Baltimore on his way home from his trial, a riot greeted him.
Burr, thinking it wisest to leave the United States, toured Europe, and tried vainly to raise support for a military venture. Usually he talked about targeting that prospective venture against Mexico or Spanish Florida, though New Orleans occasionally came up as a potential target. After some years, he returned to New York, speculated in land, remarried, and eventually hired a ghostwriter to write his memoirs.
But the immediate results of Burr's Conspiracy and his acquittal were scanty. President Jefferson tried to use Burr's acquittal to spur Congress to reduce the power of the (still largely-Federalist) judiciary by impeaching Chief Justice Marshall or even changing the Constitution to put term limits on judges. However, no specific matters were proposed before other issues - such as a failed embargo against England, which would eventually lead to the War of 1812 - redirected the government's attention. Even a bill to actually criminalize attempted treason failed.3
But in the popular mindset, the country had put down a dreadful conspiracy against its very existence. The West had demonstrated its loyalty to the country. A writer from the 1830's would say that the popular horror at Burr was "one of the most noble objects in our history." Blennerhassett Island, where Burr had gathered his men, became a popular tourist site. When prominent writer Edward Hale wanted to tell a story about the value of the Union, he immediately seized on Burr's Conspiracy as a fitting prompt for his "The Man Without A Country."
And meanwhile, Burr himself died in 1836, having commissioned an authorized biography that repeated his story but answered no questions about his actions and convinced no one. He was financially ruined after land speculation, failed law practice, and a ruinous divorce suit (where his ex-wife engaged Hamilton's son as her divorce lawyer). One way or another, he left behind no papers - but the American people already had a story about him.
The contemporary name for what we now call Washington, DC.
According to the practice at the time, each Supreme Court justice would "ride circuit" and preside over the US Circuit Court in a given district. Marshall got the district of Virginia, where Burr was tried because his original camp was on Blennerhassett Island, Virginia (now West Virginia).
At the time, actual treason carried a mandatory death sentence; attempted treason was not a crime. Treason law would finally be overhauled during the Civil War, to make the death sentence optional instead of mandatory and to criminalize attempted treason. Still, very few prosecutions actually happened after the Civil War.