On the night of Feb. 18-19, 1807, former vice president of the United States Aaron Burr was arrested on charges of treason. Burr supposedly had been involved in a plan to detach part of the Louisiana Territory from the United States, or possibly provoke a war with Spain in order to create a new nation in what was then the American Southwest.
Burr's grandfather had been Massachusetts Congregationalist minister Jonathan Edwards, one of the men who had sparked the colonies' Great Awakening of the 1730s and 1740s. Burr himself had been an officer during the American Revolution, seeing action at Quebec in 1775 and sharing in the Continental Army's cold and misery at Valley Forge in 1777. The next year, he resigned from the Army due to ill health.
As the war wound down, Burr became a lawyer and eventually a successful New York state politician. Burr had become such an influential figure in the New York state Democratic-Republican Party that when Thomas Jefferson ran for president in 1800, he needed Burr's help to carry New York. Burr's price was the vice presidential slot. In 1800, however, the Constitution stated that the candidate with the most electoral votes would become president, while the candidate who received the second most votes would become vice president.
Wishing to avoid a repeat of the 1796 election, in which Federalist leaning John Adams won the presidency while Democratic-Republican Thomas Jefferson won the vice presidency, Democratic-Republican electors were given explicit instructions on how to cast each of their two electoral votes — all would vote for Jefferson with their first vote, all but one would vote for Burr with their second. The belief was this would be enough votes to sideline incumbent President John Adams' re-election bid.
When the votes were cast however, both Burr and Jefferson each received the exact same amount of electoral votes. Rather than step down, Burr pressed his case, much to the anger of Jefferson. The matter was decided by the House of Representatives, which ultimately decided in Jefferson's favor. Burr got the vice presidency, and Jefferson never forgot or forgave what he considered Burr's treachery.
Jefferson excluded Burr from important decisions, and Burr, feeling useless as vice president, campaigned for an ambassadorship to Britain or France. Jefferson, however, did not feel like doing Burr any favors, and likewise had no plans to keep him on the 1804 presidential ticket (which had been modified in the 12th Amendment to the Constitution that year). In early 1804, Burr decided to run for governor of New York, but was defeated by Morgan Lewis. Burr grew desperate.
By the summer of 1804, Burr had caught wind of rumors that Alexander Hamilton, former secretary of the treasury and a fellow New York lawyer, had slandered and insulted him during the gubernatorial campaign. Hamilton, who had been out of the national political spotlight since the 1800 election, accepted Burr's challenge to duel, largely because he believed it was a great piece of political theater. When the two men met on the New Jersey shore (dueling was illegal in New York), on July 11, 1804, Burr fatally shot Hamilton.
Burr completed his term as vice president with a cloud over his head. Despite the fact that the duel had been an honest and agreed-to affair, Burr was indicted in both New York and New Jersey for murder. When federal judge Samuel Chase was impeached, Burr, who as vice president served as the president of the Senate, oversaw the trial.
Jefferson saw the trial as a way to prove his theory that the judiciary branch was beneath the other two branches of the federal government, the executive and the legislative. Jefferson instructed Burr to treat the proceedings as no big deal, as though trying and removing federal judges was to be a common occurrence. In fact, Burr treated the event with great solemnity, noting that the impeachment of a federal judge was a rare and uncommon thing. Chase was acquitted in early 1805.
When his term expired in March 1805, Burr fled west, eventually claiming that he was going to take possession of land in Texas that he had leased from the Spanish government. In fact, Burr had been meeting with various shady figures throughout the country, and rumors began to swirl that a conspiracy was afoot. One of the figures that Burr was in cahoots with was James Wilkinson, America's highest ranking general as well as Agent 13, a spy for the Spanish crown.
Traveling throughout Pennsylvania, Ohio and the Louisiana Territory, Burr did indeed begin to recruit men and stockpile weapons. Historians are unclear as to exactly what Burr's intentions were at this time. Was Burr planning on carving out of the Louisiana Territory a new nation? Was he planning on fomenting a war with Spain, in the hopes of capturing Spanish territory for himself? His ultimate goals remain murky. Wilkinson, however, had been a major partner in Burr's plans.
In the book “Duel: Alexander Hamilton, Aaron Burr and the Future of America,” historian Thomas Fleming wrote: “But General Wilkinson was still Agent 13, on the Spanish payroll. … Wilkinson sent a message to President Jefferson, announcing he had just uncovered a nefarious plot to revolutionize the West and start a war with Spain. The general also rushed letters to the Spanish governor of Florida and the imperial viceroy in Mexico City, telling them of his good deed on Spain's behalf and demanding an appropriate reward.”
With no hard evidence of any crime other than Wilkinson's letter, Jefferson jumped on the opportunity to sideline his old nemesis once and for all. He ordered that Burr be arrested and brought to trial (though for just what charge, no one yet knew).
The National Center for Constitutional Studies book, “The Real Thomas Jefferson: The True Story of America's Philosopher of Freedom,” includes Jefferson's message to Congress, justifying his actions: “(Burr) collected … all the ardent, restless, desperate and disaffected persons who were ready for any enterprise analogous to their characters. He seduced good and well-meaning citizens, some by assurances that he possessed the confidence of the government and was acting under its secret patronage, a pretense which obtained some credit from the state of our differences from Spain.”
Many of the figures Burr “seduced” had been those disaffected by Jefferson's presidency. Fearing that the Federalists had politicized the Army, Jefferson had purged the American military for those he suspected of political disloyalty. With Congress he had created the military academy at West Point, which left many existing Army officers without prospects for promotion now that new recruits — supposedly educated in military matters — were expected to be the backbone of America's defense. Also, Jefferson's weak response to the British practice of impressment — stealing sailors off of American ships for use in the Royal Navy — bred resentment among many citizens and military men.
Jefferson's order to capture Burr soon made its way west, however. In January 1807, after supposedly plotting treason and setting out from Blennerhassett Island on the Ohio River, Burr surrendered his small force of 60 men to authorities, was arraigned in a court, and released. This did not stop Jefferson's order to capture him, however. Burr then attempted to make for Spanish Florida, but on the night of Feb. 18-19, 1807, he was finally captured in Wakefield, Mississippi Territory (today Alabama), by Edmund Pendleton Gaines of the U.S. Army. Gaines held Burr at Fort Stoddert, before he was eventually tried in Richmond, Virginia.
In the book “The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln,” historian Sean Wilentz wrote: “Jefferson, in one of his rash moments, publicly proclaimed Burr's guilt and then plunged into trying to ensure his conviction. The trial — in which Burr retained a team that included none other than Samuel Chase's defender, Luther Martin — became a political imbroglio. Federalists, including presiding Justice (John) Marshall, used the occasion to embarrass Jefferson, going so far as to issue a subpoena to the president.”
Ultimately, Burr was acquitted of treason. Though the verdict was officially “Not proven,” Marshall recorded it as “Not guilty.” Burr, however, was almost certainly guilty of some form of treason, though exactly what his aims were will almost certainly never be known. The event also proved to be less than Jefferson's finest hour, as he was consistently willing to trample on Burr's civil rights and make proclamations regarding his guilt before the trial began. His hatred for his rival trumped his famed (and perhaps falsely magnified with time) liberality.
Burr lived to be 80 years old, and died from natural causes in New York in September 1836.
Cody K. Carlson holds a master's in history from the University of Utah and has taught at SLCC. He is currently a salesman at Doug Smith Subaru in American Fork. Email: ckcarlson76@gmail.com