Learning from Aaron Burr

...Drawing upon expansionist fervor on the frontier and Western discontent with "Easterner" government, Burr found wide support for his plans, and included among the prominent adventurers in his entourage that incomparable rogue James Wilkinson, ranking general of the United States Army and at that time Governor of the Louisiana Territory...

...contributor to numerous publications A BRILLIANT student at Princeton, a courageous soldier and patriot during the Revolutionary War, and a matchless advocate at the New York Bar, Aaron Burr flashed like a meteor across the American political scene...

...As though it were not enough to see well-born, well-educated Aaron Burr rising to the top levels of the Government only to conspire against it with a foreign power, left free to operate by the indulgence of his superior, the reader will even learn from his perusals that Colonel Aaron Burr fought at the Battle of Monmouth...

...President Jefferson, who had become concerned by reports of Burr's activities but for some reason had failed to take strong action against him, received several lurid letters from Wilkinson, who must have decided that the brighter future lay in exposing the "plot...

...As both book-jacket and foreword rightly observe, The Burr Conspiracy is "especially meaningful" in a period when America has seen traitors tried and conspiracies exposed, when the definition of treason again occupies our public...

...and, while Professor Abernethy presents the evidence in such a way that the reader is left to draw his own conclusions, the professor's conclusion is that Burr was definitely treasonous in his "ultimate objectives...

...If there is a moral to be drawn from the Burr chronicle, I would suggest that it lies in a totally different direction...

...You see...

...Actually, for all these timely similarities, Aaron Burr is a nineteenth-century figure, not a twentieth-century one...

...To make out a treason case, it had to be shown that (1) a military force in a condition to make war had been assembled, and (2) that the defendant was part of the treasonable assembly or, if not present, had procured the assembly...

...What was treason in me thirty years ago is patriotism now...

...Relying on Government exposure of Burr's plot, timely police action against an active conspiracy, and the native good sense of an informed public, the nation dealt with Aaron Burr without returning to the nightmare of the Alien and Sedition Laws, from which it had just awakened...

...Whether Burr actually plotted treason has divided historians from 1806 to the present...

...he might have intended to mount the attack on Spanish America for which the West was itching and add this "ripe plum" to the Union...

...At this point, armed with fresh evidence from the Clarence Carter papers, the Spanish Archives, contemporary newspaper accounts, and a diary of the evidence before the Richmond grand jury, Professor Thomas Abernethy of the University of Virginia has entered the academic lists...

...Here are the broad outlines of the Burr "conspiracy": After his killing of Alexander Hamilton in their duel of July 1804 foreclosed Burr's return to New York politics, and doubts about his reliability on the part of Jefferson and other Republicans clouded his prospects in Washington, the ambitious New Yorker turned westward to regain power and wealth in the inviting political vacuum of the Louisiana Territory...

...But despite this desperate situation, as our young nation faced hostile powers pressing on her borders and men with large ambitions and slippery loyalties agitating from within, the United States managed to protect itself from traitors and conspirators without abandoning the constitutional line between words and deeds enunciated by Chief Justice Marshall...

...The crux of the case lay in the definition of treason set forth in the Constitution, which requires two witnesses to an overt act of levying war against the United States (or adhering to its enemies by giving them aid or comfort...

...While the book moves at a rather sluggish pace, it does bring Burr, Wilkinson and the details of the conspiracy into focus...

...Coupling his prodigious talents and polished manner with a driving ambition, Burr naturally turned to politics...

...The trial developed into a political battle between Jefferson and the Republican Administration, pressing for Burr's conviction, and the Federalists (presiding judge John Marshall and defense counsel Luther Martin) and anti-Jeffersonian Republicans (jury foreman John Randolph of Roanoke), intent on acquittal...

...He was, therefore, engaged in treason...

...Burr was then tried for the misdemeanor of leading an expedition into Spanish territory, but was found not guilty on this charge as well...

...Perhaps this is the moral which readers of The Burr Conspiracy will find most edifying...

...He was more of a Renaissance adventurer than a modern Machiavellian of the fifth-columnist variety...

...After negotiations with "filibuster" (freebooter) groups like the Mexican Association and contacts with the Spanish and British Ministers, Burr purchased a land grant in Western Louisiana and, in 1806, set out with some 60 men along the Cumberland River from Blennerhassett's Island toward the Louisiana boundary...

...Marshall added that the Government must produce two witnesses to an overt act in order to prove that the defendant had procured the assembly...

...or, finally, he might have planned to cut off these states and territories in order to unite them to Spain's holdings in return for Spanish cash and the privilege of ruling the seceded territory...

...and he rose from New York State Attorney General, United States Senator and party boss in New York City to become Vice President of the nation in 1800, following a tie-breaking vote in the House of Representatives during which he stood only one vote from the White House...

...In the present setting, readers of this book will find titilations galore...

...There are various possible explanations for his conduct: He might have intended to accept retainers from every available purse (he took $10,000 from the Spanish Minister to protect Spanish possessions, and offered to split off the West in return for British payment of $500,000) while pursuing land speculation and territory politics as his real objectives...

...A fresh account of the story of Aaron Burr is assured an interested audience among historians and many general readers, for Burr's guilt has been hotly disputed ever since a Richmond jury in 1806 declared the Government's treason case against him "not proven" by the evidence presented...

...His judgment is that Burr did plan with Spanish agents to divide the Western territory from the East and add it to Spanish holdings...

...I doubt, though, that every reader of this volume will be drawn to it solely by an interest in Aaron Burr...

...His movement into conspiracy was precipitated not by ideology or party affiliation but by a stroke of ill-fortune which cut off his promising political career...

...There is even a shaft of truth in Burr's bitter cry years later, when Sam Houston "freed" Texas: "There...

...The United States in these early years was, as Professor Abernethy points out, in a "period of tumult and separatist intrigues.'' This was a time when economic conflicts between East and West threatened to split the nation, when the states regarded their voluntary compact as one which could be dissolved at will, and the measure of "treason" I as the Founding Fathers had demonstrated in the American Revolution) might be the success or failure of the enterprise...

...To transpose Burr into a period of intense national loyalties, mass warfare and cold-war conspiracies is to deal history's cards from the bottom of the deck...

...I was right...

...Advising treason could, of course, be conspiracy...

...John Marshall ruled that this did not mean advising treason, for the line between words and deeds was a fundamental one...

...others, like Samuel Morison and Henry Steele Commager, lean toward the spectacular and "filibusterer" interpretation, noting that 60 men seems a trifle under-strength for an expedition to sever and hold the West...

...And it was at the Burr trial that President Jefferson first refused to appear and produce papers relating to Burr when subpoenaed by Chief Justice Marshall...

...I was only thirty years too soon...

...he might have meant to unite the disaffected Western states with the Louisiana and Indiana Territories and create an independent empire...

...Jefferson issued orders for Burr's arrest, and, apprehended as he tried to flee to Spanish Florida, the latter found himself in the Federal dock at Richmond, charged with plotting treason against the United States of America...

...Since Burr had not been present at the assembling on Blennerhassett's Island, and two witnesses could not be produced to prove an act of procurement, the jury reported Burr's guilt under the indictment not proved "by any evidence submitted to us...

...Some historians, like Henry Adams, have seen Burr's goal as secession...

...Like a meteor, too, Burr's career was swiftly over-only two years after he had stepped down as presiding officer of the Senate, he was in London, a fugitive from bill collectors and a traitor in the eyes of his fellow-countrymen...