It is March 8th. Welcome to Episode 67 of History in a Year. Today, a disgraced Vice President tries to steal half the country. After killing Alexander Hamilton in a duel, Aaron Burr’s political career is dead in the East. So, he looks to the West. We explore one of the most bizarre and audacious plots in American history, as Burr attempts to raise a private army, invade Spanish Mexico, detach the newly purchased Louisiana Territory, and crown himself the emperor of a new nation. We witness the treacherous betrayal of General James Wilkinson, Burr’s desperate flight in disguise, and the “Trial of the Century” that tested the very definition of treason.
STEPHEN:
Welcome to History in a Year: America’s First 250 Years.
LEAH:
Join us every single day as we journey from the Revolution of 1776 to the 250th anniversary of the United States.
STEPHEN:
You can find every episode and join the discussion at PointedWords.com. I’m Stephen.
LEAH:
And I’m Leah.
STEPHEN:
It is March 8th. Welcome to Episode 67. The year is 1805, and we need to talk about what happened to Aaron Burr.
LEAH:
Aaron Burr is a fascinating, incredibly ambitious, and ultimately tragic figure. Back in 1800, he had tied Thomas Jefferson in the Electoral College and nearly became the third President of the United States.
STEPHEN:
Instead, he became Vice President. And Jefferson, who deeply distrusted Burr, completely shut him out of the administration. Burr had no power, no influence, and he knew Jefferson was going to drop him from the ticket in the 1804 election.
LEAH:
So, Burr tried to run for Governor of New York to save his political career. But Alexander Hamilton aggressively campaigned against him, destroying his reputation in the press.
STEPHEN:
Which led to the morning of July 11, 1804. Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton rowed across the Hudson River to Weehawken, New Jersey, and stood ten paces apart with pistols.
LEAH:
Burr shot Hamilton in the stomach. Hamilton died the next day.
STEPHEN:
Aaron Burr was the sitting Vice President of the United States, and he was suddenly wanted for murder in two different states. His political career in the East was completely, permanently dead.
LEAH:
When his term as Vice President officially ended in March 1805, Burr was a man without a country. He was deeply in debt, and he had a massive, bruised ego.
STEPHEN:
So, Burr looked at a map. He couldn’t go East, North, or South. The only direction left was West.
LEAH:
And the American West in 1805 was essentially the Wild West. Thomas Jefferson had just bought the massive Louisiana Territory, but the federal government had almost zero control over it. It was full of angry frontiersmen, Spanish soldiers, and shifting borders.
STEPHEN:
Aaron Burr looked at that chaos, and he saw a massive opportunity. He decided to start his own country.
LEAH:
The exact details of the “Burr Conspiracy” are still debated by historians today, mostly because Burr told different lies to different people depending on what he wanted from them.
STEPHEN:
But the general plan was staggering in its audacity. Burr planned to raise a private mercenary army in the Ohio Valley. He would float down the Mississippi River, capture the port of New Orleans, and then launch an invasion into Spanish-controlled Mexico—which included modern-day Texas.
LEAH:
Once he conquered Mexico, he was going to merge it with the western American states—which he planned to convince to secede from the Union—and create a massive, independent Western Empire. With himself sitting on the throne as Emperor Aaron the First.
STEPHEN:
To pull this off, Burr needed allies. And he made a fatal mistake with his very first recruit.
LEAH:
Burr reached out to the highest-ranking officer in the United States Army: General James Wilkinson.
STEPHEN:
James Wilkinson is arguably the most corrupt man to ever wear an American uniform. He was the commanding general of the army, and Jefferson had just appointed him the governor of the northern part of the Louisiana Territory.
LEAH:
But Wilkinson had a massive secret. For years, he had been secretly on the payroll of the Spanish Crown. He was “Agent 13.” He was literally a paid Spanish spy running the American military.
STEPHEN:
Wilkinson enthusiastically agreed to help Burr invade Spanish territory—probably playing both sides to see who would pay him more.
LEAH:
Burr’s next recruit was a wealthy, eccentric Irish immigrant named Harman Blennerhassett. Blennerhassett owned a massive, beautiful private island on the Ohio River.
STEPHEN:
Burr convinced Blennerhassett to finance the operation. Blennerhassett’s island became the staging ground for the conspiracy. They started stockpiling muskets, buying flatboats, and recruiting young, adventurous men who wanted to conquer Mexico.
LEAH:
By the fall of 1806, Burr’s plan was actually in motion. He was traveling down the Ohio River with a small flotilla of armed men.
STEPHEN:
But then, General James Wilkinson got cold feet.
LEAH:
Wilkinson realized that the conspiracy was too messy, people were starting to talk, and if they got caught, he would be hanged for treason.
STEPHEN:
So, Wilkinson did what he did best. He betrayed his partner to save his own skin. He wrote a frantic, heavily edited letter to President Thomas Jefferson, completely exposing Burr’s plot, while conveniently leaving out his own massive involvement.
LEAH:
When Jefferson read the letter, he was absolutely furious. His own former Vice President was trying to tear the country apart!
STEPHEN:
Jefferson immediately issued a presidential proclamation declaring that a treasonous conspiracy was underway in the West. He ordered the arrest of anyone involved.
LEAH:
The moment that proclamation hit the newspapers, Burr’s grand army completely melted away. The militias raided Blennerhassett’s island and seized the boats.
STEPHEN:
Burr was down in the Mississippi Territory when he realized the game was up. He abandoned his men, put on the ragged clothes of a riverboat worker, and tried to flee into Spanish Florida in disguise.
LEAH:
But in February 1807, a sheriff in the Alabama wilderness recognized him. Aaron Burr was arrested and dragged back east under heavy guard.
STEPHEN:
He was taken to Richmond, Virginia, to face the ultimate charge: Treason against the United States.
LEAH:
This sets up the Trial of the Century. And Thomas Jefferson wanted Burr’s head on a spike. Jefferson was personally directing the prosecution from the White House, offering pardons to witnesses if they would testify against Burr.
STEPHEN:
But Jefferson ran into a massive, immovable object in the Richmond courtroom.
LEAH:
The presiding judge was none other than Chief Justice John Marshall.
STEPHEN:
We’ve talked about Marshall before. He was Jefferson’s cousin, and they despised each other. Marshall was not going to let Jefferson use the courts to execute a political rival.
LEAH:
And Marshall had the Constitution on his side.
STEPHEN:
The Founding Fathers had been very careful when they wrote the treason clause in the Constitution. In England, the King could execute you for treason just for thinking about overthrowing the government.
LEAH:
But the US Constitution says treason consists only of levying war against the United States, and no person can be convicted unless there are two witnesses to the same overt act.
STEPHEN:
John Marshall looked at the prosecution and said, “Where is the overt act?”
LEAH:
Burr had bought boats. He had talked about invading Mexico. He had written coded letters. But he had never actually attacked an American fort or fired a shot at an American soldier.
STEPHEN:
Marshall ruled that simply planning a conspiracy was not enough to be convicted of treason. You had to actually levy war. And since Burr wasn’t even physically present on Blennerhassett’s island when the militia raided it, he couldn’t be tied to any overt act of violence.
LEAH:
Marshall’s strict interpretation of the Constitution absolutely gutted the prosecution’s case. The jury had no choice. On September 1, 1807, Aaron Burr was found not guilty.
STEPHEN:
Thomas Jefferson was enraged. He actually suggested trying to impeach John Marshall over the verdict, but he couldn’t get the political support for it.
LEAH:
Aaron Burr was a free man, but his life in America was over. He was a pariah. He fled to Europe under a fake name, where he lived in poverty for years, still trying to convince the British and the French to fund an invasion of Mexico.
STEPHEN:
The Burr Conspiracy proved how fragile the young American Republic still was. The West was a powder keg, and ambitious men were willing to light the match.
LEAH:
But Thomas Jefferson’s second term was about to be derailed by a completely different disaster. And this one was entirely of his own making.
STEPHEN:
Join us tomorrow for Episode 68. The Embargo Act. The British and the French are at war, and they are using American ships as collateral damage. In a desperate attempt to avoid entering the conflict, Thomas Jefferson makes a catastrophic economic blunder that bankrupts American farmers and nearly destroys the New England economy.
LEAH:
I’m Leah.
STEPHEN:
And I’m Stephen.
STEPHEN:
You can find every episode at PointedWords.com. And this… is our story.