Fallen Founder
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A new territorial aggressiveness marked the Jefferson administration’s policy. The 1803 Louisiana Purchase had doubled the size of the United States, and Jefferson called this vast expanse his “empire for liberty.” For the next three years, war with Spain remained a real possibility; diplomatic relations suffered as each country tried to enforce its contested boundaries. The U.S. and Spanish armies were on the verge of clashing, as both sides engaged in a chess match of provocative moves and countermoves along disputed borders. When Burr looked west in 1804, he considered land investment opportunities, and a filibuster into Mexico, and perhaps Florida, were war with Spain to break out. But to carry off his scheme, he needed allies, the most important of whom were Senator Jonathan Dayton and General James Wilkinson. Both would join him in this daring venture, and it was probably Wilkinson who came up with the idea for a foray into Spanish territory.43
Though Burr and Wilkinson probably knew each other from the time of the Revolution, they were not intimates at that early date. With Jefferson’s victory in 1801, Wilkinson sought to ingratiate himself with Burr, and for the first time declared himself a Republican. He attended the March inauguration, lobbying for either a War Department post or the governorship of Mississippi Territory. As a man whose entire career involved military commissions and securing patronage, he had served under the first two Federalist presidents, becoming a brigadier general and commander of the U.S. Army by 1796, and was reappointed commanding general in 1800. Two years later, when Congress threatened to take away his military commission, Wilkinson entreated Burr to intervene on his behalf. Burr did another favor for the ambitious general: he helped to place Wilkinson’s two sons at Princeton.44
Patronage again brought Wilkinson to Burr’s door in 1804 when he was angling for the governorship of Louisiana Territory.* He made a surprise visit to New York City in May (two months before the duel), requesting a bed for the night, while inviting the vice president to “see his Maps.” Armed with twenty-eight maps, the general was headed for Washington next, where he delivered a lengthy memorial to the president on the current situation in the Louisiana and Orleans territories. The persuasive general succeeded again, becoming governor of the Louisiana territory while retaining his post as army commander. 45
Patronage and speculation went hand-in-hand in the Louisiana Territory, something that Jefferson was well aware of when he appointed James Wilkinson. Treasury Secretary Albert Gallatin had sized up the new governor of Louisiana, and told the president that he was “extravagant and needy and would not, I think, feel much delicacy in speculating on public money and public lands.” Wilkinson was, Gallatin added, not “very scrupulous,” but in his lust for land and speculative schemes he was certainly not alone. Wherever a transfer of land had occurred, whether from Indians or by international treaty, speculators descended, beginning with the most politically privileged.46
Meanwhile, Burr was making further arrangements in the West. Two of his close relatives (and past financial partners) would find posts in the newly acquired territories: Dr. Joseph Browne, the brother-in-law of Burr’s late wife, was named secretary of the Louisiana Territory, and Burr’s stepson, John Bartow Prevost, became a superior court judge in New Orleans. Wilkinson and Dayton were bound together by speculative interests, too, because the general’s major business partner, Daniel Clark, Jr., U.S. consul in New Orleans from 1801 to 1803, was Dayton’s primary contact in the West.47
When Burr and Wilkinson met again in Washington, during the winter of 1804–05, they discussed the possibility of a filibuster into Mexico, and there is evidence to suggest that the two were making copies of maps of Florida, Mexico, and the southern frontier. In June, Burr had hoped to meet with Baron Alexander von Humboldt, who was known to have drafted the most complete map of Mexico. He failed to meet the famous German explorer and cartographer, but it is safe to assume that Burr and Wilkinson did their best to get their hands on Humboldt’s map.48
All the evidence points to the fact that Burr had started thinking about going west well before he lost the governor’s race, or faced indictments for murder from his duel with Hamilton. He was not a “desperate man” when he finally reached the Crescent City in 1805. He was in 1805, as he had been in 1803, when he first discussed a trip to New Orleans with Dayton, and as he had always been: a man who undertook action only after deliberate planning. Though his alliance with Wilkinson was essential to his plans, Wilkinson had plans of his own. And those plans, as we shall see, were often at odds with those of the former vice president.49
“MEXICO GLITTERS IN OUR EYES”
In 1804, other, even more secret negotiations set the stage for Burr’s project. Before he arrived in New York that spring, Wilkinson had become acquainted with two influential Spanish officials: Don Vicente Folch, the governor of West Florida, and Sebastian Calvo de la Puerta y O’Faril, the marqués de Casa Calvo, who remained in New Orleans after 1804, as the Spanish boundary commissioner. These two officials had attended the ceremony that marked the transfer of Louisiana to the United States, and Wilkinson was on hand, too, to watch the American flag replace the French colors over the Place d’Armes.50
Wilkinson’s intimacy with the Spanish Dons went way back. In 1787, he was put on the Spanish payroll, vowing allegiance to his Catholic Majesty, and acting, for all intents and purposes, as a double agent. He suggested to the Spanish how they might encourage a Kentucky independence movement that would lead to an alliance between Kentucky and Spain. He was also active in constitutional politics in Lexington and Danville, Kentucky, assuming a role in the westerners’ bid for statehood, which finally took place in 1792. But the so-called “Spanish Conspiracy” continued to haunt Wilkinson. Rumors about his questionable allegiance followed him through the 1790s, and were part of the War Department’s official records; charges would resurface amid the “Burr Conspiracy,” and Wilkinson would be investigated by Congress in 1807. He retained his command throughout, and was finally brought forward for court-martial in 1811, when he was completely cleared. As the richest evidence remained buried in Spanish archives, his secret life as a double agent was not discovered until the twentieth century.51
In 1804, however, Wilkinson was again looking for money from Spain, asking for $20,000 in back pay for a “pension” he had not received for ten years. In return, he promised Governor Folch of Spanish West Florida valuable information, claiming he could provide “what was concealed in the heart of the President.” Wilkinson issued a lengthy memorial, his “Reflections,” offering strategic advice to the Spanish on how they could retain their colonial possessions in the face of U.S. belligerence. To keep his identity secret, the document was translated into Spanish, Wilkinson’s authorship concealed. In further communications, he was referred to only as “number 13.”52
Though he received $12,000 for his services in 1804, it is unclear whether the Spanish got their money’s worth. This document is more valuable for what it reveals about Wilkinson’s self-presentation. Aside from his blustering, Wilkinson adopted a clear strategy in print, namely, to make himself indispensable. The more conflict that arose, the more likely it was that both sides would rely on his advice. In 1804, then, the general supplied information to the Spanish—and to President Jefferson—that served to heighten rather than reduce tensions between the two countries. A boundary dispute loomed, which threatened all-out war. Writing to Jefferson, Wilkinson urged a defense of the U.S. claim to the Rio Grande border separating Louisiana and Mexico, arguing, in other words, that the future Texas was U.S. soil. But writing to Spanish officials, the general described a different scenario. Spain should reclaim control of the west bank of the Mississippi, he suggested, and strengthen its Texas defenses at Nacogdoches and the Sabine River—well north and east of where Jefferson was meant to make a stand. Wilkinson’s treachery is instantly recognizable. Two years later, war almost broke out along the Sabine, due to explosive conditions persisting along this border.53
Wi
lkinson also preyed on the worst fears of the Dons. He conjured images of America’s overflowing population west of the Alleghenies as a restless force, primed and ready to cross into Spanish territory. If the United States secured its boundary claim along the Rio Grande, all was lost. The flood gates would open to “hardened armies and adventurers, desperadoes who, like the ancient Goths and Vandals,” would storm into Mexico. By Goths and Vandals, he meant nothing other than American filibusterers.54
Those close to Wilkinson, however, understood his ambition for an Americanized Mexico. Burr and Wilkinson shared a friend in Charles Biddle of Philadelphia: Wilkinson had married Biddle’s niece, Ann, back in 1778. Biddle must have known what was on Wilkinson’s mind when, in March 1805, he received a letter from the general, predicting that before long he would be, as he put it, “on the high road to Mexico.” In his “Reflections,” Wilkinson himself called Mexico “the most precious jewel of the royal diadem.” John Adair, a Kentucky senator, had excitedly informed him not long before his letter to Biddle that “the Kentuckians are full of enterprise” and “greedy after plunder as ever the old Romans were.” “Mexico glitters in our Eyes.”55
Wilkinson was to write a glowing letter of introduction on Burr’s behalf to the marqués de Casa Calvo, the same Spanish boundary negotiator who was responsible for paying him handsomely for his “Reflections.” It appears that Wilkinson was more than willing to conceal Burr’s plans from Spain, at least initially. Wilkinson wanted a filibuster that would succeed, and that would accrue to his benefit and reputation. His backup plan, as it were, was to protect himself in case the filibuster failed. Wilkinson was doing a lot of things at once, all of them designed to secure a prominent (and safe) place for him, regardless who succeeded and who failed.56
Under these circumstances, it is less than startling that in the summer of 1804, Burr sent a proposal for cooperation to Anthony Merry, the British minister to the United States. In the form that Merry conveyed Burr’s proposal to the foreign secretary in London, the vice president would “lend his assistance to His Majesty’s Government in any Manner in which they may think fit to employ him, particularly endeavoring to effect a Separation of the Western Part of the United States from that which lies between the Atlantick and the Mountains, in it’s [sic] whole Extent.” Beginning with Henry Adams, 125 years ago, many historians have used this communication to damn Burr, without recognizing that it represents only Merry’s strategy in attempting to exercise influence on his own government. By no means does it tell the whole story.57
We need to start, instead, with the go-between who delivered Burr’s message to Merry. Charles Williamson was Scottish-born. He fought on the British side in the Revolution, but became a U.S. citizen and was a member of the New York State Assembly in the 1790s, when he was concurrently the representative of a group of wealthy English investors in the acquisition of over 1 million acres in Ontario and Steuben Counties in the western part of the state. As politically motivated New Yorkers with shared interests in developing unsettled lands, he and Burr had come to know one another fairly well. Both reasonably figured that if British speculators were financing land development in New York (building mills, bridges, and roads, and relying on a sophisticated advertising campaign to attract settlers), then they would likely be interested in assuming a similar role in the new West.58
Not surprisingly, Williamson saw Napoleonic ambition as a threat to both British and American interests. In 1803, he approached the British Ministry with his own plan, recommending the creation of a private filibustering force to invade the French West Indies. His force would be made up of Canadian and American recruits, backed by English funds and ships. He viewed South America and Mexico as equally attractive targets. By removing the Spanish from the hemisphere, Williamson believed that the “liberated” countries would quickly become part of an Anglo-American commercial network. Filibustering, thus, was seen as a means for promoting a “free” market, a transatlantic market that served the common interests of England and the United States. And Williamson was not merely a dreamer: he belonged to an influential Scottish family possessing close contacts with members of the British cabinet, one of whom was Henry Dundas, Lord Melville, first lord of the admiralty, who might be called the “patron saint” of filibusterers.59
There is one other thing worth knowing about Merry. He and President Jefferson despised one another. In March 1804, well before he knew of Burr’s project, Merry had urged his government to follow a course of action that would promote separatist feelings in the American West. Burr must have known this, but was willing to use Merry to further his—and his country’s—expansionist ends. As for Merry, when the diplomat reported on Burr’s project in 1805, he mentioned his idealistic version of events, highlighting Burr’s supposed separatist plan, but he ignored what he thought was unimportant: Burr’s plan for ridding Mexico of the Spanish! Meanwhile, it is important to compare Williamson’s correspondence with Lord Melville and other British officials: he presented Burr’s project strictly as an invasion of Mexico and Florida. Williamson knew what Burr intended, while Merry heard what he wanted to hear.60
So, why then would Burr even hint at the idea of separation to Merry, when he had no such intent? Unlike Williamson, who strongly advocated Anglo-American cooperation, Merry loathed the very idea of cooperation with the Jefferson administration, or any kind of joint venture that might accrue to the benefit of the president. He also began the process unsympathetic toward Burr, insofar as he shared many of the biases of the High Federalists, particularly since the death of Hamilton. He confided in a dispatch to London that the most attractive feature of Burr’s plan was that the vice president’s “spirit of revenge” might be used against “the present administration.”61
Charles Williamson sailed to England in the autumn of 1804, where he went about promoting Burr’s scheme. Like the indomitable Benjamin Franklin, who spent the better part of two years in the 1770s lobbying the French government to lend material support to the modestly equipped American independence movement, Williamson pleaded with Lord Melville to send Burr money for equipment and military stores, and requested a “small Fleet cruizing in the Gulph of Mexico to keep the Spanish quiet.” The Scottish-American lobbyist predicted that if the British government followed his advice and supported Burr, it would soon see “50,000 North Americans, with Col. Burr at their head, far on their March to the City of Mexico.”62
“TO ORLEANS, AND PERHAPS FURTHER”
In April 1805, Burr finally headed west, traveling overland from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh in the company of his friend Gabriel Shaw, a wealthy New Yorker. Before setting out, he told Theodosia that he contemplated his western tour “with gayety and cheerfulness.” This was not to say that his plans were not serious. He explained: “As the objects of this journey, not mere curiosity, or pour passer le tem[p]s, may lead me to Orleans, and perhaps further.”63
In fact, Burr would be gone seven months, covering over 3,000 miles. His itinerary included voyages down the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers, a stop at New Orleans, and a desolate return along the Natchez Trace, which he described as a “vile country,” without fresh streams, featuring instead “nasty puddle-water, covered with green scum, and full of amimalculae—bah!” To judge from the pages of Burr’s journal to his daughter, the trip made him feel like a dignitary paying a visit to an exotic foreign land. At every stop in Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee, he was “received with much hospitality and kindness.” And as he descended the Mississippi on an “elegant barge” (supplied by General Wilkinson), he needed no letters of introduction. Just the word of his arrival, and the local elite opened their homes with the “most cordial reception.”64
Burr was no simple tourist, of course. As an unofficial diplomat, military scout, and land promoter, he went about collecting information, renewing old contacts and forging new ones, all the while sizing up the political climate. His ultimate plan was to be shaped by what he learned. At t
his early stage, he considered several possibilities: Did the West offer speculative ventures for rebuilding his bankrupt finances? Was it possible to gain the popular support he needed for a filibustering campaign into Mexico? And if the United States did go to war with Spain and he went “further” than Orleans, as he had hinted to Theodosia, could he rely on Wilkinson to help him “liberate” Mexico? Overall, could he restore his national political reputation beyond the Alleghenies?
Burr traveled in high style. He arranged for a barge, or in his words “a floating house, sixty feet by fourteen, containing a dining-room, kitchen with fireplace, and two bedrooms,” to carry him and Shaw down the Ohio. Along the way, his boat caught up to the barge of Matthew Lyon, the ex-Vermont congressman. They tied the two barges together and made their way to Marietta, where Burr visited the famous Indian mounds.65
Next he called at the island retreat of Harman and Margaret Blennerhassett, two of the most colorful residents of the Ohio Valley. The couple had come to America in 1796, fleeing their native Ireland because of the scandal they had caused: Margaret was both Harman’s wife and niece. Their 179-acre estate lay fourteen miles below Marietta, off the shore of modern Parkersburg, West Virginia. The Blennerhassett mansion was built in the grand style of an Irish country home, with serpentine walks and gardens filled with exotic flowers and plants. There the couple devoted their energies to philosophical pursuits. Harman was an amateur scientist, with his own laboratory and solar telescope, and his young wife was a product of Rousseau’s Emile, raising her children with the same passion for “natural” learning that Burr and his wife had earlier provided for their talented daughter.66