The Burr Conspiracy: Uncovering the Story of an Early American Crisis
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The Burr Conspiracy: Uncovering the Story of an Early American Crisis
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Overview
In 1805 and 1806, Aaron Burr, former vice president of the newly formed American republic, traveled through the Trans-Appalachian West gathering support for a mysterious enterprise, for which he was arrested and tried for treason in 1807. This book explores the political and cultural forces that shaped how Americans made sense of the uncertain rumors and reports about Burr’s intentions and movements, and examines what the resulting crisis reveals about their anxieties concerning the new nation’s fragile union and uncertain republic.
Burr was said to have enticed some people with plans to liberate Spanish Mexico, others with promises of land in the Orleans Territory, still others with talk of building a new empire beyond the Appalachian Mountains. The Burr Conspiracy was a cause célèbre of the early republic—with Burr cast as the chief villain of the Founding Fathers—even as the evidence against him was vague and conflicting. Rather than trying to discover the real intentions of Burr or his accusers—Thomas Jefferson foremost among them—James E. Lewis Jr. looks at how differing understandings of the Burr Conspiracy were shaped by everything from partisan politics and biased newspapers to notions of honor and gentility. He also traces the enduring legacy of the stories that were told and accepted during this moment of uncertainty.
The Burr Conspiracy offers a panoramic and multifaceted portrait of the United States at a time when it was far from clear to its people how long it would last.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780691177168 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Princeton University Press |
| Publication date: | 10/24/2017 |
| Pages: | 728 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.50(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.40(d) |
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Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
SO MANY STORIES
The Circulation of Information in the Early Republic
Some of the earliest rumors about what would later be called the Burr Conspiracy appeared in the spring of 1805, after Aaron Burr completed his single term as vice president and began his first tour of the trans-Appalachian West. In late April, John Randolph — the always eccentric, increasingly anti-administration congressman from Virginia — received an unexpected visit at his plantation from Joseph Wheaton, the congressional sergeant at arms. From Wheaton, who had rented rooms to Burr during the recent session, Randolph "picked up some intelligence, not altogether uninteresting," that he shared with his friend and ally, Maryland representative Joseph H. Nicholson. Randolph relayed Wheaton's news that Burr, New Jersey senator Jonathan Dayton, Virginia representative John G. Jackson, and Ohio senator John Smith had "given each other the 'rendez-vous,' in the north western quarter of our Union." Burr and Dayton were expected to proceed down the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers "to reconnoitre lower Louisiana" (the Orleans Territory). Upper Louisiana (all of the Louisiana Purchase except the modern state of Louisiana) seemed likely to join their schemes given the recent appointment of Burr and Dayton's "well tried coadjutor," General James Wilkinson, as the territorial governor at St. Louis. "This conjunction of malign planets," Randolph warned Nicholson, "bodes no good."
Three weeks later, Nicholson returned the favor, apprising Randolph of current "conjecture[s]" regarding Burr in Washington and Baltimore. "It is certain," Nicholson reported, that Burr "has gone to Orleans, and Rumour says he will be the Delegate [to Congress] from that Territory." Nicholson considered Burr a man of "Sagacity, ... Talents[,] and Information" who could "render the United States incalculable service" in New Orleans, but worried that his "ambition" was directed "only to personal aggrandizement." Though unlikely to regain influence in national affairs, Burr, in Nicholson's view, could "[make] himself popular with our new Brethren" in the Orleans Territory and "[might] increase our Difficulties in that Quarter." These concerns, Nicholson admitted, were "the mere Bodings of the Imagination, produced by the Supposition that [Burr's] Enemies have not given a false colouring to his Character."
In late July 1805, this unsteady combination of report and rumor, fact and speculation, about Burr emerged from the closed world of private conversation and personal correspondence into the open world of newspapers. The United States' Gazette, Philadelphia's leading Federalist newspaper, directed public attention to Burr's plans with a piece titled "Queries." "How long [would] it be before we shall hear of Col. Burr being at the head of a revolution party on the western waters," the anonymous author asked? Did Burr hope "to engage the adventurous and enterprizing young men" of the East to go to Louisiana? Was he going to call "an immediate convention ... from the states bordering on the Ohio and Mississippi, to form a separate government?" Was he offering as an inducement the "publick lands" of the West? "How soon [would] the forts and magazines, and all the military posts at New Orleans and on the Mississippi be in [Burr's] hands?" How long would it take for Burr to carry this revolution to Spanish "Mexico, by granting liberty to its inhabitants, and seizing on its treasures, aided by British ships and forces?" This piece quickly produced a response from William Duane, the editor of Philadelphia's leading Republican newspaper, the Aurora General Advertiser. Duane wondered whether the author wrote from "the distempered malignity of an alarmist," from a wish to "divert [public attention] from some other object," or from an "actual knowledge of one or more facts." He assessed each of the queries, weighing them against "pre-existing facts." Duane insisted that westerners were too loyal to the federal government and union to support a separatist movement, a seizure of the public lands, or an unsanctioned attack on Mexico. He could see no reason to think that Burr was involved in any scheme, concluding that Burr's name would have served the author's presumably malign ends because he was "exactly such a character as would be open to the suspicion of all parties."
Reports on Burr's movements and speculations about his plans intensified as his western travels took him through more states and territories. Territorial governor William C. C. Claiborne informed Secretary of State James Madison of Burr's three-week stay in New Orleans in late June and early July. In late August and early September, Secretary of War Henry Dearborn, from Washington, and merchant Daniel Clark, from New Orleans, warned General Wilkinson that "strong rumour[s]" and "wild reports" linked him with Burr in a separatist "conspiracy." In early December, after Burr's return from the West, President Thomas Jefferson received a pair of anonymous notes that provided his first written warnings about Burr's plans. The same month, former president John Adams noted "a concurrence ... of [striking] events," including the presence of Burr, Dayton, and the Spanish American revolutionary Francisco de Miranda in Washington and the appointment of Wilkinson and General William Hull to territorial governorships in the West. "Enterprises of great pith," Adams worried, "may be in a state of coction."
These early letters and newspaper pieces are interesting less for their content — their hints about Burr's intentions, movements, and associates — than for their form. In combination, they illustrate some key elements of the process through which information circulated in the early American republic. They show the many ways in which news travelled: private conversations and letters, official dispatches and instructions, and newspapers, among others. But they also reveal the political and cultural forces that both facilitated and constrained this flow of information. Randolph and Nicholson exchanged letters because they were colleagues; they wrote what they wrote because they were friends and allies. Randolph would not have shared his information with all of his correspondents; Nicholson would not have offered the same speculations about Burr's plans or aspersions upon his character to just anyone. In the same way, the United States' Gazette and the Aurora, though available to all, directed their reports and analyses to the often-contrasting perspectives of partisan readers. Cultural practices also provided the means by which informants could signal the quality, and the veracity, of their news. Randolph named Wheaton as his source, trusting that Nicholson's prior knowledge would allow him to judge the reports; Nicholson distinguished information that was known for "certain" from that which was known only because "rumour says." But, as Duane explained, new reports also had to be weighed against "pre-existing facts" and assessed with regard to the "character" of their subject. What many of the Aurora's readers knew as facts and believed about public characters differed sharply, however, from what the Gazette's readers knew and believed.
The Burr Conspiracy placed great weight and great strain on the process by which information was shared and assessed. With Burr's plans and movements remaining so uncertain for so long, each new report might provide crucial answers; "a single spark," as one contemporary wrote in early January 1807, could "throw a glare of light on the dark intrigues & nefarious plots." And, with events unfolding across so much of the country, information had to travel great distances — from Philadelphia to Natchitoches, from Marietta to Richmond, from New Orleans to Washington — as quickly and accurately as possible. During the Burr crisis, the technologies and institutions that moved information worked fairly well. But systems that had been expected to bind, and even to create, a nation produced a tangle of conflicting accounts. Instead of too little information, contemporaries often found themselves faced with too much — too many rumors, reports, and assertions. Writing from Burr's trial in Richmond, Thomas Truxton reported that he had never seen "so many stories created and given currency to ... as there is here, ten times a day and at every corner of the town." As they compared and assessed these conflicting accounts, as they tried to make sense of the Burr Conspiracy, contemporaries revealed the political and cultural forces that often undercut the nation-building project.
"AN ADMIRABLE ENGINE"
Much has been written about the circulation of information in the early American republic: general studies that address the many ways in which information moved around the country; broad accounts of the postal system or the press; and narrower works on specific mail routes, newspapers, or editors. Older works often focused on technological issues, describing mail roads, printing presses, and newspaper formats in detail. They often portrayed the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries as a period of woefully poor information transmission. In an era before steam-powered ships or railroads and electric telegraphs, information moved in the same manner — with a person — and at the same speed — that of a horse or a sailing ship, at best — as it long had. Recent works, however, have argued that, given the technology of the day, information actually moved over long distances both quickly and efficiently, facilitated by federal policies. The federal government, from the beginning, acted on the broadly shared idea that republics could survive only with a well-informed citizenry and that the union could survive only by tying together its far-flung parts. Accordingly, it constructed an extensive network of post offices and roads, employed a huge number of local postmasters and mail riders, and enacted an expensive commitment to subsidizing the movement of newspapers. It is hardly surprising that many contemporaries worried about Burr and his supporters gaining control of this very effective mechanism for spreading information.
Information about Burr's plans and actions spread in every available form — conversations, private letters, public documents, newspapers, pamphlets, and books. Obviously, the most elusive form of communication for the historian is oral. Of the thousands of conversations about the Burr Conspiracy, only a few were committed to paper in diaries, letters, depositions, or testimony. Some of these records show a deep concern with capturing a conversation as fully and accurately as possible. For example, after learning about Burr's plans "in the course of conversation" with Massachusetts representative William Ely, Postmaster General Gideon Granger sat down to commit the exchange "to Writing" "as soon as company retired." The next day, Granger had another man who had heard the conversation certify his record as "correct and just." Such solicitude was rare. William Eaton engaged in a number of important conversations with Burr in Washington in early 1806 but does not appear to have recorded their contents until later that year. The president met with Burr that spring but waited "about a month" before making notes on the meeting. Like most accounts of conversations, moreover, Jefferson's notes included just the main points and scattered details.
Still, we know that a great deal of information was spread through conversation — not only in private meetings, but also in public gatherings, whether in government offices and legislative halls, on street corners and courthouse steps, or in coffeehouses and taverns. "The trial of Col Burr," a North Carolinian reported after visiting Richmond in late June 1807, "was the only topic of conversation in all Companies, as indeed it was and is still every where else." Long-distance travel — whether commercial, political, or recreational — permitted even oral communication to disseminate information across vast distances. Travellers served as important sources of news. In Greensburgh, Pennsylvania, an English tourist had "a long political discussion [about] Col. Burr's projects" with three local gentlemen who had come to the tavern, "according to the custom of the country," to "[collect] what information they [could] from travellers." Newspaper editors and letter writers often attributed their now-written information to "a gentleman just arrived."
Most handwritten communication over any real distance moved through the postal system. In the early nineteenth century, the post office rivalled the army as the government's largest and most complex bureaucracy. The postmaster general oversaw hundreds of local postmasters, mail contractors, and mail riders. The postal system's elaborate network of post offices, sorting stations, and mail routes ensured that a letter could be sent from almost anywhere in the country and delivered to its final destination with little wasted time or effort. As the population grew and spread, the postal system expanded to keep pace, with an average of 140 new post offices and 1,560 miles of new post roads added each year in the first decade of the nineteenth century. The postmaster general stayed busy locating new post offices and contracting for new routes.
But the postal system was not equally efficient everywhere. The mail moved most smoothly north and east of Washington, where there were more and better roads. South of the nation's capital and in the backcountry east of the Appalachians, there were greater delays. Mail travelling over the mountains experienced the worst problems. The mail reached the West by just a few routes — crossing the mountains in southwestern Pennsylvania, northern and southern Virginia, North Carolina, and Georgia. By contract, mail was supposed to take seventeen days between New Orleans and Washington on the Georgia route, but the mail riders almost invariably fell far behind schedule. In early January 1807, when the Burr crisis in New Orleans was at its peak, the local postmaster reported that "the latest mail from Washington [was] of the 17th of Novr" — more than seven weeks earlier. It had arrived "in a most Shocking condition," moreover, with "half of the letters rubbed to pieces." From St. Louis, an administration correspondent predicted that, given the state of the roads, mail from the East would miscarry "three times out of four." Sending mail to the nation's capital from beyond the mountains was no more reliable. "The mails from the southward and westward arrive very irregularly if at all," one western senator remarked during the congressional session, "especially from Orleans."
"Letters" cannot simply be equated with "mail," however. Handwritten communications also travelled outside of the postal system. Both private letters and official dispatches or instructions might be carried by people who were known to the writer and, often, the recipient. To send letters along the coast or across the ocean, writers also made use of ship's bags. A captain would place his ship's bag in a coffeehouse with a notice stating his ports of call and departure date; at each stop, letters could be retrieved from or deposited in the bag. Stagecoach drivers also carried letters along their route. Finding alternative ways to transmit letters was attractive for a number of reasons. Postage was relatively expensive, with charges based upon the number of sheets of paper and the distance travelled. Entrusting a letter to a known bearer could also be more reliable than sending it by mail. And using private carriers allowed writers to expect a greater degree of privacy by setting conditions for delivery. Mail was delivered not to homes, but to local post offices. Its arrival was a public event. Letters were frequently read aloud a number of times — at the post office, in a tavern or coffeehouse, and at home. Writers used various tactics to avoid both exposing what they wished to keep private and placing recipients in the awkward position of refusing to read a letter. Letters might be labelled "private" or "confidential" on the wrapper or the first page. Writers could also enclose a separate sheet that was to remain private or specify that "what is on this side is of a private nature." Some letters included even more detailed instructions for the recipient: "you must not [let] any of the old-folks or the girls lay hands upon this," a medical student insisted in a letter home relating the many opportunities for dissipation in Philadelphia.
(Continues…)
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Table of Contents
Introduction | 1
1 So Many Stories: The Circulation of Information in the Early Republic | 15
First Interlude. A Crisis in the Cabinet | 43
2 Lexington and Frankfort, Kentucky: July through December 1806 | 55
3 Guilt beyond Question: The Narrative of Thomas Jefferson | 86
4 The Threat to the Union | 118
Second Interlude. The Crime on Blennerhassett Island | 148
5 The Enterprise Commenced: The Cipher Letter as a Narrative | 167
6 New Orleans, Orleans Territory: November 1806 through May 1807 | 209
7 The Threat to the Republic | 246
Third Interlude. The Arrest of Aaron Burr | 272
8 Richmond, Virginia: March through October 1807 | 291
9 “Who Is Blennerhassett?”: The Narrative of William Wirt | 339
10 The Conflict over Burr’s Followers | 369
Fourth Interlude. A “Rising” in Baltimore | 393
11 Final Accounts of the Burr Conspiracy | 411
Conclusion | 457
Acknowledgments | 463
Abbreviations | 467
Notes | 471
Primary Source Bibliography | 643
Secondary Source Bibliography | 675
Illustrations Credits | 699
Index | 701
What People are Saying About This
“[A] remarkable book.”—Edward G. Gray, Times Literary Supplement“A superb work of contemporary historical craftsmanship.”—James M. Banner Jr., Weekly Standard“Lucid prose and careful notes make this text one that will interest both scholars of early nationalism and readers simply interested in learning more about Burr beyond his famous duel with Alexander Hamilton.”—Publishers Weekly“A meticulously researched, comprehensive analysis essential to early American scholarship.”—Library Journal“Lewis reconstructs the ‘stories’ Americans told themselves in order to decide what Burr’s aims were, how he succeeded in winning the support of several hundred men who knew about his plans, and what these events said about the stability of republican government in general and the US in particular.”—Eric Foner, London Review of Books“A magisterial account of this supposed conspiracy and a mirror for current times.”—Gene Smith, Choice