Andrew Jackson (20 page)

Jackson compiled the list and sent it on. And he kept in touch with Burr, who spent the spring and summer of 1806 in constant motion, traveling to New Orleans again and all across the West. In October Burr was back in Nashville, plying Jackson with stories of Spanish perfidy and the ease with which the Spanish lands might be taken. Jefferson’s attempt to purchase Florida, for a reported two million dollars, had failed. But neither Burr nor Jackson lamented the failure. “The certain consequence is war,” Jackson declared. “And no doubt but less than two millions can conquer not only the Floridas but all Spanish North America.”

Jackson thrilled at the prospect. “At least two thousand volunteers can be led into the field at a short notice,” he told James Winchester, one of his brigade commanders. “That number, led by firm officers and men of enterprise, I think could look into Santa Fe and Mexico, give freedom and commerce to those provinces and establish peace and a permanent barrier against the inroads and attacks of foreign powers on our interior, which will be the case so long as Spain holds that large country on our borders. Should there be a war, this will be a handsome theater for our enterprising young men and a certain source of acquiring fame.”

Jackson directed his brigadier generals to mobilize their troops. Relaying intelligence from Burr and others close to the frontier, he described threatening acts by a Spanish force operating along the Red River. “This armed force, under the sanction of their government, have imprisoned and transported five of the good citizens of the United States to the dominion of Spain. They have cut down and carried off the flag of the United States, which was erected in the Caddo nation of Indians and within the limits of the United States. They have compelled by force men in the employ of government when exploring the Red River to desist and come home, and they have taken an unjustifiable and insulting position on the east side of the river Sabine and within the Territory of New Orleans!!!” These affronts, Jackson declared, “make it necessary that the militia under my command should be in complete order and at a moment’s warning ready to march.”

Jackson also wrote to Jefferson. Bypassing both Governor Sevier and the federal secretary of war, Jackson told the president that Tennessee stood eager to defend American honor. “The public sentiment and feeling of the citizens within this state, and particularly within my division, are of such a nature and of such a kind that I take the liberty of tendering their services. . . . At one moment’s warning after your signification that this tender is acceptable, my orders shall be given conformably.”

J
ust days later, Jackson received the shock of his life. A young army captain named John Fort arrived in Nashville bearing reports of treasonous activity in the far Southwest. Adventurers, he asserted, were plotting against the United States. “Their intention was to divide the Union,” Jackson recalled Fort saying. He asked Fort how they would do this.

He replied, by seizing New Orleans and the bank [of the Mississippi], shutting the port, conquering Mexico, and uniting the western part of the Union to the conquered territory.

I, perhaps with warmth, asked him how this was to be effected.

He replied, by the aid of the Federal troops, and the General [James Wilkinson, governor of (Upper) Louisiana Territory] at their head.

I asked if he had this from the General.

He said he had not.

I asked him if Colonel Burr was in to the scheme.

He answered he did not know nor was he informed that he was: that he barely knew Colonel Burr but never had had any conversation.

I asked him how he knew this and from whom he got his information.

He said from Colonel Swartout in New York.

It was at this point that Jackson’s shock occurred.

Knowing that Colonel Burr was well acquainted with Swartout, it rushed into my mind like lightning that Burr was at the head.

Jackson now realized that Burr’s trips to New Orleans had involved more than sizing up the Spanish. He was estimating western sentiment in favor of secession from the Union. The former vice president apparently planned to become president—or king, or emperor—of his own new country, carved from the southwestern United States and northeastern Mexico and centered on the lower Mississippi and New Orleans. There was geographic logic to the audacious plan. The Mississippi was an obvious organizing principle for a political entity. Even Nashville felt its pull, which in turn reflected nothing more complicated than the gravity that drew the Cumberland to the Mississippi and the Mississippi to New Orleans and the Gulf of Mexico.

But geography couldn’t disguise that any such scheme was treason, pure and simple. Jackson sought what served Tennessee, but his first loyalty was to the Union. If what Jackson suddenly suspected of Burr was true, the man was a traitor.

And Jackson was an accomplice, if an unwitting one. As his mind reeled from the lightning bolt of recognition of Burr’s nefarious plan, he understood that he had compromised himself. He frantically dredged his memories for the encouraging words he had offered Burr, the letters he had written, the actions he had undertaken in support of Burr’s scheme. Jackson blamed himself not for moral failure; he had done nothing that pained his conscience. But he cursed himself for stupidity, for not seeing what Burr was up to. He knew that a clear conscience might not protect him if Burr’s perfidy became manifest. Jackson was lawyer enough to know that ignorance was nearly impossible to prove, and politician enough to realize that ignorance could be as damning in its own way as witting culpability.

Angry at Burr and angrier at himself, he sounded the alarm. “There is something rotten in the state of Denmark,” he wrote to William Claiborne, governor of Orleans Territory, at New Orleans. “You have enemies within your own city that may try to subvert your government and try to separate it from the Union. . . . Be upon the alert.” Jackson didn’t retreat from his desire for war against Spain, but it mustn’t be at hazard to the United States. “I hate the Dons. I would delight to see Mexico reduced, but I will die in the last ditch before I would yield a part to the Dons or see the Union disunited.” To Tennessee senator Daniel Smith at Washington, Jackson delineated how the conspiracy must have been designed to unfold.

A difference exists between our government and Spain. Their minister at open war with our executive, a designing man forms an intrigue with him to regain the purchased Territory [Louisiana]. . . . The Spanish forces under pretext of defending their frontier (where there has been no encroachment) marches a formidable force within two hundred miles of New Orleans. Your governor of New Orleans [Claiborne] organizes the militia to help defend your Territory, but your general [Wilkinson] orders him home at the very moment that he is advancing to take possession of a position on the right bank of the Sabine. The two armies are near enough to make arrangement and to form plans of cooperation. At this moment a descent is made [by Burr and accomplices] from the Ohio and upper Louisiana on New Orleans, which is in a defenceless situation, two thirds of its inhabitants in to the plan. The town falls an easy prey to its assailants, and the two armies protect the conquerors with the aid of Spain, shut the port against the exportation of the West, and hold out allurements to all the western world to join and they shall enjoy free trade and profitable commerce.

Jackson granted that he was conjecturing details. But he didn’t doubt that something akin to this was afoot. “I as much believe that such a plan is in operation as I believe there is a god. And if I am not mistaken, there are in the plan many high characters from New York to New Orleans.” He urged Smith to inform Jefferson—but not others in the administration, who might be conspirators themselves.

J
efferson didn’t need Jackson to warn him about Burr or about the western conspiracy. People had been telling him about both for months, which was precisely the president’s problem. Hardly had Burr shot Hamilton before Federalists, some Republicans, and persons who preferred to keep their identities secret began raining rumor and innuendo on the White House. “He is meditating the overthrow of your Administration,” one anonymous writer told Jefferson of Burr in December 1805. “His aberrations through the Western states
had no other object
. A foreign agent, now at Washington, knows since February last his plans and has seconded them.” A few weeks later Joseph Hamilton Daveiss, the federal district attorney for Kentucky, wrote Jefferson, “Spanish intrigues have been carried on among our people. We have traitors among us. A separation of the union in favor of Spain is the object finally.” Daveiss named Burr and Wilkinson as the arch-conspirators on the American side.

If Jefferson hadn’t been distracted by other events, he might have paid more attention to the stories about Burr. His resounding reelection in 1804 nearly swept the Federalists from the field of American politics, promising decades of Republican rule, but the international troubles that had vexed America since the early 1790s broadened and intensified. The conflict between Britain and France allowed pirates operating out of North Africa to prey on American merchant ships, seizing the vessels and their cargoes and taking their crews hostage. Jefferson responded by ordering raids against the Barbary states, as the pirate-hosting princedoms were called. In the autumn of 1805, the British navy smashed the French fleet at Trafalgar, raising British hopes that Napoleon could be crushed and prompting London to order a blockade of France. Shortly the British blockaders began capturing American ships by the dozen. The pacific Jefferson protested diplomatically; his more belligerent supporters demanded war.

For such reasons the Burr conspiracy took time to bubble to the surface of Jefferson’s agenda. Yet by the summer of 1806 the president had to pay attention. In August Jefferson received a letter from Thomas Truxton, a navy veteran of the Barbary conflict, explaining that Burr had approached him about joining the conspiracy. In September George Morgan, a Jefferson loyalist, informed the president that Burr had laid out his separatist scheme during a recent dinner at Morgan’s home near Pittsburgh. In October William Eaton, another Barbary veteran, added his voice to the conspiracy chorus, asserting what Andrew Jackson was concluding at about the same time: that Burr and Wilkinson were aiming to carve the West away from the United States and attach it to a part of Mexico similarly severed from Spanish control.

Burr wasn’t oblivious to the leaking, but, on the principle that he hadn’t broken any laws yet, he proceeded unfazed. The first serious wrinkle in his plans occurred when federal prosecutor Daveiss attempted to indict him for making preparations in Kentucky for war against Mexico. Burr hired Henry Clay, an ambitious young attorney, and fended off the indictment. But he decided not to tarry in Kentucky and went south to Tennessee.

In Nashville he encountered Jackson again. The meeting was strained yet more cordial than it might have been. After hearing from John Fort and inferring Burr’s design, Jackson had written to Burr insisting on an explanation. Burr’s reply has been lost, but Jackson paraphrased it in another letter, saying that Burr gave “an express pledge of honor that he had never had any ideas hostile to the Union or its interest.” The subsequent refusal of the Kentucky grand jury to indict him lent weight to Burr’s disclaimer. And Burr in person was as plausible as ever. He assured Jackson of his loyalty to the Union. His intentions, he said, had never gone beyond those of Jackson himself: to smite Spain and expand the realm of American liberty.

Jackson didn’t know what to conclude. He had to admit that the evidence against Burr was indirect and largely partisan. And whatever Burr might have been
thinking
, he hadn’t
done
anything illegal. And if he
had
dreamed of a southwestern empire, surely the recent hue and cry had put him off that. He might still be useful in a war against Spain, which Jackson continued to believe necessary and just.

Jackson may have been willfully fooling himself. If Burr wasn’t guilty, then Jackson wasn’t as stupid as he feared he had been, and his good name and future weren’t in such jeopardy. Maybe he had overreacted. Maybe Burr was as innocent as he claimed. In any event, Jackson didn’t have authority to arrest Burr or otherwise stand in his way. So he held his breath and hoped for the best. The two men parted on apparently friendly terms.

Yet Jackson determined to keep an eye on Burr. And he would be ready to move against him at an instant’s notice. “Should danger threaten you,” he told Governor Claiborne at New Orleans, “write me, and under your notification, on the wings of patriotism I will hasten to the point of danger, to support the Union of our country, the prop of freedom, with the arm of vengeance that shall burst on treason and on treasoners’ heads.”

T
hings didn’t come to that. The conspiracy unraveled before Burr got anywhere near New Orleans. James Wilkinson, whose loyalty was, if anything, less certain than Burr’s—Wilkinson was still on the Spanish payroll—decided to betray his partner to save himself. He wrote to Jackson asserting that treason was afoot. He said he had intercepted a letter to “Burr’s chief agent here . . . which letter is evincive of his being a party to the conspiracy which agitates your country”—Tennessee—“and is intended to destroy the American nation.” Should Burr’s plans develop as intended, Wilkinson said, “this country”—Louisiana—“will be ruined.” Wilkinson was aware that certain persons had linked his name to Burr’s in the conspiracy. Wilkinson denied the charge as an utter calumny and demanded an opportunity to dispel “the delusions and villainies by which I have been misrepresented, persecuted and defamed.” He declared that he “would steel through my father to defend the integrity of the Union. . . . I have no secrets except when necessary to the national interests.”