June 28, 2010 • 14 mins
After Aaron Burr slew Alexander Hamilton in the duel of 1804, his legislative career was over. In March of 1805, Burr left the political sphere and moved west -- but his story doesn't end there. Tune in more about Burr's later adventures in this podcast.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Katie Lambert and I'm fair Downy Candice and I
did a podcast called Alexander Hamilton's versus Aaron Burr about
(00:23):
their faithful and fatal duels, So we won't talk too
much about that here, but the upshot is that Hamilton's
is killed and Vice President Burr was the one who
did it. He was charged with murder in New York
and New Jersey, but it never went to trial, and
he is the subject of our podcast today what happened
(00:43):
after that duel. So while his murder charges don't ever
go to trial, in March eighteen o five, he has
to leave the political sphere. He's just too contentious a
figure at this point, and his speech actually makes the
Senate cry. But his career is over. He's also in
debt and he doesn't have a whole lot of friends left.
(01:03):
What he needed was to start over, and what better
place for a new life than the West. So to
give this all a little context, Thomas Jefferson advocated a
policy of expansionism. When Napoleon gave up on French influence
in North America and offered the Louisiana territory for sale.
Jefferson was all over it. And what that meant was
(01:26):
that this huge uncharted space and all the people and
it weren't too sure about being part of the rest
of America. And there were a lot of people there already.
There were not only Indians, but Spain still has a
hold on a lot of the parts that touched the border,
so there are a lot of boundary disputes. Jefferson wanted
to buy Florida from Spain, and some people thought we
(01:48):
should just take Spain's land by force, including Mexico, but
of course not everyone was a fan of expansionism, and
there was talk of the people in the southwest of secession.
So we have an opening here, a potential opportunity for
somebody to take over and rule amidst all this chaos.
So Burr hatches a plan, and this plan may have
(02:12):
started even before his duel, but the basic idea was
that he wanted to wage a private war against Spanish
held territories, possibly also in New Orleans and Mexico, and
he would have a Southwestern empire that he could rule
this republic independent of the Eastern US. He'd be an emperor.
But to put this plan into action, he's got to
(02:34):
have help. So how about James Wilkinson, who is the
guy who makes a very sketchy appearance in our podcast
unmarrywether lewis not a good guy and implicated in Lewis's death,
and especially to have this guy is your number two
a very unfortunate beginning. So Burn new Wilkinson from the
(02:55):
Quebec campaign, and by this point he was the highest
ranking officer in the entire arm Me. So in this
respect he sounds like a pretty good guy to have
on your side, a good number two. He also shared
Burr's views on why it might be pretty great to
separate the East and the West, and he saw an
opportunity for himself. He could have a very good life
(03:15):
in Burr's empire as number two. But there was another
side to it. Wilkinson was a Spanish spy, so if
things didn't work out with Burr, he would have the
chance to turn him in to the US government and
also leak his plans to the Spanish, thus you know,
winning their goodwill. So it was a win win for Wilkinson.
(03:37):
So while he's pulling together his dream team. Here. We're
also contacts Andrew Jackson, who was very anti Spain, and
the politician Jonathan Dayton. And he also gets in touch
with the Minister to the US from Britain, Anthony Mary,
and proposes a deal of sorts that for ships and money,
he'd help them take the West. So he gives word
(04:01):
that his intention is to buy a million acres of
land in the Louisiana Territory, perhaps as a bit of
a cover for the mission he's about undertake, or perhaps
because he wanted a million acres of the Louisiana territory.
But he leaves in eighteen o five and begins his
campaign very subtly. He has letters of introduction to influential people,
(04:21):
he attends balls and banquets and starts winning people over
with his charisma before he starts hinting at what he's after,
what this mission is. And he also slowly begins recruiting
young men for his plan. Men were who were looking
to better themselves because of course, the West at this
time is so uncertain, they need to find their way,
(04:44):
so he lets them keep their independence and is very
quiet about what his plans are so even his followers
don't really know what he's up to, and he he
amasses hundreds of these young men who are interested in
his ideas, and he also befriends a rich Irish immigrant
named Harmon Blenner Hasta pretty good name, yeah, definitely a
(05:06):
good name. Blender house that gives them money and also
gets the Mexico Society on his side, which is a
pretty self explanatory organization. There they are a group of
people interested in accumulating Mexico. So as far as this
mission goes, Britain doesn't come through, and people have started
to get wind of what Burr is up to because
(05:28):
of course he's talking to so many people. He's not
exactly hiding what he's trying to do. Perhaps he thought
he would be successful and could gain enough support that
it wouldn't be an issue, but little things start appearing
in the press about what he's doing. Luckily for Burr,
Spain comes through in an unlikely way. Unlike Britain, they
step up their border conflicts with the US and this
(05:50):
means that Wilkinson, as commander of the army, would end
up in Louisiana and then he and Burr could conquer
Spanish territory in the name of the United States, but
then take it over. So it brings the number one
and the number two in this conspiracy together. So Burr's
plan begins in earnest in August eighteen o six, when
(06:11):
he and his men assembled at Blenner Hasset's Island in
the Ohio River, which is going to be their home base,
and his messenger says that seven thousand men will be
on the way. So at this point his intentions are
clearly not a secret. He's talked to so many people
and they in turn have communicated to higher ups. Yeah,
even the federal government is aware of what he's doing
(06:33):
because he's talked to so many influential politicians. So Jefferson
isn't entirely in the dark, and wilcomeson soon betrays Burr.
He hands over what's known as the Cipher Letter in
eighteen oh six to Jefferson and also alerts the Spanish
to what's going on in New Orleans. And the Cipher
Letter says, in part, I have obtained funds and have
(06:56):
actually commenced the enterprise. Things are starting for real. And
this is October eighteen sixty and in November eighteen sixty,
Jefferson tells the country that there's a conspiracy in the
works and that the conspirators should be caught. So he's
still not directly calling out Burr. He figures his name
is going to come up eventually on its own, and
(07:16):
blind item from page so has blind item from Jefferson.
In December, blennerhasse it's place is raided by a militia
and they also arrest a bunch of men and took
their boats and their guns. So when Burr finally comes
to meet his men, the force is greatly diminished, not
what he had been expecting at all. But he keeps going,
(07:37):
and he had you wouldn't not have the point to
turn back, for sure. He keeps going though. He heads
down the Mississippi, and he's planning to meet with Wilkinson
in New Orleans. But after that, who knows what he's
gonna do. But what he didn't know was that at
this point he was wanted for arrest. And when he
(07:57):
lands in the Bayou Pierre in Louisiana in January eighteen
o seven, he sees a newspaper and sees that his
cipher letter is printed in full in the paper and
that he's wanted, so he doesn't have any men. His
arrival in Louisiana isn't a surprise because of course Wilkinson
has told everyone well in the newspapers have learned anyone.
(08:19):
So he turns himself in, but then flees to Alabama.
On February nineteenth, eighteen o seven, he's arrested on the road,
depends Coola and taken to Fort Stoddard. But it's kind
of weird because after all, he is a former vice
president and a colonel, and it still seems like he's
working on his plan. He's he has not entirely given
(08:41):
up yet. Yeah, he's talking to locals trying to figure
out who hates the Spanish, and so the local officials
get a little concerned about this and decide let's send
him back to Washington. So on the way back to Washington,
he's treated really well despite being under armed guard. He's
allowed to keep Brandy with him and he keeps the
life and pistols. A bad idea who lets their prisoner
(09:04):
keep pistols, but they get taken away because he does
kind of try to escape in South Carolina, and when
he's caught again, he cries things are not looking good
for Burr, and the group gets a message from Jefferson
telling them to go to Richmond instead of Washington, so
they take him there. He arrived on March seven, and
(09:26):
in April he went on trial for treason and high misdemeanors.
And this is the trial of the century, as so
many trials are, of course, and they're always as we
know it earlier. They're always in the beginning of the century. Yeah, no,
it's never in the seventies or something where you're like
the trial of the century. Um. So Chief Justice John
Marshall calls it the most unpleasant case which has ever
(09:50):
been brought before a judge in this or perhaps any
other country which affected to be governed by laws. Another
really bold claim. But on the side of the defense
we have Edmund Randolph who is Washington Secretary of State,
and lawyer Brandy Bottle also known as Luther Martin, whose
strategy is to paint Jefferson as someone who is just
(10:12):
blinded by a personal vendetta against Aaron Burr. So it's
actually pretty effective too, because Jefferson had basically said there
was incontrovertible evidence against Burr and there's not. So when
you take little quotes like that and throw them in
front of a jury, it doesn't make Jefferson start to
look like a personal problem between two men. So the
(10:36):
public's appetite for this trial is insatiable, and the papers
blair headlines about it every day. But the trial is
really odd, understandably because so many of the people involved
are just playing liars or their double agents, and the
co conspirators stories don't match up, and even his followers
don't know what Burr's plans are, so it's nobody the
(10:58):
big part. Yeah, nobody has the same story. Well did
he even have a master plan or was he just
sort of, you know, flying by the seat of his pants.
We don't know because he never told anyone, and a
lot of his papers were lost to see along with
his daughter Theodosia in eighteen thirteen, so it's likely we'll
never know. And there wasn't much evidence either. You mentioned
(11:20):
this just a second ago, but it does come up
looking a little like a personal problem instead of this
grand treason case. So Burr's acquitted on September one, eighteen
o seven, and Marshall's own opinion on the case took
three hours to read, and he said that a treason
charge required two witnesses to an overt act of force
(11:44):
or violence against the government, which was a very strict definition,
a very strict reading of the definition of treason in
the Constitution, and the evidence simply wasn't there. So Burr
was off the hook, but he wasn't off the hook
with the American public. He was being burned in effigy.
Still not a popular guy, so he headed off to
(12:06):
Europe to become an ex pat, as people in trouble
often do, but his reputation was completely ruined even there.
He was kicked out of England and Napoleon wouldn't let
him into France, so he returned to the US in
eighteen twelve, and there's no respite for him even here.
My favorite quote is from an article by Erin Wellborn
(12:27):
for American Heritage. His name was besmirched by both Federalists
and Republicans, usually for its besmirching effects. Touche. There's one
career still open to Burr. He becomes a lawyer, and
he pretty much stays off the radar and dies at
eighty with no descendants. And as for Wilkinson, it was
(12:50):
during the War of eighteen twelve that people discovered that
he was actually a spy, but he was acquitted and
not punished too, so he can live on to how
sketchy roles in future podcasts. But the Aaron Burr conspiracy
so fascinates us. We've gotten so many requests for this
I can't even tell you because we know so little
(13:11):
about it. We don't even know what this conspiracy really is.
And there's the debate over whether what he did really
was treason or just in the spirit of American enterprise.
There's the question of whether he had this big plan
or was just sort of playing it by ear. And
we have the mystery of this man who's defined by
(13:32):
only two events in his life, this fatal duel with
Alexander Hamilton and a controversial trial, and of course the
romantic notion that perhaps our answer lies in the chest
at the bottom of the ocean. So that about wraps
it up for Burr. But if you have any more
historical conspiracies you'd like us to investigate, you should email
(13:52):
them to us at History Podcasts at house stuff works
dot com, and we also take suggestions through Twitter at
mist in History and through our Facebook fan page, so
be sure to join those and as always, please check
out our homepage at www dot how stuff works dot com.
(14:13):
For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit
how stuff works dot com and be sure to check
out the Stuff you missed in History Class blog on
the how stuff works dot com homepage
Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Katie Lambert and I'm fair Downy Candice and I
did a podcast called Alexander Hamilton's versus Aaron Burr about
(00:23):
their faithful and fatal duels, So we won't talk too
much about that here, but the upshot is that Hamilton's
is killed and Vice President Burr was the one who
did it. He was charged with murder in New York
and New Jersey, but it never went to trial, and
he is the subject of our podcast today what happened
(00:43):
after that duel. So while his murder charges don't ever
go to trial, in March eighteen o five, he has
to leave the political sphere. He's just too contentious a
figure at this point, and his speech actually makes the
Senate cry. But his career is over. He's also in
debt and he doesn't have a whole lot of friends left.
(01:03):
What he needed was to start over, and what better
place for a new life than the West. So to
give this all a little context, Thomas Jefferson advocated a
policy of expansionism. When Napoleon gave up on French influence
in North America and offered the Louisiana territory for sale.
Jefferson was all over it. And what that meant was
(01:26):
that this huge uncharted space and all the people and
it weren't too sure about being part of the rest
of America. And there were a lot of people there already.
There were not only Indians, but Spain still has a
hold on a lot of the parts that touched the border,
so there are a lot of boundary disputes. Jefferson wanted
to buy Florida from Spain, and some people thought we
(01:48):
should just take Spain's land by force, including Mexico, but
of course not everyone was a fan of expansionism, and
there was talk of the people in the southwest of secession.
So we have an opening here, a potential opportunity for
somebody to take over and rule amidst all this chaos.
So Burr hatches a plan, and this plan may have
(02:12):
started even before his duel, but the basic idea was
that he wanted to wage a private war against Spanish
held territories, possibly also in New Orleans and Mexico, and
he would have a Southwestern empire that he could rule
this republic independent of the Eastern US. He'd be an emperor.
But to put this plan into action, he's got to
(02:34):
have help. So how about James Wilkinson, who is the
guy who makes a very sketchy appearance in our podcast
unmarrywether lewis not a good guy and implicated in Lewis's death,
and especially to have this guy is your number two
a very unfortunate beginning. So Burn new Wilkinson from the
(02:55):
Quebec campaign, and by this point he was the highest
ranking officer in the entire arm Me. So in this
respect he sounds like a pretty good guy to have
on your side, a good number two. He also shared
Burr's views on why it might be pretty great to
separate the East and the West, and he saw an
opportunity for himself. He could have a very good life
(03:15):
in Burr's empire as number two. But there was another
side to it. Wilkinson was a Spanish spy, so if
things didn't work out with Burr, he would have the
chance to turn him in to the US government and
also leak his plans to the Spanish, thus you know,
winning their goodwill. So it was a win win for Wilkinson.
(03:37):
So while he's pulling together his dream team. Here. We're
also contacts Andrew Jackson, who was very anti Spain, and
the politician Jonathan Dayton. And he also gets in touch
with the Minister to the US from Britain, Anthony Mary,
and proposes a deal of sorts that for ships and money,
he'd help them take the West. So he gives word
(04:01):
that his intention is to buy a million acres of
land in the Louisiana Territory, perhaps as a bit of
a cover for the mission he's about undertake, or perhaps
because he wanted a million acres of the Louisiana territory.
But he leaves in eighteen o five and begins his
campaign very subtly. He has letters of introduction to influential people,
(04:21):
he attends balls and banquets and starts winning people over
with his charisma before he starts hinting at what he's after,
what this mission is. And he also slowly begins recruiting
young men for his plan. Men were who were looking
to better themselves because of course, the West at this
time is so uncertain, they need to find their way,
(04:44):
so he lets them keep their independence and is very
quiet about what his plans are so even his followers
don't really know what he's up to, and he he
amasses hundreds of these young men who are interested in
his ideas, and he also befriends a rich Irish immigrant
named Harmon Blenner Hasta pretty good name, yeah, definitely a
(05:06):
good name. Blender house that gives them money and also
gets the Mexico Society on his side, which is a
pretty self explanatory organization. There they are a group of
people interested in accumulating Mexico. So as far as this
mission goes, Britain doesn't come through, and people have started
to get wind of what Burr is up to because
(05:28):
of course he's talking to so many people. He's not
exactly hiding what he's trying to do. Perhaps he thought
he would be successful and could gain enough support that
it wouldn't be an issue, but little things start appearing
in the press about what he's doing. Luckily for Burr,
Spain comes through in an unlikely way. Unlike Britain, they
step up their border conflicts with the US and this
(05:50):
means that Wilkinson, as commander of the army, would end
up in Louisiana and then he and Burr could conquer
Spanish territory in the name of the United States, but
then take it over. So it brings the number one
and the number two in this conspiracy together. So Burr's
plan begins in earnest in August eighteen o six, when
(06:11):
he and his men assembled at Blenner Hasset's Island in
the Ohio River, which is going to be their home base,
and his messenger says that seven thousand men will be
on the way. So at this point his intentions are
clearly not a secret. He's talked to so many people
and they in turn have communicated to higher ups. Yeah,
even the federal government is aware of what he's doing
(06:33):
because he's talked to so many influential politicians. So Jefferson
isn't entirely in the dark, and wilcomeson soon betrays Burr.
He hands over what's known as the Cipher Letter in
eighteen oh six to Jefferson and also alerts the Spanish
to what's going on in New Orleans. And the Cipher
Letter says, in part, I have obtained funds and have
(06:56):
actually commenced the enterprise. Things are starting for real. And
this is October eighteen sixty and in November eighteen sixty,
Jefferson tells the country that there's a conspiracy in the
works and that the conspirators should be caught. So he's
still not directly calling out Burr. He figures his name
is going to come up eventually on its own, and
(07:16):
blind item from page so has blind item from Jefferson.
In December, blennerhasse it's place is raided by a militia
and they also arrest a bunch of men and took
their boats and their guns. So when Burr finally comes
to meet his men, the force is greatly diminished, not
what he had been expecting at all. But he keeps going,
(07:37):
and he had you wouldn't not have the point to
turn back, for sure. He keeps going though. He heads
down the Mississippi, and he's planning to meet with Wilkinson
in New Orleans. But after that, who knows what he's
gonna do. But what he didn't know was that at
this point he was wanted for arrest. And when he
(07:57):
lands in the Bayou Pierre in Louisiana in January eighteen
o seven, he sees a newspaper and sees that his
cipher letter is printed in full in the paper and
that he's wanted, so he doesn't have any men. His
arrival in Louisiana isn't a surprise because of course Wilkinson
has told everyone well in the newspapers have learned anyone.
(08:19):
So he turns himself in, but then flees to Alabama.
On February nineteenth, eighteen o seven, he's arrested on the road,
depends Coola and taken to Fort Stoddard. But it's kind
of weird because after all, he is a former vice
president and a colonel, and it still seems like he's
working on his plan. He's he has not entirely given
(08:41):
up yet. Yeah, he's talking to locals trying to figure
out who hates the Spanish, and so the local officials
get a little concerned about this and decide let's send
him back to Washington. So on the way back to Washington,
he's treated really well despite being under armed guard. He's
allowed to keep Brandy with him and he keeps the
life and pistols. A bad idea who lets their prisoner
(09:04):
keep pistols, but they get taken away because he does
kind of try to escape in South Carolina, and when
he's caught again, he cries things are not looking good
for Burr, and the group gets a message from Jefferson
telling them to go to Richmond instead of Washington, so
they take him there. He arrived on March seven, and
(09:26):
in April he went on trial for treason and high misdemeanors.
And this is the trial of the century, as so
many trials are, of course, and they're always as we
know it earlier. They're always in the beginning of the century. Yeah, no,
it's never in the seventies or something where you're like
the trial of the century. Um. So Chief Justice John
Marshall calls it the most unpleasant case which has ever
(09:50):
been brought before a judge in this or perhaps any
other country which affected to be governed by laws. Another
really bold claim. But on the side of the defense
we have Edmund Randolph who is Washington Secretary of State,
and lawyer Brandy Bottle also known as Luther Martin, whose
strategy is to paint Jefferson as someone who is just
(10:12):
blinded by a personal vendetta against Aaron Burr. So it's
actually pretty effective too, because Jefferson had basically said there
was incontrovertible evidence against Burr and there's not. So when
you take little quotes like that and throw them in
front of a jury, it doesn't make Jefferson start to
look like a personal problem between two men. So the
(10:36):
public's appetite for this trial is insatiable, and the papers
blair headlines about it every day. But the trial is
really odd, understandably because so many of the people involved
are just playing liars or their double agents, and the
co conspirators stories don't match up, and even his followers
don't know what Burr's plans are, so it's nobody the
(10:58):
big part. Yeah, nobody has the same story. Well did
he even have a master plan or was he just
sort of, you know, flying by the seat of his pants.
We don't know because he never told anyone, and a
lot of his papers were lost to see along with
his daughter Theodosia in eighteen thirteen, so it's likely we'll
never know. And there wasn't much evidence either. You mentioned
(11:20):
this just a second ago, but it does come up
looking a little like a personal problem instead of this
grand treason case. So Burr's acquitted on September one, eighteen
o seven, and Marshall's own opinion on the case took
three hours to read, and he said that a treason
charge required two witnesses to an overt act of force
(11:44):
or violence against the government, which was a very strict definition,
a very strict reading of the definition of treason in
the Constitution, and the evidence simply wasn't there. So Burr
was off the hook, but he wasn't off the hook
with the American public. He was being burned in effigy.
Still not a popular guy, so he headed off to
(12:06):
Europe to become an ex pat, as people in trouble
often do, but his reputation was completely ruined even there.
He was kicked out of England and Napoleon wouldn't let
him into France, so he returned to the US in
eighteen twelve, and there's no respite for him even here.
My favorite quote is from an article by Erin Wellborn
(12:27):
for American Heritage. His name was besmirched by both Federalists
and Republicans, usually for its besmirching effects. Touche. There's one
career still open to Burr. He becomes a lawyer, and
he pretty much stays off the radar and dies at
eighty with no descendants. And as for Wilkinson, it was
(12:50):
during the War of eighteen twelve that people discovered that
he was actually a spy, but he was acquitted and
not punished too, so he can live on to how
sketchy roles in future podcasts. But the Aaron Burr conspiracy
so fascinates us. We've gotten so many requests for this
I can't even tell you because we know so little
(13:11):
about it. We don't even know what this conspiracy really is.
And there's the debate over whether what he did really
was treason or just in the spirit of American enterprise.
There's the question of whether he had this big plan
or was just sort of playing it by ear. And
we have the mystery of this man who's defined by
(13:32):
only two events in his life, this fatal duel with
Alexander Hamilton and a controversial trial, and of course the
romantic notion that perhaps our answer lies in the chest
at the bottom of the ocean. So that about wraps
it up for Burr. But if you have any more
historical conspiracies you'd like us to investigate, you should email
(13:52):
them to us at History Podcasts at house stuff works
dot com, and we also take suggestions through Twitter at
mist in History and through our Facebook fan page, so
be sure to join those and as always, please check
out our homepage at www dot how stuff works dot com.
(14:13):
For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit
how stuff works dot com and be sure to check
out the Stuff you missed in History Class blog on
the how stuff works dot com homepage
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