SYMHC Classics: A Conspiracy Starring Aaron Burr

We're revisiting an episode from previous hosts! 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.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Happy Saturday. This week in our podcast about the mysterious
disappearance of Theodosia Burr Alston, the daughter of Aarinberg, one
of the things we talked about was, uh that Aaron
burg got into this bizarre scheme to invade Mexico and
take over the western part of the United States territory
and make it all his personal empire, leaving it for
Theodosia to reign over as empress after his own death.

(00:26):
So that is way too interesting a story to just
bring up and then not really get into you or
so much about. But fortunately previous hosts Katie and Sarah
have already talked through all of the details, so we're
just going to share that episode with you and you
will get all caught up. So here we go. Welcome
to stuff you missed in history class from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm

(00:56):
Katie Lambert and I'm Sarah down Campus and I did
a podcast called Alexander Hamilton's Versus Aaron Burr about 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,

(01:19):
but it never went to trial, and he is the
subject of our podcast today what happened 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

(01:41):
career is over. He's also in debt and he doesn't
have a whole lot of friends left. 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

(02:02):
and offered the Louisiana Territory for sale, Jefferson was all
over it. And what that meant was that this huge
uncharted space and all the people in 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

(02:23):
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 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

(02:46):
somebody to take over and rule amidst all this chaos.
So Burr hatches a plan, and this plan may have
started even before his duel, but the basic idea was
that he wanted to wage a private war or against
Spanish held territories, possibly also in New Orleans in Mexico,
and he would have a southwestern empire that he could

(03:08):
rule this republic independent of the Eastern US. He'd be
an emperor. But to put this plan into action, he's
got to 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

(03:31):
your number two a very unfortunate beginning. So Bernie Wilkinson
from the Quebec campaign, and by this point he was
the highest ranking officer in the entire army, 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

(03:51):
to separate the East and the West, and he saw
an opportunity for himself. He could have a very good
life in Burr's empire as number too. 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

(04:11):
and also leak his plans to the Spanish, thus you know,
winning their goodwill. So it was a win win for Wilkinson.
So while he's pulling together his dream team here, Burr
Auso contacts Andrew Jackson, who was very anti Spain, and

(04:34):
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 that his intention is to buy a million acres
of land in the Louisiana territory, perhaps as a bit

(04:56):
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.
He attends balls and banquets and starts winning people over
with his charisma before he starts hinting at what he's after,

(05:20):
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,
so he lets them keep their independence and is very
quiet about what his plans are, so even his followers

(05:42):
don't really know what he's up to, and 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 good name.
Blenner House that gives them money and also gets the
Mexicos the Sciety on his side, which is a pretty

(06:02):
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 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

(06:24):
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 means that Wilkinson,
as commander of the army, would end up in Louisiana,

(06:45):
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 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

(07:08):
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 because he's talked to
so many influential politicians. So Jefferson isn't entirely in the dark.

(07:28):
And wilcomeson soon betrays bur 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 actually commenced the enterprise. Things
are starting for real. And this is October eighteen sixty.

(07:51):
And in November eighteen sixty, Jefferson tells the country that
there's a conspiracy in the works and that the conspirators
should be caught. He's still not directly calling out Burr.
He figures his name is going to come up eventually
on its own and blind item from page he has
blind item from Jefferson. In December, Blenner has its place

(08:12):
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, and he had then
would not have the point to turn back for sure.
He keeps going though. He heads down the Mississippi and

(08:34):
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 is that at this point he was
wanted for arrest. And when he lands in the Bayou
Pierre in Louisiana in January seven, he sees a newspaper
and sees that his cipher letter is printed in full

(08:56):
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 everyone. So he turns himself in but then flees
to Alabama. On February nineteenth, eighteen and seven, he's arrested

(09:17):
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 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

(09:39):
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 a knife and pistols, which is who
lets their prisoner keep pistols, But they get taken away
because he does kind of try to escape in South

(09:59):
carol Elna 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 eighth seven and in April he went on
trial for treason and high misdemeanors. And this is the

(10:21):
trial of the century. Is 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 trial of the century.
So Chief Justice John Marshall calls it the most unpleasant

(10:45):
case which has ever been brought before a judge in
this or perhaps any other country which affected to be
governed by laws. Strong another really bold claim. But on
the side of the defense we have Edmund Randolph, who
is Washington se Pretery of State, and lawyer Brandy Bottle,
also known as Luther Martin, whose strategy is to paint

(11:07):
Jefferson as someone who is just 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,

(11:27):
it doesn't make Jefferson's a great start to look like
a personal problem between two men. So the 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

(11:48):
stories don't match up, and even his followers don't know
what Burr's plans are, so it's probably the 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 state 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

(12:12):
in eighteen thirteen, so it's likely we'll never know. And
there wasn't much evidence either. You mentioned 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,

(12:34):
and he said that a treason charge required two witnesses
to an overt act of force 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.

(12:56):
He was being burned in effigy. Still not a popular guy,
so he headed off to 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

(13:19):
for him even here. My favorite quote is from an
article by Aaron Wellborn 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

(13:42):
dies at eighty with no descendants. And as for Wilkinson,
it was 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 have sketchy roles in future podcasts. But the Aaron
Burr conspiracy so fascinates us. We've gotten so many requests

(14:04):
for this I can't even tell you because we know
so little 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

(14:27):
who's defined by 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,

(14:48):
you should email them to us at History Podcasts at
houstu works dot com. And we also take suggestions through
Twitter at Miston 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. Hey, since uh these episodes that we're sharing

(15:15):
our past classics, we have some updated information that will
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(15:36):
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