Burr again visited Marietta, where the local militia were assembled for their annual drill, and put these rural soldiers through their evolutions, again fascinating the whole community.[848] At Cincinnati, Burr held another long conference with his partner, Senator John Smith, who was a contractor and general storekeeper. The place which the Washita land speculation had already come to hold in his mind is shown by the conversation—Burr talked as much of that project as he did of war with Spain and his great ambition to invade Mexico;[849] but of secession, not a syllable.
Next Burr hurried to Nashville and once more became the honored guest of Andrew Jackson, whom he frankly told of the modification of his plans. His immediate purpose, Burr said, now was to settle the Washita lands. Of course, if war should break out he would lead a force into Texas and Mexico. Burr kept back only the part Wilkinson was to play in precipitating hostilities; and he said nothing of his efforts to bolster up that frail warrior's resolution.[850]
In Tennessee and Kentucky the talk was again of war with Spain. Indeed, it was now the only talk.[851] For the third time in the Tennessee Capital a public banquet was given to the hero by whom the people expected to be led against the enemy. Soon afterward Jackson issued his proclamation to the Tennessee militia calling them to arms against the hated Spaniards, and volunteered his services to the National Government. Jefferson answered in a letter provoking in its vagueness.[852]
At Lexington, Kentucky, Burr and Blennerhassett now purchased from Colonel Charles Lynch, the owner of the Bastrop grant, several hundred thousand acres on the Washita River in Northern Louisiana.[853]
To many to whom Burr had spoken of his scheme to invade Mexico he gave the impression that his designs had the approval of the Administration; to some he actually stated this to be the fact. In case war was declared, the Administration, of course, would necessarily support Burr's attack upon the enemy; if hostilities did not occur, the "Government might overlook the preparations as in the case of Miranda."[854] It is hard to determine whether the project to invade Mexico—of which Burr did not inform them, but which they knew to be his purpose—or the plan to settle the Washita lands, was the more attractive to the young men who wished to join him. Certainly, the Bastrop grant was so placed as to afford every possible lure to the youthful, enterprising, and adventurous.[855]
At this moment Wilkinson, apparently recovered from the panic into which Clark's letter had thrown him a year before, seemed resolved at last to strike. He even wrote with enthusiasm to General John Adair: "The time long looked for by many & wished for by more has now arrived, for subverting the Spanish government in Mexico—be ready & join me; we will want little more than light armed troops.... More will be done by marching than by fighting.... We cannot fail of success.[856] Your military talents are requisite. Unless you fear to join a Spanish intriguer [Wilkinson] come immediately—without your aid I can do nothing."[857] In reply Adair wrote Wilkinson that "the United States had not declared war against Spain and he did not believe they would." If not, Adair would not violate the law by joining Wilkinson's projected attack on Spain.[858]
By the same post Wilkinson wrote to Senator John Smith a letter bristling with italics: "I shall assuredly push them [the Spaniards] over the Sabine ... as that you are alive.... You must speedily send me a force to support our pretensions ... 5000 mounted infantry ... may suffice to carry us forward as far as Grand River [the Rio Grande], there we shall require 5000 more to conduct us to Mount el Rey ... after which from 20 to 30,000 will be necessary to carry our conquests to California and the Isthmus of Darien. I write in haste, freely and confidentially, being ever your friend."[859]
In Kentucky once more the rumors sprang up that Burr meant to dismember the Union, and these were now put forward as definite charges. For months Joseph Hamilton Daveiss, a brother-in-law of John Marshall—appointed at the latter's instance by President Adams as United States Attorney for the District of Kentucky[860]—had been writing Jefferson exciting letters about some kind of conspiracy in which he was sure Burr was engaged. The President considered lightly these tales written him by one of his bitterest enemies.
With the idea of embarrassing the Republican President, by connecting him, through the Administration's seeming acquiescence in Burr's projects as in the case of the Miranda expedition, Daveiss and his relative, former Senator Humphrey Marshall—both leaders of the few Federalists now remaining in Kentucky—welded together the rumors of Burr's Mexican designs and those of his treasonable plot to separate the Western States from the Union. These they published in a newspaper which they controlled at Frankfort.[861]
The moss was removed from the ancient Spanish intrigues; Wilkinson was truthfully denounced as a pensioner of Spain; but the plot, it was charged, had veered from a union of the West with the Spanish dominions, to the establishment, by force of arms, of an independent trans-Alleghany Government.[862] The Federalist organs in the East adopted the stories related in the Western World, and laid especial emphasis on the disloyalty of the Western States, particularly of Kentucky.