The President assured Congress that "one of these was the severance of the Union of these States beyond the Alleghany mountains; the other, an attack on Mexico. A third object was provided ... the settlement of a pretended purchase of a tract of country on the Washita." But "this was merely a pretext." Burr had soon found that the Western settlers were not to be seduced into secession; and thereupon, said Jefferson, the desperado "determined to seize upon New Orleans, plunder the bank there, possess himself of the military and naval stores, and proceed on his expedition to Mexico." For this purpose Burr had "collected ... all the ardent, restless, desperate, and disaffected persons" within his reach.
Therefore the President made his Proclamation of November 27, which had thwarted Burr's purposes. In New Orleans, however, General Wilkinson had been forced to take extreme measures for the defense of the country against the oncoming plunderers. Among these was the seizure of Bollmann and Swartwout who were "particularly employed in the endeavor to corrupt the General and the Army of the United States," and who had been sent oversea by Wilkinson for "ports in the Atlantic states, probably on the consideration that an impartial trial could not be expected ... in New Orleans, and that the city was not as yet a safe place of confinement."[913]
As to Burr, Jefferson assured Congress that his "guilt is placed beyond question."[914]
With this amazing Message the President sent an affidavit of Wilkinson's, as well as two letters from that veracious officer,[915] and a copy of Wilkinson's version of Burr's letter to him from which the General had carefully omitted the fact that the imprudent message was in answer to a dispatch from himself. But Jefferson did not transmit to Congress the letter, dated October 21, 1806, which he had received from Wilkinson.
Thoughtful men, who had personally studied Burr for years and who were unfriendly to him, doubted the accuracy of Wilkinson's version of the Burr dispatch: "It sounds more like Wilkinson's letter than Burr's," Senator Plumer records in his diary. "There are ... some things in it quite irrelevant.... Burr's habits have been never to trust himself on paper, if he could avoid it—when he wrote, it was with great caution.... Wilkinson is not an accurate correct man."[916]
No such doubts, however, assailed the eager multitude. The awful charge of treason had now been formally made against Burr by the President of the United States. This, the most sensational part of Jefferson's Message, at once caught and held the attention of the public, which took for granted the truth of it. From that moment the popular mind was made up, and the popular voice demanded the life of Aaron Burr. No mere trial in court, no adherence to rules of evidence, no such insignificant fact as the American Constitution, must be permitted to stand between the people's aroused loyalty and the miscreant whom the Chief Executive of the Nation had pronounced guilty of treason.
FOOTNOTES:
[752] "We were all deeply affected, and many shed tears." (Plumer to his wife, March 2, 1805, Plumer, 331; and see Memoirs, J. Q. A.: Adams, i, 367.)
"Tears did flow abundantly." (Burr to his daughter, March 13, 1805, Davis, ii, 360.)
[753] "There was nothing written or prepared.... It was the solemnity, the anxiety, the expectation, and the interest which I saw strongly painted in the countenances of the auditors, that inspired whatever was said." (Ib. 360.)