Madam Blennerhassett welcomes the princess mother with wide arms, and kisses the heir presumptive. Aaron decides to make the island a present headquarters. Leaving the lustrous Theo and the heir presumptive to Madam Blennerhassett, he indulges in swift, darting journeys, west and north and south. He arranges for fifteen bateaux, each to carry one hundred men, at Marietta. He crosses to Nashville to talk with Jackson, and note the progress of that lean filibusterer with the Cumberland flotilla. What he sees so pleases him that he leaves four thousand dollars—a royal sum!—with the lean Jackson, to meet initial charges in outfitting the Tennessee wing of the great enterprise.
Aaron goes to Chillicothe and talks to the Governor of Ohio. Returning, he drops over to the little huddle of huts called Cannonsburg. There he forms the acquaintance of an honest, uncouth personage named Morgan, who is eaten up of patriotism and suspicion. Morgan listens to Aaron, and decides that he is a firebrand of treason about to set the Ohio valley in a blaze. He writes these flaming fears to Jefferson—as suspicious as any Morgan!
Having aroused Morgan the wrong way,
Aaron descends to New Orleans and makes payment on those eight hundred thousand acres along the Washita. Following this real estate transaction, he hunts up the whisky-reddened Wilkinson, and offers a suggestion. As commander in chief, Wilkinson might march a brigade into the Spanish country on the Sabine, and tease and tempt the Castilians into a clash. Aaron argues that, once a brush occurs between the Spaniards and the United States, a war fury will seize the country, and furnish an admirable background of sentiment for his own descent upon Mexico. Wilkinson, full of bottle valor, receives Aaron’s suggestion with rapture, and starts for the Sabine. Wilkinson safely off for the Sabine, to bring down the desired trouble, Aaron again pushes up for Blennerhassett and that exile’s island.
While these important matters are being thus set moving war-wise, the soft-witted Blennerhassett is not idle. He writes articles for the papers, descriptive of Mexico, which he pictures as a land flowing with milk and honey. During gaps in his milk-and-honey literature, the coming ambassador buys pork and flour and corn and beans, and stores them on the island. They are to feed the expedition, when it shoves forth upon the broad Ohio in those fifteen Marietta bateaux.
Aaron gets back to the island. Accompanied by the lustrous Theo and Blennerhassett, he goes to Lexington. While there, word reaches him that Attorney Daviess, acting for the government by request of Jefferson, has moved the court at Frankfort for an order “commanding the appearance of Aaron Burr.” The letter of the suspicious Morgan to the suspicious Jefferson has fallen like seed upon good ground.
Aaron does not wait; taking with him Henry Clay as counsel, he repairs to Frankfort as rapidly as blue grass horseflesh can travel. Going into court, Aaron, with Henry Clay, routs Attorney Daviess, who intimates but does not charge treason. The judge, the grand jury, and the public give their sympathies to Aaron; following his exoneration, they promote a ball in his honor.
Recruits begin to gather; the fifteen Marietta bateaux approach completion. Aaron dispatches Samuel Swartwout and young Ogden with letters to the red-nosed, necessary Wilkinson, making mad the Spaniards on the Sabine. Also Adair and Bollman take boat for New Orleans. When Swartwout and young Ogden have departed, Aaron resumes his Marietta preparations, urging speed with those bateaux.
Swartwout reaches the red-nosed Wilkinson, and delivers Aaron’s letters. These missives find the red-nosed one in a mixed mood. His cowardice and native genius for treachery, acting lately in concert, have built up doubts within him. There are bodily perils, sure to attend upon the conquest of Mexico, which the rednosed one now hesitates to face. Why should he face them? Would he not get as much from Jefferson for betraying Aaron? He might, by a little dexterous mendacity, make the Credulous Jefferson believe that Aaron meditates a blow not at Mexico but the United States. It would permit him, the red-nosed one, to pose as the saviour of his country. And as the acknowledged saviour of his country, what might not he demand?—what might not he receive? Surely, a saved country, even a saved republic, would not be ungrateful!
The red-nosed one’s genius for treachery being thus addressed, he sends posthaste to Jefferson. He warns him that a movement is abroad to break up the Union. Every State west of the Alleghenies is to be in the revolt. Thus declares the treacherous red-nosed one, who thinks it the shorter cut to that coveted title, “Wilkinson the Deliverer, Washington of the West.” Besides, there will be the glory and sure emolument! Wilkinson the red-nosed, thinks on these things as he goes plunging Aaron and his scheme of empire into ruin.