Campbell turned the letter over to Jefferson. It may well have been responsible for the President’s declaration that Tennessee was faithful and “particularly General Jackson.”
At Clover Bottom Burr’s persuasiveness and apparent frankness dissipated the worst of Jackson’s suspicions. So much so that when Burr, using the boats that Jackson’s firm had built, dropped down the river, Rachel Jackson’s 17-year-old nephew, Stokely D. Hays, was permitted to go along. In later years Hays testified that he carried a letter to Governor Claiborne and that he had instructions from the Jacksons to leave the expedition if he should discover any action on its part that was inimical to the Government.
Jefferson’s expressed confidence in General Jackson, inspired by the letter to Representative Campbell, alas! came too late. All sorts of rumors were reaching the Government in Washington. One which was taken seriously came from a Captain Read, of Pittsburgh, who asserted that upon his honor he was firmly persuaded that “large bodies of troops from Tennessee, with General Andrew Jackson at their head, were in full march to join the traitors.” Perhaps Washington had also received reports of Burr’s visits to the Hermitage, which would have lent color to the charge. Indeed, Jackson’s complicity in the plot was so fully accepted in the East that the Richmond Enquirer, while rejoicing that Wilkinson had been “tampered with unsuccessfully” added that “we must acknowledge that we have entertained involuntary suspicions of him as well as of a militia general in Tennessee.” It regretted that it could not also withdraw its suspicions of the militia general.
So it came about that when Secretary of War Dearborn found it necessary to communicate with his subordinate in Tennessee on the subject of the nation’s defense, he assumed he was writing to a man whose loyalty was seriously questioned.
Prefacing his letter on his belief that an unlawful enterprise against the Government had been commenced, Dearborn stated hesitantly that “it is presumed that the Proclamation of the President ... will have produced every exertion ... and that you will have been among the most jealous opposers of any such unlawful expedition.” He then went on to say: “About Pittsburgh it is industriously reported among the adventurers, that they are to be joined, at the mouth of the Cumberland, by two regiments under the command of General Jackson.” He concluded: “... such a story might afford you an opportunity of giving an effectual check to the enterprise if not too late.”
Little did the Secretary of War understand the man to whom he was writing. The suspicion of guilt contained in the letter would have been calculated to arouse even the mildest of men. But Andrew Jackson was not a mild man. He was least mild when his honor was in question. The General took up his pen, but his emotions were too aroused to permit orderly thinking. He had to make several drafts of a reply before he settled on one that satisfied him. It would require an exhaustive search to find anywhere as bold and unrestrained an answer from a subordinate to his superior as the one Jackson directed to the Secretary of War.
Wrote Jackson: “You stand convicted of the most notorious and criminal acts of dishonor, dishonesty, want of candour and justice. You say, Sir, that it is industriously reported among the adventurers that they are to be joined at the mouth of the Cumberland by two regiments under the command of General Jackson. Such a story might afford him an opportunity of giving an effectual check to the enterprise, if not too late.
“After I have given the most deliberate consideration to your expressions ... I cannot draw from them any other conclusion but this: that you believe me concerned in the conspiracy and that I was fit subject to act the traitor of traitors, as others have done [the reference was to Wilkinson], and that the Secretary of War could buy me up without honor.” Dearborn did not answer the letter.
To his friend Patton Anderson, Jackson wrote: “I have received some communications from the President and the Secretary of War. It is the merest old-woman letter from the Secretary you ever saw.” Then he turned on Wilkinson: “Wilkinson has denounced Burr as a traitor, after he found that he was implicated. This is deep policy. He has obtained thereby the command of New Orleans, the gunboats armed; and his plan can be executed without resistance. But we must be there in due time, before our fortifications can be erected, and restore to our government New Orleans and the western commerce.” Then, as an afterthought: “The Secretary of War is not fit for a granny.”
General Jackson had taken one other precautionary measure. He had sent a messenger to Captain Bissell, who commanded the Federal post of Fort Massac on the Ohio River a short distance above its confluence with the Mississippi, warning him of the approach of Burr’s forces and urging him not to let any warlike party go past him down the river. He added that if Bissell should need help his troops were ready to march.