Creditable as these expeditions were to American energy and enterprise, they added little to the stock of science or wealth. Many years must elapse before the vast region west of the Mississippi could be brought within reach of civilization. The crossing of the continent was a great feat, but was nothing more. The French explorers had performed feats almost as remarkable long before; but, in 1805, the country they explored was still a wilderness. Great gains to civilization could be made only on the Atlantic coast under the protection of civilized life. For many years to come progress must still centre in the old thirteen States of the Union. The expeditions of Lewis and Pike returned no immediate profits; but in the city of New York men were actively engaged in doing what Lewis could not do,—bringing the headwaters of the western rivers within reach of private enterprise and industry. While Lewis slowly toiled up the Missouri River, thinking himself fortunate if he gained twenty miles a day against the stream, the engine which Robert Fulton had ordered from the works of Watt and Bolton in England had been made, and Fulton returned to New York to superintend its use. With the money of Chancellor Livingston he began to construct the hull of his new steamboat and adjust it to the engine.
The greatest steps in progress were often unconsciously taken, and Fulton’s steamboat was an example of this rule. Neither in private talk nor in the newspapers did his coming experiment rouse much notice. To the public, Fulton’s idea, though visionary, was not new. Indeed Fulton stood in imminent danger of being forestalled by rivals. In 1804 Oliver Evans experimented with a stern-wheel steamboat on the Delaware River, while at the same time John C. Stevens was experimenting with a screw-propeller on the Hudson. Nothing practical had as yet come from these attempts. The public seemed to regard them as matters which did not concern it, and the few thousand dollars needed to pay for a proper engine and hull could with difficulty be wrung from capitalists, who were derided for their folly. Fulton worked with better support than his predecessors had enjoyed, but with little encouragement or show of interest from the press or the public.
So far as concerned activity of mind, politics still engrossed public attention. The summer of 1806, quiet and prosperous as it seemed, betrayed uneasiness,—a mysterious political activity, connected with no legitimate purpose of party. Except in Connecticut and Massachusetts, the Federalists, as an organized body, could hardly be said to exist. Democrats, Republicans, and Federalists were divided for the moment rather by social distinctions than by principle; but the division was not the less real. Every year added strength to the national instinct; but every year brought also a nearer certainty that the denationalizing forces, whether in New England under Timothy Pickering, or in Virginia under John Randolph, or in Louisiana under some adventurer, would make an effort to break the chain that hampered local interests and fettered private ambition. Under a Virginia President and a slave-owning majority of Congress, the old anti-national instinct of Virginia was paralyzed, and the dangers to rise from it were postponed; but the freer play was given to the passions of Boston and New Orleans,—to the respectable seditiousness of Timothy Pickering and the veneered profligacy of Aaron Burr. The time had come when Burr was to bring his conspiracy to the test of action, and to try the strength of a true democracy. During the autumn of 1806 Burr’s projects and movements roused a sudden panic, less surprising than the tolerance with which his conspiracy had been so long treated by the President and the press.
CHAPTER X.
When Burr ceased to be Vice-President of the United States, March 4, 1805, he had already made himself intimate with every element of conspiracy that could be drawn within his reach. The list of his connections might have startled Jefferson, if the President’s easy optimism had not been proof to fears. In London, Burr’s friend Colonel Williamson confided his plans to Pitt and Lord Melville. At Washington the British minister, Merry, wrote to Lord Mulgrave in support of Williamson’s negotiation. The creole deputies from New Orleans were Burr’s friends, and Derbigny was acquainted with “certain projects” he entertained. General Wilkinson, governor of the Louisiana Territory, whose headquarters were at St. Louis, closely attached to Burr almost from childhood, stood ready for any scheme that promised to gratify inordinate ambition. James Brown, Secretary of the Territory, was Burr’s creature. Judge Prevost, of the Superior Court at New Orleans, was Burr’s stepson. Jonathan Dayton, whose term as senator ended the same day with Burr’s vice-presidency, shared and perhaps suggested the “projects.” John Smith, the senator from Ohio, was under the influence of Burr and Dayton. John Adair of Kentucky was in Wilkinson’s confidence. The Swartwouts in New York, with the “little band” who made Burr their idol, stood ready to follow him wherever he might lead. In South Carolina Joseph Allston, the husband of Theodosia Burr, might be induced to aid his father-in-law; and Allston was supposed to be the richest planter in the South, worth a million of dollars in slaves and plantations. The task of uniting these influences and at a given moment raising the standard of a new empire in the Mississippi Valley seemed to an intriguer of Burr’s metal not only feasible, but certain of success.
After the parting interview with Merry in March, 1805, when they arranged terms to be asked of the British government, Burr went to Philadelphia, and in April crossed the mountains to Pittsburg, on his way to New Orleans. Wilkinson was to have joined him; but finding that Wilkinson had been delayed, Burr went on alone. Floating down the Ohio, his ark lashed to that of Matthew Lyon, he first stopped a few hours at an island about two miles below Parkersburg, where an Irish gentleman named Blennerhassett lived, and where he had spent a sum, for that day considerable, in buildings and improvements. The owner was absent; but Mrs. Blennerhassett was at home, and invited Burr to dinner. The acquaintance thus begun proved useful to him. Passing to Cincinnati, he became, May 11, 1805, a guest in the house of Senator Smith. Dayton was already there; but Wilkinson arrived a few days later, after Burr had gone on by land to Nashville. Wilkinson publicly talked much of a canal around the Falls of the Ohio River, to explain the community of interest which seemed to unite himself with Burr, Dayton, and Senator Smith; but privately he wrote, May 28, to John Adair, soon to be Breckenridge’s successor as senator from Kentucky: “I was to have introduced my friend Burr to you; but in this I failed by accident. He understands your merits, and reckons on you. Prepare to visit me, and I will tell you all. We must have a peep at the unknown world beyond me.”
Meanwhile Burr reached Nashville in Tennessee, where he was received with enthusiastic hospitality. Every one at or near the town seemed to contend for the honor of best treating or serving him.[152] Dinners were given, toasts were drunk; the newspapers were filled with his doings. No one equalled Andrew Jackson in warmth of devotion to Colonel Burr. At all times of his life Jackson felt sympathy with a duellist who had killed his man; but if his support was enlisted for the duellist who had killed Hamilton, his passions were excited in favor of the man who should drive the Spaniards from America; and Burr announced that this was to be the mission of his life. As major-general of the Tennessee militia, Jackson looked forward to sharing this exploit.
After spending a week or more at Nashville, Burr descended in one of General Jackson’s boats to the mouth of the Cumberland, where his ark was waiting; and June 6 he joined General Wilkinson at Fort Massac,—a military post on the north shore of the Ohio River, a few miles above its junction with the Mississippi. The two men remained together at Massac four days, and Burr wrote to his daughter, Mrs. Allston: “The General and his officers fitted me out with an elegant barge,—sails, colors, and ten oars,—with a sergeant and ten able, faithful hands. Thus equipped, I left Massac on the 10th June.” Wilkinson supplied him also with a letter of introduction to Daniel Clark, the richest and most prominent American in New Orleans. Dated June 9, 1805, it announced that the bearer would carry secrets. “To him I refer you for many things improper to letter, and which he will not say to any other.”
While Burr went down the river to New Orleans, Wilkinson turned northward to St. Louis, where he arrived July 2. He was in high spirits and indiscreet. Two of his subordinate officers, Major Hunt and Major Bruff, afterward told how he sounded them,—and Major Bruff’s evidence left no doubt that Wilkinson shared in the ideas of Burr and Dayton; that he looked forward to a period of anarchy and confusion in the Eastern States, as the result of democracy; and that he intended to set up a military empire in Louisiana. Already, June 24, he signed Lieutenant Pike’s instructions to explore the headwaters of the Arkansas River. Adair, certainly in the secret, believed the object of this expedition to be the opening of a road to Santa Fé and to the mines of Mexico.[153] Every recorded letter or expression of Wilkinson during the spring and summer of 1805 showed that he was in the confidence of Burr and Dayton; that he gave them active aid in their scheme for severing the Union; and that they in their turn embraced his project of Mexican conquest.
Burr reached New Orleans June 25, 1805, and remained a fortnight, entertained by the enemies of Governor Claiborne and of the Spaniards. Conspiracies were commonly most active and most dangerous when most secret; and the mark of secrecy, almost wholly wanting to this conspiracy in the Northern States, was never removed, by any public inquiry or admission, from its doings at New Orleans. According to the story afterward told by Wilkinson on the evidence of Lieutenant Spence, Burr on his arrival in Louisiana became acquainted with the so-called Mexican Association,—a body of some three hundred men, leagued together for the emancipation of Mexico from Spanish rule.[154] Of this league Daniel Clark afterward declared that he was not a member; but if his safety as a merchant required him to keep aloof, his sympathies were wholly with the Association. After Burr’s arrival, and under his influence, the scheme of disunion was made a part of the Mexican plan; and these projects soon became so well known in New Orleans as to reach the ears of the Spanish agents and excite their suspicions, until Clark two months later complained to Wilkinson that Burr’s indiscretion was bringing them all into danger.[155] Clark’s letter was written as though he were an innocent bystander annoyed at finding himself included in an imaginary conspiracy against the Spanish government. In truth it seemed also to be written as a warning to Burr against trusting a certain “Minor of Natchez”:—