“After a desultory conversation, in which I aimed to draw his attention to the West, I took the liberty of suggesting to the President that I thought Colonel Burr ought to be removed from the country, because I considered him dangerous in it. The President asked where he should send him. I said to England or Madrid.... The President, without any positive expression, in such a matter of delicacy, seemed to think the trust too important, and expressed something like a doubt about the integrity of Mr. Burr. I frankly told the President that perhaps no person had stronger grounds to suspect that integrity than I had; but that I believed his pride of ambition had so predominated over his other passions that when placed on an eminence and put on his honor, a respect to himself would secure his fidelity. I perceived that the subject was disagreeable to the President; and to bring him to my point in the shortest mode, and in a manner which would point to the danger, I said to him, if Colonel Burr was not disposed of, we should in eighteen months have an insurrection, if not a revolution, on the waters of the Mississippi. The President said he had too much confidence in the information, the integrity, and attachment of the people of that country to the Union, to admit any apprehensions of that kind.”
If the President had confidence in the people of New Orleans, he had not shown it in framing a form of government for them; and if he admitted no apprehensions in March, 1806, he admitted many before the year closed. In truth, he deceived himself. That he was afraid of Burr and of the sympathy which Burr’s career had excited, was the belief of Burr himself, who responded to Jefferson’s caution by a contempt so impudent as to seem even then almost incredible. Believing that the President dared not touch him, Burr never cared to throw even a veil over his treason. He used the President’s name and the names of his Cabinet officers as freely as though he were President himself; and no one contradicted or disavowed him. So matters remained at Washington down to the close of the session.
“I detailed,” said Eaton,[169] “the whole projects of Mr. Burr to certain members of Congress. They believed Colonel Burr capable of anything, and agreed that the fellow ought to be hanged, but thought his projects too chimerical, and his circumstances too desperate, to give the subject the merit of serious consideration.”
CHAPTER XI.
The death of Pitt destroyed all immediate possibility of drawing England into conspiracy with Burr,—if indeed a possibility had ever existed. The attempt to obtain money from Spain was equally hopeless. Except for Madison’s conduct in receiving Miranda and refusing to receive Yrujo, Dayton would probably have obtained nothing from Spain; but the information he was able to give Yrujo in regard to Miranda’s plans and proceedings deserved reward, and Dayton received at different times sums of money, amounting in all to about three thousand dollars, from the Spanish treasury. Dayton’s private necessities required much larger sums.
Burr was also ruined. He could not return to New York, where an indictment hung over his head. Conspiracy was easier than poverty; but conspiracy without foreign aid was too wild a scheme for other men to join. Jefferson might at that moment have stopped Burr’s activity by sending word privately to him and his friends that their projects must be dropped; but Jefferson, while closing every other path, left that of conspiracy open to Burr, who followed it only with much difficulty. In order to retain any friends or followers he was obliged to deceive them all, and entangle himself and them in an elaborate network of falsehood. Dayton alone knew the truth, and helped him to deceive.
April 16, 1806, a few days before the adjournment of Congress, Burr wrote to Wilkinson a letter implying that Wilkinson had required certain conditions and an enlargement of the scheme; Burr assured him that his requirements, which probably concerned aid from Truxton, Preble, Eaton, and Decatur, had been fully satisfied:—
“The execution of our project is postponed till December. Want of water in Ohio rendered movement impracticable; other reasons rendered delay expedient. The association is enlarged, and comprises all that Wilkinson could wish. Confidence limited to a few. Though this delay is irksome, it will enable us to move with more certainty and dignity. Burr will be throughout the United States this summer. Administration is damned which Randolph aids. Burr wrote you a long letter last December, replying to a short one deemed very silly. Nothing has been heard from the Brigadier since October. Is Cushing and Porter right? Address Burr at Washington.”[170]
Burr’s letters to Wilkinson were always in cipher, and mysteriously worded; but in this despatch nothing was unintelligible. Wilkinson afterward explained that he was himself the “Brigadier,” and the two names were those of officers under his command.
The same western mail which carried this letter to Wilkinson carried another to Blennerhassett, inviting him to join in a “speculation,” which would “not be commenced before December, if ever.” Probably Burr made many other efforts to obtain money from petty sources; he certainly exerted himself to delude the Spanish government into lending him assistance. Hitherto he had left this task to Dayton, his secretary of state, but May 14, 1806, the Spanish minister wrote to Don Pedro Cevallos,[171]—