ST. LOUIS was then a little frontier hamlet of maybe a thousand people of all sorts—French, Spanish, American, negro slaves, and Indians. The houses were built on a bottom or terrace at the foot of a limestone cliff and arranged along a few streets with French names. The chief occupation of the people was the fur trade, and to them the reports brought back by Lewis and Clark were so exciting that the St. Louis Fur Company was organized to hunt and trap on the upper Missouri.
[Illustration: BRANDING IRON USED BY LEWIS.]
REFORMS IN THE STATES.—During the years which had passed since the adoption of the Federal Constitution, great political reforms had been made. The doctrine that all men are born politically equal was being put into practice, and the states had begun to reform their old constitutions or to adopt new ones, abolishing religious qualifications for officeholders or voters, [12] and doing away with the property qualifications formerly required of voters. [13] Some states had reformed their laws for punishing crime, had reduced the number of crimes punishable with death from fifteen or twenty to one or two, and had abolished whipping, branding, cutting off the ears, and other cruel punishments of colonial times. The right of man to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness was more fully recognized than ever before.
REFORMS IN THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT.—When the Republican party came into power in 1801, it was pledged to make reforms "to put the ship of state," as Jefferson said, "on the Republican tack." About a third of the important Federalist office-holders were accordingly removed from office, the annual speech at the opening of Congress was abolished, and the written message introduced—a custom followed ever since by our Presidents. Internal taxes were repealed, the army was reduced, [14] the cost of government lessened, and millions of dollars set aside annually for the payment of the national debt.
That there might never again be such a contested election as that of 1800, Congress submitted to the states an amendment to the Constitution providing that the electors should vote for President and Vice President on separate ballots, and not as theretofore on the same ballot. The states promptly ratified, and as the Twelfth Amendment it went into force in 1804 in time for the election of that year.
JEFFERSON REËLECTED.—The Federalist candidates for President and Vice
President in 1804 were Charles C. Pinckney and Rufus King; but the
Republican candidates, Thomas Jefferson and George Clinton, [15] were
elected by a very large majority.
BURR KILLS HAMILTON.—Vice-President Burr, who had consented to be a candidate for the presidency in 1801 (p. 235) against Jefferson, had never been forgiven by his party, and had ever since been a political outcast. His friends in New York, however, nominated him for governor and tried to get the support of the Federalists, but Hamilton sought to prevent this. After Burr was defeated he challenged Hamilton to a duel (July, 1804) and killed him.
BURR'S CONSPIRACY.—Fearing arrest for murder, Burr fled to Philadelphia and applied to the British minister for British help in effecting "a separation of the western part of the United States from that which lies between the Atlantic and the mountains"; for he believed the people in Orleans territory were eager to throw off American rule. After the end of his term as Vice President (March 4, 1805) Burr went west and came back with a scheme for conquering a region in the southwest, enlisted a few men in his enterprise, assembled them at Blennerhassets Island in the Ohio River (a few miles below Marietta), and (in December, 1806) started for New Orleans. The boats with men and arms floated down the Ohio, entered the Mississippi, and were going down that river when General James Wilkinson, a fellow-conspirator, betrayed the scheme to Jefferson. Burr was arrested and sent to Virginia, charged with levying war against the United States, which was treason, and with setting on foot a military expedition against the dominions of the king of Spain, which was a "high misdemeanor." Of the charge of treason Burr was acquitted; that of high misdemeanor was sent to a court in Ohio for trial, and came to naught. [16]
[Illustration: BURR'S GRAVE AT PRINCETON, N. J.]