This report proved correct. The great Territory of Louisiana had been ceded to the United States for eighty million francs.
On Tuesday, December 20, 1803, the United States took possession by her two commissioners, William C. Claiborne and General James Wilkinson.
[pg 312]
CHAPTER XX.—Another Conspiracy.
On Saturday, March 2, 1805, at the close of the administration, Vice-President Burr took formal leave of the United States Senate. The Washington Federalist referring to his farewell address, declared it “* * * the most dignified, sublime and impressive ever uttered. * * * The whole Senate was in tears and so unmanned that it was half an hour before they could recover themselves sufficiently to come to order and choose a vice-president pro tem.”
Yet his great abilities were marred by an instinct for traitorous intrigue and an unconscionable untrustworthiness which made his life a failure.
Upon retirement, he felt forced to shift his residence and at the suggestion of his friend, General James Wilkinson, a man much more dangerous and less trustworthy than Burr and at the time chief officer of the United States Army, he traveled westward with the presumed intent of establishing his domicile at Nashville.
Many who know Wilkinson’s secret history, now believe that even then he had instigated Burr to the adoption of his traitorous plot to drive Spain from North America and establish a great empire; which in due course was to take over the Western Country and if expedient, by force of arms, would then spread its dominion eastward to the Atlantic.
On April 10, Burr left Philadelphia for Pittsburgh, where he arrived on the 29th, and the next day purchasing an ark or house boat, left for Kentucky.
[pg 313] As illustrating the purchasing power of the dollar in those days, the ark, which was sixty feet long, fourteen wide and had four rooms or compartments with glass windows, cost one hundred and thirty-three dollars.