“Lexington, Oct. 26, 1806.
“Dear Sir: I was greatly surprised and really hurt by the unusual tenor of your letter of the 23d, and I hasten to reply to it, as well for your satisfaction as my own. If there exists any design to separate the Western from the Eastern States, I am totally ignorant of it; I never harbored or expressed any such intention to any one, nor did any one ever intimate such design to me. Indeed, I have no conception of any mode in which such a measure could be promoted, except by operating on the minds of the people, and demonstrating it to be their interest. I have never written or published a line on this subject, nor ever expressed any other sentiments than those which you may have heard from me in public companies at Washington and elsewhere, and in which I think you concurred.[†] It is a question on which I feel no interest, and certainly I never sought a conversation upon it with any one; but, even if I had written and talked ever so much of the matter, it could not be deemed criminal.
“But the idea, I am told, which some malevolent persons circulate, is, that a separation is to be effected by force; this appears to me to be as absurd and as unworthy of contradiction, as if I had been charged with a design to change the planetary system. All the armies of France could not effect such a purpose, because they could not get here; and if they could get here, they could not subsist, and if they could subsist, they would certainly be destroyed.
“I have no political views whatever; those which I entertained some months ago, and which were communicated to you, have been abandoned.[‡]
“Having bought of Colonel Lynch four hundred thousand acres of land on the Washita, I propose to send thither this fall a number of settlers, as many as will go and labor for a certain time, to be paid in land and found in provisions for the time they labor—perhaps one year. Mr. J. Breckenridge, Adair, and Fowler, have separately told me that it was the strong desire of the Administration that American settlers should go into that quarter, and that I could not do a thing more grateful to the Government. I have some other views which are personal merely, and which I shall have no objection to state to you personally, but which I do not deem it necessary to publish; if these projects could any way affect the interests of the United States it would be beneficially, yet I acknowledge that no public considerations have led me to this speculation, but merely the interest and comfort of myself and my friends.
“This is the first letter of explanation which I have ever written to any man, and will probably be the last. It was perhaps due to the frankness of your character, and to the friendship you once bore me. I shall regret to see that a friendship I so greatly valued must be sacrificed on the altars of calumny.
“Be assured that no changes on your part can ever alter my desire of being useful to you; and pray you to accept my warmest wishes for your happiness.
“A. BURR.
“It may be an unnecessary caution, but I never write for publication.
“Hon. John Smith.”