Aside from a handful of dissenting voices, no one in America disputes the ignominious role assigned Benedict Arnold in the annals of American history. Arnold, a general in the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War, switched sides and took British money to divulge American military intelligence, even offering to trade West Point to the invading British. Benedict Arnold is a name synonymous with treason in the hearts of Americans…needless to say there are no “Benedict Arnold High Schools” in the US! Aaron Burr’s career on the other hand is more complicated. Though also considered a traitor by many, Burr is not as black-and-white a candidate for the US historic hall of infamy. Burr started out, like Arnold, somewhat of a hero during the revolution, then quit the fighting to practice as a lawyer and then enter politics. Burr was successful enough to (twice) run for president of the United States, on the second occasion managing to tie with Thomas Jefferson in the electoral college vote. As vice-president under an increasingly distrustful Jefferson, he found himself on the outer, excluded from involvement in White House politics.
Plagued by a sequence of political reversals𝕒 and heavily in debt, Burr turned his back on mainstream US politics and changed course to pursue other ambitions of an extra-political and illicit nature. The former vice-president left Washington DC and headed west, this is where the narrative of his controversial activities takes on a nebulous complexion.
Burr’s grand scheme X?: No one knows definitively what Burr’s intentions were after 1804, but allegations of nefarious machinations orchestrated by him were legend. Some of his accusers claimed that Burr’s plan was to annex Texas for himself or to incite the southern states and territories (Mississippi, Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, Louisiana) to secede from the United States, creating a new independent country with the former VP at the helm. Another allegation spoke of a grander plan to conquer Mexico by triggering a secessionist movement and establishing an empire for himself. Some opponents speculated that Burr wanted to attack New Orleans or seize the Florida peninsula from Spain𝕓. Burr’s own version of his post-politics plans was that he was heading south-west to farm 40,000 acres in the Spanish colony of Texas which had been supposedly leased to him by the Spanish Crown.
What is known is that Burr sensed the opportunity for wealth and glory in the west, embarking on an “expedition” of sorts with the recruitment of a fighting force𝕔, rather than farming, on his mind. He also sought money for a great “enterprise” from prominent people (Southern planters, sympathetic politicians). Burr engaged a co-conspirator, bringing General James Wilkinson𝕕, a US Army senior officer, on board to give weight to his planned illegal operations. At the same time Burr established international connexions with British officials, Spanish ministers and even Mexican revolutionaries. The British ambassador’s account of their conversation revealed Burr’s offer to the British to wrest control of the Southwest and Louisiana from the US and hand it Britain. The price? A hefty sum of money and an armed force supplied by Britain. The ambassador’s masters in London however showed no interest in Burr’s scheme, nor did the Spanish government in Madrid. Burr also met with a group of criollos whose objective was to capture Mexico from the Spanish, but again nothing tangible came of this.
A question of definitions: Before Burr could launch any part of his grand and ambitious masterplan he was undone by his co-conspirator. General Wilkinson having lost faith in Burr’s wild scheme sent President Jefferson a confidential, coded letter incriminating Burr. Burr was hunted down and eventually captured by US authorities in Louisiana. A Virginian federal court trial was arraigned in 1807 with the charge against Burr treason. Jefferson was hell-bent on prosecuting Burr and unconcerned about breaking the law to do it, however presiding Supreme Court Justice John Marshall had his own ideas of how things should proceed. Marshall applied the strictest definition of treason in accordance with the Constitution’s treason clause—interpreting it as the accused needing to be guilty of “the act of actually levying war” for treason to be proven —and accordingly found Burr not guilty (‘Aaron Burr’s trial and the Constitution’s treason clause’, Scott Bomboy, National Constitution Center, 01-Sep-2023, http://consitutioncenter.org).
Coda: Having escaped the treason charge Burr was soon to discover he had been convicted in the court of public opinion…across America effigies of him were burned and additional charges were brought by individual states. Faced with such threats and his dreams of”glory and fortune” in tatters, persona non grata Burr, fled this time to Europe where he tried unsuccessfully to convince the English and French to back his new plots to invade North America. By 1812 he had returned to New York and recommenced practicing law in relative obscurity under a different name – “Aaron Edwards” (‘The Burr Conspiracy, PBS, www.pbs.org).
Endnote: Rehabilitating Burr?: Writers and historians since Burr’s time have tended to depict Burr as an unprincipled villain and a betrayer of the Republic. Swimming resolutely against this tsunami-like tide is Nancy Isenberg’s revisionist take on the least admired founding father, she states that “Burr was no less a patriot…and a principled thinker than those who debased him”. She also challenges the popular view that he ever planned a grand conspiracy or intended to instal himself as emperor of Mexico. Isenberg adds that rather than being a womaniser as his enemies claim, Burr was something of a proto-feminist (although this begs a glaring question: how does this assessment square with the flagrant mismanagement of his wealthy second wife’s fortune?). That he has been so comprehensively vilified by historians, Isenberg contends, owes to the usefulness of (a morally flawed) Burr as a foil, making the other founding fathers𝕖 (Washington, Jefferson, Madison, etc.) look virtuous by comparison (N Isenberg, Fallen Founder: The Life of Aaron Burr, (2007)).
𝕒 his loss in the 1804 New York gubernatorial election and the notoriety and odium heaped on him after his tragic duel with Alexander Hamilton sealed his political demise
𝕓 at one point Burr told Spanish officials that his plan was not just western secession but that he wanted to capture Washington DC itself
𝕔 in which he was only modestly successful
𝕕 himself a double agent for Spain
𝕖 a theme previously pursued in Gore Vidal’s 1973 historical novel Burr…Vidal skewers the founding fathers’ traditionalist, mythical iconography, portraying Washington and his ilk as all too humanly fallible
