Did Aaron Burr Really Try to Take Over Half of America?

A new book attempts to restore the reputation of the most reviled Founding Father.

Two hundred years ago today Aaron Burr was indicted for treason. The former Vice President stood accused of an outlandish plot to take over the American West and Mexico. He has always been presumed guilty, though nothing has ever been proved. Now a new biography suggests that it was all a lie, and that Burr may be the most maligned man in American history. Is this true?

Poor Burr. In the seven years before his trial he tied Thomas Jefferson in the presidential election of 1800, was demoted to Vice President in an unfair backroom deal, and shot Alexander Hamilton. By 1807 his powerful enemies were beginning to call him a traitor. Even President Jefferson made the accusation, based largely on hearsay. Aaron Burr, nearly elected the third President of the United States, was turning into something approaching a national scapegoat.

In her new biography, Fallen Founder: The Life of Aaron Burr (Viking, 544 pages, $29.95), the historian Nancy Isenberg challenges the bad reputation that has stuck to him ever since. She praises his heroism during the Revolution and his skill as a New York politician and lawyer, and she demonstrates that he possessed a concrete political philosophy. Burr is remembered mainly as Alexander Hamilton’s killer, but Isenberg shows that Hamilton had conspired to destroy his career time and again. Moreover, Hamilton got into ten other dueling challenges before he was shot at Weehawken, whereas Burr actually loudly condemned the practice.

Isenberg, who has also written about sexuality in Burr’s era, presents her subject as a feminist. He turns out to be a progressive advocate of female education and an admirer of Mary Wollstonecraft’s essay “Vindication of the Rights of Woman.” Yet such admirable traits hardly answer the most serious question: What was he planning out West?

He was certainly working on something in the forests of the Louisiana Territory. Between his 1804 duel and his 1807 trial, he moved up and down the Mississippi and Ohio rivers repeatedly. He told people he was preparing “a grand expedition.” He may have been conspiring to separate the lands he was on from the United States; he may have been plotting an invasion of Spanish Mexico. His enemies claimed he was working at both; his defenders, only the latter.

The secession of the West was hardly unimaginable then. Many Westerners were furious that their territories, not yet being states, were unprotected by the Constitution and administered by appointed officials. James Wilkinson, the governor of the Louisiana Territory, was one of the true villains of American history, a double agent for the Spanish Empire.

As for the evidence against Burr, Great Britain’s minister to America, Anthony Merry, informed London in 1805 that Burr had asked him for funding “to effect a Separation of the Western Part of the United States.” He said Burr had even requested that the Royal Navy seize the Mississippi during his takeover. Merry supported the plan. But Isenberg says Burr was merely using Merry’s dislike of the administration to fund his filibuster of Mexico.

While traveling near Pittsburgh in 1806, Burr spent the night at his old friend George Morgan’s house. Over dinner he averred that the West’s separation was inevitable and tried to recruit Morgan’s sons for his undefined expedition. His host reported this all to the government as soon as he left. Morgan had invited Aaron Burr into his home as a friend, so it’s hard to credit Isenberg’s insistence that he was biased against Burr. Still, the suspicious dinner conversation proves nothing.

Most of the remaining evidence of treason is weaker, the product of the “Burr fever” that swept the West in 1806. Newspapers published reports that he was scheming; anonymous informants contacted President Jefferson; and some even claimed that Burr was plotting to invade Washington D.C. Rumors circulated that he hoped to raise a Native American militia, or buy weapons from a corrupt Army fort. And he did, in fact, write questionable messages to Wilkinson, referring to “things improper to letter.” Again, none of this is solid evidence of a design against the government; indeed, it can be taken to support Isenberg’s description of a panicked campaign of libel against Burr.

There are reasons to doubt the anti-Burr accusations. Descriptions of the conspiracy took on absurd proportions: He was said to be plotting to capture more than 2.5 million square miles of American and Spanish territory, and he was said to be doing so openly, despite his being a first-rate lawyer and clever politician. A Mississippi militia searched his boats just before his arrest in 1807 and found no military weapons. Finally, he was tried twice in the West for the conspiracy and found innocent both times.

The acquittals did not allay Burr fever, and in 1807 he was captured and shipped east. In the process many laws were broken. Wilkinson turned on him, arrested his associates, and declared martial law in New Orleans. Jefferson publicly proclaimed his former Vice President’s guilt, biasing the investigation. The U.S. Senate tried to suspend habeas corpus to hold Burr and his friends; the House defeated the move.

Two hundred years ago Aaron Burr was taken east to Virginia in a cage (he had repeatedly tried to escape—sure evidence of either his guilt or his resistance to wrongful arrest, depending on which side you take). His trial in Richmond pitted a former Vice President against the President. It was presided over by the chief justice, John Marshall (a friend of Burr’s), involved four past, present, and future U.S. attorneys general in various roles, and was attended by prominent spectators from Andrew Jackson to Washington Irving.

Marshall began by setting out a working definition of treason that narrowly defined the crime as open military preparation for war. Treason, he wrote, “may be machinated in secret but it can be perpetuated only in the open day.” Noting Burr’s lack of either soldiers or weapons, the justice asked, “What kind of invisible army must this have been?”

A hundred and forty witnesses were listed by the prosecution, and those called offered hearsay but no concrete evidence that met Marshall’s standard. The prosecution relied mainly on the testimony of James Wilkinson and William Eaton. Eaton, a hero of the recent Barbary War, had returned to America an alcoholic known for belligerent, paranoid rants. His accusations probably helped Burr. Wilkinson was no stronger. He was widely disliked and widely thought of as a co-conspirator of Burr’s.

Burr sat in the courtroom, clad in black silk, and watched his reputation crumble. The court held him innocent until proven guilty, but there was no due process in the national press. Three months after his May 22 indictment, he was acquitted, but his name never recovered.

Though innocent of treason, Burr had definitely plotted an invasion of Mexico, which can explain his suspicious letters to Wilkinson and to Merry. He confessed that plan to future President Andrew Jackson, sent supplies downriver, lobbied the American and British navies for help, and corresponded with Mexican priests who promised local support. Worst of all, he often told Americans in the West that he was acting as an authorized agent of the federal government.

His Mexico scheme would have had terrible consequences for the young republic. An invasion would have forced America into an unwanted war with Spain and its ally France. The neutrality Jefferson had fought so hard to maintain during the Napoleonic wars would have been undone. Ludicrously, invading Mexico was only a misdemeanor at the time; nonetheless, Burr is clearly not the slandered saint Nancy Isenberg suggests. His Mexico plot, while neither treasonous nor felonious, was extremely dangerous.

Aaron Burr is remembered today for the treason he didn’t commit and the duel he didn’t want. Isenberg works hard to rehabilitate the fallen founder, but his bad image is partially his own fault. He refused to publicly defend himself and never wrote his own account of events. He came to regret this. Late in his life he wrote, “I fear I have committed a great error; the men who knew their falsity are dead, and the generation who now read them may take them for truths, being uncontradicted.” Finally, Nancy Isenberg contradicts many of the truths we always knew about him.

—Jon Grinspan lives in New York City and writes for Military History magazine.