Flight of the Eagle. Conrad Black
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and established a stable republic with solid institutions and a strong currency, and more than doubled their original territory, peacefully. It had been a steadily more remarkable series of strategic successes, accomplished by a continuously remarkable group of men.
9. HAMILTON AND BURR
Jefferson’s next foray into westward expansionism was the dispatch of the expedition of Merriweather Lewis and William Clark to the Pacific and back. Lewis was a military officer and had been assigned as an aide to Jefferson when he became president. Jefferson had never been west of the Appalachians, but his father had been a surveyor who had glimpsed the Ohio country and Jefferson had long cherished a powerful and romantic notion of the potential for the westward expansion of the country. Jefferson proposed to Lewis a full scientific and exploratory expedition to the Pacific coast, which had never been reached overland from America, only by the Scot Alexander Mackenzie in Canada. Lewis agreed and selected William Clark, a fellow army officer, as co-leader. The expedition was expanded to 26 people, including scientists, experts in Indian languages, and a contingent of soldiers trained in frontier life. They set off from St. Louis in the spring of 1804, and after 1,600 miles went into winter quarters in November near what became Bismarck, North Dakota. They resumed their westward progress in April 1805, and reached the Pacific Ocean on November 15. The return journey to St. Louis, Missouri, from March to September 1806, was more direct. The maps, wildlife and botanical drawings, and diaries were of scientific value and captured the imagination of the country by focusing on the immense and abundant territory that beckoned to settlers (however disgruntled the indigenous population might be about it).
Jefferson’s war with the Federalists, and settling of scores generally, ramified quite widely. His supporters successfully impeached and removed from office federal district judge John Pickering, and impeached but failed to remove Associate Supreme Court Justice Samuel Chase, who had condemned the malcontent John Fries and the scurrilous blackmailer James T. Callender.
After Aaron Burr had abruptly metamorphosed from a vice presidential into a presidential candidate in early 1801, there was a widespread feeling not only that he was a scoundrel but that the system was a disaster of intrigue and chaos waiting to happen. The response was the Twelfth Amendment to the Constitution, providing for separate balloting for president and vice president, which was ratified in September 1804, in time for the presidential election.
As the 1804 election approached, both Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr vanished from the political front lines, where they had long been prominent. Hamilton was one of the leaders of the Federalists in denying Burr the governorship of New York, which he sought when long-serving Governor George Clinton was tapped by Jefferson to take Burr’s place as vice president. (John Jay only held the office for one term.) Hamilton joined the Republicans in crusading for Burr’s opponent, Morgan Lewis. In one of his frequent effusions, Hamilton, twiddling his thumbs impatiently in New York while Jefferson lolled in the newly completed White House, denounced Burr—who was infuriated at the imputations to him of unscrupulousness and even treachery, and at being frozen entirely out of government by Jefferson—as “a dangerous man, and one who ought not to be trusted with the reins of government.” In the manner of the times, this led to a duel, in which, at Weehawken, New Jersey, on July 11, 1804, Burr killed Hamilton. Thus, aged only 49, there perished the third of the six principal founders of the country. Hamilton was almost a demiurge, a financial and administrative genius and a very capable military officer in both staff and combat roles. He was a relentless political schemer and operator, and when not grounded by Washington, tended to fly off unguided, combustible, and with unpredictable results. He was a monarchist and an authoritarian at heart, but he had rendered immense services to the country and glimpsed more clearly than anyone else the true and necessary development of the American economy.
Of the other principal figures at the birth of the republic apart from Washington, Franklin, and Hamilton, Adams had retired, but Jefferson and Madison remained in great offices with work to do. Aaron Burr, who had been a brilliant politician and was a gifted lawyer and inveterate schemer, was finished politically. Having been judged guilty of trying to snitch away from Jefferson his election victory in 1800, and now having killed Hamilton, he was not presentable for high office, and wandered off to the West with great but, some thought, sinister ambitions. A helplessly controversial person, Burr would be back before the country soon again, in an exotic and unflattering light.
The disillusioned editor Callender, imprisoned under the Sedition Act, became annoyed that the administration would not repay him his fine and attacked Jefferson for fathering three children with his comely slave, Sally Hemings. Jefferson ignored the allegation, which was not reprinted in respectable publications and was dismissed as the malicious scandal-mongering of a convicted felon, who in any case died in July 1803 when he blundered into a river in Richmond, Virginia, in a drunken stupor. (Callender’s allegations were correct, but not strictly relevant to Jefferson’s competence to hold his office, legally or otherwise.)
General Charles Cotesworth Pinckney was nominated by the Federalists for president, and the Hamiltonian disciple and anti-slavery advocate Rufus King, minister to Great Britain and former senator from New York, was nominated for vice president. There was not really too much to run against, as Jefferson offered peace, prosperity, and a distinguished, unpretentious government, and he and Clinton won easily, 162 electoral votes to 14, and with about 72 percent of the votes.
After the death of Hamilton, Burr was indicted for murder but continued for eight months to be the vice president, in which capacity he presided in very statesmanlike and learned fashion over the impeachment trial of Justice Chase, which, to Jefferson’s acute irritation, ended in acquittal. Burr devised his next and perhaps most grandiose plan. He spoke with the British and Spanish ministers to Washington about subsidizing the creation of a new jurisdiction that Burr would set up in the Southwest. Neither the subsequent judicial proceedings nor the efforts of historians have clarified whether Burr had any treasonable intent. The American military commander in the southern Mississippi region, General James Wilkinson (who commissioned Lieutenant Zebulon Montgomery Pike’s expedition to the sources of the Mississippi and to Colorado, where Pike’s Peak is named after him, and New Mexico, in 1806–1807), was illicitly taking competing emoluments from the French, British, and Spanish, to keep an eye out for their interests in the Southwest. Burr, a great national celebrity, much admired in some circles for clearing his honor by killing an illustrious opponent in a duel, padded around the area and supplied arms from his own resources to the Louisiana militia, and added his own tangible favors to those Wilkinson was receiving from foreign powers. Burr and Wilkinson had been friendly when both had been in the Continental Army.
As rumors became more intense and far-fetched that Burr was planning to set up his own country, carved out of American and Mexican territory, Jefferson had him charged with treason on November 26, 1806. Jefferson reported to the Congress in February 1807 that the former vice president’s “guilt is placed beyond question,” oblivious of the fact that Burr had already been released by a grand jury in Mississippi for lack of evidence, but rearrested in Alabama. He was taken to Richmond for trial, while Jefferson personally worked with the U.S. attorney in Richmond, George Hay, on the prosecution’s case. Burr was a brilliant barrister and participated in the preparation of his own case, which, to Jefferson’s dismay, was judged by Chief Justice John Marshall, self-assigned for the purpose to the Fourth Circuit. In April 1807, Marshall pitched out the treason charge and reduced it to conspiracy. Burr had many supporters, including Jefferson’s cousin and successor as secretary of state and former U.S. attorney general, Edmund Randolph. Burr subpoenaed Jefferson, and the documentation between his officials and himself in respect of the case, and Marshall ruled that the president enjoyed no exemption, and that he would determine confidentially the relevance and degree of privilege and national security concerns of the material.
Burr excused Jefferson as a witness, and Jefferson helped establish an important precedent, which would be used in the Watergate affair in 1974, and handed over the material to Marshall. The trial, in August 1807, consisted of the evidence and cross-examination of the sole government witness, General Wilkinson, who was torn limb from limb by Burr and his counsel and appeared a good deal more guilty of reprehensible acts than the defendant. The jury found Burr not guilty, but in wording that implied it was not convinced that he was wholly innocent of wrongdoing. Burr