TWW: TWO FOR TEXAS (Hickory/Burr) 11-26-93 TWO FOR TEXAS...

"OLD HICKORY" JACKSON, AND AARON ("TRAITOR") BURR

"I'm still at Nashville and I love it here. For one week I've been lounging at the home of my dear friend, General Jackson, who now heads the state militia. He's intelligent, impetuous and frank, and appeals to me as honest, patriotic also wise!"

Aaron Burr, at The Hermitage, Act III, Scene Two, in Thomas B. Sweeney's Aaron Burr's Dream for the Southwest, published for the bi-centennial of Burr's birth (1956)
"The Burr Conspiracy, and James Wilkinson, have always been unhappy subjects for the historian. One capable scoundrel can cause enormous riptides in the currents of history, which makes rational study dangerous."

T. R. Fehrenbach, Lone Star: A History of Texas and the Texans (1968) When today's Texas tourists visit the Grand Ole Opry, out at Nashville's "Opryland USA", a former theme, amusement park, little do they know that near by lies a forgotten, embarrassing, Texas connection. Back in 1807, less than five miles to the east over at Clover Bottom, Andrew Jackson drilled troops for an invasion of their home state. And Civil War enthusiasts, interested in the Battle of Stone's River probably don't know that on Stone's River Jackson had two boats built, to abet the invasion. Jackson was enmeshed in the machinations of Aaron Burr, who dreamed of a fantastic Western empire. Unbeknownst to Jackson, Burr didn't care if they had to lop off part of the United States to get the dizzy job done. Jackson barely avoided the Burr stigma of "treason," and over twenty years later, his political foes were still trying to smear him with the dirty Burr brush. Probably nowhere had Burr been more consistently honored, than at Nashville...at least on the first three of his four visits. On his initial arrival, on May 29, 1805, he was celebrated as a hero--for the very reasons that had disgraced him in the Northeast. About a year before, he had slain Alexander Hamilton in a duel which blasted his political fortunes.

TWW: TWO FOR TEXAS (Hickory/Burr) 11-26-93 (Hamilton had called him "dangerous," and Burr confirmed this.) But his

politicians use of the pistol endeared him down in Tennessee, since he had struck a blow at those timid Federalists. Why, those craven Yankees had even balked at the Louisiana Purchase! "The West lived by the gun," notes historian Page Smith, referring to the South, "and the Federalists were as much hated as the Spanish." Back at the time of the Purchase, Tennessee's militia arrayed itself at the ready--armed to repulse a possible Spanish attack. The Old Southwest was especially galled that Texas, which "should" have been in the deal, stayed in the clutch of the Spanish dons. This Texas grudge-lust would gnaw at the collective Southern heart--only with the final annexation of Texas in 1846, would the bitterness turn into a spasm of ecstasy. Now, Nashville was agog at the impending visit of bold Aaron Burr. Already a circus promoter had swung through town with a wax effigy of Burr that he was exhibiting in many cities. Burr had long earned Tennessee's affection-he had even argued for the admission of the state of Franklin (see Chapter the Union. Then in 1796 he had helped Tennessee itself gain admittance. So Burr drew many Tennessee votes in 1800, when he lost the presidency to Thomas Jefferson by one vote--but accepted the consolation prize of the vice-presidency. Now that he was out of office, admirers like Andrew Jackson hoped he would hang out a tin sign with his name on it, up on the Public Square, and practice law. Why, soon enough he could represent Tennessee up there in Congress! But no one state could contain Aaron Burr's megalomania. He had almost become president of one nation. So why not patch together another, new nation--out of whatever available territoryand try again...? All he needed was ) to

TWW: TWO FOR TEXAS (Hickory/Burr) 11-26-93 3 gold, guns, and some boats such as traversed the Cumberland River. Burr's entry into town triggered the grandest parade ever seen thereabouts. Cannon shots... military music...flag-waving...followed by a triumphal banquet. Burr gave a thrilling speech on the "New West." The major-general of the local militia, Andrew Jackson, posed a toast. Jackson was also "president" of the dinner, and had known Burr earlier in the U.S. Senate. With some duels behind him--as well as ahead of him--rough-hewn Jackson admired Burr's performance on the field of "honor." And Jackson, like the rest of frontier Nashville, was awed by Burr's suave, well-bred manners, and his conversational brilliance. Nashville's elite tripped over each other, toadying up to this would-be Western Napoleon. This was Burr's coming-out party. "Major General" Jackson especially thirsted for any military experience he might grab, fairly drooling at the prospect of helping Burr boot the Spanish out of the Southwest. Burr wrote his daughter, praising the "number of sensible, wellinformed, and well-behaved people" at Nashville. This assessment would be reversed, in time. Meanwhile, Jackson had ridden his best horse to the banquet, bringing with him a milk-white mare, which Burr probably rode home to Jackson's "Hermitage" (the log-cabin version, not the later mansion which stands today). Burr was so ecstatic, he said he could have stayed a month, instead of the five Days he spent with Jackson. He confided to his host that Secretary of War Henry Dearborn was in on the plot to expel Spain. "The invasion of Mexico is in every heart, on every tongue," one Nashvillian wrote at the time..."All that was yet lacking to make it certain was war between Spain and the United States "

TWW: TWO FOR TEXAS (Hickory/Burr) 11-26-93 4 Jackson "loaned" Burr an open boat--on June 3, 1805 he was sailing down the Cumberland River and into the Ohio. Burr was a professional socialite, and persuasive sponge. For years he had been sopping up loans to subsidize his stylish political career. Now his scintillating Western scenario was making men reach for their bank-notes--or bank drafts--as readily as, earlier, Burr had inspired women to reach for their bedroom doorknobs. (He had married a woman ten years older than himself, but she had died.) Burr always adhered to the Golden Rule of salesmen and seducers: "Say unto others what they most want to hear." 'Trouble is, such a policy works better in the boudoir than in aristocratic political circles. While women don't tend to compare notes on their lovers in public, men--once they feel they've been violated, politically and/or financially--just may start talking openly about their bungled liaisons. (One of the better Burr rumors had him plotting to invade Washington, capture Jefferson, burn the Navy's ships, and seize the banks and public arsenal.) Aaron Burr was in a borrowed boat, on borrowed time. Then he stepped out of the vessel lent by Jackson, and switched to a much larger "ark." By June 6, he was conferring secretly with Brigadier-General James Wilkinson at Fort Massac on the Ohio. They had first met during the Revolutionary War, when they studied conspiracy under that outstanding traitor, Benedict Arnold. From Arnold they picked up the knack of writing in code--at one point, they would have three ciphers going between them. They were also alumni of the "Conway Cabal" that had tried to unseat George Washington. Wilkinson was an existential Western character, always out for a Fistful of Dollars...followed by demands For a Few Dollars More.

TWW: TWO FOR TEXAS (Hickory/Burr) 11-26-93 Spanish dollars, mostly. The versatile Wilkinson had gouged $50,000 out of Spain, without bothering to learn Spanish, while serving as commander of the U.S. army at the same time. Though to call him a traitor is to accord him too

much respect--to betray a person or an institution, one first has to have been loyal. Wilkinson was loyal to but two causes--himself, and money. Even as a plotter he was a phony, revealing "conspiracies" of his own contriving, with characters drawn to fit the paranoias of his latest customers. He was something of a spy novelist, rewriting manuscripts of melodrama to fit the latest, changing markets. Burr himself had earlier tried to beguile the Spanish--and even the English--with his fantasy of a Western empire, supposedly to halt the advances of the Americans. Of course at Nashville he had pandered to his listeners appetite for a war with Spain. Burr left Wilkinson, and passed Chickasaw Bluffs (today's Memphis) on the Mississippi. In New Orleans, Burr abandoned his schoolboy zest for secret codes, and quite openly promoted his "colonization" program. One has to marvel at his crassness. He fired up the three hundred-member "Mexican Association" of Southern zealots, by saying the U.S. wanted to oust Spain. As "le Colonel Burr" he oozed soothing reassurances to the French. And he wooed a Catholic bishop by claiming to have a Crusader for an ancestor. Returning to Tennessee, he may have met General James Winchester, on an island in Bledsoe's Creek's unsuccessfully trying to rope him in. He was back in Nashville on August 6, 1805, again the guest of Jackson ("one of those prompt, frank, ardent souls I love to meet"). At some point he reportedly stayed in a house behind 42-44 N. Cherry Street (Fourth Ave. North today). Later, he and Jackson corresponded. Writing from Washington the next

TWW: TWO FOR TEXAS (Hickory/Burr) 11-26-93 6 spring (March 24, 1806), Burr raised the alarm about Spain and France possibly attacking Florida and Louisiana: Your country is full of fine material for an army, and I have often said a brigade could be raised in West Tennessee which could drive double their number of Frenchmen off the earth. And could Jackson maybe send Burr a list of officer recruits? Jackson obliged, naming his nephew and business partner, John Coffee, among many, thus ensnarling himself deeper in the gossamer of Burr's sinister spider web. That May, Jackson killed Charles Dickinson in, his most notorious duel. The luster of his reputation dimmed instantly. Now, more than ever, Jackson could use some reflected glory from the still-bright star of Aaron Burr. Anyway, it was high time Jackson got off the silly dueling ground, and stopped shooting (or shooting at) his political foes. If he really wanted to justify his military rank and uniform (and habitual military manner), he needed to get onto a real battlefield for grown-ups! Oh, Lord, please grant me that war with Spain my friend Burr keeps talking about... On September 26, Burr was back in Nashville again. Perpetual filibusterdebutante that he was, Burr craved even more social exposure. Jackson began writing his friends that Burr "is always and is still a true and trusty friend of Tennessee." The goal? To drum up even more dinner invitations! On the l7th, thanks to Jackson, a splendid ball was held at the City Hotel. The "president" of the ball was General Thomas Overton--the "vice president" was no less than James Robertson. Wearing his uniform, Jackson entered grandly...escorting Burr rekindled his military fervor, and he redonned his uniform...whose pockets contained his secret Spanish spy pay-offs. around the room for introductions. "It was a question with the ladies which was the finer gentleman," wrote James Parton, biographer of both men.

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Toasts were drunk--songs were sung--and decades later, people would remember it all. Burr also dined privately with James ("Father of Tennessee") Robertson, talking candidly about "settlements...on the western waters." But what roleif any--would the national government play in all this? Burr ducked that question. Gradually, folks began to scent something peculiar in these Western winds, that seemed blow in and out of Nashville with Aaron Burr. Maybe intentionally, The Impartial Review was running a series of historical exposes on the "Spanish Conspiracy" of the 1780s-90s...the intrigue which aimed to separate Kentucky from the Union. Written by Humphrey Marshall, reprinted from his Western World at Frankfort, Kentucky, they implicated Burr's plot-pal, Wilkinson. Frankfort had been founded by Wilkinson (his protg Philip Nolan, Texas-invader with Peter Ellis Bean, used to visit him there). Unsuccessfully, Marshall had been trying to warn President Jefferson about Burr's ambitions. Nashville held a happier view of Wilkinson, however. This Spanish spy ran a fine store in Lexington, Kentucky (a branch of Barclay, Moylan & Co.), where many Nashvillians shopped.* Jackson uttered a saber-rattling warning about a "hostile" Spain in the Review (October 4, 1806), and commanded the militia to stand by "at a moment's warning ready to march." That same day Jackson cheerily wrote to a friend that a

war with Spain would afford "enterprising young men...a handsome theatre...and a source for acquiring fame. And Burr ensnared Jackson all the more. His recent guest wrote him a letter which he received on November 3. Now Jackson operated a racetrack over

TWW: TWO FOR TEXAS (Hickory/Burr) 11-26-93 at Clover Bottom on stone's River (east of present-day Donelson, north of

Lebanon Road). Plus a tavern (or "house of entertainment" in the records), along with a boat yard. Burr placed an order with Jackson for five large boats, and provisions. Burr, the devout house-guest and dinner-guest everywhere he went, somehow had $3500 in Kentucky bank-notes to spend on boats. Jackson's partner and nephew, John Coffee, set to building them. Thus did Jackson cause to be constructed--with hammer, saw, and adze--the material evidence of boats which would threaten to sink him. Jackson's definitive biographer, Robert V. Remini, admits that he was now an "accomplice." Even worse, Jackson paid $700 of Burr's money to Patten Anderson who recruited seventy-five men to go with Burr down river. Out on the race course, in close proximity to Jackson's tavern, these potential recruits marched up and down and drilled. Burr himself said you don't need great numbers "to execute great military deeds," but merely a leader in whom the men have confidence (e.g., Jackson). Around the same time he remarked: "Tennesseans, as the breed runs in 1806, can go anywhere and do anything." Yes, but the troops at Clover Bottom were ahead of schedule ...by about thirty years. Not till 1836, would Davy Crockett and Sam Houston finish what these men were hoping to start. Thereupon appeared an enigmatic stranger calling himself "Captain Fort." Maybe he was one of Burr's unauthorized (and unacknowledged) sons. He sure seemed to know a lot, and basking in the Hermitage hospitality, he sure told a lot. Captain Fort was ready to join the Burr enterprise...yet casually discussed with Jackson the plot to divide the Union...seize New Orleans and the bank...close the

TWW: TWO FOR TEXAS (Hickory/Burr) 11-26-93 9 port...conquer Mexico...then detach the Southwest (Tennessee, etc.), and engraft it on to Mexico and form a new empire! Gen. James Wilkinson, whom Jackson loathed, was up to his epaulets in the scheme. (As Burr biographer Holmes Alexander puts it, "Andrew Jackson had but one country. Wilkinson had two, and both were for sale."* ) Chilled to the marrow, Jackson asked him to repeat his story in front of John Coffee. When "Captain Fort" began backing up, and changing his tale, Jackson was all the more convinced. And scared. And angry. With the boats still a-building, Jackson seized his pen as if it were a sword, and whipped out some letters to protect his exposed posterior. He sounded the alarm with friends (and generals) Robertson and John Overton. The governor of Lower Louisiana, William C. C. Claiborne, was a former Tennessee Supreme Court judge, and Tennessee congressman--and hysterically, Jackson wrote him about enemies from within. He named Wilkinson. He warned of plots to sever off Louisiana, while vowing personally to "die in the last ditch" before seeing the Union dismembered. To President Jefferson, Jackson waxed especially cryptic, offering to muster his Tennessee militia "at one moment's warning" in the event of aggression "FROM ANY QUARTER." By now, Burr's enemies in Frankfort were trying to indict him for treason. Two tries before a grand jury failed. Witnesses failed to show, and (to confuse matters infinitely), one of the judges was accused of being in the pay of Spain.
*Jackson's hatred of Wilkinson stemmed from at least 1805, when Wilkinson court-martialed his friend, Colonel Thomas Butler, for failing to cut his hair according to regulations. But Butler would "rather fight than crop," noted Tennessee's prolific, popular historian, Louise Littleton Davis. *In the American Revolution, Wilkinson had been clothier general, till fund shortages necessitated his departure. Then bankruptcy in his civilian life

TWW: TWO FOR TEXAS (Hickory/Burr) 11-26-93 1 Anyway, in those days secession itself was not a treasonous topic..."these United States" were sovereignties who had voluntarily joined together, and could legally withdraw peaceably, through legislation. (It took the Civil War, and 600,000 lives, to politically change these to the United States.) Burr's lawyer was Henry Clay, who happened to represent Jackson's trading interests in Kentucky. To celebrate Burr's victory, a ball with all the trimmings simply had to be held! By December 14, Burr was back at Nashville...but Jackson's staid but sensible wife Rachel turned him away at the door. So Burr lodged a few days down at Jackson's Clover Bottom inn. Here, a few days later, Jackson and General Overton interviewed him sharply. Burr swore he possessed orders from the Secretary of War, and even flashed a convincing (but spurious) blank commission "signed" by Jefferson. Since only two of Burr's boats were ready, and he was in a hurry, Jackson gave him a refund. And he sent along his wife's nephew, seventeen-year-old Stockley D. Hays, who was going to school in New Orleans--which is where Burr was headed. Stockley carried concealed weapons in his pockets, in the form of secret letters to Gov. Claiborne in the event Burr tried anything treasonous. They left on December 22. Nashville's Impartial Review remarked on December 27: "Colo. Burr embarked from this place for New-Orleans on Monday last, with two large flat boats, which did not appear to be loaded."

No doubt Burr aimed to put in an appearance at Turpin's Cabaret and Coffee-House, the filibuster H.Q. for the first fifteen years of the century. (Turpin's was a long, one storey building across from the Marigny mansion at

TWW: TWO FOR TEXAS (Hickory/Burr) 11-26-93 Marigny Street and the levee.) Wilkinson panicked. One of Burr's cipher letters to him was so volatile

that, obviously, the whole scheme was about to fly apart in smithereens. For sure Wilkinson would lose his juicy Spanish stipend. Wilkinson was already an object of ever-widening distrust, and he was a blabbermouth when drunk. But in Aaron Burr, he had a collaborator who outdid him in sloppiness. Wilkinson was cool in a crisis, however. Generously he elected to save not one, but two nations--along with his own rump. And get paid for it in the process. Spain, he would rescue from the American filibuster plot of flamboyant Burr. The United States, he would deliver from the dire secessionist scheme of that traitor Burr. And he would bill both countries for his services. President Jefferson received his first warning from Wilkinson on October 20, and another the next day. Jefferson hated Burr, his arch-rival, and he naively trusted Wilkinson. With good reason: the genial general got along well with Spain (!); he was no war-monger, being more of a headquarters officer; and from Texas he used to send the contemplative Jefferson gifts of fossils and Indian relics. (He gave Jefferson a map of Texas, probably drawn by Philip Nolan, late employer of Peter Ellis Bean.) Jefferson had erupted with a proclamation on November 27: "...sundry persons are conspiring and confederating together to begin a military enterprise against the dominions of Spain, etc., etc."

Nashville shuddered. Burr's fair-weather followers scurried for their storm-shelters. The same town which had showered Burr with banquets and ballyhoo, now tipped over the tables of Southern hospitality. In a fit of

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patriotism, on December 30, they burned Burr in effigy out-on the Public Square. Jackson must have chafed at this fickleness of Nashville's nervous burghers. And some of the anti-Burr furor was probably directed at him. He may have understood it, somewhat. Tennesseans had fought the British and the Cherokee. So why should they wish to withstand, now, Federal troops and martial law in reprisal for their flirtation with Burr? To hell with Aaron Burr! Secretary of War Henry Dearborn confronted Jackson by letter, with the rumor that he was supposed to join Burr at the mouth of the Cumberland with two regiments. "But sir," retorted Jackson, "when proof shows him to be a traitor, I would cut his throat with as much pleasure as I would yours on equal testimony." Touch! Jackson suspected Dearborn of being a Wilkinson accomplice. Jackson now made a splendid show of rallying to arms, despite having no military experience. Gen. James Robertson called up Revolutionary War veterans over fifty years of age--and with much martial pomp, Jackson reviewed two militia companies. The Impartial Review ranted about "the intrigues of restless ambition," and "the efforts of disorganizing demagogues" now threatening the Union. And Jackson gave an address about the potential "TRAITOR" attempting "the dismemberment of our country, or criminal breach of our laws...an illegal enterprise separating the western from the eastern part of the United states."

No doubt some of his listeners thus called to arms, had recently drilled over at the Clover Bottom racetrack on behalf of Jackson...and Burr. The

TWW: TWO FOR TEXAS (Hickory/Burr) 11-26-93 1 Richmond Enquirer (December 30, 1806) all but named Jackson, when it accused "a militia general in Tennessee" of stirring up people against Spain. Jackson still trusted Burr, he confided to a friend, while qualifying it somewhat: if Burr were a traitor, "being torn to pieces, and scattered to the four winds of heaven, would be too good for him." Wilkinson kept heating up New Orleans by hurling frenzied letters at Gov. Claiborne. Then on December 12, he slapped martial law upon the city... terrorizing the populace with the threat of Aaron Burr, who at any moment might descend with 6-7,000 troops and commence looting and raping. Real and suspected Burrites were arrested (especially those who might incriminate Wilkinson). Alas, Burr--with only a handful of men--failed to appear, and live up to his atrocious expectations. Soon Wilkinson was as discredited in New Orleans, as he was in his hometown of Frankfort. On January 4, 1807 Burr suckered-in another Jackson in Tennessee. At Chickasaw Bluffs on the Mississippi River (today's Memphis), Lieutenant Jacob Jackson was the current garrison commander of the army outpost (a site first secured by Gen. James Robertson). Jackson took money from Burr to raise troops against Spanish Mexico--though whether for invasion, or for defense against attack, is not clear. Burr came away with "thirty pounds of lead" presumably for bullets. He was finally realizing that his filibuster dreams were so much folly--that not just his ambition, but his life was in peril. His ex-comrade Wilkinson was

offering $2,000 for his capture--Burr surrendered to the court martial, posted bail, and left. A military tribunal might have ended in a firing squad...splattering him

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against a wall, silencing him forever on the issue of Wilkinson's complicity, under the quasi-sanction of "military justice." The actual capture of Aaron Burr accrued some advantage to Williamson County, Tennessee. Burr deserted his followers and galloped off into the Mississippi wilderness alone. In the village of Wakefield he asked for directions at a house where he was recognized by Nicholas Perkins, the land office registrar appointed by Jefferson. Perkins summoned help from a nearby military post--then, invoking doubtful Federal authority, arrested Burr. Lieutenant Edmund P. Gaines helped out.* Perkins, Burr, and six others, rode north. At Chester, South Carolina, Burr leaped off his horse and tried to claim civil protection from his impromptu military captivity. Perkins threw down on his prisoner with two pistols--Burr defied him---so unceremoniously, Perkins grabbed the ex-Vice President around the waist, and hoisted him into the saddle. For having brought Burr a thousand miles to Richmond, Perkins collected a $3,331 reward. Perkins's Burr-bounty left a permanent landmark in Tennessee. Born March 14, 1779 in Pittsylvania County, Virginia, Perkins was appointed Attorney-General for Washington County, Mississippi, after bringing in Burr. *Gaines's early years had been passed in Tennessee--and from 1801-04, he had surveyed the Gaines (Natchez) Trace from Nashville to Natchez, as well as the waterway from the Cumberland River to the Ohio.

TWW: TWO FOR TEXAS (Hickory/Burr) 11-26-93 Then he resigned in 1809, moved to Williamson County, Tennessee; was a State Senator (1815-1817); and amassed about 1200 acres on the Harpeth River. Around 1821-22 he built the imposing "Montpier" mansion...to exaggerate slightly, we might call it "the house that Burr built." When Perkins died on January 6, 1848, his will was so bulky, his estate so vast, that the clerk who copied it was paid $15.

Burr was tried in Richmond. Jackson was subpoenaed....certainly, neither one of them needed the story of the boat-building dragged into court. Jackson Aimed to defend Burr's reputation, and to attack what little he could find of Wilkinson's. Wisely, the prosecution did not call him. Infuriated at wasting the trip, Jackson harangued a crowd in Capitol Square. Gen. Wilkinson arrived, sporting huge gold spurs, a sash, and a selfdesigned uniform (which the Spanish admired), plus a heavy, dragging sword. One of the men he had betrayed jostled him from the sidewalk into the street.* But e strutted into court, "swelling like a turkeycock," in the words of author Washington Irving. (Another spectator was Meriwether Lewis.) Wilkinson was on the stand for days, and admitted to having once corresponded in code with the Spanish governor of Louisiana, then retracted it. And oh, yes, he had deleted his own name from one of Burr's incriminating cipher letters. Thomas Jefferson had once philosophized that a nation benefited from having a revolution, say, every twenty yearsthat even secession had its merits. *Samuel G. Swartwout" later Collector for the Port of New York under the Jackson administration (where he became the first American to bilk the U.S. Treasury of a million dollars).

Now President Jefferson began stonewalling, invoking "executive privilege"

TWW: TWO FOR TEXAS (Hickory/Burr) 11-26-93 worthy of' a twentieth century president, to keep a letter from Wilkinson to himself out of court.

On the other hand, the judge, Chief Justice John Marshall, had dined with Burr after the indictment, but before the trial! Burr himself was a witty lawyer, whose maxim was "The law is anything that is boldly asserted and plausibly maintained," and the prosecution's case was weak. Burr was acquitted, but much of the testimony was delightfully memorable. Such as Burr's purported plan to seize Washington, drive Congress and Jefferson "into the river Potomac," then capture New York. Wilkinson smeared by Burr's disgrace, told Jefferson at least he had saved the nation...and Jefferson agreed, to the tune of $1,500 in expense money. Wilkinson had sent a larger bill to his Spanish bosses ($116,000) for his fight against Burrism, but the ingrate dons rejected his invoice. In the grandiose sense, Burr's plot was probably patriotic. Why not chop off a piece of the Old Southwest--just for now--and forge a new empire? Then reattach it all to the U.S. with--guess who?~ as the candidate for president of a new, improved United States. (To an extent, Sam Houston followed the Burr blueprint.) But by pathologically keeping all his options open, Burr lost them all. He gulled himself more than he did anyone else.* He ricocheted around Europe for a time, living off his legend as best he could. French archival records have him encouraging France to seize Canada *Poor Burr was "misunderstood," according to the founder of The Aaron Burr Association, Samuel Engle Burr, Jr., author of Colonel Aaron Burr, The American Phoenix, etc., 2nd rev. ed. (19~4). So was Wilkinson, according to New Orleans lawyer James Wilkinson, in his Wilkinson, Pioneer and Soldier (1935).

TWW: TWO FOR TEXAS (Hickory/Burr) 11-26-93 from Britain, and Louisiana from the U.S. Who can blame him? He had to come up with some kind of sales pitch, to beg for money from a balking Napoleon. Burr, whose illustrious lineage had traces of madness in it, kept a diary which he shared with his daughter in installments. He kept her posted on his consumption of prostitutes and opium. In these pages emerges a different Burr than the drawing-room darling of the Old Southwest, in the halcyon

"colonization" days of 1805-06. Burr finally remarried, to a woman who worked her way up from streetwalking to aristocracy, and whose son named George Washington claimed to have been fathered by the Father of Our Country. Burr cleaned out her money, and they divorced. Aaron Burr died in 1836, only a few months after the Alamo where so many Tennesseans and Kentuckians (such as he had tried to enlist in 1806) fought to the death for Texas. Burr got the last word..."What was treason in me thirty years ago is patriotism now..." And it's hard to improve upon the posthumous praise bestowed by Mrs. William L. Nichol in a speech on January 29, 1911. If only Burr had succeeded, she said, he would have generously developed Mexico's silver mines, provided universal education, and permitted "poets and scholars" to penetrate Mexico's secret archives and bring to light "the epic of lost Atlantis." This speech was delivered before a meeting of The Ladies' Hermitage Association at Jackson's home. As for Jackson, the Burr stench leaked and reeked down the years. Now in American presidential campaigns, anything goes, so as late as 1828 John Overton was writing John Coffee that a Nashville committee was "collecting evidence in vindication of Gen. Jackson in relation to the Burr conspiracy."

TWW: TWO FOR TEXAS (Hickory/Burr) 11-26-93 But from 1807 on, Jackson indulged no private schemes for Western aggrandizement. He operated through the military, as in the Creek War in opposition to Spain; through Congress via friends like Senator Thomas Hart Benton; through his own presidency; through his surrogate in Texas, Sam Houston; and through his protg, President James K. Polk. America was going West. On this, at least, Andrew Jackson was in agreement with Thomas Jefferson...with James Wilkinson...and, especially, with Aaron Burr.