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Hero or Villain? The Treason Trial of Aaron Burr (1807)

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Political Trials in an Age of Revolutions

Part of the book series: Palgrave Histories of Policing, Punishment and Justice ((PHPPJ))

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Abstract

Aaron Burr, U.S. Senator and Vice President of the United States, has long been confined to the outer edges of the founding generation for three principal reasons: his aggressive reputation for political office and fame; the so-called Burr conspiracy, his alleged attempt to create an empire in what became the western United States; and his treason trial, 1807, when Chief Justice John Marshall, who presided as a trial court judge, acquitted him. Burr claimed he was an American patriot, attempting to secure America’s borders and expand the new nation westward to ensure its stability and growth. This essay investigates the charges against Burr and his trial to determine the major questions left open that establish whether he was a hero or a villain.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Key sources include volume 5 of Dumas Malone, Jefferson and His Time, Jefferson the President: Second Term, 1805–1809, 6 vols (Boston, 1981); and Milton Lomask, Aaron Burr: The Conspiracy and the Years of Exile, 1805–1856 (New York, 1982). See also Joseph Wheelan, Jefferson’s Vendetta: The Pursuit of Aaron Burr and the Judiciary (New York, 2005), and David O. Stewart, American Emperor: Aaron Burr’s Challenge to Jefferson’s America (New York, 2011).

  2. 2.

    Jonathan W. White points this out in “Thomas Jefferson, Aaron Burr and the American Way of Treason”, Smithsonian Magazine, http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/thomas-jefferson-aaron-burr-and-american-way-treason-180962573/ (accessed 31 March 2017).

  3. 3.

    Gordon S. Wood, Revolutionary Characters: What Made the Founders Different (New York, 2006), 226.

  4. 4.

    Nancy Isenberg, Fallen Founder: The Life of Aaron Burr (New York, 2007), 2.

  5. 5.

    Peter Charles Hoffer, The Treason Trials of Aaron Burr (Lawrence, KS, 2008), 15.

  6. 6.

    Peter S. Onuf, The Mind of Thomas Jefferson (Charlottesville, 2007), 111–18, 134, and Walter Lafeber, “Jefferson and an American Foreign Policy”, in Jeffersonian Legacies, ed. Peter S. Onuf (Charlottesville, 1995), 374.

  7. 7.

    Stewart, American Emperor, 9, 62–65, who notes that “much about the United States was in flux in 1805. Even its physical boundaries were changing”.

  8. 8.

    François Furstenberg, When the United States Spoke French: Five Refugees Who Shaped a Nation (New York, 2014); Peter Kastor, The Nation’s Crucible: The Louisiana Purchase and the Creation of America (New Haven, 2004); and Thomas Fleming, The Louisiana Purchase (Hoboken, NJ, 2003). The 1783 Treaty of Paris ending the Revolutionary War recognised the Mississippi River as the official western boundary of the new United States. After the Purchase, the Rocky Mountains became the new boundary. See Joseph J. Ellis, The Quartet: Orchestrating the Second American Revolution (New York, 2015), 26, 32, 68.

  9. 9.

    Thomas Jefferson to Maria Cosway, 12 October 1786, in Thomas Jefferson, Writings, ed. Merrill D. Peterson (Washington, DC, 1984), 866–77.

  10. 10.

    Jefferson to Joseph Priestley, 29 January 1804, in ibid., 1142–3.

  11. 11.

    Buckner F. Melton, Aaron Burr: Conspiracy to Treason (New York, 2002), 1.

  12. 12.

    Paul Schneider, Old Man River: The Mississippi Rover in North American History (New York, 2014), 1–2.

  13. 13.

    Aside from the studies previously mentioned, other valuable works include R. Kent Newmyer, The Treason Trial of Aaron Burr: Law, Politics, and the Character Wars of the New Nation (Cambridge, 2012), and Jean Edward Smith, John Marshall: Definer of a Nation (New York, 1996), 352–374. Older works include Donald Barr Chidsey, The Great Conspiracy: Aaron Burr and His Strange Doings in the West (New York, 1967); Thomas Perkins Abernethy, The Burr Conspiracy (New York, 1954); Francis F. Beirne, Shout Treason: The Trial of Aaron Burr (New York, 1959); Walter Flavius McCaleb, The Aaron Conspiracy and A New Light on Aaron Burr (New York, 1966).

  14. 14.

    Isenberg, Fallen Founder, 196–220.

  15. 15.

    Thomas Jefferson, The Anas, in Jefferson, Writings, 693.

  16. 16.

    The twelfth amendment, ratified in 1804, required presidential and vice-presidential candidates to run together, thus avoiding the events of the 1800 election.

  17. 17.

    This duel has long been the focus of historians. See, for example, Joanne B. Freeman, Affairs of Honor: National Politics in the New Republic (New Haven, 2001), 159–171, 187–198; W. J. Rorabaugh, “The Political Duel in the Early Republic: Burr v. Hamilton”, Journal of the Early Republic, 15 (1995), 1–23.

  18. 18.

    Noted in Melton, Aaron Burr, 30.

  19. 19.

    Milton Lomask, Aaron Burr: The Years from Princeton to Vice President, 1756–1805 (New York, 1979), 141–144; Melton, Aaron Burr, 30–31. Lomask’s two-volume study is the definitive biography.

  20. 20.

    Alexander Hamilton to James Bayard, 16 January 1801, in Alexander Hamilton, Writings, ed. Joanne B. Freeman (Washington, D.C., 2001), 978, 981.

  21. 21.

    See, for example, Hamilton to Gouverneur Morris, 26 December 1800, and Hamilton to John Rutledge Jr., 4 January 1801, in ibid., 972–6.

  22. 22.

    Maya Jasanoff recounts the “Bowles” conspiracy in the 1790s linking it to the Burr conspiracy. William Augustus Bowles sought to seize the Floridas, New Orleans, and Mexico from the Spanish and turn the territory into an independent country allied with Britain. Maya Jasanoff, Liberty’s Exiles: American Loyalists in the Revolutionary World (New York, 2011), 237–242 with the link to Burr on 242, 309, 321–3.

  23. 23.

    Stewart, American Emperor, 45–6.

  24. 24.

    Political Correspondence and Public Papers of Aaron Burr, ed. Mary-Jo Kline, 2 vols. (Princeton, 1983), II: 863–4.

  25. 25.

    Ibid., II: 865. Kline makes clear that King opposed the idea while recording it.

  26. 26.

    Ibid., II: 840–841.

  27. 27.

    Ibid., II: 921.

  28. 28.

    Lomask, Burr: The Conspiracy and the Years of Exile. 60.

  29. 29.

    Quoted in ibid., 63.

  30. 30.

    William H. Safford, The Life of Harman Blennerhassett (Freeport, NY, 1850), 64–5, with the quotation on 65.

  31. 31.

    McCaleb, The Aaron Burr Conspiracy, 78.

  32. 32.

    R. Kent Newmyer, “Burr versus Jefferson versus Marshall,” Humanities: The Magazine of the National Endowment for the Humanities, https://www.neh.gov/humanities/2013/mayjune/feature/burr-versus-jefferson-versus-marshall, (accessed 18 September 2017).

  33. 33.

    Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. (1 Cranch) 137 (1803).

  34. 34.

    Bruce A. Ackerman, The Failure of the Founding Fathers: Jefferson, Marshall, and the Rise of Presidential Democracy (Cambridge, MA, 2005).

  35. 35.

    On Wilkinson’s duplicity, see Andro Linklater, An Artist in Treason: The Extraordinary Double Life of General James Wilkinson (New York 2009), who shows that as “Agent 13” for Spain, he undermined the United States, even betraying state secrets.

  36. 36.

    For a copy of the cipher letter, see Stewart, American Emperor, 309–312, and Kline, Political Correspondence, II: 986–8.

  37. 37.

    Ibid., II: 973, 985; Newmyer, The Treason Trial of Aaron Burr, 30; and Stewart, American Emperor, 309–310.

  38. 38.

    Malone, Jefferson the President: The Second Term, 1805–1809, V: 225.

  39. 39.

    Kline, Political Correspondence, II: 988.

  40. 40.

    Ibid., II: 989.

  41. 41.

    Quoted in Malone, Jefferson the President: The Second Term, V: 244.

  42. 42.

    Newmyer, The Treason Trial of Aaron Burr, 12.

  43. 43.

    Kline, Political Correspondence, II: 987.

  44. 44.

    The self-styled Baron de Bastrop was a Dutch Guiana-born adventurer who eventually moved to Holland where he was accused of embezzling taxes he had collected for the government. He fled to Spanish Louisiana and then settled in Spanish Texas after the Louisiana Purchase by the United States in 1803. There he established a colony, which became the Bastrop lands to which Jefferson referred in his address. See McCaleb, The Aaron Burr Conspiracy, 76.

  45. 45.

    Thomas Jefferson, “Special Message on the Burr Conspiracy”, 22 January 1807, in Jefferson, Writings, 534.

  46. 46.

    Ibid., 538. Burr’s friend, Jonathan Dayton, was seeking British support.

  47. 47.

    For the case against them, the trial, verdict, and appeal, see Newmyer, The Treason Trial of Aaron Burr, 46–65.

  48. 48.

    See John Barrell, Imagining the King’s Death: Figurative Treason, Fantasies of Regicide, 1793–1796 (Oxford, 2000).

  49. 49.

    Ex parte Bollman, 8 U.S. (4 Cranch) 75, 127 (1807).

  50. 50.

    For Burr’s indictment, see Stewart, American Emperor, 313–15.

  51. 51.

    Abernethy, The Burr Conspiracy, 220, 240.

  52. 52.

    Supreme Court justices were each assigned to sit as trial judges along with one federal judge to hear cases involving violations of law against the United States. The local judge was Cyrus Griffin who served from 1789 until his death in 1810. The United States Courts of Appeal were not created until 1891 when the justices were relieved of their “circuit riding” duty. See Russell R. Wheeler and Cynthia Harrison, Creating the Federal Judicial System, 2nd ed. (Washington, 1994).

  53. 53.

    Coincidentally, both prosecutors in 1800 represented journalist James Callender in his sedition trial for publishing material critical of the Adams administration.

  54. 54.

    Newmyer, The Treason Trial of Aaron Burr, 112.

  55. 55.

    Marshall equivocated on this issue. In a letter to Justice William Cushing, he stated that “the opinion of the supreme court in Bollman & Swartout, certainly adopts the doctrine of constructive treasons”. But, he asked, “How far does that case carry this doctrine? Ought the expressions in that opinion to be revised?” Marshall to Cushing, 29 June 1807, in John Marshall, The Papers of John Marshall, ed. Charles F. Hobson, et al., 12 vols. (Chapel Hill, 1974–2015), VII: 60.

  56. 56.

    The trial report was fully recorded by court stenographer, David K. Robertson. See Robertson, Reports of the Trials of Colonel Aaron Burr, 2 vols. (1808; rpt. Delhi, 2016). Another court stenographer, Thomas Carpenter, also published a record, which included Burr’s misdemeanor trial in violation of the Neutrality Act of 1794 for contemplating war against Spain. The trial immediately followed the treason proceedings. See Carpenter, The Trial of Col. Aaron Burr, 3 vols. (Washington, 1807–1808).

  57. 57.

    John Marshall, United States v. Burr, 13 June 1807, 7:37–50.

  58. 58.

    Newmyer, The Treason Trial of Aaron Burr, 148.

  59. 59.

    Editor’s note, in Marshall, Papers, VII: 7.

  60. 60.

    John Marshall, United States v. Burr, (25 Cas 55, Virginia), 31 August 1807, in ibid., VII: 95, for the subpoena.

  61. 61.

    Ibid., VII: 96.

  62. 62.

    Ibid., VII: 108. Throughout his opinion, Marshall cited the authorities such as jurists Edward Coke, Chief Justice Matthew Hale, Michael Foster, Edward Hyde East, Sir William Blackstone, and his colleagues on the Supreme Court, Justices Samuel Chase and William Paterson.

  63. 63.

    Ibid., VII: 113.

  64. 64.

    Ibid., VII: 114.

  65. 65.

    Ibid., VII: 115–116.

  66. 66.

    Hoffer, The Treason Trials of Aaron Burr, 171.

  67. 67.

    Jefferson to William Branch Giles, 20 April 1807, in Jefferson, Writings, 1175.

  68. 68.

    Beirne, Shout Treason, though Beirne’s views remained fairly objective in his treatment of the accusations against Burr.

  69. 69.

    “[Burr] was one of history’s greatest losers.” Chidsey, The Great Conspiracy, 144.

  70. 70.

    Wheelan, Jefferson’s Vendetta, 263.

  71. 71.

    Hoffer, The Treason Trials of Aaron Burr, 193.

  72. 72.

    McCaleb, The Aaron Burr Conspiracy, 27.

  73. 73.

    Lomask, Burr: The Conspiracy and the Years of Exile, 112, 358–359.

  74. 74.

    Isenberg, Fallen Founder, 282. Isenberg explains that “a filibuster was an invasion by a private army without government sanction”.

  75. 75.

    Newmyer, The Treason Trial of Aaron Burr, 181.

  76. 76.

    Melton, Aaron Burr, 235.

  77. 77.

    Kline, Political Correspondence, II: 921–922.

  78. 78.

    Stewart, American Emperor, 299. Stewart comments, “The search for Burr’s single plan is a pursuit of a mirage”. See also James E. Lewis Jr., The Burr Conspiracy: Uncovering the Story of an Early American Crisis (Princeton, 2017), which was published too late for consideration in this essay. After two decades of work, Lewis also notes the inconclusiveness of Burr’s motives and is interested in the stories that developed after the events of 1805–7. Eric Foner observes that “this is a book about the indeterminacy of historical evidence rather than history itself. Instead of offering his own narrative of the conspiracy, Lewis reconstructs the ‘stories’ Americans told themselves in order to decide what Burr’s aims were, how he succeeded in winning the support of several hundred men who knew about his plans, and what these events said about the stability of republican government in general and the US in particular.” In the end, Foner notes that Lewis “sits on the fence,” unable to determine what exactly Burr was up to. See Eric Foner, “The Embryo Caesar,” London Review of Books, 14 December 2017.

  79. 79.

    Quoted in many sources. See, for example, Schneider, Old Man River, 189.

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  1. Department of Political Science, Towson University, Towson, MD, USA

    Jack Fruchtman

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  1. School of Humanities, Languages and Social Science, Griffith University, Southport, QLD, Australia

    Michael T. Davis

  2. Faculty of Arts and Humanities, University of Stirling, Stirling, UK

    Emma Macleod

  3. School of History, Classics and Archaeology, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK

    Gordon Pentland

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Fruchtman, J. (2019). Hero or Villain? The Treason Trial of Aaron Burr (1807). In: Davis, M., Macleod, E., Pentland, G. (eds) Political Trials in an Age of Revolutions. Palgrave Histories of Policing, Punishment and Justice. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-98959-4_12

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