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Mississippi Historical Society.
him, failed to develop his real design, but much was darkly shadowed forth. He constantly asserted that his object was to settle the Bastrop grant on the Washita, 700,000 acres of which, it was shown, he had purchased from Colonel Charles Lynch, of Kentucky, had paid for the same a valuable consideration in cash and drafts, and received a deed, which was of record in Lexington. He proved that he had purchased, and made contracts, for supplies of provisions and agricultural implements, and insisted that he had never contemplated an expedition against Mexico unless in the event of hostilities between the United States and Spain, which at that period was esteemed a very probable contingency, and, indeed, was anxiously desired by the enthusiastic and adventurous people of the Western States. He never denied that he considered the Union a rope of sand, and that a separation of the Western from the Atlantic States would inevitably follow from existing political and geographical causes. This impression he endeavored to enforce on every one, in his peculiarly graphic and emphatic manner. We find him thus speaking, at the outset of his journey in Western Pennsylvania, to Col. George Morgan, a soldier of the revolution and long his personal friend, at his hospitable fireside, which until then had heard only the patriotic traditions of the war and heartfelt anticipations of the future glory of the Union, declaring that with 200 men he could drive the President into the Potomac and overturn the government. Here it was, too, that he received that laconic but memorable reply from the bluff old soldier, "I'll be d?d, sir, i/ you could take our little town of Canonsburg with such a force?our women are all Democrats." These evidences of attachment to the Union, however, which were met with at every stage of his journey did not uproot an opinion which seems to have been deeply seated in his own mind, and even while under arrest at Washington we find him sneering at the instability of the government in presence of Mr. Graham, its accredited agent, and of Callier and Henry, members of the Council. Colonel Burr fell into the common error of underrating the people. Educated in the camp, he looked upon the masses as just so much physical power, to be operated on through their passions or moved at will by superior intellect. He attached undue im-
A Trip Through the Piney Woods.?Claiborne.	505
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portance to the leading men of the West, with many of whom he had been in correspondence, who were the secret accomplices of his design, and had impressed him with the belief that the multitude was ripe for "treason, strategem and spoils.?
; While, however, we thus repeat the grounds upon which he ^vindicated himself from the charge of treason, it must be remembered that the testimony of General Eaton, Commissioner Trux-?ton and General Wilkinson, supposing them to have sworn the truth, goes to show that he meditated the seizure, by force of arms, of Baton Rouge and New Orleans (the former, at that {time, a Spanish post, the latter the capital of Louisiana, which had recently been purchased by the United States), and that he contemplated ultimately the separation of the Union and the invasion of Mexico. In the face of all this constructive treason, however, no overt act could be shown at his trial, and he was discharged, and at this day, with all the testimony yet before the public, perhaps no jury could agree as to the true object of his expedition. One point only, his partners allege, was settled by his trial in the public mind. Whatever he did contemplate had been arranged in concert with General Wilkinson and other prominent men in the west, and the want of firmness or perfidy of Wilkinson occasioned its failure. General Wilkinson had lost the popular esteem, the government at Washington, and at the War Department especially, viewed him with distrust; a suspicion that he was in the pay of the Spanish government (which then controlled the navigation of the Mississippi, the only outlet of the commerce of the west), had spread throughout the country; all, except his staff and a few gallant officers of his command, had deserted him; and it was believed, being thus desperate in his fortunes, he first clutched at the overtures of Burr, but finally, changing his mind upon perceiving the anxiety felt by Mr. Jefferson, betrayed him for the purpose of recovering the confidence and favor he had formerly enjoyed. The testimony of Major Bruff (brought in collaterally at Burr?s trial) bore very hard upon Wilkinson's fidelity to his government, though the witness was evidently under the influence of strong prejudices. Colonel McKee, who had been, up to 1802, agent in the Choctaw Nation, and was a confidential friend of Wilkinson then and long subsequently, swore that