Free A Nation Rising by Kenneth C. Davis

traitor and his “guilt is placed beyond question.” Jefferson vowed he would bring the full force of the federal government down on his former vice president. But Jefferson did not know that Wilkinson’s damning letter was a copy that the duplicitous general had made, altering the text.
    Watching with interest from a distance, John Adams thought that Jefferson had overreached and wrote to another signer of the Declaration, Benjamin Rush, that even if Burr’s “guilt is as clear as the noonday sun, the first magistrate ought not to have pronounced it so before a jury had tried him.” No admirer of Burr, Adams nonetheless also noted, “I never believed him to be a fool. Politicians have no more regard for the Truth than the Devil [and] I suspect that this Lying Spirit has been at work concerning Burr.” 27
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    B URR , IN THE meantime, was moving swiftly around the territories, while making contact with members of the British government, and seeking support for his ventures. And if he was truly on the verge of treason, he did little to cover his tracks. Instead he reached out to several prominent and powerful friends, such as his longtime acquaintance and Prince ton classmate Senator Jonathan Dayton, and his son-in-law Joseph Alston.
    He also made several overtures to a rising young power from the new state of Tennessee, forty-year-old Andrew Jackson. In May1805, Burr had spent several days with Jackson and Jackson’s wife Rachel at their home outside Nashville. Burr said that he intended to oust the hated Spanish from the Southwest, and Jackson was enthusiastic about the idea. Like many southerners and westerners, Jackson believed Spain was the enemy. The “dons,” as he called them, contributed to two irksome and dangerous problems: Indians and fugitive slaves. Jackson and other southerners with their own ambitions of spreading American control looked upon Burr’s plan very favorably.
    Jackson believed that Burr was going to collect an expeditionary force in Kentucky and Tennessee and float down the Mississippi to New Orleans intending to start a revolution in Mexico, perhaps even with American naval support. Jackson’s ardor for the plan began to cool, however, when he heard the rumors of Burr’s real design: to create a new country with himself at the head. As the historian Andrew Burstein puts it: “Jackson was in charge of building boats for which Burr had paid in advance, at his Clover Bottom boatyard. Believing that Burr was not doing anything that Jefferson was unaware of—or else to cover himself—Jackson wrote the President, ‘In the event of insult or aggression made on our Government from any quarter…, I take the liberty of rendering [Tennessee’s volunteers’] service, that is, under my command.’” 28
    Jefferson issued an order for Burr’s arrest, declaring him a traitor even before an indictment was issued. Burr turned himself in to the federal authorities. Defended in a Kentucky courtroom by a rising young attorney named Henry Clay, Burr was released after two grand juries separately found his actions legal. But Jefferson’s warrant followed Burr to Mississippi, where still another grand juryrefused to indict him in February 1807. Certain that the president and Wilkinson would not permit him to go free, Burr fled toward Spanish Florida. It was there that Nicholas Perkins recognized him late on the night of February 19, 1807.
    Burr was brought to trial before the United States circuit court at Richmond, Virginia. Thomas Jefferson watched as his distant cousin and political antagonist, John Marshall, chief justice of the United States, presided over the trial. A staunch Federalist, Marshall had been appointed by John Adams just before Adams left office and in February 1803 had written the landmark decision in Marbury v. Madison , establishing the principle of judicial review, under which the Supreme Court can