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Page Number: 9

4 

TRUMP v. VANCE 

Opinion of the Court 

with Alexander Hamilton, and with a murder charge pend-
ing in New Jersey, Burr followed the path of many down-
and-out Americans of his day—he headed West in search of 
new opportunity.  But Burr was a man with outsized ambi-
tions.  Together with General James Wilkinson, the Gover-
nor of the Louisiana Territory, he hatched a plan to estab-
lish  a  new  territory  in  Mexico,  then  controlled  by  Spain.4 
Both men anticipated that war between the United States
and  Spain  was  imminent,  and  when  it  broke  out  they  in-
tended to invade Spanish territory at the head of a private 
army.

But while Burr was rallying allies to his cause, tensions
with Spain eased and rumors began to swirl that Burr was 
conspiring  to  detach  States  by  the  Allegheny  Mountains
from the Union.  Wary of being exposed as the principal co-
conspirator, Wilkinson took steps to ensure that any blame 
would fall on Burr.  He sent a series of letters to President 
Jefferson accusing Burr of plotting to attack New Orleans
and revolutionize the Louisiana Territory.

Jefferson, who despised his former running mate Burr for 
trying to steal the 1800 presidential election from him, was
predisposed  to  credit  Wilkinson’s  version  of  events.  The 
President  sent  a  special  message  to  Congress  identifying 
Burr as the “prime mover” in a plot “against the peace and
safety of the Union.”  16 Annals of Cong. 39–40 (1807).  Ac-
cording to Jefferson, Burr contemplated either the “sever-
ance of the Union” or an attack on Spanish territory.  Id., 
at 41.  Jefferson acknowledged that his sources contained a
“mixture of rumors, conjectures, and suspicions” but, citing
Wilkinson’s letters, he assured Congress that Burr’s guilt
was “beyond question.”  Id., at 39–40. 

—————— 

4 Wilkinson was secretly being paid by Spain for information and in- 
fluence.  In the wake of Burr’s trial, he was investigated by Congress and 
later  court-martialed.    But he  was  acquitted  for  want  of  evidence,  and 
his duplicity was not confirmed until decades after his death, when Span-
ish archival material came to light.