In New York Aaron Burr had led a political career as stormy and chequered as the careers of New York politicians have generally been.  He had shown himself as adroit as he was unscrupulous in the use of all the arts of the machine manager.  The fitful and gusty breath of popular favor made him at one time the most prominent and successful politician in the State, and one of the two or three most prominent and successful in the nation.  In the State he was the leader of the Democratic party, which under his lead crushed the Federalists; and as a reward he was given the second highest office in the nation.  Then his open enemies and secret rivals all combined against him.  The other Democratic leaders in New York, and in the nation as well, turned upon the man whose brilliant abilities made them afraid, and whose utter untrustworthiness forbade their entering into alliance with him.  Shifty and fertile in expedients, Burr made an obstinate fight to hold his own.  Without hesitation, he turned for support to his old enemies, the Federalists; but he was hopelessly beaten.  Both his fortune and his local political prestige were ruined; he realized that his chance for a career in New York was over.

    When Beaten in New York he Turned to the West.

He was no mere New York politician, however.  He was a statesman of national reputation; and he turned his restless eyes toward the West, which for a score of years had seethed in a turmoil out of which it seemed that a bold spirit might make its own profit.  He had already been obscurely connected with separatist intrigues in the Northeast; and he determined to embark in similar intrigues on an infinitely grander scale in the West and Southwest.  He was a cultivated man, of polished manners and pleasing address, and of great audacity and physical courage; and he had shown himself skilled in all the baser arts of political management.

It is small wonder that the conspiracy of which such a man was head should make a noise out of all proportion to its real weight.  The conditions were such that if Burr journied West he was certain to attract universal attention, and to be received with marked enthusiasm.  No man of his prominence in national affairs had ever travelled through the wild new commonwealths on the Mississippi.  The men who were founding states and building towns on the wreck of the conquered wilderness were sure to be flattered by the appearance of so notable a man among them, and to be impressed not only by his reputation, but by his charm of manner and brilliancy of intellect.  Moreover they were quite ready to talk vaguely of all kinds of dubious plans for increasing the importance of the West.  Very many, perhaps most, of them had dabbled at one time or another in the various separatist schemes of the preceding two decades; and they felt strongly that much of the Spanish domain would and should ultimately fall into their hands—­and the sooner the better.