Burr Begins his Treasonable Plotting.

Burr began his treasonable scheming before he ceased to be Vice-President.  He was an old friend and crony of Wilkinson; and he knew much about the disloyal agitations which had convulsed the West during the previous two decades.  These agitations always took one or the other of two forms that at first sight would seem diametrically opposed.  Their end was always either to bring about a secession of the West from the East by the aid of Spain or some other foreign power; or else a conquest of the Spanish dominions by the West, in defiance of the wishes of the East and of the Central Government.  Burr proposed to carry out both of these plans.

    He Endeavors to Enlist the Foreign Powers.

The exact shape which his proposals took would be difficult to tell.  Seemingly they remained nebulous even in his own mind.  They certainly so remained in the minds of those to whom he confided them.  At any rate his scheme, though in reality less dangerous than those of his predecessors in Western treason, were in theory much more comprehensive.  He planned the seizure of Washington, the kidnapping of the President, and the corruption of the United States Navy.  He also endeavored to enlist foreign Powers on his side.  His first advances were made to the British.  He proposed to put the new empire, no matter what shape it might assume, under British protection, in return for the assistance of the British fleet in taking New Orleans.  He gave to the British ministers full—­and false—­accounts of the intended uprising, and besought the aid of the British Government on the ground that the secession of the West would so cripple the Union as to make it no longer a formidable enemy of Great Britain.  Burr’s audacity and plausibility were such that he quite dazzled the British minister, who detailed the plans at length to his home government, putting them in as favorable a light as he could.  The statesmen at London, however, although at this time almost inconceivably stupid in their dealings with America, were not sunk in such abject folly as to think Burr’s schemes practicable, and they refused to have anything to do with them.

    He Starts West and Stays with Blennerhassett.

In April, 1805, Burr started on his tour to the West.  One of his first stoppages was at an island on the Ohio near Parkersburg, where an Irish gentleman named Blennerhassett had built what was, for the West, an unusually fine house.  Only Mrs. Blennerhassett was at home at the time; but Blennerhassett later became a mainstay of the “conspiracy.”  He was a warm-hearted man, with no judgment and a natural tendency toward sedition, who speedily fell under Burr’s influence, and entered into his plans with eager zeal.  With him Burr did not have to be on his guard, and to him he confided freely his plans; but elsewhere, and in dealing with less emotional people, he had to be more guarded.