Burr Conspiracy: Wilkinson's Doctored Cipher and Marshall's Treason Test

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Dropped from Thomas Jefferson's ticket in 1804, Vice President Aaron Burr asked British minister Anthony Merry for money, guns and two or three ships of the line to help the American Southwest secede. When London ignored the plan, he told Spanish diplomat Carlos Martínez de Irujo he meant to seize Washington, D.C. Publicly he claimed to be settling 40,000 leased acres in Spanish Texas. In 1805 he toured the Ohio River and the Natchez Trace, found a backer in Harman Blennerhassett, whose island near present-day Parkersburg became a depot, and leaned on General James Wilkinson, a secret Spanish agent known as Agent 13.

After Ohio militia raided Blennerhassett Island and Henry Clay defended Burr in Kentucky, Wilkinson turned on him, sending Jefferson an altered decoding of Burr's cipher letter that removed his own role. Burr surrendered at Bayou Pierre, escaped in boatman's clothes, and was recaptured in February 1807. At his treason trial in Richmond, Chief Justice John Marshall upheld a subpoena to Jefferson and required an overt act of war proved by two witnesses, and the jury acquitted. Burr went into exile, pitched Napoleon on invading Mexico, and returned to New York under a false name.

Merry gave Burr about $1,500; Irujo reportedly added a few thousand dollars.
Burr's force numbered perhaps a hundred men rather than thousands.
Jefferson gave prosecutor George Hay signed blank pardons to secure testimony.
Witness Jacob Allbright's claim of muskets raised on the island was contradicted by the militia general himself.
A grand jury foreman called Wilkinson a mammoth of iniquity.

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