Sabine should be, for the present, the line of demarca- CHAPTER tion between the two nations. XIX. Leaving Cushing to bring down the troops, Wilkinson 1806. hastened back to Natchitoches, where he received a let- Nov. 7. ter from Bollman, dated at New Orleans, covering a duplicate of Burr's letter in cipher, and also a letter, partly in cipher, from Dayton, different in its precise tenor, but in general substance much the same with that brought by Swartwout. Just about the same time he also received a letter from a gentleman at Natchez, stating the arrival there of a person from St. Louis in thirteen days, bringing a report that a plan to revolutionize the Western country was just ready to explode Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee, and the Territory of Orleans having combined to declare themselves independent on the 15th of November. This letter gave new impulse to Wilkinson's alarm. He wrote to Cushing to hasten down the troops with the greatest possible dispatch, and to the officer commanding at New Orleans, to whom he sent a re-enforcement of men and artificers, to press forward his defenses; but without signs of alarm, or any indication of his reasons. Wilkinson himself proceeded with all dispatch to Natchez, whence, in the midst of a severe domestic bereavement in the death of his wife, he dispatched a second special messenger to the president with duplicates of his former communications, inclosed in a letter, in which he declared that all his doubts as to the reality of the conspiracy were now at an end, mentioning also the insufficiency of the means at his disposal, and the necessity of putting New Orleans under martial law; in which step he trusted to be sustained by the president. Wilkinson exhibited to this messenger the ciphered letters he had received, and authorized him to name Burr, Dayton, Truxton, and others, as apparently engaged in the enterprise. CHAPTER He dispatched, at the same time, a confidential letXIX. ter to Governor Claiborne, of the Orleans Territory, in1806. forming him that his government was menaced by a secret plot, and entreating him to co-operate with the military commander in measures of defense; but enjoining secrecy till he himself arrived. He also called on the acting governor of the Mississippi Territorry for five hundred militia to proceed to New Orleans. But as he declined to specify the service for which he required them, the acting governor declined to answer the requisition. Νον. 25. Arrived at New Orleans, and being under apprehensions that Burr had many secret partisans in that city— a thing by no means improbable-and the rumors from up the river growing more and more alarming, a public Dec. 9. meeting of merchants was called, before which Wilkinson and Claiborne made an exposition of Burr's suspected projects. The militia of the Territory was placed at Wilkinson's disposal; in addition to a small squadron of gun-boats and ketches in the river, vessels were armed and fitted out to repel the expected attack by sea, and a sort of voluntary embargo was agreed upon in order that seamen might be got to man them. After consultation with the governor and two of the Dec. 14. judges, Wilkinson caused Bollman, Swartwout, and Ogden to be arrested, and confined on board some of the vessels of the squadron. A writ of habeas corpus having been issued in the case of Bollman by the Superior Court, Wilkinson appeared before the judges in full uniform, attended by his aids-de-camp, and made a return stating that, as a necessary step toward the defense of the city, menaced by a lawless band of traitors, he had arrested Bollman on his own responsibility, on a charge of misprision of treason; and that he would do the same with any other person against whom reasonable suspicions. XIX. might arise. Indeed, he intimated very strongly that CHAPTER both Alexander and Livingston, the lawyers at whose instance the habeas corpus had issued, ought to be ar- 1806. rested. Bollman and Swartwout were sent prisoners by sea to Washington. Ogden was once released on a writ of habeas corpus, granted by Judge Wortman, of the County Court, and directed to the officer in whose custody Ogden was. But both he and Alexander, who had obtained the writ, were shortly after taken into custody by Wilkinson's order, and to a new writ Wilkinson made the same return as in Boll man's case. Wortman himself was presently arrested, but was set at liberty by the judge of the United States District Court. New Orleans, subjected, in fact, to martial law, presented a singular scene of doubts, alarm, and mutual suspicions and recriminations. The chief ground of suspicion against Livingston seems to have been that Burr had drawn upon him, in favor of Bollman, for $1500. But this, Livingston insisted, was merely in discharge of an old debt. Among those arrested was Bradford, the old whisky rebel, editor of the only paper in New Orleans, which was thus brought to a stop. While these events were occurring on the Lower Mississippi, much excitement also prevailed on the waters of the Ohio and its tributaries. About the time of Burr's arrival in the Western country, a series of articles, signed Querist, appeared in the Ohio Gazette, one of the four or five newspapers published at that time west of the mountains, arguing strongly in favor of the separation of the Western States from the Union. These articles were nominally written by Blennerhasset, but were believed to be furnished in substance by Burr. Articles having the same tendency, though less bold and decided, appeared in the Commonwealth, a Democratic paper published at Pittsburg. CHAPTER XIX. There had sprung up in Kentucky, on the part of some aspirants for political power, a great uneasiness at 1806. the existing monopoly of office and influence by the old Republican leaders. The circumstance of a draft on the Spanish government for a considerable amount, drawn by Sebastian, one of those leaders, and now a judge of the Court of Appeals, and found among the effects of a Kentucky merchant, who had died during a visit to New Orleans, had revived the old story of Spanish pensioners in Kentucky-a story zealously seized upon as a means of destroying the influence of the old monopolists of political influence. Daviess, the United States District Attorney, had caught very eagerly at this affair, and early in the year had opened a correspondence with the president, under an injunction of the strictest secrecy, implicating, on mere suspicion, rumor, or guess, Wilkinson, Brown, late one of the Kentucky senators, and, indeed, most of the leading politicians of that state, as being, or having been, Spanish pensioners, and therefore likely, in case of a war with Spain, to play into her hands, and perhaps to bring about that separation of the Union which Spain had formerly instigated, and for which her partisans had labored, without being then able to accomplish it. Daviess even went so far as to abandon his plantation, and to make a journey of exploration down the Mississippi, for the purpose of unraveling this plot. He went, however, no further than St. Louis, and returned without discovering any thing. Meanwhile, there had been set up at Lexington a newspaper called the Western World, edited by that same Wood whose History of John Adams's adminis tration Burr had formerly labored to suppress. By whom this paper was started does not distinctly appear. viess denied, in his letters to the president, any agency Da XIX. in it. But its object evidently was to attack the al- CHAPTER The name of Wilkinson, against whom, also, Marshall entertained a mortal hatred, was freely used in connection with these alleged Spanish intrigues, of which he was represented as having been a chief manager; and the fact that certain large sums of money had been at different times remitted to him from New Orleans was urged as proof positive of his corrupt connection with the Spanish government. The rumors in circulation of a new enterprise on foot under Burr's leadership became connected, in the public mind, with those relating to the old Spanish plot, and Wilkinson's reputed connection with that gave additional credibility to the hints of Burr and his confederates of his being also connected with the new movement. Some numbers of the Western World, containing im putations of this sort, which reached the Lower Mississippi, added not a little to Wilkinson's embarrassments. So currently, indeed, were he and Burr connected together by rumor, that General Jackson wrote to Gov- Nov. 12 ernor Claiborne, suggesting that an enterprise was on foot against his territory, and warning him to be on his guard against internal as well as external dangers, and as well against Wilkinson as against Burr. "I hate the Dons," wrote Jackson; "I would delight to see Mexico reduced; but I would die in the last ditch before I would see the Union disunited." This letter of Jack ។ |