Burr conspiracy

The Burr conspiracy of 1805-1807, was a treasonous plot alleged to have been planned by American politician and former military officer Aaron Burr (1756-1836), in the years during and after his single term as third Vice President of the United States (1801-1805), during the presidential administration and first term of the third President Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826, served 1801-1809).

According to the accusations made against former Vice President Burr, he attempted to use his international connections and support from a cabal of American planters, politicians, and United States Army officers to establish an independent country in the old federal Southwest Territory (1790-1796), south of the Ohio River, (future states of Kentucky, Tennessee and the future federal Territories of later Mississippi Territory (1798-1817), and adjacent Alabama Territory), and east of the Mississippi River and north of the southern coast along the Gulf of Mexico, or to invade / conquer the newly-acquired Louisiana Purchase of 1803, west of the Mississippi River, later organized as the Louisiana Territory (1804-1812), then divided into future 18th state of Louisiana and upper / northern portion as Missouri Territory (1812-1821); or plotting against the northern parts of the colonial New Spain (later Mexico), still held by Spain; or against and seizing the Florida peninsula of the longtime Royal Spanish colony of Spanish Florida, (consisting of West Florida and East Florida), in the Americas / Western Hemisphere, part of the world-wide Spanish Empire since the early 16th century.

Burr's version was that he intended to farm 40,000 (40 thousand) acres (160 km²) in the Spanish Texas colonial province of the New Spain Viceroyalty which had been supposedly leased to him by the Spanish Crown.

In February 1807, former Vice President Burr was arrested on President Jefferson's orders and charged / indicted for treason, despite a lack of firm evidence.^[1] While Burr was ultimately acquitted of treason in a trial, due to the lack of detailed specificity in the 1787 text of the United States Constitution about any alleged crimes of treason, the fiasco and affair further destroyed his already faltering political career. Effigies of his likeness were hung and burned throughout the country and the threat of additional charges from individual states forced him into exile overseas in Europe.^[2]

Burr's true intentions remain unclear and, as a result, have led to varying theories from historians: some claim that he intended to take parts of Texas and the newly acquired Louisiana Purchase of 1803 for himself, while others believe he intended to try to conquer Mexico to the southwest (then a Royal Spanish colonial province of the Kingdom of Spain in the Viceroyalty of New Spain, in the Americas, part of the world-wide Spanish Empire), or even as the gossip extended to wild accusations of conquering even the entirety of the continent of North America. The number of men backing him is also unclear, with wide-ranging different inconclusive accounts ranging from fewer than 40 men to upwards of 7,000.