I CLAIM LITTLE KNOWLEDGE OF AMERICAN LAW, BUT FROM WHAT little I had seen it seemed a curious business – and more curious still, as I later discovered. They put great store in their states, which I had always supposed to be no more than shires or counties, and paid little heed to the nation at large. So it was that Burr could be wanted for duelling in New Jersey (where he had shot his opponent), and for murder in New York (where the man had actually died), but could roam free across the other fifteen states and assorted territories. It was as if a man condemned in Kent could claim his innocence merely by strolling into Surrey. Hence the reason that on that wintry morning, with the shouts of the militia sounding ever louder from over the hill, we hurried back to our boats and repaired to the far side of the river. On the east bank was the Mississippi Territory, whose governor had taken so much against Burr; on the west was the Louisiana Territory (neither place having yet attained that height of civilization or population expected of a state). There, so we supposed, not only the broad river but the entire edifice of American law protected us. ‘The governor has not the least sanction over us here,’ boasted Burr – though I noticed that he posted pickets around the perimeter of our camp nonetheless.
As if to prove Burr’s wisdom, an hour after we had crossed the river a quartet of dragoons came to the water’s edge opposite. They waited there some time, staring at us and conferring together before riding away. That evening, a small watch-fire glowed on the far shore while Burr, Tyler, Blennerhassett and I held a council in his cabin. As ever, Burr’s spirits were high.
‘They cannot touch me, of course. I fancy if they even tried, half the country would rise up in arms and we would endure the horrors of a civil war.’
He rather over-estimated the strength of his fellow citizens’ good-feeling, I thought.
‘I say we fight our way out,’ declared Tyler, who had evidently spent too many hours imbibing Burr’s madness. ‘If we stormed Baton Rouge and took it, all Mississippi would rally to our cause.’
Blennerhassett did not like that plan at all, and said so. It occurred to me that ours must be a desperate plight indeed if a half-mad, half-blind Irishman was the only man among us who could see sense. This time, though, Burr concurred.
‘That would be an act of war contrary to the Neutrality Act.’
‘What does that signify?’ retorted Tyler. ‘Once a fire’s blazing no-one looks for the match.’
‘It signifies everything. Shoot a man one day and you are a murderer; shoot him the next and you may be a patriot. Every pair of eyes west of the mountains is trained on us, and we cannot afford a single mis-step. They can march a hundred regiments of militia to meet us, but as long as we’re on the right side of the law we’re untouchable. There isn’t a court in the land that would convict me for what we’ve done so far.’
Blennerhassett stirred. ‘They might if they found five hundred stands of arms on our boats.’
‘But they will not. We will hide them away until the danger is past.’
‘And what about this business of splitting the Union?’ Blennerhassett persisted. ‘That’s treason. If they convict us—’
‘That is enough,’ hissed Burr, in an aggrieved whisper. ‘It does not do to speak of such things. It will only give succour to rumour-mongers and villains, and we do not know what ears may be pressed against our keyhole. As you all know,’ he said loudly, ‘my plan has always been to confront Spain only if the country was at war. Even Mr Jefferson cannot have objected to that.
‘Though I concede,’ he added in a quieter tone, ‘that if he did discover my full ambition, and the allies I had enlisted, perhaps he might have taken it amiss.’
Or perhaps, I thought, he had guessed it all along. He cannot have harboured much love for Burr, who had almost snatched the presidency from him and then tainted it with his duelling. Perhaps he had merely bided his time, waiting for Burr to show his hand and condemn himself outright.
If such was the case, an English lieutenant caught with Burr would be worth several feet of the hangman’s rope. Clearly, the sooner I was away from this lunacy the better. From what I had gleaned, we were now not more than a few days from New Orleans, whence I could surely find a packet to start me home. I touched my hand to the lapel of my coat where I had hidden my uncle’s letter, cheering myself with the thought of the benefits to come when I confronted him.
I cleared my throat. ‘Perhaps it would be best if I made contact with my ships, informed them of these developments. That way, they could be on hand if we needed reinforcements.’
I had long since dismissed any notion that these ships might actually exist, that they might be any more substantial than the rest of Burr’s conjectured army, but I knew he placed great store in them. This time, unfortunately, the argument did not sway him.
‘I would prefer it if you did not. It would not do, at the present time, to call attention to our English connections, valuable as they undoubtedly are.’ He fixed me with a beaming smile. ‘If you were to be captured by the militia, it would be quite disastrous for our cause.’
For all Burr’s confident humour, it was evident to all that his dreams were fast receding. We clung on at our encampment on the Louisiana shore for almost a week, while a succession of officers rowed across to present their exhortations, blandishments and threats. One day we had a Colonel Wooldridge, who was treated to tea in the day cabin while Catherine and I hid in the sleeping cabin and listened through a crack in the door. With a great show of reluctance and delicacy, he enquired after Burr’s intentions, and was delighted to hear Burr’s solemn undertaking that he had never intended more than the settlement of some lands he happened to own in Louisiana. When the visiting colonel alluded to the arsenal Burr was commonly supposed to have brought, Tyler assured him that they had nothing more than rifles for hunting and shooting Indians. This was true enough: I had seen to it myself using a smuggler’s trick learned in Dover, dropping the guns over the side where a well-swung grapple might easily draw them up again.
Colonel Wooldridge departed well satisfied, and for a time Burr seemed to think that that might prove the end of the business. Regrettably, the Mississippi governor did not share this apprehension, and the following day sent a second colonel who intimated that if Burr did not surrender himself peaceably, he might well forfeit the protection of the law.
‘That is nonsense,’ said Burr, who revered the law on a plane with the divine. ‘This is the United States. No man may be deprived of the protection of the law.’
Nonetheless, he cast anxious glances at the three-score dragoons who had chosen to exercise on the far bank. And when the governor sent a letter the next day remarking that he had assembled a great quantity of militia, ‘to guard this Territory against any designs inimical to this Government’, Burr sank still deeper into thought.
On the fourth day, a major came, together with a sharp-looking attorney named Poindexter. Whether this signified a diminution of the governor’s regard, or whether he had exhausted his supply of colonels, Burr passed several hours in conversation with them. When they had left, with many solemn handshakes and mutual declarations of honour, Burr summoned Tyler, Blennerhassett and me.
‘I have agreed that tomorrow I will cross the river and meet with Governor Mead. He has promised me safe conduct and an honest parley – I will see what he has to say.’
‘A dozen to one he will say, “You are my prisoner,”’ said Tyler angrily. ‘Can’t you see what he’s doing? He’ll cut off the army’s head, and as soon as you’re gone he’ll send his men to round up the rest of us. He’s already landed a company of militia on our shore – how’s that for your safe conduct?’
‘Has he?’ I craned my neck around and peered out of the cabin window, though of course it was dark outside. ‘I thought you said they could not touch us here.’
‘Well, if that’s so then Governor Mead forgot it.’ Tyler pulled a pistol from his belt and thumped its butt on the table. ‘I say we hoist up the muskets we stashed, gather the men and march down tonight. Mead’s men have no tents – I spied out their camp myself – so come the dawn they’ll be frozen, stiff and weary. We’ll sweep them into the Mississippi like so much sawdust.’
Burr shook his head. ‘And then what? We will not rally the local population to our side by massacring their sons and brothers. All Mississippi and Louisiana would turn against us. Wilkinson would come north with his army, and we would either die in battle or be hanged from the highest tree in the territory.’
Having just begun to wonder how I might escape Tyler’s lunatic expedition, I was glad to hear Burr forbid it with such force. Yet even that was little consolation. If Burr had at last been driven to acknowledge the reality of our predicament, it must truly be desperate.
Burr left the following afternoon, a stiff, solitary figure in the stern of a little bateau dwarfed by the magnitude of the river. Soon he was lost to view. Grey clouds hung low in the sky, threatening deeper snow to come, and a melancholy stillness seized our camp. For a time we tried to continue with the normal business of the expedition – chopping firewood, cleaning rifles, caulking leaks in the boats – but after a couple of hours, by spontaneous accord, we drifted away from our tasks and sat silent by the fires, like a parliament of widows gaunt-eyed with grief. I even saw a tear on Catherine’s cheek – the first I had seen in all our perils and adventures.
As dusk was falling, a small light was seen working up the river, and presently we saw the skiff making its way towards us. We all of us leaped up and ran down to the water’s edge, straining to see whether our captain had returned. I confess that even I felt a strange tug of hope, though I owed Burr nothing but hardship and danger.
It was not Burr. It was the colonel of dragoons who had visited us three days earlier.
‘Burr is under arrest,’ he called, as the boatmen worked their oars to keep the skiff stationary in mid stream, a few yards off the bank. ‘He has submitted to the governor and will be taken to Washington and placed under recognizance. A fortnight from now, he will stand trial for treason.’