ONLY THE MOST UNLIKELY PARTS OF THIS STORY ARE TRUE. IN THE presidential election of 1800 Aaron Burr tied Thomas Jefferson in the electoral college, and on thirty-six tie-breaking votes in the House of Representatives. When Jefferson eventually won, by a single vote, runner-up Burr (in a quickly abandoned procedure) became Vice-President. Four years later, Burr shot former Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton dead in a duel, and was subsequently dropped from Jefferson’s re-election ticket. By 1805 his political career was over.
A man of enormous energy and charisma, Burr responded to this reverse by deciding that if his country would not have him, he would have another country – specifically, the Spanish colony of Mexico, which at the time covered much of Central and North America. Seeking backers for his scheme among all the great powers of the day, he found a sympathetic reception with the British ambassador in Washington, Anthony Merry. Merry passed the suggestion on to his government but there is no record of any official reply; that did not stop Burr writing, in August 1806, that ‘naval protection of England is secured’ and that one of his associates ‘is going to Jamaica to arrange with the [British] admiral there and will meet us at the Mississippi’. Historians have tended to dismiss these claims as empty bravado.
Nonetheless, there is no doubt that at this time British naval personnel were engaged in a great deal of dubious activity around Spanish possessions in the Americas. In April 1806, Commodore Sir Home Popham and General William Beresford took ships and troops from the Cape of Good Hope (which they were supposed to be defending) and launched a unilateral invasion of South America, hoping to open it to British trade. They quickly took Buenos Aires but failed to make further progress, and were eventually driven out by the Spanish with heavy losses. Neither Beresford nor Popham received more than a reprimand. Meanwhile, General Beresford’s brother John, a navy captain, had been supporting the liberationist General Miranda in a Bay-of-Pigs-style attempt to spark a rebellion in Venezuela. Again, early successes quickly came to nothing. A British-backed attack in the north would have fitted with these other expeditions as the northern element of a concerted, three-pronged attack on Spanish America.
The execution of Burr’s plan unfolded much as it does in this novel, and was at least as hapless as I have portrayed it. Entrusting a key part of the conspiracy to a Spanish double agent was unfortunate, but even without that disadvantage he was never in much danger of success. The army of thousands he had expected (and catered for) never materialized, but Burr pressed on with astounding tenacity. Meanwhile, his misplaced optimism, combined with reckless indiscretion, convinced the nation that he threatened the very foundations of the Republic, and the full weight of the government was mobilized against him. Being personally loathed by the President was the final nail in his coffin.
Or not. From Natchez, Burr was taken to Virginia and tried for treason, where the very ineffectuality of his conspiracy proved to be his salvation. The framers of the constitution (who had, after all, begun their careers as traitors against their sovereign government) had defined treason solely as levying war against the United States. Given Burr’s total failure to levy war, whatever his intentions, and his lawyerly instinct for staying on the right side of the law, he was acquitted, much to Jefferson’s fury. He went into exile in England, returning to America in 1812.
Harman Blennerhassett was taken for trial with Burr but was released after Burr’s acquittal. Broken by the experience, his life afterwards was a woeful tale of ever-worse tragedy and penury, involving dissipated fortunes, crop failures, ill-timed commercial speculations, apoplexy and a rabid fox. His story has since become a popular subject for romantic novelists. His extraordinary mansion on Blennerhassett Island was first looted by militia, then burned to the ground in 1811. It remained in that condition until 1984, when the enlightened attentions of the West Virginia state government rebuilt it as a museum. It is well worth a visit.
The United States did not complete the conquest of Spain’s North American territories until 1848. Then, almost as if working from Burr’s blueprint, they provoked an unnecessary war with Mexico, invaded, and seized what is now California, New Mexico, Nevada, Utah, Arizona and half of Texas. Had Burr lived to see it he might well have applauded the audacity, while remembering Talleyrand’s cynical formulation that treason is only a question of timing.