What landed Aaron Burr before a grand jury for the federal 5th District circuit court in Richmond beginning on May 22, 1807, wasn’t the 1804 fatal shooting of former Secretary of Treasury Alexander Hamilton.
Instead, a long and twisted road brought him before Richmond resident and United States Supreme Court Chief Justice John Marshall, who at the time also rode the circuit. Burr’s alleged crime: treason.
On Jan. 22, 1807, President Thomas Jefferson accused Burr of organizing the secession of states west of the Alleghenies, the taking of New Orleans (recently acquired by the U.S.) and organizing a military expedition “against the dominions of the king of Spain, with whom the United States then were and still are at peace,” referring to Mexico. But it didn’t really happen that way, and Jefferson said all this without a grand jury indictment.
Aaron Burr, seen in an engraving of his portrait by John Vanderlyn (Image via Getty Images)
“Burr had to overcome not the evidence against him,” notes scholar Susan Geissler Bowles, “but the determination of the president to hang him.”
Burr arrived in Richmond as both phenomenon and pariah. No one doubted his service in the Revolutionary War or his efforts on behalf of the Jeffersonian Democratic-Republican Party in New York. But the party rejected him for his vigorous opposition to Jefferson in the tumultuous 1800 presidential election runoff in the House of Representatives. The central-government Federalists and others wanted little to do with him after Hamilton’s death.
The Burr trial opened in Richmond, a town of 10,000 people, like a hit Broadway show. Tourists filled every inn, sometimes sleeping three to a bed, or settled under the carriages they drove or in tents along the riverbank.
The social whirl got to those undertaking the law.
John Wickham, one of Burr’s dream team of defense lawyers, held a dinner party at his splendid Court End house (now part of The Valentine museum). Marshall received an invitation, as did Burr, out on bail. Marshall, renowned as much for astute jurisprudence as his enjoyment of social occasions, claimed not to know of Burr’s attendance. The partisan press declared the evening “a feast of treason.”
The prosecution team included George Hay, district attorney for Virginia, and William Wirt, personally assigned by Jefferson and, later, the ninth U.S. Attorney General and biographer of Patrick Henry. (Wirt would come to live in the resplendent Hancock-Wirt-Caskie House standing at 2 N. Fifth St.)
Jefferson attempted to micromanage the prosecution from afar, including sending signed blank pardons to induce testimony from reluctant witnesses.
The federal case against Burr largely rested on what did or did not happen on a three-mile-long island in the Ohio River at the tip of what was then southwestern Virginia. There, wealthy Irish immigrant Harman Blennerhassett built for his family an art-filled mansion as a private idyll. Burr viewed the place and nearby lands as a staging area for possible operations of some sort.
Blennerhassett succumbed to the charismatic persuasions of Burr. He helped to purchase boats and gather men for an adventure.
Burr sought to inveigle in his murky plans General of the Army James Wilkinson, who was also serving as governor of the Louisiana Territory. The two communicated like misbehaving schoolboys through coded messages.
In June 1805, Wilkinson outfitted Burr with “an elegant barge” and provided letters of introduction to friends in New Orleans. There, Burr enjoyed himself and raised money and recruits.
Wilkinson later turned to be a paid informant of Spanish agents finagling to retake the French lands bought in 1803 by the U.S. Thinking he might play Burr, Wilkinson ultimately became anxious about his own possible complicity.
On Oct. 21, 1806, he sent his suspicions to Jefferson.
Wilkinson claimed an enclosed decoded letter came from Burr, detailing his intentions. During the trial this went against him, as he’d doctored the text.
Jefferson sent secret agent John Graham, posing as a sympathizer, to Blennerhassett. The laird of the isle expounded on the merits of dismembering the country. Then a detachment of the Ohio militia visited and may have engaged in a scuffle with the assembled “Burristas.” Accounts differ. Whatever happened, Burr wasn’t there — he was in Kentucky, where he avoided grand jury charges for insurrection. His defense in part came from a young lawyer originally from Hanover County: Henry Clay. And then a Mississippi grand jury dismissed charges, too.
Regardless, all this intelligence led to Jefferson’s announcement of the charges to Congress.
Burr went on the lam until Maj. Nicholas Perkins found him in the Tombigbee River country near Wakefield, Alabama. He arrested a defiant Burr in the name of the United States, and thus began Burr’s thousand-mile journey to Virginia and a seven-month trial.
The grand jury indicted Burr for treason, for levying war against the United States and a high misdemeanor for organizing a military expedition against Spain in Mexico that violated the Neutrality Act of 1794.
“The government’s case rested on the assumption that conspiracy to commit treason was equal to the act itself,” explains Bowles, the scholar. “The defense took the opposite position: If no treasonable acts took place, the defendant could not be charged with treason.”
Wirt attempted to paint Burr as an “evil genius” and a “serpent in the garden of republican virtue.”
“The lawyers’ arguments were key attractions of the trial for spectators then and historians now,” observes historian R. Kent Newmyer.
At one point, Marshall issued a subpoena to Jefferson for documents that Burr requested in preparation for his defense. Jefferson supplied parts of the letters, though he never acknowledged the subpoena. But the exchange demonstrated the judiciary as a coequal branch of government and that not even the president stood above the law.
On Aug. 31, Marshall issued his decision that there wasn’t enough credible evidence for the treason charge, and the jury on Sept. 1, 1807, stated that “Aaron Burr is not proved to be guilty under this indictment by any evidence submitted to us.” Burr objected, as he wanted a “not guilty” verdict — “We therefore find him not guilty” was added at Marshall’s request. After more wrangling and revisiting the executive privilege of Jefferson, the jury acquitted Burr of the misdemeanor.
The decision enraged Jefferson, who wanted Marshall impeached. As news spread, mobs burned in effigy figures of Burr, Blennerhassett, Wilkinson and, in Baltimore, even Marshall.
“Too many people told too many different stories, and too many people had things to hide,” Burr biographer Buckner F. Melton Jr. observes of the trial.
Burr later fled to Europe for several years, then returned to New York to practice law. He died at age 80 in Staten Island.
