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Thomas Jefferson Trmp: Trying to Hang Your Vice President [1]

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Date: 2024-06-21  

I found a copy of Jefferson’s Vendetta: the Pursuit of Aaron Burr and the Judiciary by Joseph Wheelan in a local Little Free Library, where I get many of my books (and then pass them on). Interested in the history and the equivocal figure of Burr, I read it and found history rhyming once again.

As the author tells the story, it is clear Jefferson was trying to railroad Burr into a treason conviction on (ahem) trumped up charges. Jefferson declared Burr’s “guilt is placed beyond question” without even a hearing or trial. (I am old enough to remember the public harrumphing when Nixon declared Charlie Manson guilty before that trial was over. Jefferson went him one or two steps further.)



Early on in the process, Dr Justus Bollman, an associate of Burr’s, was arrested without warrant, transported against his will to Washington DC, and held in the Marine Corps headquarters without any charges filed against him. Jefferson had him brought from his cell to Secretary of State Madison’s office to meet with Jefferson and Madison. "Bollman extracted a promise from Jefferson to guard the confidentiality of what he was about to say. 'The P. assured him that nothing which he might say or acknowledge, should be made use of against himself,' said Madison’s notes of the January 23 meeting. [Burr wasn’t arrested until February.] Jefferson and Madison also assured Bollman that is was a 'settled rule' that no such statement made to a government official 'could be extorted from him as a witness' in court. Although he would later discover this to be untrue, Bollman believed at the time that he was safe from self-incrimination, and proceeded to tell his story.



"Burr’s sole purpose was to lead an expedition against Mexico, said Bollman.”

So Jefferson knew from the beginning that Burr was not assembling a force against USAmerican territories or interests, the treason he was charged with. Still, he appropriated $11,000 from the government’s “continuing fund” for US Attorney George Hay’s hiring of prosecutors and much more was spent to transport and lodge a hundred and forty government witnesses from all over the country. The Jefferson administration spent nearly $100,000, without congressional authorization, equalling about $2,574,000 in 2024 dollars. Jefferson also gave Hay a sheaf of blank pardons to use, he instructed Hay, “at your discretion, if you should find a defect of evidence, and believe that this would supply it…”

An offer, Bollman refused when it was presented to him.

In the course of the trial, Burr and his lawyers subpoenaed some letters that had passed between Jefferson and the chief witness against Burr, General James Wilkinson, the Commanding General of the USAmerican Army at the time. The presiding judge, Chief Justice John Marshall, a cousin of Jefferson’s but not a friend, ruled that the president could be subpoenaed since “while the people had elected him, he remained a citizen and, thus, subject to the same laws as other citizens.” (I wonder if anyone will remember this if/when the Supremes rule on Trmp’s claim of immunity.) Jefferson complied although he redacted some parts of the letters. Here we have two precedents formed at the same time: the president is not above the law and there is executive privilege for some communications.

It was discovered in 1854, 29 years after his death, that General Wilkinson, who had twice been the Senior Officer of the Army, had also been a paid spy and agent for the Spanish government for most if not all of his professional life. Thus, one could think of the treason trial of Aaron Burr as foreign meddling in USAmerican politics and a mostly successful disinformation campaign.

Reading about this history has diminished my opinion of Jefferson and raised my opinion of Burr, who not only promoted the rights of women and educated his daughter as thoroughly as any son, but also, as a state assemblyman, had tried to ban slavery in New York and represented blacks for the New York Manumission Society, which opposed the re-enslavement of free blacks and established the African Free School in New York. In addition, he believed that the government should negotiate with Indian tribes, unlike Jefferson who advocated their removal or extermination, and, unusual among the Founders, had an Indian friend, Joseph Brant of the Mohawks, a very interesting person in his own right.

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