Aaron Burr's Attempt to Conquer Texas: or How Aaron Burr Continually Insisted on Ruining His Life

Many people don’t know about that one time Aaron Burr tried to conquer Texas/Mexico and was tried for treason. Those who do know about it often don’t know about the even funnier details and aftermath. Most people only know of Aaron Burr as “the dude that shot Hamilton.” While this was definitely one of the most historically impactful things he did, it was far from the most interesting.

After Aaron Burr killed Hamilton, his political career was in ruins. He was recently the ex-vice president, and almost everyone was mad at him for shooting Al. He was even faced with the threat of a murder charge for the duel. Burr decided he had to take drastic action to regain his influence.

He wrote to England, telling them that he was willing to head up a scheme to get Louisiana and other territories through Texas to secede. England was like “Haha get a load of this guy… yeah we’re not gonna do that.” Burr decided he would just do it himself, and went and found a dude who owned an island in the middle of the Ohio river, and made that island his headquarters for his ~plot~. He also managed to get General Wilkinson, the highest ranked guy in the whole US army, to be in on it. He started recruiting an army, for mysterious purposes. We don’t really know what he was trying to do, whether it be attack the Spanish and attempt to seize portions of Texas and Mexico for the United States, or whether he was straight up trying to conquer and rule areas of the southwestern United States for himself. (Seriously, some people speculated at the time that he wanted to declare himself Emperor over that whole giant chunk of land.)

Either way, he was almost ready to begin his plan, having already had his army gather on his island, when General Wilkinson got cold feet. He ran off and tattled to Jefferson, who was both super mad, and also always on the lookout for a way to slam Burr. Jeffy put out an order for Burr’s arrest, and the army on the island was raided while Burr was away. Meanwhile, Burr tried to gather support, but only got under a hundred men. They sailed on down the Mississippi, until Burr figured out that Jefferson had put a bounty on him. Burr was captured, and the plan was to bring him to Virginia, when he escaped off into the wilderness. After this escape attempt, he was recaptured and brought to Virginia to stand trial.

So he got to Virginia, and everyone hated him even more than before. Jefferson wanted Burr convicted so bad that he signed a whole stack of blank pardons, and basically told the 140 witnesses/accomplices (which, incidentally, included Andrew Jackson), “wow, look at all these pardons I have! I would really love to hand them out, but I totally can’t give them to the worst offenders. Sure would be nice if I knew who those were so I could give these pardons to EVERYONE ELSE.” Basically he wanted everyone to point fingers at Burr so he’d get convicted.

Burr’s defense at the trial was “umm I just wanted to farm like… 40,000 acres… in the frontier wilderness….” Because he clearly didn’t admit what he was actually up to, speculation ran wild, as it has in the years since. But since the only active act of treason that could be confirmed was the army on the island, and Burr wasn’t there when it was busted, he was acquitted on lack of evidence. At this point, people just hated Burr’s guts so much that riots started at his acquittal, where people burned Burr’s effigy, his accomplices’ effigies, and even the judge’s effigy (who, again incidentally, happened to be Chief Justice John Marshall).

For once in his life, Burr did the wise thing, and yeeted himself outta the country. He went to England and immediately started trying to gather support for starting a revolution in Mexico. You’d think the guy would learn, but no. England was like “Okay enough” and kicked him out of the country. He went to France and tried to get Napoleon to help him with the same scheme. Napoleon declined. At this point Burr was just too plain poor to get to America, so he waited a couple years till he had enough money, then sailed home.

Probably wisely, he changed his name. He reopened his lawyer practice and married a wealthy widow. This might seem like a good place to end the story, and it would be, if Aaron Burr didn’t always insist on ruining his own life. Perhaps that’s what he and Hamilton truly had in common.

Anyways, his wife filed for divorce only four months after marrying him, because he had lost a bunch of her money by using it to engage in land speculation.

Her divorce lawyer? Alexander Hamilton Jr.

I cannot even imagine how that went down, but what we do know is that Hammy Jr. succeeded in procuring a divorce for his client. The day that her divorce from Burr was finalized, Burr died.

Convenient.