Louisiana and Aaron Burr 327 



quite ready to talk vaguely of all kinds of dubious 

 plans for increasing the importance of the West. 

 Very many, perhaps most, of them had dabbled at 

 one time or another in the various saparatist schemes 

 of the preceding two decades ; and they felt strongly 

 that much of the Spanish domain would and should 

 ultimately fall into their hands and the sooner the 

 better. 



There was thus every chance that Burr would be 

 favorably received by the West, and would find plenty 

 of men of high standing who would profess friend- 

 ship for him and would show a cordial interest in his 

 plans so long as he refrained from making them too 

 definite; but there was in reality no chance what- 

 ever for anything more than this to happen. In 

 spite of Burr's personal courage he lacked entirely 

 the great military qualities necessary to successful 

 revolutionary leadership of the kind to which he as- 

 pired. Though in some ways the most practical of 

 politicians he had a strong element of the visionary 

 in his character; it was perhaps this, joined to his 

 striking moral defects, which brought about and 

 made complete his downfall in New York. Great 

 political and revolutionary leaders may, and often 

 must, have in them something of the visionary ; but 

 it must never cause them to get out of touch with 

 the practical. Burr was capable of conceiving revo- 

 lutionary plans on so vast a scale as to be fairly ap- 

 palling, not only from their daring but from their 

 magnitude. But when he tried to put his plans into 

 practice, it at once became evident that they were 



