328 The Winning of the West 



even more unsubstantial than they were audacious. 

 His wild schemes had in them too strong an element 

 of the unreal and the grotesque to be in very fact 

 dangerous. 



Besides, the time for separatist movements in the 

 West had passed, while the time for arousing the 

 West to the conquest of part of Spanish-America 

 had hardly yet come. A man of Burr's character 

 might perhaps have accomplished something mis- 

 chievous in Kentucky when Wilkinson was in the 

 first flush of his Spanish intrigues ; or when the po- 

 litical societies were raving over Jay's treaty; or 

 when the Kentucky Legislature was passing its nulli- 

 fication resolutions. But the West had grown loyal 

 as the Nineteenth Century came in. The Western- 

 ers were hearty supporters of the Jeffersonian Dem- 

 ocratic-Republican party; Jefferson was their idol; 

 they were strongly attached to the Washington ad- 

 ministration, and strongly opposed to the chief op- 

 ponents of that administration, the Northeastern 

 Federalists. With the purchase of Louisiana all 

 deeply-lying causes of Western discontent had van- 

 ished. The West was prosperous, and was attached 

 to the National Government. Its leaders might still 

 enjoy a discussion with Burr or among themselves 

 concerning separatist principles in the abstract, but 

 such a discussion was at this time purely academic. 

 Nobody of any weight in the community would al- 

 low such plans as those of Burr to be put into effect. 

 There was, it is true, a strong buccaneering spirit, 

 and there were plenty of men ready to enlist in an 



