Louisiana and Aaron Burr 341 



goaded into action, had issued a proclamation for his 

 arrest; and even before this proclamation was is- 

 sued, the fabric of the conspiracy had crumbled into 

 shifting dust. The Ohio Legislature passed reso- 

 lutions demanding prompt action against the con- 

 spirators; and the other Western communities fol- 

 lowed suit. There was no real support for Burr 

 anywhere. All his plot had been but a dream; at 

 the last he could not do anything which justified, 

 in even the smallest degree, the alarm and curiosity 

 he had excited. The men of keenest insight and 

 best judgment feared his unmasked efforts less than 

 they feared Wilkinson's dark and tortuous treach- 

 ery. 14 As he drifted down the Mississippi with his 

 little flotilla, he was overtaken by Jefferson's proc- 

 lamation, which was sent from one to another of 

 the small Federal garrisons. Near Natchez, in Jan- 

 uary, 1807, he surrendered his flotilla, without re- 

 sistance, to the Acting-Governor of Mississippi Ter- 

 ritory. He himself escaped into the land of the 

 Choctaws and Creeks, disguised as a Mississippi 

 boatman; but a month later he was arrested near 

 the Spanish border, and sent back to Washington. 



Thus ended ingloriously the wildest, most spec- 

 tacular, and least dangerous, of all the intrigues for 

 Western disunion. It never contained within itself 

 the least hope of success. It was never a serious 

 menace to the National Government. It was not 

 by any means even a good example of Western 

 particularistic feeling. It was simply a sporadic 



14 E. G. Cowles Meade; see Gayarre, IV, 169. 



