Burr conspiracy

The Burr conspiracy of 1805–1807, was an alleged treasonous plot to have been planned by American politician and former military officer Aaron Burr (1756–1836), in the years during and after his single term as the third vice president of the United States (1801–1805), during the presidential administration and first term of the third president Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826, served 1801–1809). Burr was accused of attempting to use his international connections and support from a cabal of American planters, politicians, and United States Army officers to establish an independent country in the old federal Southwest Territory (1790–1796), south of the Ohio River (future states of Kentucky, Tennessee and the future federal Territories of later Mississippi Territory (1798–1817), and adjacent Alabama Territory), and east of the Mississippi River and north of the southern coast along the Gulf of Mexico; or to invade/conquer the newly acquired Louisiana Purchase of 1803, west of the Mississippi River, later organized as the Louisiana Territory (1804–1812), then divided into the future 18th state of Louisiana and the upper/northern portion as the Missouri Territory (1812–1821); or plotting against the northern parts of the colonial New Spain (later Mexico), still held by Spain; or against and seizing the Florida peninsula of the longtime Royal Spanish colony of Spanish Florida (consisting of West Florida and East Florida), in the Americas/Western Hemisphere, part of the world-wide Spanish Empire since the early 16th century. Burr's version was that he intended to farm 40,000 acres (160 km2) in the Spanish Texas colonial province of the New Spain Viceroyalty which had been supposedly leased to him by the Spanish Crown. In February 1807, former Vice President Burr was arrested on President Jefferson's orders and charged/indicted for treason, despite a lack of firm evidence. While Burr was ultimately acquitted of treason in a trial, due to...