[50 years ago this week, Vice President Spiro Agnew resigned. That striking political moment was not only part of the deepening Watergate scandal, but one of the few times when an American Vice President has made major news. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy Agnew and other noteworthy Veeps, leading up a weekend post on our current VP!]
On two
dark sides to expansion that a Vice President’s trial helps us better remember.
In the summer of
1807, former Vice President of the United States Aaron Burr was tried for
treason and high misdemeanor in a Virginia federal court, one presided
over by none other than Supreme Court Chief Justice John Marshall. While
Burr has become much better known over the last few years due to his central
role in the life and (especially) death of
Alexander Hamilton, and while he lived a long and influential
American life that included prominent roles in the Revolution
and Founding, this trial focused on by far the most striking and controversial
part of Burr’s story, what came to be known as the Burr
Conspiracy: his 1805-06 efforts (begun while he was still VP, natch) to
raise an independent military force in the Western United States and either use
it to establish a separate nation with himself as the leader or to invade
Mexico (possibly to enact the same purpose of carving out a distinct territory
that he could rule). The uncertainties revealed by even that brief summary,
however, along with other factors like the lack of reliable witnesses (other
than one shady co-conspirator,
James Wilkinson), led to an acquittal on both charges (despite President Thomas
Jefferson’s ardent and possibly unconstitutional attempts
to influence the outcome).
The
histories around Burr’s conspiracy and trial, like all those in his incredibly
complicated and compelling life, deserve their own specific attention and
analysis. But this unique moment nonetheless also reflects a couple broader and
quite dark realities of expansion, both in that early 19th century
period and throughout our history. For one thing, we often frame expansion (at
least in how it is presented in our educational texts and conversations)
through the official mechanisms by which territory was added, whether treaties
like the one that began this week’s posts or financial transactions like the 1803
Louisiana Purchase through which the
Jefferson Administration (with Burr as VP) acquired these Western
territories from France. Yet while such measures did formally add new lands to
the expanding nation, the actual expansion of Americans (individually and
collectively) into those territories was far, far more messy and bloody. I’ve
long argued that the Oklahoma
Land Run of 1889, in which US settlers invaded that future
state while it was still all Indian Territory, was a striking and illegal
historical moment—yet one could just as easily see it as emblematic of the
chaotic and brutal way that US expansion always took place on the ground.
Moreover,
the seeming dichotomy between (yet clear interconnections of) Founding Father
and Vice President Burr and treasonous conspirator Burr is also emblematic of
the unsavory (or at the very least far from idealized) roles performed by
countless prominent Americans in the expansion process. Davy Crockett is a
particularly good example, a folk hero who had his own Walt Disney TV show yet one
who made his
name in wars against Native Americans and then a pre-Civil War rebellion
in defense of slavery (all of which were also in service of
eventual US expansions, whether into the Southeast or Texas). But another
example is none other than George Washington, whose first
military service (which led directly to all his future
military and political roles) was in the French and Indian War, a conflict
precipitated by (if not at all
limited to) the expansion of English settlements into new territories. Hell,
many of the Civil War US Colored Troops (one of my favorite American
communities) went on to serve with the post-war Buffalo
Soldiers, regiments of all-Black cavalry that fought Native Americans
throughout the late 19th century “Indian Wars.” When it comes to
expansion, to quote my favorite line from my favorite depiction of that USCT
community, “ain’t
nobody clean.”
Next
VeepStudying tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What
do you think? Vice Presidents you’d highlight?
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