Page:Henry Adams' History of the United States Vol. 3.djvu/243

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1805.
BURR'S SCHEMES.
231

together with the pecuniary aid which would be wanted, arrived in time to enable him to set out the beginning of March."

From Pitt, besides the naval force. Burr wanted a credit for one hundred and ten thousand pounds, to be given in the names of John Barclay of Philadelphia, and Daniel Clark of New Orleans. In his report to Merry on the results of the Western tour he said no more than he had a right to say, without violent exaggeration. He barely hinted at complicity on the part of Wilkinson, Smith, Adair, and Andrew Jackson. He gave Merry clearly to understand that the heart of his plot was not in the Ohio Valley, but at New Orleans. He laid little weight on the action of Kentucky or Tennessee; with him, the point of control was among the creoles.

"Mr. Burr stated to me—what I have reason to believe to be true from the information I have received from other quarters—that when he reached Louisiana he found the inhabitants so impatient under the American government that they had actually prepared a representation of their grievances, and that it was in agitation to send deputies with it to Paris. The hope, however, of becoming completely independent, and of forming a much more beneficial connection with Great Britain, having been pointed out to them, and this having already prevailed among many of the principal people who are become his associates, they had found means to obtain a suspension of the plan of having recourse to France."

Burr impressed Merry with the idea that West Florida was also to be taken within the scope of his