EDITORIAL NOTE

On 26 December 1806 Brig. Gen. James Wilkinson transmitted an affidavit to President Thomas Jefferson supporting Wilkinson’s arrest of Samuel Swartwout, James Alexander, and Peter V. Ogden on charges of “Treason, misprision of Treason or Such other offence against the Government & Laws of the United States” related to Aaron Burr’s alleged plans to separate western states and territories from the Union. Wilkinson had sent an 18 December letter to Jefferson justifying the arrest of Burr’s alleged co-conspirator, Justus Erick Bollmann. In both communications, Wilkinson included a decoded copy of what he conveyed as Burr’s 29 July 1806 “cipher letter.” Wilkinson interpreted this letter as an attempt to recruit him into Burr’s illegal scheme. The Jefferson administration adopted this explanation as well.

In his 18 December letter Wilkinson stated that he had received the cipher letter from Bollmann on 6 November. However, in his 26 December affidavit Wilkinson reported having received a copy from Swartwout in early October. Although Jefferson had heard of the cipher letter and some of its contents by early January, he had not seen it until Wilkinson’s affidavits arrived on 23 January. The cipher letter provided only vague details, failing to fully substantiate the rumors about Burr’s alleged designs against the United States, although Wilkinson swore that the bearers of the copies of the letter had verbally apprised him of Burr’s plans. Indeed, some historians have questioned whether Burr actually authored the letter to Wilkinson. Despite the ambiguity of some of the details in the letter, the Jefferson administration accepted it as evidence of Burr’s treason (ASP, Miscellaneous, 1:470–73; Lewis, The Burr Conspiracy, 173–80).