Such was the situation of the country when Jefferson, having been eight years in office, and following the example of Washington, refused to accept of re-election, prepared to retire from the administration. But before we speak of this event, we must briefly return to a cause of anxiety and agitation, originating in the designs of the late vice-president, Aaron Burr. Burr, while in office, offended both prevailing parties. The federalists by his fatal encounter with Hamilton, who was the idol of that party; and the republicans by his supposed intrigues against Jefferson. Under these circumstances, finding himself everywhere unpopular, he retired as a private citizen to the newer western states. Here, restless, scheming and ambitious, he engaged in an enterprise the full scope and intention of which seems never to have been completely fathomed. With the ostensible design of forming a large agricultural settlement on the banks of the Washita in Louisiana, he put himself at the head of a great number of people, who were armed and organised, and for whose use boats were purchased and built on the Ohio. The nature of his preparations, which had a warlike rather than a peaceful character, and the disclosures of some of his associates, led to the supposition that his real object was of a very different character—was, in fact, no less than to separate the western states from the Union, to add Mexico to them, and place himself at their head. “Nothing,” says the President Jefferson, writing on this subject to La Fayette, “has more strongly proved the innate force of our form of government than this conspiracy. Burr had probably engaged 1,000 men to follow his fortunes, without letting them know his projects, otherwise than by assuring them that the government approved of them. The moment a proclamation was issued, undeceiving them, he found himself left with about thirty desperadoes only. The people rose in a mass wherever he went, and by their own energy the thing was crushed in an instant, without its having been necessary to employ the military excepting to take care of their respective stations. His first enterprise would have been to seize New Orleans, which he supposed would powerfully bridle the upper country, and place him at the door of Mexico.”