Indicted for murder, Burr now disappears from politics, but only to emerge in a new role. During all the early history of our Union the parts beyond the Alleghanies were attached to it by but a slender thread, which Spanish intrigue incessantly sought to cut. At this very time Spain was pensioning men in high station there, including General Wilkinson, commanding our force at New Orleans. Could not Burr detach this district or a part of it from our Government and make here an empire of his own? Or might he not take it as the base of operations for an attack on Spanish America that should give him an empire there? Some vision of this sort danced before the mad genius's vision, as before that of Hamilton in the Miranda scheme. Many influential persons encouraged him, with how much insight into his plan we shall never know. Wilkinson was one of these. Blennerhassett, whose family and estate Burr irreparably blasted, was another. He expected aid from Great Britain, and from disaffected Mexicans. From the outset the West proved more loyal than he hoped, and when, at the critical moment, Wilkinson betrayed him, he knew that all was lost. Sinking his chests of arms in the river near Natchez, he took to the Mississippi woods, only to be recognized, arrested by Jefferson's order, and dragged to Richmond to jail. As no overt act was proved, he could not be convicted of treason; and even the trial of him for misdemeanor broke down on technical points. The Federalists stood up for Burr as if he had been their man, while Jefferson on his part pushed the prosecution in a fussy and personal way, ill becoming a President. Jefferson's most lasting work as national chief-magistrate was his diplomacy in purchasing for the Union the boundless territory beyond the Mississippi, prized then not for its extent or resources, both as yet unknown, but as assuring us free navigation of the river, which sundry French and Spanish plots had demonstrated essential to the solid loyalty of the West. Louisiana, ceded by France to Spain in 1762, became French again in 1801. Napoleon had intended it as the seat of a colonial power rivalling Great Britain's, but, pressed for money in his new war with that kingdom, concluded to sell. He wished, too, the friendship of the United States against Great Britain, and knew not the worth of what he was bargaining away. Willing to take fifty million francs, he offered for one hundred million, speedily closing with Livingston and Monroe's tender of eighty, we to assume in addition the French spoliation claims of our citizens. The treaty of purchase was signed May 2, 1803, and ratified by the Senate the 17th of the following October.