Marshall concluded that the prosecution failed to produce sufficient evidence of treason. He scheduled Burr for trial on the high misdemeanor charge and set bail at $10,000. Marshall's refusal to insert the treason charge enraged President Jefferson, who suspected that the Chief Justice's judgment was warped in favor of Burr by his own dislike of Jefferson and the course of his Administration.

Jefferson took it as a personal mission to secure Burr's conviction. He had printed circulars sent out throughout the western country asking "every good citizen to step forward, and communicate to the government any information he may possess." He dispatched a deputy marshal to take depositions near Blennerhassett Island. Secretary of State James Madison wrote Andrew Jackson, requesting that he help gather depositions from around Tennessee thatmight help convict Burr. Meanwhile in New Orleans, Wilkinson sent out numerous agents to collect whatever evidence they could.

Jefferson's own view of Burr's actions is best revealed in his letters of 1807. He saw that Burr's "first enterprise was to have been the seizure of New Orleans" which would "place him at the door of Mexico." His plan, according to Jefferson, included "separating the western states from us, of adding Mexico to them, and of placing himself at their head." "Burr's conspiracy" was, Jefferson concluded, "one of the most flagitous of which history will ever furnish an example." According to Jefferson, Burr abandoned his original plan to separate the western states from the Union only because "he very early saw that the fidelity of the western country was