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People don’t like uncertainty, and many cope with it by finding a way to fill in the blanks. Reuben Kemper, who was also entangled in the alleged Burr conspiracy, was able to rehabilitate his reputation by providing the public with a way to fill in the blanks. The opportunity to do so presented itself, ironically, following his arrest by the federal government, which was reported nationwide. In January 1811 North Carolina’s The Star, reprinting a story from the Rhode Island Republican, reported:

Since the [Republic of West Florida] Conventional Party have declared themselves free and independent of Old Spain … a number of the inhabitants of this part of the [Mississippi] Territory wishing well to the cause have taken an active part in the business and about a fortnight since several men, to the number of sixty-five, went below the line of demarcation.… All who have returned above the line have had writs served upon them for the purpose of a prosecution, on account of having engaged in an expedition not authorized by the government of the United States—among whom are Col. Kennedy and Col. Kemper.

Because Kemper had lain low for six years, his dubious past escaped the notice of most newspapers. But his arrest risked revealing his days at the head of what the U.S. government had declared to be a gang. Shrewdly, he seized this moment to publish his own account in newspapers throughout the country. He related how he had been contacted by a man named Lewis Kerr, who knew of his past attack at Baton Rouge and invited him to an important meeting, at which he would have to take an oath of secrecy: “Before taking this oath, I told Mr. Kerr that was there anything in opposition to the government of the United States, that it must not be made known to me on any terms whatever! He assured me there was not.” Kemper then employed some classic name-dropping, citing Kerr’s assurance that the secret project “was set on foot by men higher in office than any others in the United States—I believe meaning the president.” Kemper’s article related that the venture being planned—technically not by the United States—was to take possession of West Florida. He was asked how many men he could raise and allowed as he could “fill the place.”

The crux of Kemper’s article followed this account of his recruitment. It sought to separate his participation from Aaron Burr’s alleged conspiracy to create a new country:

I asked him if he had ever learned or could conjecture what Mr. Burr’s plans were, in coming to this country the year before.… His route was a strange one. Mr. Morgan said so it was, but he knew nothing of Mr. Burr’s plans; that he was not in the habit of telling him, but said there was a man in this place some time prior to this had told him that he expected Burr was on some revolutionary plan or other toward Mexico.… I observed that, in my opinion, Burr was an intriguing character, who would stop at nothing in his situation. Mr. Morgan said very true, he was all that, but he was a man of too much sense for that.

Kemper concluded by relating an extraordinary effort he undertook to eliminate any uncertainty about the military action in which he was becoming involved:

I at length determined in going to see Mr. Jefferson, and in June I left the Mississippi Territory for Washington city. On my route, I had planned a thousand ways of introducing the inquiry, knowing the unfavorable impression that had been made on the mind of the president through my particular “friends,” Mr. Claiborne, Governor of Louisiana, Mr. John Smith, Senator from the State of Ohio, and some others.

But the climax of the article—Kemper’s meeting with President Jefferson—engaged in the very thing the article hoped to eliminate: uncertainty. “I rather bungled the business,” Kemper wrote, “obtained no information, and I suppose gave but little. The president thought he had received a novel visit, and I thought he treated his guest in a novel manner.” Meaning what? Who knows. What we do know is how Kemper rehabilitated his reputation