So it was with Aaron Burr.
His conspiracy was merely one, and by no means the most dangerous, of the various conspiracies in which men like Wilkinson, Sebastian, and many of the members of the early Democratic societies in Kentucky, bore a part.

It was rendered possible only by the temper of the people and by the peculiar circumstances which also rendered the earlier conspiracies possible; and it came to naught for the same reasons that they came to naught, and was even more hopeless, because it was undertaken later, when the conditions were less favorable.
Clark's Part in the Proposed French Attack on Spain.
The movement deliberately entered into by many of the Kentuckians in the years 1793 and 1794, to conquer Louisiana on behalf of France, must be treated in this way.

The leader in this movement was George Rogers Clark.

His chance of success arose from the fact that there were on the frontier many men of restless, adventurous, warlike type, who felt a spirit of unruly defiance toward the home government and who greedily eyed the rich Spanish lands.

Whether they got the lands by conquest or by colonization, and whether they warred under one flag or another, was to them a matter of little moment.