Even before this, the constantly increasing frigidity of the President toward him, and the refusal of the Administration to recognize by appointment any one recommended by him for office in New York,[763] had made it plain to all that the most Burr could expect was Jefferson's passive hostility. Under these circumstances, and soon after his judiciary vote, the spirited Vice-President committed another imprudence. He attended a banquet given by the Federalists in honor of Washington's birthday. There he proposed this impolitic toast: "To the union of all honest men." Everybody considered this a blow at Jefferson. It was even more offensive to the Administration than his judiciary vote had been.[764]
From that moment all those peculiar weapons which politicians so well know how to use for the ruin of an opponent were employed for the destruction of Aaron Burr. Moreover, Jefferson had decided not only that Burr should not again be Vice-President, but that his bitterest enemy from his own State, George Clinton, should be the Republican candidate for that office; and, in view of Burr's strength and resourcefulness, this made necessary the latter's political annihilation.[765] "Never in the history of the United States did so powerful a combination of rival politicians unite to break down a single man as that which arrayed itself against Burr."[766]
Nevertheless, Burr, who "was not a vindictive man,"[767] did not retaliate for a long time.[768] But at last to retrieve himself,[769] he determined to appeal to the people--at whose hands he had never suffered defeat--and, in 1804, he became a candidate for the office of Governor of New York. The New York Federalists, now reduced to a little more than a strong faction, wished to support him, and were urged to do so by many Federalist leaders of other States. Undoubtedly Burr would have been elected but for the attacks of Hamilton.
At this period the idea of secession was stirring in the minds of the New England Federalist leaders. Such men as Timothy Pickering, Roger Griswold, Uriah Tracy, and James Hillhouse had even avowed separation from the Union to be desirable and certain; and talk of it was general.[770] All these men were warm and insistent in their support of Burr for Governor, and at least two of them, Pickering and Griswold, had a conference with him in New York while the campaign was in progress.