finement, deprived of their papers and belongingsthe General had Mr. Swartwout's watch-and denied legal representation. Writs of habeas corpus issued by the Superior Court, on December 16, found Mr. Ogden alone aboard, the other two prisoners having already been transferred to a war vessel bound for Baltimore, consigned to the President of the United States.

Mr. Ogden was released by Judge Workman on December 17. He "now struts at large," General Wilkinson complained to Mr. Jefferson. But not for long. As for Erich Bollmann, the General notified the Court that he "had arrested Bollmann, as I shall arrest, without respect to class or station, all those against whom I have positive proof of being accomplices in the machinations against the state." And in support of the absent prisoners' treason, General Wilkinson submitted Colonel Burr's cipher letter of July 29, which he had not yet sent to Mr. Jefferson— he did so soon after-and which now found its way into the newspapers. And inside of twenty-four hours Mr. Ogden was rearrested and imprisoned, together with the friend who had sworn out his writ, a certain James Alexander who in a few days was shipped to Baltimore with hardly more than the clothes on his back.

New Orleans was in a perfect panic. It was plain that the General had set aside all civil authority and proposed to make arrests right and left. Writs for Mr. Alexander and Mr. Ogden drew from him the reply that his explanation in the case of Erich Bollmann was sufficient. A motion by Edward Livingston, on December 26, to attach the General brought

forth the statement "that the body of the said Peter V. Ogden is not in his power, possession or custody." The Governor, in the face of repeated appeals, refused to give the judges any assistance, and Judge Workman adjourned his court and resigned. General Wilkinson then had the Judge arrested, and held for trial at Natchez, but a United States District Judge finally released him.

Martial law hung over the city; no one dared breathe, no one dared move; who was to be the next victim of General Wilkinson's military patrols? General Adair! That gentleman arrived-on private business, so he declared-at noon on January 14, and sat down to dinner at Madame Nourage's boarding house, after making his presence known to Judge Prevost and Governor Claiborne. At four o'clock in the afternoon, while he was still at dinner, one hundred and fifty soldiers surrounded the house- -a lesser number would perhaps have been uncomplimentary-and General Adair was "violently dragged from the table, paraded through the streets," placed on a schooner and taken to a swamp twenty-five miles below the city, and finally shipped in his turn, with Peter Ogden, to Baltimore. The trouble with John Adair aside from the letters which General Wilkinson had previously written to him-was that he had presumed to laugh at the danger threatening New Orleans, since he had left Colonel Burr at Nashville late in December with exactly two boats!

6

General Wilkinson was dictator of New Orleans; he had arrested Bollmann, Swartwout, Ogden, Alex

ander, Workman, Adair, and one or two minor individuals; there were in the city any number of people equally "implicated" whom he might have arrested at any moment-but General Wilkinson did not arrest them. He did not arrest any of the influential Creoles, he did not arrest the Mayor, he did not arrest Edward Livingston. On the contrary, he made it plain that they had nothing to fear from him; he wrote insinuatingly reassuring letters to Daniel Clark in which he disparaged Governor Claiborne and promised never to expose Mr. Clark's friends "unless compelled by self defense;" and throughout this period he remained in detailed correspondence with the Spanish Governor of West Florida. One really begins to wonder what was going on in General Wilkinson's mind. New Orleans was his; what did he think he might do with it?

The weeks passed. General Wilkinson was still rendering Colonel Burr's cipher "to my satisfaction;" Mr. Jefferson wrote approving the General's arrests; Cowles Meade kept warning Governor Claiborne to "be on your guard against the wily general consider him a traitor and act as if certain thereof;" New Orleans began to yawn a little at its saviour's fits and starts of alarm. "From the best information we can collect," the Orleans Gazette decided, "the object of Colonel Burr is . . an attack upon Mexico and not, as has been alleged, the parricidal attempt to dismember the Union.'

Messages and proclamations passed back and forth; General Wilkinson made a great to-do of gathering "papers" and "evidence" with his secret police; the Governor made up his mind that Colonel Burr was

not coming-nor did he ever come and that the Louisianians were loyal in any case; and in March the Legislature was finally remarking, concerning the recent military outburst, that "though nothing can justify, yet circumstances of extreme danger might excuse some of these violent measures. But here no foreign enemy or open domestic foe was then, or has yet been proved to have been within any perilous distance of this city, or that treason lurked within our walls." And that "the acts of high-handed military power" to which they had been exposed were "acts too notorious to be denied, too illegal to be justified, too wanton to be excused."

But to the perpetrator of them, to the inimitable General James Wilkinson, there came no punish

ment. .

CHAPTER IV

HABEAS CORPUS

I

THE President's proclamation of November 27, 1806, made very little stir in Washington, after the first surprise. Indeed, in his message to Congress, on December 1, Mr. Jefferson said very little about the conspiracy. It was an attempt "to carry on a military expedition against the territories of Spain," and the information concerning it was "chiefly in the form of letters, often containing a mixture of rumors, conjectures and suspicions." The proclamation, he explained, was an act of good faith towards Spain. Not a word about treason.

But in his own mind the President was worried; he did not know what might be happening in the West; he was writing to the Secretary of the Navy concerning the measures to be taken should it become necessary to recapture New Orleans! Still, he had confidence in the Western States, he pretended to have confidence in Louisiana, and publicly, officially, he did nothing. He had moved to prevent an expedition to Mexico; the necessity for any further genuine