ment and filled their pages with attacks on Mr. Marshall. "Lucius"-William Thompson whose earlier criticisms of the Justice had been submitted to Mr. Jefferson and enthusiastically endorsed by him-began to write his "Letters to John Marshall” in the Aurora, from which they were copied in all the administration gazettes. Mr. Marshall had erected tyranny upon the tomb of freedom; he was a disgrace to the bench of justice; he had prostrated the dignity of the Chief Justice of the United States; he had exhibited a culpable partiality towards Aaron Burr, and a "shameless solicitude . . to implicate the government . as negligent of

their duty."

In fact, Marshall and Burr were "traitors in heart and in fact;" few countries had ever produced such a criminal and such a judge; Mr. Marshall and Colonel Burr together were "forever doomed to blot the fair page of American history, to be held up as examples of infamy and disgrace, of perverted talents and unpunished criminality, of foes to liberty and traitors to [the] country." Mr. Marshall had screened a criminal and disgraced a judge, and he ought to be removed from the elevation which he had dishonored by his crimes.

So, in the fall of 1807, the Chief Justice was being publicly villified by the President's mouthpiece, while the President himself was urging on the House a repetition of the earlier proceedings against Judge Pickering and Judge Chase proceedings which would without doubt have been instituted had not Congress found more pressing international affairs to attract its partisan attention.

And at Baltimore, in November, the populace was hanging them all in effigy-John Marshall, "His Quid Majesty" Aaron Burr, Blennerhassett, "the chemist, convicted of conspiracy to destroy the tone of the public Fiddle," and "Lawyer Brandy Bottle" Luther Martin. They were all in town at the time, except Mr. Marshall; Mr. Blennerhassett at the Evans Hotel, in the attic of which he hid during the popular commotion, and Colonel Burr, with Samuel Swartwout, at Mr. Martin's house, preparations to defend which had been made by the attorney's law students.

Out in the streets the crowds went roaring bythe tradition that Colonel Burr appeared at a window and bowed, supposing the manifestation to be in his honor, is scarcely credible dragging after them the carts containing the effigies to be "executed," and escorted by a troop of cavalry who were present, "not to disperse the mob, but to . . . behold their conduct." And the next day, after the "hangings," crowds began to gather again around the taverns, and there was violent mischief in the air, so that Colonel Burr who was out walking with a Mr. Barney was advised by another friend, Mr. Hughes, to "take your departure without further civil or military honors being conferred upon you."

They put the Colonel in a hack, and Mr. Barney drove off with him to a stage stop outside of Baltimore, while Mr. Hughes followed them a little later with the baggage and the reservation. And at first Colonel Burr would have objected to these arrangements, saying that he was too old a soldier to be frightened by a mob, but "that is all fine bravado,"

the practical Mr. Hughes told him. "Barney and I have no desire to shoot down or be shot by our fellow citizens. You may throw your life away, Colonel, but this bright world has too many attractions for us to throw ours in defending you, when a pleasant ride of half an hour will save you from danger and restore us to our affectionate parents."

In other words, Mr. Barney and Mr. Hughes were quite anxious to be rid of his perilous company.

2

The Colonel went to Philadelphia and hid himself away in a French boarding house in which Charles Biddle found him in the evenings "generally alone with little light in his room. He was very pale and dejected, how different from what he had been a short time before . . . It would not have surprised me on going there to have found he had ended his sufferings with a pistol."

And one evening Colonel Burr was taken by the Sheriff, at the suit of a Mr. Wilkins of Pittsburghone of the gentlemen whom he had interested in the Bastrop project. "Late at night," Mr. Biddle reported, "he [Burr] was brought to my house, and the Sheriff waited a considerable time with him and Mr. Pollock for me to come home. Mr. Pollock is a highly respectable gentleman, intimate in my family, a relative and friend of Colonel Burr, and a man of large fortune Colonel Burr was perfectly composed; at this time scarcely anything could disturb him. At length one of my neighbors was sent for. Mr. Holwell, a gentleman of the bar, who pledged himself to be answerable for Mr.

VOL. II-IS

Burr's appearance in the morning. In the morning Mr. Pollock was accepted as the bail." But the plaintiff's attorney had made a mistake, and the case was dismissed.

As for the Spanish schemes, although they were still running in the Colonel's mind, he would have been grateful for "any appointment that would have made him independent. My reason for thinking so," Mr. Biddle wrote, "is that on the resignation of Judge Shippen he requested me to speak to Governor McKean, and endeavor to get him appointed in his room. This, as Colonel Burr then stood, I thought would be improper, and told him so. However, I spoke to the Governor's son who being of the same opinion was not spoken to."

the Governor

Colonel Burr did not yet seem to have realized that, so well had the administration done its work, in the public estimation he was a condemned

And if at Washington there was not time, in the face of approaching trouble with England, to impeach the Chief Justice, the Senate still found opportunity to attempt one conspicuous demonstration of administrative vengeance-aside from Senator Giles's proposal of legislation for the punishment of accessories to treason whether personally present

or not.

On November 27, 1807, Senator Maclay of Pennsylvania offered a resolution, subsequently adopted as amended by Senator Thurston of Kentucky, to

the effect that "a Committee be appointed to inquire whether it be compatible with the honor and privileges of this House that John Smith, a Senator Ohio, against whom. bills of indictment

from .
were found

. for treason and misdemeanor, should be permitted any longer to have a seat therein; and that the Committee do inquire into all the facts regarding the conduct of Mr. Smith as an alleged associate of Aaron Burr, and report to the Senate."

It was known that Senator Smith was a friend of Colonel Burr, that he had been in communication with him during the period of the conspiracy, and that he had been abortively indicted for treason and misdemeanor. It was also a matter of record that Senator Smith had offered to pay one half of the expenses of the Ohio militia at the time of their service against the conspirators, and that an effort to indict him at Chillicothe had failed. Now the United States Senate proposed to try its hand against him. On December 31, the Committee, in the person of John Quincy Adams, reported that “the conspiracy of Aaron Burr and his associates against the peace, union and liberties of the United States is of such a character, and that its existence is established by such a mass of concurring and mutually corroborative testimony," that no person engaged in it should be permitted to hold a seat in the Senate.

Whether or not Mr. Smith was involved was for the Senate to decide, but it was clear that a great part of the testimony essential to Colonel Burr's conviction had been withheld from the jury at Richmond-Mr. Adams, who was preparing to turn