in all this-in all these opinions which it did not, or would not, understand-but the fact that Mr. Jefferson's traitor had escaped, and drank damnation to the judges. And Colonel Burr was disgusted. "After all," he wrote Theodosia, "this is a sort of drawn battle. [Marshall's] opinion was a matter of regret and surprise to [his] friends and of ridicule to his enemies-all believing that it was a sacrifice of principle to conciliate Jack Cade [Thomas Jefferson]."

The Colonel was unjust-he was even extremely rude to Mr. Marshall-but it was exasperating, of course, after having been exonerated of high crimes and misdemeanors by five juries in Kentucky, Mississippi and Virginia.

CHAPTER IV

AFTERMATHS

I

RICHMOND emptied itself; Colonel Burr went north; the Chief Justice galloped off to the Blue Ridge, content in the knowledge that he had obeyed the "public law" rather than the "public will" in the "most deplorably serious" business which he had just completed—although Mr. Blennerhassett could see in his latest decision only an attempt "to pacify the menaces and clamorous yells of the cerberus of Democracy." And Mr. Jefferson was talking seriously about impeachment.

His message to Congress was emphatic on the subject, even though the Cabinet had not allowed him to retain in that document such paragraphs as he had originally composed concerning his belief that "wherever the laws were appealed to in aid of the public safety, their operation [in the Burr trial] was on behalf of those only against whom they were invoked." The great Republican papers, the Philadelphia Aurora and the Richmond Enquirer in particular, took up the Executive cry of impeach

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 implicate the government . as negligent of their duty."

to

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.

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