Gen. Eaton, of Tripoli fame, sought with him in September, 1806. Eaton was said to feel aggrieved at the failure of the government to recognize the value of his services in Africa. He had been approached by Burr in Washington and had not been averse to listening to him. He now warned the President, but so guardedly as to offer no sure ground for executive action.

Toward the last of October, more specific information came from the West. Burr's agents made no concealment of establishing a military encampment near Marietta, Ohio. There they were joined by armed parties from up the river. Various explanations were given of their destination. Some openly declared that the purpose of the expedition embraced the separation of the West from the Union.

In view of this definite information, and of the steadily increasing rumors, the President now dispatched to the scene a special agent, empowered to call into service the military as well as the civil authority of the Territory should the necessity arise. Orders were also sent to the Governors of the Orleans and Mississippi Territories, and to the commanders of the land and naval forces operating in them, enjoining them to be on the alert to check all infringements of the neutrality laws. Special instructions were sent to Gen. Wilkinson in order to show him that he was under surveillance, and if possible to hold him loyal. But Wilkinson had already grown alarmed and had determined to reinstate himself with the government. With 500 soldiers he was encamped at Nachitoches prepared to oppose a threatened Spanish irruption. Burr had been in steady communica tion with him and had fully unfolded his plans to him. Wilkinson now forwarded all these communications to the President, who on the strength of them issued a proclamation that certain preparations had been set on foot against the dominions of Spain in North America, and calling upon all good citizens and all the officers of the United States, within their respective functions, to aid in bringing the conspirators to judgment. There was no mention of Burr's name, nor of any designs against the integrity of the Union. Orders for immediate and

summary action were also sent along with the proclamation. All Burr's men and stores were to be seized.

It was not long before matters took on a serious aspect. Either from the connivance or the blundering of the judicial officers of the West, Burr's movement seemed to be gaining ground. Daveiss was a vigorous officer, and early in November he had made a motion for Burr's arrest. The Judge had refused it, but when a grand jury was impanelled, Daveiss found that his action had been premature and moved for the discharge of the jury. A second time Daveiss renewed his motion in the District court, and again Burr was released. But the grand jury did more. They signed a declaration to the effect that Burr had meditated nothing dangerous to the peace and wellbeing of the United States. So strong was the sympathy of the immediate section with Burr, that the action of the District. Attorney was regarded as a piece of persecution originating with Jefferson.

The local authorities of Ohio and Kentucky were, if not disloyal to the government, at least negligent; for, notwithstanding the President's proclamation, and the passage of the necessary measures by the legislatures of those two States, Burr's forces were allowed to escape in boats down the Ohio. He himself joined them at the mouth of the Cumberland, and by January, 1807, the combined forces were as far down the Mississippi as Natchez. In spite of the advantage Burr had gained from the decision of the court in Kentucky, his great expedition had dwindled to the pitiful size of one hundred men, carried in thirteen boats.

Wilkinson had in the meantime been acting with a decision and vigor to which he had hitherto been a stranger. He had made the most extensive preparations at New Orleans to resist. Burr, had had the legislature of the Territory summoned to a special session, and had arrested three of the most conspicuous of Burr's accomplices, two of whom were sent North.

Burr learned of these preparations, and, landing his handful of men at Natchez, established a camp there. On the arrival of the President's proclamation he surrendered and appeared be

fore the Territorial court, but the court decided that there was no evidence that Burr had committed any offense within the boundaries over which it had jurisdiction. Burr fled from the Territory, but Wilkinson sent officers after him, and he was arrested in Alabama and carried thence to Richmond, Virginia. On March 30th, he came before Justice Marshall, who was presiding over the District court, for examination and commitment. George Hay, the Attorney of the District, made charges of treason and misdemeanor against him. The Judge dismissed the former, but put him under heavy bonds to answer the second charge at the next session of the court, beginning May 22nd. Before the collapse of the conspiracy had been announced in the East, the wildest rumors as to Burr's strength were afloat. Jefferson, however, affected throughout to regard the conspiracy as trivial. In his annual message, in December, he dismissed the whole matter in a few words. His private correspondence, also, was of the calmest tone. "Burr's enterprise," he wrote to Charles Clay, "is the most extraordinary since the days of Don Quixote. It is so extravagant that those who know his understanding would not believe it if the proofs admitted doubt. He > has meant to place himself on the throne of Montezuma, and extend his empire to the Alleghany, seizing on New Orleans as the instrument of compulsion for our Western States. I think his undertaking effectually crippled by the activity of the Ohio." The country, however, was not so well satisfied. John Randolph moved for information from the President, and on January 22nd, 1807, Jefferson sent to Congress a special message narrating the whole conspiracy from the September preceding and naming Burr as its central figure. This was the date when, he claimed, he had first heard of Burr's course. It cannot be decided whether he was now for the first time sincerely convinced of Burr's treason to the United States, or merely thought this the first favorable opportunity to make the matter public. At any rate, he had never before expressed the idea that the movement was "an illegal combination of private individuals against the peace and safety of the Union." The message, so far from allaying the excitement of the country, served only

to confirm the vague alarm which prevailed, for the news of the utter weakness of Burr's following had not yet reached the East. To complete the unfortunate turn things had taken for Jefferson, the Republican majority in the Senate lost its head and passed, without the necessary three readings, a bill for the suspension of the Habeas Corpus. The bill failed in the House, but it gave the opposition abundant ground for attack. Furthermore, the administration sustained a rebuke when the two accomplices of Burr whom Wilkinson had sent North were brought before Chief Justice Marshall and promptly discharged from custody on the ground of the insufficiency of the evidence connecting them with any act of treason. Jefferson saw that his cue was to treat the whole conspiracy as a trivial thing. This tone was assumed, as far as was possible, in his special message relating to the conspiracy, but it dominated his correspondence with Wilkinson. The latter was bent upon retrieving himself for his dalliance with Burr by a show of extraordinary activity Letters to the President in suppressing Burr's schemes. poured in from Wilkinson, magnifying the proportion of the enterprise and emphasizing its danger to the country. Jefferson could not afford to offend him. Still less could he afford to let such representations go unheeded. His correspondence for the period is a marvel of tact and skill.

While Jefferson was thus engaged in checking over-enthusiastic friends, and silencing opponents, Burr came up for examination before Chief Justice Marshall, then holding Circuit court in Richmond, Virginia. He had employed an array of counsel far superior in ability and legal learning to the advocates employed by the government. No sympathy was expected by the administration from the Judge who was to preside. On April Ist, Judge Marshall delivered an opinion, in which he declined to commit Burr for treason on the evidence of Eaton and Wilkinson, and he went out of his way to call to task the Executive for neglect of duty in providing proof of treason. He committed Burr for misdemeanor merely, and admitted him to bonds for appearance at the next session of court.

The lethargy of Jefferson during the actual progress of Burr's

schemes must always remain inexplicable. But henceforth personal reasons urged him to try to bring Burr to conviction. In the shape the case had now assumed he saw an attack, by Federalist influences, upon the power of the Executive to punish treason. Marshall's strictures upon his course bit the deeper because at heart he knew them to be largely just. He wrote to Bowdoin, United States Minister to Spain: "Hitherto we have believed our law to be that suspicion on probable grounds was sufficient cause to commit a person for trial, allowing time to collect witnesses till the trial, but the judges here have decided that conclusive evidence of guilt must be ready in the moment of arrest, or they will discharge the malefactor. If this is still insisted on, Burr will be discharged, because his crimes having been sown from Maine through the whole line of the western States to New Orleans, we cannot bring the witnesses here under four months. The fact is that the Federalists make Burr's course their own, and exert their whole influence to shield him from punishment. And it is unfortunate that Federalism is still predominant in our judiciary department, which is consequently in opposition to the Legislative and Executive branches and is able to baffle their measures often."

In a letter to his political confidant, W. B. Giles, his animosity to Marshall mounted still higher: "That there should be anxiety and doubt in the public mind, in the present defective state of the proof, is not wonderful; and this has been sedulously encouraged by the tricks of the Judges to force trials before it is possible to collect the evidence. The presiding

Judge meant only to throw dust in the eyes of his audience. But all the principles of law are to be perverted which would bear on the favorite offenders who endeavor to overrun this odious Republic. If there had ever been an instance in this or the preceding administration of Federal Judges so applying principles of law as to condemn a Federal or acquit a Republican offender, I should have judged them in the present case with more charity."

His feeling toward Burr is thus expressed: "Against Burr, personally, I never had one hostile sentiment. I never, indeed,