THE indictments are read, and Aaron pleads “Not guilty!” Thereupon
Luther Martin moves for a _subpoena duces tecum_ against Jefferson,
commanding him to bring into court those written orders from the files
of the War Department, which he, as President and _ex officio_ commander
in chief of the army, issued to the red-nosed Wilkinson. Arguing the
motion, the violent Martin proceeds in these words:
“We intend to show that these orders were contrary to the Constitution
and the laws. We intend to show that by these orders Colonel Burr’s
property and person were to be destroyed; yes, by these tyrannical
orders the life and property of an innocent man were to be exposed to
destruction. This is a peculiar case, sirs. President Jefferson has
undertaken to prejudge my client by declaring that ‘of his guilt there
can be no doubt!’ He has assumed to himself the knowledge of the Supreme
Being, and pretended to search the heart of my client. He has proclaimed
him a traitor in the face of the country. He has let slip the dogs of
war, the hell-hounds of persecution, to hunt down my client. And now,
would the President of the United States, who has himself raised all
this clamor, pretend to keep back the papers wanted for a trial where
life itself is at stake? It is a sacred principle that the accused has a
right to the evidence needed for his defense, and whosoever--whether
he be a president or some lesser man--withholds such evidence is
substantially a murderer, and will, be so recorded in the register of
heaven.”
Argument ended, Marshall, chief justice, sustains the motion. He holds
that the _subpoena duces tecum_ may issue, and goes so far as to say
that, if it be necessary to the ends of justice, the personal attendance
of Jefferson himself shall be compelled.
The charge is treason, and no bail can be taken; Aaron must be locked
up. The Governor of Virginia offers as a place of detention a superb
suite of rooms, meant for official occupation, on the third floor of the
penitentiary building. Marshall, chief justice, accepting such proffer,
orders Aaron’s confinement in the superb official suite. Aaron takes
possession, stocks the larder, loads the sideboards, and, with a cloud
of servitors, gives a dinner party to twenty friends.
The lustrous Theo arrives, and makes her residence with Aaron in
the official suite, as lady of the establishment. Each day a hundred
visitors call, among them the aristocracy of the town. Also dinner
follows dinner; the official suite assumes a gala, not to say a gallant
look, and no one would think it a prison, or dream for one urbane
moment that Aaron--that follower of the gospel according to Lord
Chesterfield--is fighting for his life.
Following the order for the _subpoena duces tecum_, and Aaron’s
dinner-giving incarceration in the official suite, Marshall, chief
justice, directs that court be adjourned until August--a month away.
Wirt, during the vacation, goes over to Washington. He finds Jefferson
in a mood of double anger.
“What did I tell you,” cries Jefferson--“what did I tell you of
Marshall?” Then he rushes on to the utterances of the violent Luther
Martin. “Shall you not move,” he demands, “to commit Martin as
_particeps criminis_ with Colonel Burr? There should be evidence to fix
upon him misprision of treason, at least. At any rate, such a step would
put down our impudent Federal bulldog, and show that the most clamorous
defenders of Colonel Burr are one and all his accomplices.”
Meanwhile, the “impudent Federal bulldog” attends a Fourth-of-July
dinner in Baltimore. Every man at table, save himself, is an adherent of
Jefferson. Eager to demonstrate that loyal fact to the administration,
sundry of the guests make speeches full of uncompliment for Martin, and
propose a toast:
“Aaron Burr! May his treachery to his country exalt him to the
scaffold!”
More speeches, replete of venom, are aimed at Martin; whereupon that
undaunted drunkard gets upon his feet.
“Who is this Aaron Burr,” he roars, “whose guilt you have pronounced,
and for whose blood your parched throats so thirst? Was not he, a
few years back, adored by you next to your God? Were not you then his
warmest admirers? Did not he then possess every virtue? He was then in
power. He had influence. You were proud of his notice. His merest smile
brightened all your faces. His merest frown lengthened all your visages.
Go, ye holiday, ye sunshine friends!--ye time-servers, ye criers of
hosannah to-day and crucifiers to-morrow!--go; hide your heads from the
contempt and detestation of every honorable, every right-minded man!”
August: The day of trial arrives. Wirt, with the dull, deferent Hay, has
gone over the testimony against Aaron, and arranged the procession
of its introduction. Wirt will begin far back. By the mouth of the
red-nosed Wilkinson--somewhat in hiding from Swartwout--and by others,
he will relate from the beginning Aaron’s dream of Mexican conquest.
He will show how the vision grew and expanded until it reacted upon the
United States, and the downfall of Washington became as much parcel of
Aaron’s design as was the capture of Mexico. He will trace Aaron through
his many conferences in Washington, in Marietta, in Nashville, in
Cincinnati; and then on to New Orleans, where he is closeted with
Merchant Clark and the Bishop of Louisiana.
And so the parties go into court.
The jury being sworn, Marshall, chief justice, at once overthrows those
well-laid plans of Wirt.
“You must go to the act, sir,” says Marshall.
“Treason, like murder, is an act. You can’t think treason, you can’t
plot treason, you can’t talk treason; you can only act it. In murder you
must first prove the killing--the murderous act, before you may offer
evidence of an intent. And so in treason. You must begin by proving the
overt act of war against the country, before I can permit evidence of an
intent which led up to it.”
This ruling throws Wirt abroad in his calculations. The “Federal
bulldog” Martin grows vulgarly gleeful, Wirt correspondingly glum.
Being prodded by Marshall, chief justice, Wirt declares that the “act
of war” was the assembling of forty armed men, under one Taylor, at
Blennerhassett Island. They stopped at the island but a moment, and
Aaron himself was in Lexington. None the less there were forty of them;
they were armed; they were there by design and plan of Aaron, with an
ultimate purpose of levying war against this Government. Wirt urges that
constructive war was at that very island moment being waged, with Aaron
personally absent but constructively present, and constructively waging
such war.
At this setting forth, Marshall, chief justice, puckers his lips, as
might one who thinks the argument far-fetched and overfinely spun.
Martin, the “Federal bulldog,” does not scruple to laugh outright.
“Was ever heard such hash!” cries Martin. “Men may bear arms without
waging war! Forty men no more mean war than four! Men may float down
the Ohio, and still no war be waged. Because the hypochondriac Jefferson
imagined war, we are to receive the thing as _res adjudicata_, and
now give way while a pleasantly concocted tale, of that carnage of a
presidential nightmare, is recited from the witness box. Sirs, you are
not to fiddle folk onto a scaffold to any such tune as that, though a
president furnish the music.”
Marshall, chief justice, still with pursed lips and knotted forehead,
directs Wirt to proceed with his evidence of what, at Blennerhassett
Island, he relies upon to constitute, constructively or otherwise, a
state of war. Having heard the evidence, he will pass upon the points of
law presented.
Wirt, desperate because he may do no better, puts forward one Eaton as
a witness. The latter tells a long, involved story, which sounds vastly
like fiction and not at all like fact, of conversations with Aaron.
Aaron brings out in cross examination, that within ten days after
he, Eaton, went with this tale to Jefferson, a claim for ten thousand
dollars, which he had been pressing without success against the
Government, was paid. Aaron suggests that Eaton, to induce payment
of such claim, invented his narrative; and the suggestion is plainly
acceptable to the jury.
Following Eaton, Wirt calls Truxton; and next the suspicious Morgan,
who first wrote to Jefferson touching Aaron and his plans. Then
follow Blennerhassett’s gardener and groom, and one Woodbridge,
Blennerhassett’s man of business. Wirt, by these, proves Aaron’s
frequent presence on the island; the boats building at Marietta; the
advent of Taylor with his forty armed men, and there the relation ends.
In all--the testimony, not a knife is ground, not a flint is picked, not
a rifle fired; the forty armed men do not so much as indulge in drill.
For all they said or did or acted, the forty might have been explorers,
or sightseers, or settlers, or any other form of peaceful whatnot.
“I suppose,” observes Marshall, chief justice, bending his black eyes
warningly upon Wirt--“I suppose it unnecessary to instruct counsel that
guilt will not be presumed?”
Wirt replies stiffly that counsel for the Government, at least, require
no instructions; whereat Martin the “Federal bulldog” barks hoarsely
up, that what counsel for the Government most require, and are most
deficient in, is a case and the evidence of it. Wirt pays no heed to
the jeer, but announces that under the ruling of the court, made before
evidence was introduced, he has nothing more to offer touching acts of
overt war. He rests his case, he says, on that point; and thereupon, the
defense take issue with him. The Government, Aaron declares, has failed
to make out even the shadow of a treason. There is nothing which demands
reply; he will call no witnesses.
Marshall, chief justice, directs that the arguments to the jury be
proceeded with. Wirt is heard. Being imaginative, and having no facts,
he unchains his fancy and paints a paradise, whereof Aaron is the
serpent and Blennerhassett and his moon-visaged spouse are Adam and Eve.
It is a beautiful picture, and might be effective did it carry any grain
of truth. However, it is well received by the jury as a romance full
of entertaining glow and glitter; and then it is put aside from serious
consideration.
While Wirt the fanciful is thus coloring his invented paradise, with
Aaron as the serpent and the Blennerhassetts the betrayed Adam and Eve,
the “betrayed” Blennerhassett, sitting by Aaron’s side, is reading the
“serpent” a letter, that day received from Madam Blennerhassett. The
missive closes:
“Apprise Colonel Burr of my warmest acknowledgments for his own and
Theo’s kind remembrances. Tell him to assure her that she has inspired
me with a warmth of attachment that never can diminish.”
On the oratorical back of Wirt come Wickham, Hay, Randolph, Botts,
and McRae. Lastly Martin is heard, the “Federal bulldog” seizing the
occasion to bay Jefferson even more violently than before. When they
are done, Marshall, chief justice, lays down the law as to what should
constitute an “overt act of war”; and, since it is plain, even to the
court crier, that no such act has been proven, the jury hurry forward a
finding:
“Not guilty!”
Jefferson, full of prejudice, hears the news. He writes wrathfully to
Wirt:
“Let no witness depart without taking a copy of his evidence, which is
now more important than ever. The criminal Burr is preserved, it seems,
to become the rallying point of all the disaffected and worthless of
the United States, and to be the pivot on which all the conspiracies and
intrigues, that foreign governments may wish to disturb us with, are to
turn. There is still, however, the misdemeanor; and, if he be convicted
of that, Judge Marshall must, for very decency, give us some respite by
a confinement of him; but we must expect it to be very short.” There
is a day’s recess; then the charge of “levying war against Mexico” is
called. The red-nosed Wilkinson now tells his story; and is made
to admit--the painful sweat standing in great drops upon his purple
visage--that he has altered in important respects several of Aaron’s
letters. Being, by his own mouth, a forger, the jury marks its estimate
of the red-nosed one by again acquitting Aaron, and pronouncing a second
finding: “Not guilty!”
Thus ends the great trial which has rocked a continent. Aaron is free;
his friends crowd about him jubilantly, while the loving, lustrous Theo
weeps upon his shoulder.