ions to him
personally, he adds: "But, sir, when proofs showed him to be a Treator"
(spelling was never the future President's strong point), "I would cut
his throat with as much pleasure as I would cut yours on equal
testimony."

The whole conspiracy fizzled out. Burr could get no help from any of the
divergent parties he had attempted to gain. No one would fight for him.
His little band of rebels was scattered, and he himself was seized,
tried for treason, and acquitted on a technical point. But his dark,
tempestuous career was over. Though he lived to an unlovely old age, he
appears no more in history.

Jefferson was re-elected President in 1804. He was himself doubtful
about the desirability of a second tenure, but the appearance at the
moment of a series of particularly foul attacks upon his private
character made him feel that to retire would amount to something like a
plea of guilty. Perhaps it would have served his permanent fame better
if he had not accepted another term, for, owing to circumstances for
which he was only partly to blame, his second Presidency appears in
history as much less successful than his first.

Its chief problem was the maintenance of peace and neutrality during the
colossal struggle between France under Napoleon and the kings and
aristocracies of Europe who had endeavoured to crush the French
Revolution, and who now found themselves in imminent peril of being
crushed by its armed and amazing child.

Jefferson sincerely loved peace. Moreover, the sympathy for France, of
which he had at one time made no disguise, was somewhat damped by the
latest change which had taken place in the French Government. Large as
was his vision compared with most of his contemporaries, he was too much
soaked in the Republican tradition of antiquity, which was so living a
thing in that age, to see in the decision of a nation of soldiers to
have a soldier for their ruler and representative the fulfilment of
democracy and not its denial. But his desire for peace was not made
easier of fulfilment by either of the belligerent governments. Neither
thought the power of the United States to help or hinder of serious
account, and both committed constant acts of aggression against American
rights. Nor was his position any stronger in that he had made it a
charge against the Federalists that they had provided in an
unnecessarily lavish fashion for the national defence. In accordance
with his pledges he had reduced