is intention, he found himself facing the acting-governor of
the Mississippi Territory with a warrant for his arrest. To the
chagrin of his fellow conspirators, Burr surrendered tamely, even
pusillanimously.

The end of the drama was near at hand. Burr was brought before a grand
jury, and though he once more escaped indictment, he was put under
bonds, quite illegally he thought, to appear when summoned. On the 1st
of February he abandoned his followers to the tender mercies of the law
and fled in disguise into the wilderness. A month later he was arrested
near the Spanish border above Mobile by Lieutenant Gaines, in command
at Fort Stoddert, and taken to Richmond. The trial that followed did not
prove Burr's guilt, but it did prove Thomas Jefferson's credulity and
cast grave doubts on James Wilkinson's loyalty.* Burr was acquitted
of the charge of treason in court, but he remained under popular
indictment, and his memory has never been wholly cleared of the
suspicion of treason.

* An account of the trial of Burr will be found in "John
Marshall and the Constitution" by Edward S. Corwin, in "The
Chronicles of America".

CHAPTER VII. AN ABUSE OF HOSPITALITY

While Captain Bainbridge was eating his heart out in the Pasha's prison
at Tripoli, his thoughts reverting constantly to his lost frigate, he
reminded Commodore Preble, with whom he was allowed to correspond,
that "the greater part of our crew consists of English subjects not
naturalized in America." This incidental remark comes with all the
force of a revelation to those who have fondly imagined that the sturdy
jack-tars who manned the first frigates were genuine American sea-dogs.
Still more disconcerting is the information contained in a letter from
the Secretary of the Treasury to President Jefferson, some years later,
to the effect that after 1803 American tonnage increased at the rate of
seventy thousand a year, but that of the four thousand seamen required
to man this growing mercantile marine, fully one-half were British
subjects, presumably deserters. How are these uncomfortable facts to
be explained? Let a third piece of information be added. In a report of
Admiral Nelson, dated 1803, in which he broaches a plan for manning
the British navy, it is soberly stated that forty-two thousand British
seamen deserted "in the late war." Whenever a large convoy assembled at
Portsmouth, added the Admiral, not less than a thousand seamen usually