that his former ally, Wilkinson, had now established a reign of terror
at New Orleans directed against his followers; and feeling no desire to
test the tender mercies of a court-martial presided over by his former
associate, Burr surrendered himself into the custody of the acting
Governor of Mississippi Territory. But the refusal of the territorial
grand jury to indict him suggested the hope that he might still escape
from the reach of the law. He therefore plunged into the wilderness,
headed for the Spanish border, and had all but reached his destination
when he was recognized and recaptured at Wakefield, Alabama.

Owing to the peculiar and complicated circumstances which led up to
it, Burr's case was from the outset imbued with factional and partisan
politics of the most extreme kind. While the conspiracy was at its
height, Jefferson, though emphatically warned, had refused to lend it
any credence whatever; but when the danger was well over he had thrown
the whole country into a panic, and had even asked Congress to suspend
the writ of habeas corpus. The Federalists and the President's enemies
within his own party, headed by the redoubtable Randolph, were instantly
alert to the opportunity which Jefferson's inexplicable conduct afforded
them. "The mountain had labored and brought forth a mouse," quoted the
supercilious; the executive dragnet had descended to envelop the monster
which was ready to split the Union or at least to embroil its
relations with a friendly power, and had brought up--a few peaceful
agriculturists! Nor was this the worst of the matter, contended these
critics of the Administration, for the real source of the peril had been
the President's own action in assigning the command at New Orleans to
Wilkinson, a pensioner of Spain, a villain "from the bark to the very
core." Yet so far was the President from admitting this error that he
now attributed the salvation of the country to "the soldier's honor" and
"the citizen's fidelity" of this same Wilkinson. Surely, then, the
real defendants before the bar of opinion were Thomas Jefferson and his
precious ally James Wilkinson, not their harried and unfortunate victim,
Aaron Burr!

The proceedings against Burr occupied altogether some seven months,
during which the sleepy little town of Richmond became the cynosure of
all eyes. So famous was the case that it brought thither of necessity or
out of curiosity men of every rank and grade of life, of every spec