ies
of renown. The prosecution was in charge of the United States District
Attorney, George Hay--serious, humorless, faithful to Jefferson's
interests, and absolutely devoid of the personal authority demanded by
so grave a cause. He was assisted by William Wirt, already a brilliant
lawyer and possessed of a dazzling elocution, but sadly lacking in the
majesty of years. At the head and forefront of the defense stood Burr
himself, an unerring legal tactician, deciding every move of the
great game, the stake of which for him was life itself. About him were
gathered the ablest members of the Richmond bar: John Wickham, witty and
ingenious, Edmund Randolph, ponderous and pontifical, Benjamin Botts,
learned and sarcastic, while from Baltimore came Luther Martin to aid
his "highly respected friend," to keep the political pot boiling,
and eventually to fall desperately in love with Burr's daughter, the
beautiful Theodosia. Among the 140 witnesses there were also some
notable figures: William Eaton, the hero of Derne, whom Burr's
codefendant, Blennerhassett, describes for us as "strutting about
the streets under a tremendous hat, with a Turkish sash over colored
clothes," and offering up, with his frequent libations in the taverns,
"the copious effusions of his sorrows"; Commodore Truxton, the gallant
commander of the Constellation; General Andrew Jackson, future
President of the United States, but now a vehement declaimer of Burr's
innocence--out of abundant caution for his own reputation, it may be
surmised; Erick Bollmann, once a participant in the effort to release
Lafayette from Olmutz and himself just now released from durance vile
on a writ of habeas corpus from the Supreme Court; Samuel Swartwout,
another tool of Burr's, reserved by the same beneficent writ for a
career of political roguery which was to culminate in his swindling
the Government out of a million and a quarter dollars; and finally the
bibulous and traitorous Wilkinson, "whose head" as he himself owned,
"might err," but "whose heart could not deceive." Traveling by packet
from New Orleans, this essential witness was heralded by the impatient
prosecution, till at last he burst upon the stage with all the eclat
of the hero in a melodrama--only to retire bated and perplexed, his
villainy guessed by his own partisans.

By the Constitution treason against the United States consists "only in
levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them