Still the price he paid for having his way was high, and the returns that he got were small. He incurred the charge of truckling to France, of holding the whip-hand over Congress, of alienating some of the leading Virginia Republicans, and of causing an open rupture in his party, just like John Adams. Napoleon took not a single step toward satisfying our claims to the "rightful boundaries of Louisiana.” The Emperor was busy elsewhere. His face was turned from Washington toward Jena, Eylau, and Friedland. Florida still dangled before Jefferson's Tantalus gaze. A dozen years were to pass before Spain, exhausted by her struggle with the mighty Corsican, and shorn of her colonies in the New World, was to yield us title to the shores which Ponce, de Leon had christened the "land of flowers" in the days of her strength and glory three centuries past.

The stormy session of the ninth Congress which had opened on the day of Austerlitz (December 2, 1805) came to a close on April 21, 1806. The President had carried through a fruitless programme at the cost of divided counsels and waning popularity. "Mr. Jefferson has worried himself so much with the movements of Congress," wrote the French minister at Washington to Talleyrand on May 10, 1806, "that he has made himself ill and grown ten years older." But Jefferson's troubles were only beginning. While he was laboring during the summer of 1806 to heal the schism in the party, combat

ing the charges of inconsistency and intrigue which John Randolph was publishing over the signature of Decius in the Richmond Enquirer, indignantly denying to Duane the rumor that he had "denounced the old Republicans by the epithet of Jacobins," and exhorting his secretaries, Gallatin, Madison, and Dearborn not to let the "malignant efforts of their adversaries succeed in sowing tares" between them, difficulties and dangers were multiplying at home and abroad. Persistent and ugly rumors came to Washington of the treasonable movements of Aaron Burr in the Western country, and the depredations of French and English cruisers on our commerce were growing intolerable.

Just what Burr intended to accomplish by his plots in the Southwest will never be clear, nor could he probably have given a coherent account of them himself. For his plans evidently changed with his fortunes. It is certain, however, that after the ruin of his political career in the East by the slaying of Hamilton he entertained grandiose notions of starting a "new empire" in the West. Now it was a scheme to detach all the States west of the Alleghanies and join them to Louisiana, as he confided to the English minister, Merry, whom he asked for financial aid to the extent of half a million, and a supporting squadron of British ships at the mouth of the Mississippi. Now it was a desperate plot to kidnap the heads of the government, seize the pub

lic treasure, and sail for New Orleans to proclaim the independence of Louisiana. Now it took the form of a great empire in Mexico and Central America, in which he should be the new Montezuma. Now it dwindled into the harmless scheme of purchasing and colonizing the Bastrop grant on the Red River. The whole episode, which fills the two years from Burr's retirement from the vicepresidency in 1805 to his trial in Richmond in 1807, is a tangled drama of intrigue and deception, with the two arch scoundrels, Burr and Wilkinson, in the title-rôles; with Major-General Andrew Jackson grazing the edge of treason in his ostentatious reception to Burr in Tennessee, and Henry Clay pledging his own "honor and innocence" in support of Burr's before the grand jury of Kentucky; with the blandishments of Theodosia Burr Alston, the "empress elect," and the poor braggart dupe, Blennerhasset, shorn of his money.

Jefferson had at first rumors, then more definite reports from several sources, of "strange and suspicious movements" by Burr in the West, early in the year 1806, but he treated them with indifference. He was absorbed in his quest for Florida. General Eaton, a hero of the Tripolitan war, called on him a few weeks after he had carried the two-million-dollar bill through the House, and told him from good evidence that "if Colonel Burr was not disposed of we should in eighteen months have an insurrection

if not a revolution on the waters of the Mississippi." Jefferson replied that he had "too much confidence in the . . . attachment of the people of that country to the Union to admit of any apprehensions of that kind." Mr. Henry Adams says in his detailed account of the conspiracy that "a word quietly written by Jefferson to one or two persons in the Western country would have stopped Burr short in his path and would have brought Wilkinson to his knees." Yet Jefferson, either on account of what Randolph called "the easy credulity of his temper," or because Wilkinson had some hold on him which we cannot explain, or because the most convincing evidence of Burr's treason was furnished by a Federalist district attorney, took no action until near the close of November, 1806, and then only issued a general proclamation without even mentioning Burr's name. "Sundry persons," it declared, were conspiring against Spain (!), and all officers of the United States were ordered to seize and detain such persons. Burr slipped by the forts at the mouth of the Ohio and kept ahead of the slowly travelling proclamation on his way down the Mississippi. It remained for Wilkinson, betraying Burr as he had for years betrayed his country by the acceptance of Spanish gold, to bring the "conspiracy" to a halt by prohibiting Burr's approach to New Orleans. Realizing that the game was up, Burr surrendered to Governor Meade, of the Missis

sippi Territory, escaped in the guise of a woodman, and was finally apprehended, at the end of February, 1807, near the Spanish frontier of West Florida, and sent to Richmond for trial.

After his "culpable negligence" in not suppressing the conspiracy, Jefferson now showed great zeal in prosecuting the victim. But his unfortunate delay had made him rather the accomplice of Wilkinson than the dignified first magistrate of the land, the sworn defender of its Constitution and laws. His implacable enemy, John Marshall, presided over the circuit court at Richmond, and designated as foreman of the grand jury a newer but no less implacable enemy of the administration-John Randolph, of Roanoke. A third enemy, Luther Martin, of Maryland, whom Jefferson called an "impudent Federal bull-dog," was the leading counsel for Burr, as he had been for Chase. At the hands of these men the trial soon assumed the form of an inquisition into the conduct of Thomas Jefferson rather than of Aaron Burr. Instructed by Marshall on the nature of the "overt act" which constituted treason, John Randolph refused to bring in a bill of indictment on that score, and Burr was tried for a misdemeanor only. The court summoned Jefferson by subpoena to appear in person with papers relating to the alleged conspiracy, and when the President refused to obey the summons on the ground that it would be incompatible with the dignity of