Shout treason

Transcriber’s Note
Table of Contents added by Transcriber
AARON BURR From an original drawing from nature, by Saint-Mémin
by Francis F. Beirne
HASTINGS HOUSE · PUBLISHERS NEW YORK
COPYRIGHT © 1959 by HASTINGS HOUSE, PUBLISHERS, INC.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced without written permission of the publisher.
Published simultaneously in Canada by S. J. Reginald Saunders, Publishers, Toronto 2B.
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 59-13552
Printed in the United States of America
The story of Aaron Burr has been treated exhaustively by many writers in many ways. Oddly enough, aside from the stenographic report of the proceedings and a small volume which appeared nearly a century ago, there seems to have been no work dealing alone with the subject of Burr’s trial in Richmond, Virginia, in the spring and summer of 1807, on charges of treason against the United States and high misdemeanor. Yet this marked the climax of Burr’s public career and the presence of a former Vice-President of the United States as the accused, charged with such serious crimes, of the Chief Justice of the United States on the bench, and of distinguished leaders of the bar represented both in the prosecution and defense made this the most dramatic case in the history of American jurisprudence.
It is true there is likely to be no better account of the trial than that of Albert J. Beveridge, on whom this author has leaned heavily in feeling his way through legal technicalities and to whom he makes grateful acknowledgment. This scholarly treatment, however, is buried in the middle of Senator Beveridge’s life of John Marshall where it cannot attract the attention it deserves from a larger audience both because of the trial’s historical importance and its human and spectacular qualities. It was with the idea of reaching the general reader that this work, striving for historical accuracy but relieved of confusing technicalities, was undertaken.