"June 18, 1807.
"On Saturday morning General Wilkinson, with ten or eleven witnesses from New Orleans, arrived in Richmond. Four bills were immediately delivered to the grand jury against Blennerhassett and Burr; one for treason and one for misdemeanour against each. The examination of the witnesses was immediately commenced. They had gone through thirty-two last evening. There are about forty-six. General Eaton has been already examined. He came out of the jury-room in such rage and agitation that he shed tears, and complained bitterly that he had been questioned as if he were a villain. How else could he have been questioned with any propriety?
"Poor Bollman is placed in a most awkward predicament. Some days ago Mr. Hay, the district attorney, in open court tendered him a pardon under the great seal and with the sign manual of Thomas Jefferson. Bollman refused to receive it. Hay urged it upon him. Bollman said that no man could force on him such a badge of infamy. Hay insisted that he was a pardoned man, whether he would or not; and this question will, probably, also come before the court in argument to-day or to-morrow."
"June 22, 1807.
On Friday Mr. Hay complained that Burr had so constantly occupied the court for the four weeks past with his extraordinary motions, that he (Mr. Hay) could not get an opportunity of making one on his part; he therefore gave notice that he should, at the first interval, move for leave to send to the grand jury interrogatories for their instruction, to be put to the witnesses, in order that the whole truth might come out.
"Burr said it was a thing without example, and which the court could not permit without his assent; but he thought there was reason in the proposal of Mr. Hay, and that he should cheerfully assent, with the condition only that he (Burr) should also send interrogatories, to be put to the same witnesses, the better to extract the 'whole truth.'
"The court said that it certainly could not be permitted to Mr. Hay to send interrogatories, being against usage and reason; but as Mr. Burr had assented, there seemed to be no objection that both parties should send in interrogatories; and such permission was granted, whereupon Mr. Hay withdrew his motion."
"June 24, 1807.
"While we were engaged to-day in the argument of the question for an attachment against Wilkinson, the grand jury came into court with bills against Blennerhassett and myself for treason and misdemeanour. Two bills against each of us. These indictments for treason are founded on the following allegations: that Colonel Tyler, with twenty or thirty men, stopped at Blennerhassett's Island on their way down the Ohio; that though these men were not armed, and had no military array or organization, and though they did neither use force nor threaten it, yet, having set out with a view of taking temporary possession of New-Orleans on their way to Mexico, that such intent was treasonable, and therefore a war was levied on Blennerhassett's Island by construction; and that, though Colonel Burr was then at Frankfort on his way to Tennessee, yet, having advised the measure, he was, by construction of law, present at the island, and levied war there. In fact, the indictment charges that Aaron Burr was on that day present at the island, though not a man of the jury supposed this to be true.
"This idea of constructive war is, by this jury, carried far beyond the dictum advanced by Judge Chace in the case of Fries; for Chace laid down that the actual exertion of force, in a hostile or traitorous manner, was indispensable to establish treason. Yet the opinions of Chace in this case were complained of by the whole republican party, and condemned by all the lawyers of all parties in Philadelphia, as tending to introduce the odious and unconstitutional doctrine of constructive treason.