[832] Samuel Dana and John Cotton Smith. (See Eaton's testimony, Annals, 10th Cong. 1st Sess. 512; and Eaton: Prentiss, 396-403.)
That part of Eaton's account of Burr's conversation which differs from those with Truxtun and Decatur is simply unaccountable. That Burr was capable of anything may be granted; but his mind was highly practical and he was uncommonly reserved in speech. Undoubtedly Eaton had heard the common talk about the timidity and supineness of the Government under Jefferson and had himself used language such as he ascribed to Burr.
Whichever way one turns, no path out of the confusion appears. But for Burr's abstemious habits (he was the most temperate of all the leading men of that period) an explanation might be that he and Eaton were very drunk—Burr recklessly so—if he indulged in this uncharacteristic outburst of loquacity.
[833] Eaton: Prentiss, 402.
[834] McCaleb, 62.
[835] Burr to Jackson, March 24, 1806, Parton: Jackson, i, 313-14.
Burr also told Jackson of John Randolph's denunciation of Jefferson's "duplicity and imbecility," and of small politics receiving "more of public attention than all our collisions with foreign powers, or than all the great events on the theatre of Europe." He closed with the statement, then so common, that such "things begin to make reflecting men think, many good patriots to doubt, and some to despond." (See McCaleb, 51.)
[836] This man, then thirty-five years of age, and "engaging in ... appearance" (Blennerhassett Papers: Safford, 434), had had a picturesque career. A graduate of Göttingen, he lived in Paris during the Revolution, went to London for a time, and from there to Vienna, where he practiced medicine as a cover for his real design, which was to discover the prison where Lafayette was confined and to rescue him from it. This he succeeded in doing, but both were taken soon afterward. Bollmann was imprisoned for many months, and then released on condition that he leave Austria forever. He came to the United States and entered into Burr's enterprise with unbounded enthusiasm. His name often appears as "Erick Bolman" in American records.
[837] Dayton to Wilkinson, July 24, 1806, Annals, 10th Cong. 1st sess. 560.
[838] See testimony of Littleton W. Tazewell, John Brokenbrough, and Joseph C. Cabell. (Annals, 10th Cong. 1st Sess. 630, 675, 676).