Day after day was consumed in argument on points of evidence, while the grand jury were examining witnesses. Marshall delivered a long written opinion upon the question as to whether a witness could be forced to give testimony which he believed might criminate himself. The District Attorney read Jefferson's two letters upon the subject of the subpœna duces tecum. No pretext was too fragile to be seized by one side or the other, as the occasion for argument upon it demanded—for instance, whether or not the District Attorney might send interrogatories to the grand jury. Always the lawyers spoke to the crowd as well as to the court, and their passages at arms became ever sharper.[1150]
Wilkinson is "an honest man and a patriot"—no! he is a liar and a thief; Louisiana is a "poor, unfortunate, enslaved country"; letters had been seized by "foulness and violence"; the arguments of Burr's attorneys are "mere declamations"; the Government's agents are striving to prevent Burr from having "a fair trial ... the newspapers and party writers are employed to cry and write him down; his counsel are denounced for daring to defend him; the passions of the grand jury are endeavored to be excited against him, at all events";[1151] Hay's mind is "harder than Ajax's seven fold shield of bull's hide"; Edmund Randolph came into court "with mysterious looks of awe and terror ... as if he had something to communicate which was too horrible to be told"; Hay is always "on his heroics"; he "hopped up like a parched pea"; the object of Burr's counsel is "to prejudice the surrounding multitude against General Wilkinson"; one newspaper tale is "as impudent a falsehood as ever malignity had uttered"—such was the language with which the arguments were adorned. They were, however, well sprinkled with citations of authority.[1152]
FOOTNOTES:
[1017] See vol. i, 201, of this work.
[1018] Tobacco chewing and smoking in court-rooms continued in most American communities in the South and West down to a very recent period.
[1019] Address of John Tyler on "Richmond and its Memories," Tyler, i, 219.
[1020] Irving was twenty-four years old when he reported the Burr trial.
[1021] Blennerhassett Papers: Safford, 465. Marshall made this avowal to Luther Martin, who personally told Blennerhassett of it.
[1022] Judge Francis M. Finch, in Dillon, i, 402.
"The men who framed that instrument [Constitution] remembered the crimes that had been perpetrated under the pretence of justice; for the most part they had been traitors themselves, and having risked their necks under the law they feared despotism and arbitrary power more than they feared treason." (Adams: U.S. iii, 468.)