Wilkinson was "too much fatigued" to come into court. (Burr Trials, i, 196.) By Monday, however, he was sufficiently restored to present himself before Marshall.
[1128] Irving to Paulding, June 22, 1807, Irving, i, 145.
[1129] Wilkinson to Jefferson, June 17, 1807, "Letters in Relation," MSS. Lib. Cong.
The court reporter impartially states that Wilkinson was "calm, dignified, and commanding," and that Burr glanced at him with "haughty contempt." (Burr Trials, i, footnote to 197.)
[1130] "Gen: Jackson of Tennessee has been here ever since the 22ḍ [of May] denouncing Wilkinson in the coarsest terms in every company." (Hay to Jefferson, June 14, 1807, Jefferson MSS. Lib. Cong.)
Hay had not the courage to tell the President that Jackson had been as savagely unsparing in his attacks on Jefferson as in his thoroughly justified condemnation of Wilkinson.
[1131] Truxtun left the Navy in 1802, and, at the time of the Burr trial, was living on a farm in New Jersey. No officer in any navy ever made a better record for gallantry, seamanship, and whole-hearted devotion to his country. The list of his successful engagements is amazing. He was as high-spirited as he was fearless and honorable.
In 1802, when in command of the squadron that was being equipped for our war with Tripoli, Truxtun most properly asked that a captain be appointed to command the flagship. The Navy was in great disfavor with Jefferson and the whole Republican Party, and naval affairs were sadly mismanaged or neglected. Truxtun's reasonable request was refused by the Administration, and he wrote a letter of indignant protest to the Secretary of the Navy. To the surprise and dismay of the experienced and competent officer, Jefferson and his Cabinet construed his spirited letter as a resignation from the service, and, against Truxtun's wishes, accepted it as such. Thus the American Navy lost one of its ablest officers at the very height of his powers. Truxtun at the time was fifty-two years old. No single act of Jefferson's Administration is more discreditable than this untimely ending of a great career.
[1132] This man was the elder Decatur, father of the more famous officer of the same name. He had had a career in the American Navy as honorable but not so distinguished as that of Truxtun; and his service had been ended by an unhappy circumstance, but one less humiliating than that which severed Truxtun's connection with the Navy.
The unworthiest act of the expiring Federalist Congress of 1801, and one which all Republicans eagerly supported, was that authorizing most of the ships of the Navy to be sold or laid up and most of the naval officers discharged. (Act of March 3, 1801, Annals, 6th Cong. 1st and 2d Sess. 1557-59.) Among the men whose life profession was thus cut off, and whose notable services to their country were thus rewarded, was Commodore Stephen Decatur, who thereafter engaged in business in Philadelphia.