[1133] It was under Stoddert's administration of the Navy Department that the American Navy was really created. Both Truxtun and Decatur won their greatest sea battles in our naval war with France, while Stoddert was Secretary. The three men were close friends and all of them warmly resented the demolition of the Navy and highly disapproved of Jefferson, both as an individual and as a statesman. They belonged to the old school of Federalists. Three more upright men did not live.
[1134] See supra, 304-05.
[1135] A popular designation of Eaton after his picturesque and heroic Moroccan exploit.
[1136] Truxtun at the time of his conversations with Burr was in the thick of that despair over his cruel and unjustifiable separation from the Navy, which clouded his whole after life. The longing to be once more on the quarter-deck of an American warship never left his heart.
[1137] Burr Trials, i, 486-91. This abstract is from the testimony given by Commodore Truxtun before the trial jury, which was substantially the same as that before the grand jury.
[1138] Annals, 10th Cong. 1st Sess. 452-63. See note 1, next page.
[1139] Wilkinson's testimony on the trial for misdemeanor (Annals, 10th Cong. 1st Sess, 520-22) was the same as before the grand jury.
"Wilkinson is now before the grand jury, and has such a mighty mass of words to deliver himself of, that he claims at least two days more to discharge the wondrous cargo." (Irving to Paulding, June 22, 1807, Irving, i, 145.)
[1140] See McCaleb, 335. Politics alone saved Wilkinson. The trial was universally considered a party matter, Jefferson's prestige, especially, being at stake. Yet seven out of the sixteen members of the grand jury voted to indict Wilkinson. Fourteen of the jury were Republicans, and two were Federalists.
[1141] Randolph to Nicholson, June 25, 1807, Adams: Randolph, 221-22. Speaking of political conditions at that time, Randolph observed: "Politics have usurped the place of law, and the scenes of 1798 [referring to the Alien and Sedition laws] are again revived."