(Gulf States Historical Magazine, ii, 379.)
Parton's Life of Burr is still the best story of this strange life. But Parton must be read with great care, for he sometimes makes statements which are difficult of verification.
A brief, engaging, and trustworthy account of the Burr episode is Aaron Burr, by Isaac Jenkinson. Until the appearance of Professor McCaleb's book, The Aaron Burr Conspiracy, Mr. Jenkinson's little volume was the best on that subject. Professor McCaleb's thorough and scholarly study is, however, the only exhaustive and reliable narrative of that ambitious plan and the disastrous outcome of the attempted execution of it.
[1345] Blennerhassett Papers: Safford, 480-82; also see Baltimore American, Nov. 4, 5, 6, 1807.
[1346] Annals, 10th Cong. 1st Sess. 108-27.
[1347] The bill passed the Senate, but foreign affairs, and exciting legislation resulting from these, forced it from the mind of the House. (See vol. iv, chap. i, of this work.)
[1348] John Quincy Adams of Massachusetts, Samuel Maclay of Pennsylvania, Jesse Franklin of North Carolina, Samuel Smith of Maryland, John Pope of Kentucky, Buckner Thruston of Kentucky, and Joseph Anderson of Tennessee. (Annals, 10th Cong. 1st Sess. 42.)
[1349] Smith had been indicted for treason and misdemeanor, but Hay had entered a nolle prosequi on the bills of indictment after the failure of the Burr prosecution. (Memoirs, J. Q. A.: Adams, i, 481.)
[1350] Adams had been indulging in political maneuvers that indicated a courtship of the Administration and a purpose to join the Republican Party. His course had angered and disgusted most of his former Federalist friends and supporters, who felt that he had deserted his declining party in order to advance his political fortunes. If this were true, his performance in writing the Committee report on the resolution to expel Smith was well calculated to endear him to Jefferson. Adams expressed his own views thus: "On most of the great national questions now under discussion, my sense of duty leads me to support the administration, and I find myself of course in opposition to the federalists in general.... My political prospects are declining." (Memoirs, J. Q. A.: Adams, i, 497-98.)
The Federalist Legislature of Massachusetts grossly insulted Adams by electing his successor before Adams's term in the Senate had expired. Adams resigned, and in March, 1809, President Madison appointed him Minister to Russia, and later Minister to Great Britain. President Monroe made the former Federalist his Secretary of State. No Republican was more highly honored by these two Republican Presidents than was John Quincy Adams.