Marshall, chief justice, directs that the arguments to the jury be proceeded with. Wirt is heard. Being imaginative, and having no facts, he unchains his fancy and paints a paradise, whereof Aaron is the serpent and Blennerhassett and his moon-visaged spouse are Adam and Eve. It is a beautiful picture, and might be effective did it carry any grain of truth. However, it is well received by the jury as a romance full of entertaining glow and glitter; and then it is put aside from serious consideration.
While Wirt the fanciful is thus coloring his invented paradise, with Aaron as the serpent and the Blennerhassetts the betrayed Adam and Eve, the “betrayed” Blennerhassett, sitting by Aaron’s side, is reading the “serpent” a letter, that day received from Madam Blennerhassett. The missive closes:
“Apprise Colonel Burr of my warmest acknowledgments for his own and Theo’s kind remembrances. Tell him to assure her that she has inspired me with a warmth of attachment that never can diminish.”
On the oratorical back of Wirt come Wickham, Hay, Randolph, Botts, and McRae. Lastly Martin is heard, the “Federal bulldog” seizing the occasion to bay Jefferson even more violently than before. When they are done, Marshall, chief justice, lays down the law as to what should constitute an “overt act of war”; and, since it is plain, even to the court crier, that no such act has been proven, the jury hurry forward a finding:
“Not guilty!”
Jefferson, full of prejudice, hears the news. He writes wrathfully to Wirt:
“Let no witness depart without taking a copy of his evidence, which is now more important than ever. The criminal Burr is preserved, it seems, to become the rallying point of all the disaffected and worthless of the United States, and to be the pivot on which all the conspiracies and intrigues, that foreign governments may wish to disturb us with, are to turn. There is still, however, the misdemeanor; and, if he be convicted of that, Judge Marshall must, for very decency, give us some respite by a confinement of him; but we must expect it to be very short.” There is a day’s recess; then the charge of “levying war against Mexico” is called. The red-nosed Wilkinson now tells his story; and is made to admit—the painful sweat standing in great drops upon his purple visage—that he has altered in important respects several of Aaron’s letters. Being, by his own mouth, a forger, the jury marks its estimate of the red-nosed one by again acquitting Aaron, and pronouncing a second finding: “Not guilty!”
Thus ends the great trial which has rocked a continent. Aaron is free; his friends crowd about him jubilantly, while the loving, lustrous Theo weeps upon his shoulder.