The stage was now set for the last act in the drama. Wilkinson arrived in the city, deliberately set Claiborne aside, and established a species of martial law, not without opposition. To justify his course Wilkinson swore to an affidavit based on Burr's letter of the 29th of July and proceeded with his arbitrary arrests. One by one Burr's confederates were taken into custody. The city was kept in a state of alarm; Burr's armed thousands were said to be on the way; the negroes were to be incited to revolt. Only the actual appearance of Burr's expedition or some extraordinary happening could maintain this high pitch of popular excitement and save Wilkinson from becoming the ridiculous victim of his own folly.
On the 10th of January (1807), after an uneventful voyage down the Mississippi, Burr's flotilla reached the mouth of Bayou Pierre, some thirty miles above Natchez. Here at length was the huge armada which was to shatter the Union—nine boats and sixty men! Tension began to give way. People began to recover their sense of humor. Wilkinson was never in greater danger in his life, for he was about to appear ridiculous. It was at Bayou Pierre that Burr going ashore learned that Wilkinson had betrayed him. His first instinct was to flee, for if he should proceed to New Orleans he would fall into Wilkinson's hands and doubtless be court-martialed and shot; but if he tarried, he would be arrested and sent to Washington. Indecision and despair seized him; and while Blennerhassett and other devoted followers waited for their emperor to declare his intention, he found himself facing the acting-governor of the Mississippi Territory with a warrant for his arrest. To the chagrin of his fellow conspirators, Burr surrendered tamely, even pusillanimously.
The end of the drama was near at hand. Burr was brought before a grand jury, and though he once more escaped indictment, he was put under bonds, quite illegally he thought, to appear when summoned. On the 1st of February he abandoned his followers to the tender mercies of the law and fled in disguise into the wilderness. A month later he was arrested near the Spanish border above Mobile by Lieutenant Gaines, in command at Fort Stoddert, and taken to Richmond. The trial that followed did not prove Burr's guilt, but it did prove Thomas Jefferson's credulity and cast grave doubts on James Wilkinson's loyalty.* Burr was acquitted of the charge of treason in court, but he remained under popular indictment, and his memory has never been wholly cleared of the suspicion of treason.
* An account of the trial of Burr will be found in "John
Marshall and the Constitution" by Edward S. Corwin, in "The
Chronicles of America".
CHAPTER VII. AN ABUSE OF HOSPITALITY
While Captain Bainbridge was eating his heart out in the Pasha's prison at Tripoli, his thoughts reverting constantly to his lost frigate, he reminded Commodore Preble, with whom he was allowed to correspond, that "the greater part of our crew consists of English subjects not naturalized in America." This incidental remark comes with all the force of a revelation to those who have fondly imagined that the sturdy jack-tars who manned the first frigates were genuine American sea-dogs. Still more disconcerting is the information contained in a letter from the Secretary of the Treasury to President Jefferson, some years later, to the effect that after 1803 American tonnage increased at the rate of seventy thousand a year, but that of the four thousand seamen required to man this growing mercantile marine, fully one-half were British subjects, presumably deserters. How are these uncomfortable facts to be explained? Let a third piece of information be added. In a report of Admiral Nelson, dated 1803, in which he broaches a plan for manning the British navy, it is soberly stated that forty-two thousand British seamen deserted "in the late war." Whenever a large convoy assembled at Portsmouth, added the Admiral, not less than a thousand seamen usually deserted from the navy.
The slightest acquaintance with the British navy when Nelson was winning immortal glory by his victory at Trafalgar must convince the most sceptical that his seamen for the most part were little better than galley slaves. Life on board these frigates was well-nigh unbearable. The average life of a seaman, Nelson reckoned, was forty-five years. In this age before processes of refrigeration had been invented, food could not be kept edible on long voyages, even in merchantmen. Still worse was the fare on men-of-war. The health of a crew was left to Providence. Little or no forethought was exercised to prevent disease; the commonest matters of personal hygiene were neglected; and when disease came the remedies applied were scarcely to be preferred to the disease. Discipline, always brutal, was symbolized by the cat-o'-nine-tails. Small wonder that the navy was avoided like the plague by every man and seaman.
Yet a navy had to be maintained: it was the cornerstone of the Empire. And in all the history of that Empire the need of a navy was never stronger than in these opening years of the nineteenth century. The practice of impressing able men for the royal navy was as old as the reign of Elizabeth. The press gang was an odious institution of long standing—a terror not only to rogue and vagabond but to every able-bodied seafaring man and waterman on rivers, who was not exempted by some special act. It ransacked the prisons, and carried to the navy not only its victims but the germs of fever which infested public places of detention. But the press gang harvested its greatest crop of seamen on the seas. Merchantmen were stopped at sea, robbed of their able sailors, and left to limp short-handed into port. A British East Indiaman homeward bound in 1802 was stripped of so many of her crew in the Bay of Biscay that she was unable to offer resistance to a French privateer and fell a rich victim into the hands of the enemy. The necessity of the royal navy knew no law and often defeated its own purpose.
Death or desertion offered the only way of escape to the victim of the press gang. And the commander of a British frigate dreaded making port almost as much as an epidemic of typhus. The deserter always found American merchantmen ready to harbor him. Fair wages, relatively comfortable quarters, and decent treatment made him quite ready to take any measures to forswear his allegiance to Britannia. Naturalization papers were easily procured by a few months' residence in any State of the Union; and in default of legitimate papers, certificates of citizenship could be bought for a song in any American seaport, where shysters drove a thrifty traffic in bogus documents. Provided the English navy took the precaution to have the description in his certificate tally with his personal appearance, and did not let his tongue betray him, he was reasonably safe from capture.