“Mr. Jefferson!” The face of Meriwether Lewis was strangely moved. “I see the actual greatness of your soul; but I ask nothing.”
“Why, in my heart I feel like flinging open every prison door in the world. If you have gained an empire for your country, and paid for it as you have, could not a great and rich country afford to pay to the extent of a woman’s happiness? When a king is crowned, he sets free the criminals. And this day I feel as proud and happy as if I were a king—and king of the greatest empire of all the world! I know well who assured that kingdom. Let me be, then”—he raised his long hand—“say nothing, do nothing. And let this end all talk between us of these matters. I know you can keep your own counsel.”
Lewis bowed silently.
“Go to Richmond, Merne. You will find there a broken conspirator and his unhappy daughter. Both are ostracized. None is so poor as to do either of them reverence. She has no door opened to her now, though but lately she was daughter of the Vice-President, the rich Mrs. Alston, wife of the Governor of her State. Go to them now. Tell Colonel Burr that the President will not ask mercy for him. John Marshall is on the bench there; but before him is a jury—John Randolph is foreman of that jury. It is there that case will be tried—in the jury room; and politics will try it! Go to Theodosia, Merne, in her desperate need.”
“But what can I do, Mr. Jefferson?” broke out his listener.
“Do precisely what I tell you. Go to that social outcast. Take her on your arm before all the world—and before that jury! Sit there, before all Richmond—and that jury. An hour or so will do. Do that, and then, as I did when I trusted you, ask no questions, but leave it on the knees of the gods. If you can call me chief in other matters,” the President concluded, “and can call me chief in that fashion of thought which men call religion as well, let me give you unction and absolution, my son. It is all that I have to give to one whom I have always loved as if he were my own son. This is all I can do for you. It may fail; but I would rather trust that jury to be right than trust myself today; because, I repeat, I feel like flinging open every prison door in all the world, and telling every erring, stumbling man to try once more to do what his soul tells him he ought to do!”