Why, Mr. Wickham asked him, had he waited from October 10th, when Swartwout handed him the cipher letter, until October 21 to notify the Government? Mr. Wickham’s implication was that he had needed the time to make up his mind. But the General had a different and plausible explanation. He said he took that time in order to get out of Swartwout all the information he could about the conspiracy. Why had he asserted in his first letter to the President that he did not know the leader? Wilkinson pleaded that he was not at that time sure since he could not fully trust what Swartwout told him.
September gave way to October and Wilkinson was still on the stand being badgered by the defense. Counsel for Colonel Burr were desirous of linking the General’s high-handed conduct in New Orleans with orders issued by the Government. This line of questioning brought a protest from Hay.
“It has been the constant effort of the counsel on the other side to identify General Wilkinson with the Government,” he charged. “We have heard of the plundering of post offices, violating of oaths and prostrating of private rights. Now it is asked if the Government approved of these acts. Is it proper, is it decorous to pursue this course?”
“Do you recollect expressing to any person that he would confer the highest obligation on the Government by seizing Colonel Burr?” Wilkinson was asked by the defense. The General admitted that he might have said that since those were his sentiments. His great object, he declared, was to apprehend Burr and deliver him to the civil power for trial. The city of Washington was the place he wished to have him sent. But personal injury to the Colonel had not entered his head. He recollected a German had come to him and proffered his services to take the Colonel “dead or alive.”
“I was shocked at the very idea,” declared Wilkinson, “and declined employing him.”
When Mr. Wickham demanded a letter purported to have been written by President Jefferson to Wilkinson approving the measures the General had taken, he set off another argument almost as acrimonious as that which had attended Burr’s request for the subpoena duces tecum.
“These gentlemen, it seems, are carrying on an impeachment against the President of the United States,” asserted Mr. Wirt, not unmindful of the political effect of the charge. “What is their object in demanding this letter? It is no more than vainly to attempt to inculpate the President and to gratify their spleen and their resentment against him. Is that their object? Is Aaron Burr more or less guilty because he [the President] has approved or disapproved the measures of General Wilkinson?”
“They want to ask you,” continued Wirt, pursuing the same line of criticism, “which is the most guilty, Thomas Jefferson or Aaron Burr? Are you, then, trying the President? And even if you were, would you not have him here and give him an opportunity of answering his accusers?”
“It has already been decided in this Court,” retorted Martin, “that the President has no more rights than the man who walks the street in rags. ‘What!’ says the gentleman. ‘Will you then violate the sanctity of private correspondence?’ Sir, when the gentleman made this declaration, I looked at his face to see whether it did not blush with shame, and even burst with blood, at expressing such a sentiment.”
“I hope, Sir,” observed Wirt, “the redness of a man’s face is no evidence of a man’s guilt.” This indirect allusion to Martin’s own physiognomy, red presumably as a result of his addiction to the bottle, was surely not lost on the audience.