Anybody who was familiar with the Navy would have recognized two veteran sailors, their faces bronzed by wind and sun and salt spray, who had served their country well. They were Stephen Decatur the elder and Thomas Truxtun, commodores both. Decatur boasted commendable service as a privateersman in the Revolutionary War, but he was to be overshadowed by his son of the same name. Truxtun, too, began his naval career as a privateer in the struggle for independence. Later he supervised the building of the frigate Constellation and, on her completion, took command and mustered her first crew. His latest exploits were the capture of the frigate L’Insurgente and the defeat in battle of the frigate La Vengeance in the quasi-war with France.
Present, too, was William B. Giles, loyal party man and President Jefferson’s leader in the Senate. He was there, oddly enough, under a summons of the United States Marshal for the Virginia District to be a member of the panel from which the Grand Jury was to be chosen. Burr thought it unreasonable, considering Giles’s politics. Soon he was going to say so.
There, too, was “General” Eaton, author of the affidavit, now present in person. The “Hero of Derne” wore a broad scarlet sash around his middle which provided an exotic touch to his costume and a silent rebuke to those who questioned his title and his fame. Eaton was a great talker and, so it was said, when not attending court spent the better part of his time at the tavern bars.
One might have marked a handsome young man with blue-gray eyes and a head of abundant chestnut hair. He was a stranger to Richmond and his accent betrayed a northern background. His name then meant nothing to anybody save the little group of Burr’s friends who had come down from New York to lend the prisoner moral support during the trial. This was Washington Irving, lately returned from a European tour. He had read law and been admitted to the New York bar; there was a report to the effect that he had actually had a client. But even at this early stage in his career he was more active with his pen. He and his older brother William, and William’s brother-in-law James K. Paulding, had just launched a sprightly magazine satirizing New York society under the title of Salmagundi. Brother William and Paulding were having to carry the burden while Washington was away.
William was a Republican, Washington’s sympathies were Federalist. Fastidious by nature, Washington rose superior to the unpretentious merchant family into which he had been born. The Irvings, on the other hand, were immensely proud of their precocious son and all too glad to give him a helping hand in his rise in the world. They liberally financed the trip to Europe and it had been a great success. There young Irving made the grand tour and lived in style in the Paris of Napoleon’s empire. He had himself fitted out by the best tailor. He sat for the rising young American painter, John Vanderlyn, then resident in Paris. The work seems to have been undertaken out of the sheer delight of the artist in having such a pleasing model.
On his travels Irving had made the acquaintance of two Virginia gentlemen of the bluest blood, a Mercer of Fredericksburg and Joseph Cabell, the Governor’s brother. He looked forward to renewing the acquaintance on his trip south, particularly that with Cabell who had just married Mary Walker Carter. Irving was told she was one of the wealthiest young women in the state. The young New Yorker was there on a literary retainer. It was said that some of Burr’s friends thought he might help the cause through his writings. But if any of his accounts of the trial ever got into the newspapers the record of them has been lost.
A familiar figure to most of the Virginians in the hall was a tall, gaunt man with absurdly long legs for so short a body who spoke in a high falsetto voice. His leather breeches and his riding boots identified him as a country squire. In actual fact he had ridden up to Richmond from his estate, Bizarre, some sixty miles to the south. This was the brilliant and eccentric John Randolph, master as well of Roanoke. A horse, he once said, was to him what a ship was to a sailor. A member of Congress, Randolph had acted none too astutely as one of the Managers, or prosecutors, in the impeachment trial of Judge Chase. He, too, had received a summons from the Marshal to appear for jury duty. Like the Chief Justice and Edmund Randolph, he was a part of the lengthened shadow of the prolific Turkey Island pair, William and Mary Isham Randolph.
Standing out conspicuously in that dense throng was still another youth. His height alone would have distinguished him, for he was 6 feet 4½ inches tall. Not content with looking over the heads of the crowd he climbed up on the great lock of the entrance door of the hall in order to get an unobscured view of the proceedings. From his perch he had a good look at the accused. Colonel Burr saw him, too. The young man was Winfield Scott. Years later, when he had become one of the nation’s great soldiers, the two met again and Burr reminded the general of the encounter. Contemporaries described Scott as the most magnificent youth in all Virginia.
At the time of the trial young Scott was reading law in the office of David Robertson, of Petersburg. Not only was Robertson well grounded in Blackstone and Coke and the intricacies of the Virginia statutes, he also was an accomplished linguist with a knowledge of five languages. What is more, he had trained himself to take notes in shorthand, and he was present at the trial to record the proceedings. Thanks to David Robertson, posterity has in two fat volumes a reliable verbatim account of much that was said at the trial. It was at Robertson’s suggestion that young Scott came to Richmond to get a first-hand impression of the leaders in what he then intended to be his chosen profession.
Better known to the Richmonders of the day than he was to be known to posterity was a queer Scotsman named James Ogilvie who was to be a regular attendant at the sessions. According to local gossip he was heir to an earldom and had passed up the title to become an impoverished schoolteacher in Virginia. Elocution was his forte and he not only came to the trial himself but brought his pupils along so that they could have a practical demonstration of the art of oratory from the greatest practitioners of the day. Ogilvie was in bad repute with the local clergy. Either an atheist or an agnostic, he traveled about delivering “infidel lectures.” He was blamed for shaking the religious faith of a number of Virginia’s young men. But the Devil got him in the end. As an elocutionist he failed to live up to his own exacting standards, grew melancholy, and committed suicide. Or so it was said. A less romantic account of his death attributed it to an overdose of laudanum, a drug to which he had become addicted.