In less spectacular company James Mercer Garnett would have been outstanding. His claims to distinction were membership in the Virginia Legislature, in the U.S. House of Representatives, and as first president of the United States Agricultural Society. For variety the jury included one banker, John Brockenbrough, who had abandoned the medical profession to become the treasurer of the Bank of Virginia. Later he was to be its president. Perhaps his rarest achievement was that he made and kept the friendship of the fickle John Randolph of Roanoke. Interestingly enough it was a boast that in this company he shared with Tazewell who also managed to hold Randolph’s affection.
Another member of the jury bore an unusual relationship to the foreman. This was Robert Barraud Taylor, of Norfolk. Years before as hot-headed youths at William and Mary College the two had a falling out which led to a challenge followed by a duel in which Taylor was wounded. He still carried in his side a slug fired from Randolph’s pistol. The record does not show that their meeting on the jury revived the animosity.
Numbered among the sixteen were Edward Pegram, member of a family prominent in Petersburg and shortly to become mayor of that busy commercial city, and John Mercer, whose family was honorably associated with Fredericksburg. There was Mumford Beverley in whose veins ran the blood of the Byrds of Westover. There was John Ambler, first cousin of the Chief Justice’s wife and a Shockoe Hill neighbor. Finally there were three jurymen who left no conspicuous public record behind them—Thomas Harrison, Alexander Shephard, and William Daniel. But they all bore good names. Looking at the sixteen chosen men as they arose from their seats and proceeded to the Grand Jury room Burr might have flattered himself that few prisoners had ever been honored with a jury of such quality.
However, it was not characteristic of Burr to acknowledge favors. Quite the contrary. He was up and addressing the Court again, this time to ask the Chief Justice to advise the jury on the admissibility of certain evidence he assumed Hay would place before them. Hay retorted that he trusted the Court would grant no indulgence, but treat Burr like any other man who had committed a crime.
Here was another chance for Burr to assume a posture of injured innocence. Rising to his feet he exclaimed: “Would to God that I did stand on the same footing with every other man. This is the first time I have been permitted to enjoy the rights of a citizen. How have I been brought hither...?”
Here the Chief Justice interrupted Burr’s soliloquy to remark that such digressions were improper. After a little more of such skirmishing between counsel Court was adjourned while all Richmond was held in suspense as to whether the Grand Jury would indict and, if so, what crimes the indictment would include. Burr may not have liked the complexion of the jury, yet he might have gone farther and fared worse.
Simultaneously with the adjournment a tall, cadaverous frontiersman was reported to be haranguing a crowd from the steps of a grocery store just off the Capitol Square, in the same breath damning Jefferson’s administration and declaring that Colonel Burr was a victim of its persecution. The name of the speaker meant little to most Richmonders, though it was already well known in Washington and in the speaker’s home state of Tennessee. The man was Andrew Jackson. What was he doing in Richmond? And why had he taken it on himself to deliver this public excoriation of Jefferson and defense of Burr?
Chapter VII
On May 29, 1805, on his first visit to the West, Aaron Burr arrived in Nashville, Tennessee. There he was heartily welcomed as was becoming a former Vice-President of the United States, a member of the ascendant political party in that section of the country, and one who in the best frontier tradition had met his man on the field of honor.