The gray walls of the ancient building, says Macaulay, were hung with scarlet. Benches draped in red were provided for the Peers, and benches draped in green for the Commons. Seated in the galleries were the Queen, surrounded by the “fair-haired daughters of Brunswick,” the ambassadors and ministers of great countries, and such distinguished personages as Mrs. Siddons, the actress and beauty, Sir Joshua Reynolds, the artist, Georgiana Duchess of Devonshire, and other women of brilliance and fashion.
There, too, were the Managers, the great orators of the day—Edmund Burke, Charles James Fox, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, William Windham, and Charles Earl Grey. They were to conduct the prosecution.
There, too, in all his injured dignity was the man who was responsible for this glamorous exhibition of justice. Nearly eight years were to pass before the tedious performance came to a close and Warren Hastings went forth a free and vindicated man.
Meanwhile the world looked on at the drama. Not the least interested spectators were members of the bench and bar of the new nation across the sea. It had lately won its independence, but none the less, especially where the law was concerned, it clung to the tradition of its mother country.
Our ancestors brought English law with them when they founded the American colonies. During the colonial period those young men who could afford it journeyed to London to study the law at the Inns of Court. No revolution of a few years’ duration could sever this stout line of descent. No greater compliment could be paid an American lawyer than to remark that he was capable of holding his own with the best in the spirited forensic encounters in Westminster.
It was only natural that our American bar, reveling in the Hastings episode, should yearn to put on a similar show. It was inevitable that an opportunity would arrive.
It first presented itself in the case of Samuel Chase, a justice of the Supreme Court of the United States and an ardent and outspoken Federalist who did not hesitate to express his low opinion of Thomas Jefferson’s Republican administration even from the bench. The Republican leaders in Congress took up the challenge. In eight articles members of the House compressed all the complaints of his conduct that had been made since his appointment eight years before and laid the charges before the Senate of the United States.
On February 4, 1805, the Senate, sitting as a Court of Impeachments, convened to hear the case. Mark the influence of the trial of Warren Hastings. The Senate Chamber was remodeled for the occasion. In the center of the scene was the chair of the President of the Court—in this case the Vice-President of the United States. To his right and left were two rows of benches with desks, the whole covered with crimson cloth, like those of the Lords in the trial of Warren Hastings. These were for the thirty-four senators who were to sit in judgment. Facing them were three rows of benches arranged in tiers and covered with green cloth, as had been those of the Commons. These were for members of the House of Representatives. On either side of the chair of the presiding officer were inclosures covered with blue cloth; respectively for the Managers, who were to prosecute the case, and for the lawyers of the defense. Present, too, were the Chief Justice and the associate justices of the Supreme Court.
The young Republic, alas, could produce no peers in gold and ermine. There were no brothers and sons of a ruling monarch, nor an heir apparent conspicuous for his fine person and noble bearing. Nor could the raw and straggling community that then went under the name of Washington present the same array of genius and fashion as London. But it did the best it could with the raw material it had. In the Senate Chamber a temporary gallery had been erected. Here were boxes provided with comfortable seats from which ladies dressed in the height of fashion followed the proceedings.
Who was responsible for this elaborate and colorful setting, so obviously imitating the spectacle of a few years earlier at Westminster? Senator Plumer, of New Hampshire, records that all the arrangements were in the hands of the Vice-President who also presided over the trial. And that Vice-President was Aaron Burr. One might have guessed that no other American statesman boasted the same dramatic instinct. Nor was the stage set without his awareness that he was to play a leading part on it. And he played it well. From at least one none-too-friendly critic he provoked the comment that: “He conducted with the dignity and impartiality of an angel, but with the rigor of a devil.” Burr was greatly pleased with that remark and quoted it in a letter to his daughter, Theodosia.