“I am surprised why they should be in so much terror of me,” he observed. “Perhaps my name may be the terror, for my first name is Hamilton.”
Colonel Burr was not amused. He stated that the remark was in itself sufficient cause for disqualifying the venireman and the facetious Mr. Morrison was excused.
By now the venire had been exhausted and yet eight seats on the jury still remained empty. Mr. Hay therefore moved that the Court award a new venire, and the Chief Justice granted a panel of forty-eight and ordered an adjournment until Thursday, the 13th, in order to allow time for bringing it together. But when Thursday came Burr objected that the list of the panel he had received contained no addresses. In consequence the adjournment was continued until Saturday. Even then the prospect was discouraging; it was beginning to look as though Mr. Hay was right when he expressed a fear that Colonel Burr would not be tried for want of a jury.
However, it was Colonel Burr who offered a solution to the problem. He proposed that he be permitted to select eight men out of the new panel. The prosecution, despairing of getting a jury any other way, agreed. And so at last the jury box was filled, twelve days after court had been convened for the trial.
Unlike the Grand Jury, the Petit Jury could not boast a particularly distinguished list of members. Colonel Carrington stood out prominently among them; so much so in fact, that the Chief Justice waved aside whatever scruples he may have had and placed his brother-in-law in the key position in the trial by appointing him foreman.
Though the other eleven jurymen were not destined for immortality they all bore substantial names that meant something in Virginia. They were David Lambert, Richard E. Parker, Hugh Mercer, Christopher Anthony, James Sheppard, Reuben Blakey, Benjamin Graves, Miles Bott, Henry E. Coleman, John M. Sheppard, and Richard Curd.
By the time the jury had been organized it was Saturday again and it hardly seemed worth while to start the trial. So Judge Marshall adjourned the Court for the weekend. Even the heavens seemed relieved that at last progress had been made. A violent thunderstorm on Tuesday night broke the heat wave and made life more bearable.
During the weekend Blennerhassett was the object of what he described as “another advance from female humanity.” Mrs. Jean Auguste Marie Chevallié, wife of the French Consul and Judge Peter Lyon’s daughter, sent him a message asking if he would accept refreshments of delicacies she might provide. The ladies were outdoing themselves to see which one could qualify as benefactor-in-chief. Mrs. Chevallié’s genteel inquiry offset in some degree the annoyance the prisoner was experiencing at the hands of idle visitors to the penitentiary desirous of gratifying their curiosity by surveying his countenance and his quarters. More disturbing than that was a letter from his financial agent in Philadelphia informing him that, because of the attachment served on Blennerhassett’s funds, he had been obliged to dishonor all the bills drawn and presented for acceptance since January 20 last. Blennerhassett interpreted the statement as marking the disappearance of the last pecuniary resources of his poor family.
Now at last, after weeks of delay, the stage was finally set. When Court convened on Monday, the completed jury was seated. This day saw the arrival of reinforcements for the defense in the person of Charles Lee. His presence appears to have been designed primarily to lend distinction to Burr’s cause by including the magic name of Lee among his defenders. Charles Lee, a brother of “Light Horse Harry,” had been Attorney General of the United States in Washington’s cabinet. He, too, was a descendant of William Randolph of Turkey Island and his wife Mary Isham. So far as the record of the trial shows, his participation was not in proportion to his eminence as a lawyer.
When the bailiff had called the Court to order the prisoner was directed to stand while the clerk read the indictment. It was the same to which he had pleaded “Not guilty” when the Grand Jury returned a true bill on June 24.