Let the Chief Justice be secretly amused. Mr. Wirt was not going to deny himself the superb opportunity of holding his audience spellbound with his oratorical gifts. “But he carried with him taste and science and wealth; and lo, the desert smiled!
“Possessing himself of a beautiful island in the Ohio, he rears upon it a palace and decorates it with every romantic embellishment of fancy. A shrubbery that Shenstone might have envied, blooms around him! An extensive library spreads its treasures before him. A philosophical apparatus offers to him all the secrets and mysteries of nature. Peace, tranquillity and innocence shed their mingled delights around him.
“And to crown the enchantment of the scene, a wife, who is said to be lovely even beyond her sex and graced with every accomplishment that can render it irresistible, had blessed him with her love and made him the father of several children. The evidence would convince you that this is but a faint picture of the real life.”
The speaker’s countenance changed from joy to distress and his voice assumed a solemn tone. “In the midst of all this peace, this innocent simplicity and this tranquillity; this feast of the mind, this pure banquet of the heart, the destroyer comes. He comes to change this paradise into a hell. Yet the flowers do not wither at his approach. No monitory shuddering through the bosom of their unfortunate possessor warns him of the ruin that is coming upon him.
“A stranger presents himself. Introduced to their civilities by the high rank which he had lately held in this country, he soon finds his way to their hearts, by the dignity and elegance of his demeanor, the light and beauty of his conversation and the seductive and fascinating power of his address. The conquest was not difficult. Innocence is ever simple and credulous. Conscious of no design itself, it suspects none in others. It wears no guard before its breast. Every door and portal and avenue of the heart is thrown open, and all who choose it enter.
“Such was the state of Eden when the serpent entered its bowers. The prisoner, in a more engaging form, winding himself into the open and unpracticed heart of the unfortunate Blennerhassett, found but little difficulty in changing the native character of that heart and the objects of its affection. By degrees he infuses into it the poison of his own ambition. He breathes into it the fire of his own courage; a daring and desperate thirst for glory; an ardor panting for great enterprises, for all the storm and bustle and hurricane of life.
“In a short time the whole man is changed, and every object of his former delight is relinquished. No more he enjoys the tranquil scene. It has become flat and insipid to his taste. His books are abandoned. His retort and crucible are thrown aside. His shrubbery blooms and breathes its fragrance upon the air in vain; he likes it not. His ear no longer drinks in the rich melody of music; it longs for the trumpet’s clangor and the cannon’s roar. Even the prattle of babes, once so sweet, no longer affects him; and the angel smile of his wife which hitherto touched his bosom with ecstasy so unspeakable, is now unseen and unfelt.
“Greater objects have taken possession of his soul. His imagination has been dazzled by visions of diadems, of stars and garters and titles of nobility. He has been taught to burn with restless emulation at the names of great heroes and conquerors. His enchanted island is destined soon to relapse into a wilderness; and in a few months we find the beautiful and tender partner of his bosom, whom he lately permitted not the winds of summer ‘to visit too roughly,’ we find her shivering at midnight, on the winter banks of the Ohio and mingling her tears with the torrents that froze as they fell.
“Yet this unfortunate man, thus deluded from his interest and his happiness, thus seduced from the paths of innocence and peace; thus confounded in the toils that were deliberately spread for him, and overwhelmed by the mastering spirit and genius of another—this man, thus ruined and undone and made to play a subordinate part in this grand drama of guilt and treason—this man is to be called the principal offender, while he, by whom he was plunged into misery, is comparatively innocent, a mere accessory. Is this reason? Is it law? Is it humanity? Sir, neither the human heart nor the human understanding will bear a perversion so monstrous and so absurd! So shocking to the soul! So revolting to the reason!”
Thus ended Wirt’s classic accusation of Burr. The time remaining to the speaker was devoted to a prosaic discussion of bellum levatum as distinguished from bellum percussum. Gentlemen on the other side, said Mr. Wirt, asked for battles, bloody battles, hard knocks, the noise of cannon. But there was none. There did not have to be. The Constitution said “levying war,” not “making war.” He had recourse to his dictionary to show that the word “levy” means “to raise.” So there needed to be no force. The word force was used figuratively merely to signify the assembled body and not any deed of violence.