“Yesterday,” wrote Randolph, June 25,[325] “the grand jury found bills for treason and misdemeanor against Burr and Blennerhassett una voce, and this day presented Jonathan Dayton, ex-senator, John Smith of Ohio, Comfort Tyler, Israel Smith of New York, and Davis Floyd of Indiana, for treason; but the mammoth of iniquity escaped,—not that any man pretended to think him innocent, but upon certain wire-drawn distinctions that I will not pester you with. Wilkinson is the only man that I ever saw who was from the bark to the very core a villain. The proof is unquestionable; but, my good friend, I cannot enter upon it here. Suffice it to say that I have seen it, and that it is not susceptible of misconstruction. Burr supported himself with great fortitude. He was last night lodged in the common town jail (we have no State prison except for convicts), where I daresay he slept sounder than I did. Perhaps you never saw human nature in so degraded a situation as in the person of Wilkinson before the grand jury; and yet this man stands on the very summit and pinnacle of Executive favor, while James Monroe is denounced.”
In the debates of the next session, when Randolph followed up his attacks on Jefferson by trying to identify him with Wilkinson’s misdeeds, a fuller account was given of the plea which saved Wilkinson from presentment.
“There was before the grand jury,” said Randolph,[326] “a motion to present General Wilkinson for misprision of treason. This motion was overruled upon this ground,—that the treasonable (overt) act having been alleged to be committed in the State of Ohio, and General Wilkinson’s letter to the President of the United States having been dated, though but a short time, prior to that act, this person had the benefit of what lawyers would call a legal exception, or a fraud; but I will inform the gentleman that I did not hear a single member of the grand jury express any other opinion than that which I myself expressed, of the moral, not of the legal, guilt of the party.”
In the evidence taken by a Congressional committee in 1811 regarding Wilkinson,[327] several members of the grand jury were called to testify; and their accounts showed that the motion to present General Wilkinson for misprision of treason was made by Littleton W. Tazewell, and supported by Randolph and three or four other members of the grand jury. One witness thought that the vote stood 9 to 7.
Narrow though the loophole might be, Wilkinson squeezed through it. The indictment of Burr was at length obtained. The conspirators, who had at first vehemently averred that Wilkinson would never dare to appear, and who if he should appear intended to break him down before the grand jury, were reduced to hoping for revenge when he should come on the witness-stand. Meanwhile, June 26, Burr pleaded not guilty, and the court adjourned until August 3, when the trial was to begin.
Thus far the President had carried everything before him. He had produced his witnesses, had sustained Wilkinson, indicted Burr, and defied Marshall’s subpœnas. This success could not be won without rousing passion. Richmond was in the hands of the conspirators, and they denounced Jefferson publicly and without mercy, as they denounced Wilkinson and every other government officer.
“As I was crossing the court-house green,” said an eye-witness,[328] “I heard a great noise of haranguing some distance off. Inquiring what it was, I was told it was a great blackguard from Tennessee, one Andrew Jackson, making a speech for Burr and damning Jefferson as a persecutor.”
Hay wrote to the President, June 14:[329]—
“General Jackson, of Tennessee, has been here ever since the 22d, denouncing Wilkinson in the coarsest terms in every company. The latter showed me a paper which at once explained the motive of this incessant hostility. His own character depends on the prostration of Wilkinson’s.”
This paper was no doubt Jackson’s secret denunciation to Claiborne. Young Samuel Swartwout, who had some reason to complain of the ridiculous figure he had been made to cut, jostled Wilkinson in the street, and ended by posting him for a coward. John Randolph echoed Luther Martin’s tirades against the President. Randolph was in despair at Jefferson’s success.