Punctuation and spelling were made consistent when a predominant preference was found in this book; otherwise they were not changed.

Simple typographical errors were corrected; occasional unbalanced quotation marks retained.

Ambiguous hyphens at the ends of lines were retained; occurrences of inconsistent hyphenation have not been changed.

Most of the illustrations are of handwritten documents, and some are difficult to read. Their lighting and contrast in this eBook have been adjusted in an attempt to improve readability. The most readable versions of these documents may be found in the HTML version of this eBook at Project Gutenberg.

[List of Illustrations]: “Affidavit of Burr for subœena” originally was printed as “Affidavit at Burr for subpoena”; changed here.

Page 58: Transcriber corrected several lines of transposed text.

Page [78]: “MacRae” originally was printed as “McRae” but was changed here to match the predominant spelling of the name elsewhere in this eBook.