Mr. President, this tale refutes itself. It is impossible for any man of common sense to believe it. But, independently of external refutation, the communication stated by Glover to have been made by Smith, carries internal evidence of its falsehood, by the contradictions and absurdities wherewith it abounds. Can any one believe that a man of John Smith’s intelligence and knowledge told the ridiculous story about the frigate which Mr. Somebody was building, or had completed, in the Southern States, to be employed in this expedition? What! An individual in this country build a frigate, to which so few fortunes are adequate? Mr. Alston, who is probably the person meant, though rich, is well known not to have the means of building a frigate, even were he disposed to expend his whole fortune in such an enterprise. And this frigate, moreover, was to be built in secret. Nobody was to see it; for otherwise, the building of it by an individual, so strange a thing, would have been a matter of notoriety, with which the newspapers would have rung, and which it would have been wholly unnecessary for Smith to communicate to Glover and McFarland, and ridiculous in the last degree to communicate confidentially. A frigate built by an individual, and built in secret! Can any one believe that John Smith, a Senator, and a man of information, could tell so absurd a tale? Sir, a frigate cannot be built in a dry-dock, although it may be kept there. It must be built openly. It must be seen. Its commencement, and its progress, would be as well known on the Ohio, long before it could be completed, as on the Potomac. And to represent John Smith, a Senator, and a man of sense, gravely telling such a tale to Glover, a lawyer, and McFarland, a judge, both men of some information, accustomed to read the newspapers, and therefore knowing the falsehood of the tale, is an absurdity so gross, that one is wholly at a loss to conceive how Glover, who, depraved as he is, by no means appears destitute of understanding, came to admit it into his fabrication. We can account for it only by a reference to the kindness of an overruling Providence, which, for the protection of innocence, sometimes impels guilt to mar its own schemes, by a strange intermixture of folly with its wickedness.
This deposition presents another instance of the same kind, though not equally glaring. Glover swears that this communication was made to him by Smith, under the strictest injunctions of secrecy. And yet he had stated, in the beginning of the deposition, that the communication was made in the presence of a friend, who proves to be William McFarland. This is another instance in proof of the old adage, that “liars ought to have good memories.” Before Glover came to the end of his deposition, he forgot what he had said in the beginning, and thus fell into another of those providential contradictions by which the falsehood of made-up stories is often detected.
Reviewing, then, Mr. President, all these considerations—the bad general character of Glover, at all the places where he had lived; the repeated instances of wilful false swearing which had been fixed upon him; the contradiction of this story by his friends and confederates, McFarland and Nimmo, as well as by himself; his enmity to Smith, and Smith’s ill opinion of him; Smith’s silence on this subject to all his usual confidants and intimate friends; and the inherent contradictions and absurdities of the story itself, I think myself warranted in saying, that the credibility of Glover is completely overthrown, and that his testimony must be laid out of the case.
I come next to that of Peter Taylor, and here I feel myself greatly relieved, in being able to absolve him from the guilt of wilful false swearing. His character is said to be fair, and, for aught we know, is so. We are far from a wish to impeach it. But we shall show that in some of the minute circumstances which he relates, and which are adduced as grounds of suspicion against Mr. Smith, he probably mistakes, and that the others are satisfactorily explained.
In ascertaining what degree of credit is due to an honest witness, especially in relating, after a considerable lapse of time, minute facts, which derive their complexion from circumstances apparently trivial, it is proper, in the first place, to consider his education and habits of life, and to inquire how far they have a tendency to produce that accuracy and precision of conception and language, whereon the weight of such testimony almost wholly depends. Apply this rule to Peter Taylor. Admit him to be perfectly honest in his intentions. But we find him to be an illiterate laborer, sometimes employed as a menial servant. Such a man is likely enough to have a distinct perception, and an accurate recollection, of such facts as he is accustomed to observe. But when he speaks of things out of the usual track of his business, his thoughts, and his observation; when he attempts, at such a distance of time, to relate very minute facts, in which he could not have taken any interest at the time; I ask, if we can implicitly rely on the clearness of his comprehension, or the exactness of his memory? Is it not highly probable that he may have misconceived at the time, or forgotten since, some of those circumstances, apparently minute, on which the character of the whole transaction frequently depends?
But if, in addition to this general reasoning, it should appear that the witness has, in relating other parts of this transaction, committed several mistakes, will it not be admitted that his recollection is too confused or imperfect to command our confidence or influence our decisions? This is the case with Peter Taylor. In his testimony, taken at Richmond, from which the part now used against Mr. Smith is extracted, he relates that, in October, 1806, Blannerhasset, on their return from Kentucky, pressed him to join Colonel Burr’s expedition, and that he consented to go, provided he might take his wife and family; to which Blannerhasset did not consent. On his cross-examination, he states that his wife died in the September preceding. He also relates, in his direct testimony, that when the party left Blannerhasset’s island he saw Dudley Woodbridge on the bank. And it is proved by Woodbridge himself, and by Morris B. Belknap, that Woodbridge was at that time in bed, and was not on the bank at any time during that night. These are small mistakes, but they prove that Taylor’s recollection of minute circumstances, such as those which he details concerning Mr. Smith, cannot be relied on.
The first of these circumstances is, that Mr. Smith, on being informed that he was a servant of Blannerhasset, asked him to go up stairs. This, at first view, might have a suspicious appearance, as if Mr. Smith wished to make or receive some communications which required privacy. But when we learn that Mr. Smith had his office up stairs, where he usually wrote, and that he wished to write a letter by Taylor, the mystery vanishes, and the circumstance stands fully explained.
But he wrote a letter to Colonel Burr. No doubt, Mr. President, a letter from Mr. Smith to Colonel Burr, at that time, has in itself a suspicious appearance. But we are made acquainted with the contents of the letter, and the suspicion disappears. Instead of being a criminal correspondence concerning an enterprise in which they were mutually engaged, it is a letter informing Colonel Burr of the suspicions afloat concerning his plans and movements, and requesting an explanation, for Smith’s own satisfaction. Nothing could be more natural than such a step, on the part of Mr. Smith. Colonel Burr had long been his acquaintance and friend, and recently his guest. He could not, therefore, be indifferent, either on Colonel Burr’s account or his own, to the reports in circulation. These reports were founded on mysterious circumstances, which Mr. Smith supposed could be satisfactorily explained, and he wrote to obtain this explanation. No conduct could be more rational or more commendable. It was kind and candid towards his friend, and cautious towards himself.
The answer which he obtained was well calculated to quiet his alarms. His original letter is not in our power, but we have produced a copy of it. The answer, however, in the handwriting of Colonel Burr, is now in my hand. This letter is no after-thought; no subsequent contrivance for exhibition; for Mr. Broadwell has proved that he saw it delivered to Mr. Smith from the post-office. Let it be attentively read; let the situation of Colonel Burr and of Mr. Smith at that time be considered; and then let gentlemen candidly declare, whether they think that Mr. Smith, after receiving that letter, could regard Colonel Burr in any other light than that of an honorable man, indignantly repelling unfounded and injurious suspicions? [Here Mr. Harper produced the original letter, the handwriting and authenticity of which were recognized by several of the Senators.]
But Mr. Smith inquired anxiously about the news, in the part of the country from which Peter Taylor had come. And what more natural, what more usual, than to inquire the news, especially in a time of alarm and apprehension? The operations of Colonel Burr were the subject of general conversation, and had excited no small alarm. The plot, whatever it was, appeared to thicken about Blannerhasset’s island. Of course every one felt anxious to know what was going on at that place, and in its neighborhood. This circumstance, then, is of no moment; and the letter, the only ground of suspicion, being fully explained, every thing is explained, except the last fact stated by Taylor, on which I will now bestow some attention.