Page:Henry Adams' History of the United States Vol. 3.djvu/472

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460
HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES.
Ch. 19.

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,[1] "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:[2]

"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.

  1. Parton's Life of Burr, ii. 107.
  2. Hay to Jefferson, June 14, 1807; Jefferson MSS.