James Cheetham handled his pen like a bludgeon. Even at this distance of time Cheetham's "View of Aaron Burr's Political Conduct," in which is traced the Vice President's alleged intrigues to promote himself over Jefferson, is interesting and exciting. Despite its bitter sarcasm and torrent of vituperation, Cheetham's array of facts and dates, the designation of persons and places, and the bold assumptions based on apparent knowledge, backed by foot-notes that promised absolute proof if denial were made, impress one strongly. There is much that is weak, much that is only suspicion, much that is fanciful. A visit to an uncle in Connecticut, a call upon the governor of Rhode Island, a communication sent under cover to another, letters in cipher, pleasant notices in Federalist newspapers, a journey of Timothy Green to South Carolina--all these belong to the realm of inference; but the method of blending them with well established facts was so artful, the writer's sincerity so apparent, and the strokes of the pen so bold and positive, that it is easy to understand the effect which Cheetham's accusation, taken up and ceaselessly repeated by other papers, would have upon the political fortunes of Burr. Nevertheless the Vice President remained silent. He did not feel, or seem to feel, newspaper criticism with the acuteness of a sensitive nature trying to do right. "They are so utterly lost on me that I should never have seen even this," he wrote Theodosia, "but that it came inclosed to me in a letter from New York." Still Cheetham kept his battery at work. After his "Narrative" came the "View," and then, in 1803, "Nine Letters on the Subject of Burr's Defection," a heavier volume, a sort of siege-gun, brought up to penetrate an epidermis heretofore apparently impregnable. Finally, the Albany _Register_ took up the matter, followed by other Republican papers, until their purpose to drive the grandson of Jonathan Edwards from the party could no longer be mistaken.[126] [Footnote 126: "All the world knew that not Cheetham, but DeWitt Clinton, thus dragged the Vice President from his chair, and that not Burr's vices but his influence made his crimes heinous; that behind DeWitt Clinton stood the Virginia dynasty, dangling Burr's office in the eyes of the Clinton family, and lavishing honours and money on the Livingstons. All this was as clear to Burr and his friends as though it was embodied in an Act of Congress."--Henry Adams, _History of the United States_, Vol. 1, pp. 331, 332.] Burr's coterie of devoted friends so understood it, and when the gentle Peter Irving, whose younger brother was helping the newly established _Chronicle_ into larger circulation by his Jonathan Oldstyle essays, showed an indisposition as editor of the Burrite paper to vituperate and lampoon in return, William P. Van Ness, the famous and now historic "Aristides," appeared in the political firmament with the suddenness and brilliancy of a comet that dims the light of stars.