One of these correspondents was almost certainly Judge Prevost, Burr’s stepson, whom Jefferson had appointed District Judge for the Territory of Orleans. That Daniel Clark was another hardly admits of doubt. Swartwout assured Wilkinson of the fact;[204] but apart from this evidence, the same reasons which obliged Burr to confide in Wilkinson required him to confide in Clark. The receivers of the letters, whoever they were, hastened to make their contents known to every one whom they could trust. Immediately after the arrival of Bollman and Dayton about October 1, before any serious alarm had risen in Ohio, the town of New Orleans rang with rumors of Burr’s projects. The news excited more consternation than hope; for although the creoles had been bitter in complaints of Claiborne’s administration and of the despotism imposed upon them by Congress, they remembered their attempt to revolt in 1768, and were far from eager to risk their safety again. Nevertheless, the temper of the people was bad; and no one felt deeper anxiety as to the number of Burr’s adherents than Governor Claiborne himself. Nearly three years had elapsed since Dec. 20, 1803, when the Spanish governor surrendered Louisiana to the United States, and the history of the Territory during that time presented an uninterrupted succession of bickerings. The government at Washington was largely responsible for its own unpopularity in the new Territory, its foreign and domestic policy seeming calculated to create ill-feeling, and after creating it, to keep it alive. The President began by appointing as Governor of Louisiana a man who had no peculiar fitness for the place. Claiborne, in contrast with men like Wilkinson, Burr, and Daniel Clark, rose to the level of a hero. He was honest, well-meaning, straightforward, and thoroughly patriotic; but these virtues were not enough to make him either feared or respected by the people over whom he was to exercise despotic powers; while Claiborne’s military colleague, Wilkinson, possessed fewer virtues and a feebler character. The French Prefect, Laussat, who remained for a time in New Orleans to protect French interests, wrote his Government April 8, 1804, an interesting account of the situation as seen by French eyes:[205] “It was hardly possible that the government of the United States should have made a worse beginning, and that it should have sent two men (Messrs. Claiborne, governor, and Wilkinson, general) less fit to attract affection. The first, with estimable private qualities, has little capacity and much awkwardness, and is extremely beneath his place; the second, already long known here in a bad way, is a flighty, rattle-headed fellow, often drunk, who has committed a hundred impertinent follies. Neither the one nor the other understands a word of French or Spanish. They have on all occasions, and without delicacy, shocked the habits, the prejudices, the character of the population.”