History of the United States of America, Volume 3 (of 9) : $b During the second administration of Thomas JeffersonAdams, Henry
History
History of the United States of America, Volume 3 (of 9) : $b During the second administration of Thomas Jefferson
Adams, Henry
United States -- History -- 1801-1809; United States -- History -- 1809-1817
“Yesterday,” wrote Randolph, June 25,[325] “the grand jury
found bills for treason and misdemeanor against Burr and
Blennerhassett _una voce_, and this day presented Jonathan
Dayton, ex-senator, John Smith of Ohio, Comfort Tyler, Israel
Smith of New York, and Davis Floyd of Indiana, for treason; but
the mammoth of iniquity escaped,--not that any man pretended to
think him innocent, but upon certain wire-drawn distinctions
that I will not pester you with. Wilkinson is the only man that
I ever saw who was from the bark to the very core a villain.
The proof is unquestionable; but, my good friend, I cannot
enter upon it here. Suffice it to say that I have seen it, and
that it is not susceptible of misconstruction. Burr supported
himself with great fortitude. He was last night lodged in the
common town jail (we have no State prison except for convicts),
where I daresay he slept sounder than I did. Perhaps you never
saw human nature in so degraded a situation as in the person of
Wilkinson before the grand jury; and yet this man stands on the
very summit and pinnacle of Executive favor, while James Monroe
is denounced.”
In the debates of the next session, when Randolph followed up his
attacks on Jefferson by trying to identify him with Wilkinson’s
misdeeds, a fuller account was given of the plea which saved Wilkinson
from presentment.
“There was before the grand jury,” said Randolph,[326] “a motion
to present General Wilkinson for misprision of treason. This
motion was overruled upon this ground,--that the treasonable
(overt) act having been alleged to be committed in the State
of Ohio, and General Wilkinson’s letter to the President of
the United States having been dated, though but a short time,
prior to that act, this person had the benefit of what lawyers
would call a legal exception, or a fraud; but I will inform the
gentleman that I did not hear a single member of the grand jury
express any other opinion than that which I myself expressed, of
the moral, not of the legal, guilt of the party.”
In the evidence taken by a Congressional committee in 1811 regarding
Wilkinson,[327] several members of the grand jury were called to
testify; and their accounts showed that the motion to present General
Wilkinson for misprision of treason was made by Littleton W. Tazewell,
and supported by Randolph and three or four other members of the grand
jury. One witness thought that the vote stood 9 to 7.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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