Owing to the peculiar and complicated circumstances which led up to it, Burr's case was from the outset imbued with factional and partisan politics of the most extreme kind. While the conspiracy was at its height, Jefferson, though emphatically warned, had refused to lend it any credence whatever; but when the danger was well over he had thrown the whole country into a panic, and had even asked Congress to suspend the writ of habeas corpus. The Federalists and the President's enemies within his own party, headed by the redoubtable Randolph, were instantly alert to the opportunity which Jefferson's inexplicable conduct afforded them. "The mountain had labored and brought forth a mouse," quoted the supercilious; the executive dragnet had descended to envelop the monster which was ready to split the Union or at least to embroil its relations with a friendly power, and had brought up--a few peaceful agriculturists! Nor was this the worst of the matter, contended these critics of the Administration, for the real source of the peril had been the President's own action in assigning the command at New Orleans to Wilkinson, a pensioner of Spain, a villain "from the bark to the very core." Yet so far was the President from admitting this error that he now attributed the salvation of the country to "the soldier's honor" and "the citizen's fidelity" of this same Wilkinson. Surely, then, the real defendants before the bar of opinion were Thomas Jefferson and his precious ally James Wilkinson, not their harried and unfortunate victim, Aaron Burr!