Truxtun testified further that Burr told him that, if there were no war with Spain, he intended to invite friends to settle on a piece of land on the Washita River for which he was about to complete a contract. Burr estimated that within a year he would have 1,000 families of respectable and fashionable people there. Such in substance was Commodore Truxtun’s testimony. It was worth all the rest, for it was so patently honest that nobody questioned it. When he had finished Burr inquired of him: “Did you ever hear me express any intention or sentiment respecting a division of the Union?” “We were very intimate,” Truxtun answered. “There seemed to be no reserve on your part. I never heard you speak of a division of the Union.” Burr could not have asked for better testimony from one of his own witnesses. It must have erased from the minds of the jury whatever unfavorable conclusions had been reached as a result of Eaton’s insistence that division of the Union was Burr’s aim. On the other hand the more astute among them may have made allowances for Burr’s habit of saying to each individual just so much as he felt that individual should know. When Commodore Truxtun had stepped down from the witness stand the prosecution called Peter Taylor, the Blennerhassetts’ English gardener. He was a simple country man of limited education, in striking contrast to the distinguished naval officer who preceded him. In introducing him Mr. Hay explained that the witness would directly prove the connection between Burr and Blennerhassett. It appears, too, that the prosecution counted on Taylor as one of the two witnesses to the overt act which the Constitution required to prove guilt of treason. Taylor’s testimony began with the events on the island immediately after receipt of the President’s proclamation informing the public of the existence of a plot and cautioning all loyal citizens to have nothing to do with it. Mr. Blennerhassett and Mr. Alston, said Taylor, had gone down the river to join Colonel Burr. On reading the proclamation the people in the vicinity of the island had become alarmed and Mrs. Blennerhassett sent Taylor in search of her husband and Burr to warn Burr not to return to the island because of the public outcry against him. According to Taylor’s story, after going to Chillicothe and Cincinnati, he caught up with Burr in Lexington, Kentucky. Burr inquired news of the island to which Taylor replied that he had been sent by Mrs. Blennerhassett to warn him not to return. Taylor quoted himself as saying: “If you come up our way the people will shoot you.” He also testified that he had told the Colonel the people were saying the land settlement was all a fib and that Burr had something else in view.