President Jefferson had taken his time in acting against the alleged conspirators. He had been waiting for tangible evidence that would stand up in a court of law. Once he was convinced that he had it he moved with dispatch and determination to find Burr guilty. Otherwise, after the unequivocal charge of “guilt beyond question” proclaimed to the nation in his special message to Congress, he and his administration would be made to look ridiculous. If the Chief Justice cooperated to this end, all well and good. If on the contrary, as Jefferson foresaw, the Chief Justice raised obstructions in favor of the prisoner, he would do well to look to his own head. It was already being rumored that the President was so set on getting rid of Marshall, and so confident that doing so was a mere matter of time, that he had already chosen a successor in Spencer Roane, another Virginian, but one consecrated to the cause of Republicanism. And here at the very outset of the trial the Chief Justice was prejudging the charge of treason by stating that if there had been treason there must by now be evidence of it. But no evidence had been produced before the court. In a letter to his friend Senator Giles, the President unbosomed himself on the unreasonableness of the decision. “In what terms of decency can we speak of this?” he asked. “As if an express could go to Natchez, or the mouth of the Cumberland and return in five weeks, to do which has never taken less than twelve!... But all the principles of law are to be perverted which would bear on the favorite offenders who endeavor to overturn this odious republic!... The nation will judge both the offender and the judges for themselves. If a member of the Executive or Legislative does wrong, the day is never far distant when the people will remove him. They will see then and amend the error in our Constitution which makes any branch independent of the nation.... If their protection of Burr produces this amendment, it will do more good than condemnation would have done ... and if his punishment can be commuted now for a useful amendment of the Constitution, I shall rejoice in it.” If letting Burr go scot free resulted in checkmating Marshall and putting the judiciary in its place, Mr. Jefferson was willing to pay even that price. As for the lack of witnesses the Government, if the Chief Justice would only give it reasonable time, would take care of that. From Washington, Attorney General Rodney sent out printed circulars for wide distribution throughout the western country urging every good citizen to step up and communicate to the Government any information which might “contribute to the general welfare.” The allusion was obvious. A deputy marshal and special messenger were dispatched to Wood County, Virginia, to round up witnesses from the vicinity of Blennerhassett Island where the overt act of treason was alleged to have occurred.