The trial was to provide another battleground for the two new political parties--the Federalists, representing wealth and aristocracy and conservatism, and the Jeffersonian Republicans, recruited from the masses and led by a man of no small fortune who was regarded by the Federalists as a dangerous radical and a traitor to his class. It was to be the scene, too, of a fight for power between the executive and the judiciary reflected in the personalities of Thomas Jefferson and John Marshall--a fight not only of immediate moment but one whose outcome was to determine the relative positions of the two branches of government for years to come. Finally, if the accused was found guilty he faced not simply dismissal from office, but death on the gallows. Even the colorful impeachment of Warren Hastings fell short of that. _Chapter_ I At dusk on the evening of the twenty-sixth of March, in the year 1807, there arrived in Richmond, Virginia, over the road from Fredericksburg, a stagecoach bearing a party of seven men. It pulled up on Main Street before the Eagle Tavern, one of the leading hostelries of the town, where in the growing darkness the passengers descended without attracting great attention. One of them was a tall, thickset man with a weather-beaten face whose air of authority marked him as leader of the group. His companion, of less than average height, lightly built and erect, wore a rough suit of homespun with pantaloons and a hat with a wide brim which drooped disconsolately over his refined features. Those unmistakable evidences of gentility were in striking contrast to the uncouth dress of a backwoodsman. The large man bore the name of Nicholas Perkins. He was registrar of the land office of Washington County in faraway Alabama. The second man was Aaron Burr, lately Vice-President of the United States, and now a prisoner of the United States Army. The other five men were his guards, especially picked to assure the safe delivery of the prisoner wherever the authorities might direct. Theirs had not been an arduous task. With one minor exception the prisoner could not have been more co-operative and amenable. The trip from Alabama had taken 21 days, but the journey which brought Aaron Burr to his present situation might be said to have begun when he first saw the light of day more than 51 years before. For nature had endowed him at birth with a fatal combination of brilliance and deviousness that in the end was to be his undoing.