Burr’s friend Senator John Smith, of Kentucky, also had expressed misgivings. To him Burr wrote: “I was greatly surprised and really hurt by the unusual tenor of your letter of the 23rd [October], and I hasten to reply to it as well for your satisfaction as my own. If there exists any design to separate the Western from the Eastern states, I am totally ignorant of it. I never harbored or expressed any such intention to anyone, nor did any person ever intimate such design to me.” Following his exoneration by the Grand Jury in Kentucky, Burr went back to Nashville and called once more at the Hermitage. The General was not at home, but the visitor got a cool reception from Rachel. She evidently was not entirely satisfied by his written explanation to the General. Burr then put up at the tavern at nearby Clover Bottom where Jackson had a store. There he was confronted by Jackson and John Coffee and again protested he had no object in view except what was sanctioned by legal authority, and that, when the time came, he would produce the Secretary of War’s orders. According to one account not mentioned by Jackson in his letter to Campbell, Burr drew from his pocket a blank commission signed by Jefferson saying, “Gentlemen, I suppose this will satisfy you.” Jackson concluded his letter to Campbell “... if he [Burr] is a traitor, he is the basest that ever did commit treason, and being tore to pieces and scattered to the four winds of heaven would be too good for him.” Campbell turned the letter over to Jefferson. It may well have been responsible for the President’s declaration that Tennessee was faithful and “particularly General Jackson.” At Clover Bottom Burr’s persuasiveness and apparent frankness dissipated the worst of Jackson’s suspicions. So much so that when Burr, using the boats that Jackson’s firm had built, dropped down the river, Rachel Jackson’s 17-year-old nephew, Stokely D. Hays, was permitted to go along. In later years Hays testified that he carried a letter to Governor Claiborne and that he had instructions from the Jacksons to leave the expedition if he should discover any action on its part that was inimical to the Government.