“After I have given the most deliberate consideration to your expressions ... I cannot draw from them any other conclusion but this: that you believe me concerned in the conspiracy and that I was fit subject to act the traitor of traitors, as others have done [the reference was to Wilkinson], and that the Secretary of War could buy me up without honor.” Dearborn did not answer the letter. To his friend Patton Anderson, Jackson wrote: “I have received some communications from the President and the Secretary of War. It is the merest old-woman letter from the Secretary you ever saw.” Then he turned on Wilkinson: “Wilkinson has denounced Burr as a traitor, after he found that he was implicated. This is deep policy. He has obtained thereby the command of New Orleans, the gunboats armed; and his plan can be executed without resistance. But we must be there in due time, before our fortifications can be erected, and restore to our government New Orleans and the western commerce.” Then, as an afterthought: “The Secretary of War is not fit for a granny.” General Jackson had taken one other precautionary measure. He had sent a messenger to Captain Bissell, who commanded the Federal post of Fort Massac on the Ohio River a short distance above its confluence with the Mississippi, warning him of the approach of Burr’s forces and urging him not to let any warlike party go past him down the river. He added that if Bissell should need help his troops were ready to march. From Captain Bissell he shortly received a curt reply to the effect that Burr had already arrived at Massac, that his party showed no evidence of being on a warlike mission and had been permitted to proceed down the river. Already Burr’s protestations of innocence had begun to have their effect on the General and now this report from Bissell strengthened his conviction of Burr’s sincerity. From then on in Jackson’s judgment Wilkinson, and not Burr, was the real culprit, and he acted accordingly.