Nothing would be more damaging to the prosecution than a ruling of the Court sustaining the contention of the defense. The prosecution’s plan was to present the evidence chronologically, introducing all the scheming and plotting that had been common gossip during the past few years, and gradually working up to a climax. Colonel Burr and his counsel touched a tender spot when they challenged this procedure. At this juncture the defense received valuable reinforcement through the arrival of Luther Martin of Maryland. Mr. Martin was a lawyer of exceptional talent. A native of New Jersey, he had been educated at Princeton from which he graduated with high honors in the class of 1766, six classes ahead of Aaron Burr. At the age of thirty he was Attorney General of Maryland, from which high office he resigned to build up a lucrative practice in Baltimore. Elected a delegate from Maryland to the Constitutional Convention, he showed his courage and his scorn for conformity by defying the powerful Virginia delegation, headed by Washington, and championing the cause of the smaller states. His service in the Convention, valuable as it turned out to be, had more recently been overshadowed by his stalwart defense of Judge Chase in the impeachment proceedings. Another asset for the business in hand was Mr. Martin’s warm friendship for Burr and his inveterate hatred of Thomas Jefferson. In politics Martin was a Federalist; added to his political differences with the President was a personal grudge resulting from an injury quite unconsciously inflicted by Mr. Jefferson. Luther Martin married Maria Cresap, a daughter of Col. Michael Cresap, a frontiersman of Allegheny County, Maryland. In his “Notes on Virginia” Jefferson included the eloquent speech of the Indian chieftain Logan, who had befriended the early settlers yet whose wife and children had been butchered by the whites. Jefferson’s purpose in introducing this classic piece of rhetoric was to call attention to the nobility of the red man. He was not aware that responsibility for the murder had been pinned on Colonel Cresap, Martin’s father-in-law. Martin voiced his resentment in a bitter letter to a Philadelphia newspaper, but this public outpouring was not sufficient in itself to erase the grudge he held against Jefferson. Mr. Martin’s brilliance was offset by an untidy dress, coarseness of speech and manner, and an addiction to spirits that earned him the nickname “Old Brandy Bottle.” His capacity was phenomenal, and though he imbibed freely this did not seem to dull his wit or befuddle his mind. He made his entrance into the lists in Richmond as a foreigner, but, had he wished, he might have claimed kinship with his Virginia colleagues as a former student of Chancellor Wythe in Williamsburg and a member of the Virginia bar practicing briefly on the state’s eastern shore.