Burr’s first visit to the Nashville settlements, and to the Hermitage, was in May, 1805. He had just stepped down from the vice-presidency and his farewell speech to the Senate had been greatly admired. His fatal duel with Alexander Hamilton, which had stigmatized him in the East, did not detract any from his popularity on the Tennessee frontier where killing a man in a duel was not regarded as a matter involving any serious moral turpitude. Upon his arrival in Nashville he was given a reception that amounted to an ovation, culminating in a sumptuous dinner with the usual round of toasts and speeches. Jackson rode in from the Hermitage to take part in the festivities, attended by a servant leading a milk-white horse; and when the dinner was over Colonel Burr went back with him to the Hermitage as his guest. “I have been received with much hospitality and kindness, and could stay a month with pleasure,” Burr wrote his daughter, Theodosia. From Nashville Colonel Burr went to New Orleans; but on his return trip in August stopped at the Hermitage again for a visit of eight days. To Theodosia he wrote: “For a week I have been lounging at the house of General Jackson—once a lawyer, after a judge, now a planter; a man of intelligence, and one of those prompt, frank, ardent souls whom I love to meet.” In September, 1806, Burr was back at the Hermitage, this time with his mind apparently fully made up as to his contemplated expedition to the Southwest. Theodosia he had brought along with him as far as Blennerhassett Island on the Ohio where he had left her; and in his frequent talks with the prominent citizens of Nashville during his stay there he discussed freely his plans to establish colonies “on the western waters.” There were not lacking even then suspicious persons who wanted to know more about the exact nature of the mysterious Colonel’s mysterious plans; but Jackson, at first at least, seemed to give full credence to Burr’s declarations of pacific intentions, and at the fete given in the visitor’s honor in Nashville he entered the ballroom accompanied by Jackson attired in his full uniform as a major general.