The two speeches made by Mr. Harper and Mr. Gallatin on this occasion, the 10th January, 1800, were very able, and are even now interesting reading; but they find their proper place in the Annals of Congress, and the question of the reduction of the army was to be settled by other events. A matter of a very different nature absorbed the attention of Congress during the months of February and March. This was the once famous case of Jonathan Bobbins, a British sailor claiming to be an American citizen, who, having committed a murder on board the British ship-of-war Hermione, on the high seas, had escaped to Charleston, and under the 27th article of the British treaty had been delivered up by the United States government. At that time extradition was a novelty in our international relations. The President was violently attacked for the surrender, and a long debate ensued in Congress. Mr. Gallatin spoke at considerable length, but his speech is not reported, and although voluminous notes, made by him in preparing it, are among his papers, it is impossible to say what portion of these notes was actually used in the speech. The triumphs of the contest, however, did not fall to him or to his associates, but to John Marshall, who followed him, and who, in a speech that still stands without a parallel in our Congressional debates, replied to him and to them. There is a tradition in Virginia that after Marshall concluded his speech, the Republican members pressed round Gallatin, urging with great earnestness that it should be answered at once, and that Gallatin replied in his foreign accent, "Gentlemen, answer it yourselves; for my part I think it unanswerable," laying the stress on the antepenultimate syllable. The story is probably true. At all events, Mr. Gallatin made no answer, and Mr. Marshall's argument settled the dispute by an overwhelming vote. But the coming Presidential election, one of the most interesting in our history, now cast its shadow in advance over the whole political field. The two parties were so equally divided that the vote of New York City would probably decide the result, and for this reason the city election of May, 1800, was the turning-point of American political history in that generation. There the two party champions, Hamilton and Burr, were pitted against each other. Commodore Nicholson was hotly engaged, and Edward Livingston, Matthew L. Davis, and the other Republican politicians of New York became persons of uncommon interest. Mr. Gallatin, as leader of the Republican party in Congress and as closely connected by marriage with the Republican interests of New York City, was kept accurately informed of every step in the political campaign. He himself was in constant communication with Matthew L. Davis, who was Burr's most active friend then and ever afterwards. Davis's letters are now of historical importance, and may be compared with the narrative in his subsequent Life of Burr: