who are to try him, and if there be any one who will not concur in finding him guilty, he is discharged of course.  I am sorry to tell you that Bollman was Burr’s right hand man in all his guilty schemes.  On being brought to prison here, he communicated to Mr. Madison and myself the whole of the plans, always, however, apologetically for Burr as far as they would bear.  But his subsequent tergiversations have proved him conspicuously base.  I gave him a pardon, however, which covers him from every thing but infamy.  I was the more astonished at his engaging in this business, from the peculiar motives he should have felt for fidelity.  When I came into the government, I sought him out on account of the services he has rendered you, cherished him, offered him two different appointments of value, which, after keeping them long under consideration, he declined for commercial views, and would have given him any thing for which he was fit.  Be assured he is unworthy of ever occupying again the care of any honest man.  Nothing has ever so strongly proved the innate force of our form of government, as this conspiracy.  Burr had probably engaged one thousand men to follow his fortunes, without letting them know his projects, otherwise than by assuring them the government approved of them.  The moment a proclamation was issued, undeceiving them, he found himself left with about thirty desperadoes only.  The people rose in mass wherever he was or was suspected to be, and by their own energy the thing was crushed in one instant, without its having been necessary to employ a man of the military but to take care of their respective stations.  His first enterprise was to have been to seize New Orleans, which he supposed would powerfully bridle the upper country, and place him at the door of Mexico.  It is with pleasure I inform you that not a single native Creole, and but one American of those settled there before we received the place, took any part with him.  His partisans were the new emigrants from the United States and elsewhere, fugitives from justice or debt, and adventurers and speculators of all descriptions.

I enclose you a proclamation, which will show you the critical footing on which we stand, at present, with England.  Never, since the battle of Lexington, have I seen this country in such a state of exasperation as at present.  And even that did not produce such unanimity.  The federalists themselves coalesce with us as to the object, although they will return to their old trade of condemning every step we take towards obtaining it.  ‘Reparation for the past, and security for the future,’ is our motto.  Whether these will be yielded freely, or will require resort to non-intercourse, or to war, is yet to be seen.  We have actually near two thousand men in the field, covering the exposed parts of the coast, and cutting off supplies from the British vessels.

I am afraid I have been very unsuccessful in my endeavors to serve Madame de Tesse in her taste for planting.  A box of seeds, &c. which I sent her in the close of 1805, was carried with the vessel into England, and discharged so late that I fear she lost their benefit, for that season.  Another box, which I prepared in the autumn of 1806, has, I fear, been equally delayed from other accidents.  However, I will persevere in my endeavors.