Page:Henry Adams' History of the United States Vol. 3.djvu/255

1806. advised him to hold his tongue, for his solitary word would not avail against the weight of Burr's character. Nevertheless, in March, 1806, he called at the White House and saw the President.


 * "After a desultory conversation, in which I aimed to draw his attention to the West, I took the liberty of suggesting to the President that I thought Colonel Burr ought to be removed from the country, because I considered him dangerous in it. The President asked where he should send him. I said to England or Madrid. . . . The President, without any positive expression, in such a matter of delicacy, seemed to think the trust too important, and expressed something like a doubt about the integrity of Mr. Burr. I frankly told the President that perhaps no person had stronger grounds to suspect that integrity than I had; but that I believed his pride of ambition had so predominated over his other passions that when placed on an eminence and put on his honor, a respect to himself would secure his fidelity. I perceived that the subject was disagreeable to the President; and to bring him to my point in the shortest mode, and in a manner which would point to the danger, I said to him, if Colonel Burr was not disposed of, we should in eighteen months have an insurrection, if not a revolution, on the waters of the Mississippi. The President said he had too much confidence in the information, the integrity, and attachment of the people of that country to the Union, to admit any apprehensions of that kind."

If the President had confidence in the people of New Orleans, he had not shown it in framing a form