Page:Henry Adams' History of the United States Vol. 3.djvu/283

1806.
 * "This plot is laid wider than you imagine. Mention the subject to no man from the Western country, however high in office he may be. Some of them are deeply tainted with this treason. I hate duplicity of expression; but on this subject I am not authorized to be explicit, nor is it necessary. You will despatch some fit person into the Orleans country to inquire."

February 10 Daveiss wrote again calling attention to Burr's movements during the previous summer, and charging both him and Wilkinson with conspiracy. At about the time when these letters arrived, the President received another warning from Eaton. The air was full of denunciations, waiting only for the President's leave to annihilate the conspirators under popular contempt. A word quietly written by Jefferson to one or two persons in the Western country would have stopped Burr short in his path, and would have brought Wilkinson abjectly on his knees. A slight change in the military and naval arrangements at New Orleans would have terrified the Creoles into good behavior, and would have made Daniel Clark denounce the conspiracy.

The President showed Daveiss's letter to Gallatin, Madison, and Dearborn; but he did not take its advice, and did not, in his Cabinet memoranda of October 22, mention it among his many sources of information. February 15 he wrote to