Page:Henry Adams' History of the United States Vol. 3.djvu/290

278 rest silent. November 8, when Judge Innis overruled the motion and denied the process, Burr appeared in court and challenged inquiry. The following Wednesday, November 12, was fixed for the investigation. A grand-jury was summoned. Burr appeared, surrounded by friends, with Henry Clay for counsel, and with strong popular sympathy in his favor. Daveiss too appeared, with a list of witnesses summoned; but the chief witness was absent in Indiana, and Daveiss asked a postponement. The jury was discharged; and after a dignified and grave harangue from the accused, Burr left the court in triumph. On the strength of this acquittal he ventured again to appear in Cincinnati, November 23, in confidential relations with Senator Smith; but the term of his long impunity was soon to end.

October 22, while Burr was at Lexington, President Jefferson held a Cabinet council at Washington. The Spaniards were then threatening an attack upon Louisiana, while Wilkinson's force in the Mississippi and Orleans Territories amounted only to ten hundred and eighty-one men, with two gunboats. Memoranda, written at the time by Jefferson, detailed the situation as it was understood by the Government: —


 * "During the last session of Congress, Colonel Burr who was here, finding no hope of being employed in any department of the government, opened himself confidentially