Can any man read this letter, and say that he thinks the person to whom it was addressed had no previous knowledge of the plan? Without such previous knowledge, the letter itself must have been unintelligible. Nor can it be considered as a proposal to seduce the general from his allegiance, because the disclosure which it makes is not of the plan, but of the means to effect it. Every thing relative to the project is spoken of as resting already in the knowledge of his correspondent; and it mentions only such details as were necessary still to be arranged, in order to ensure its success. Examine it more in detail. It begins with acknowledging the receipt of a letter, post-marked 13th May, and then immediately enters on the business-" I have at length obtained

funds, and have actually commenced." Funds for what? What is commenced? These would be the natural exclamations of a person who had been, as the general pretends he was, totally in the dark as to his correspondent's plans. From the wording of this letter is it not plain, that the want of funds had been the subject of former communication, and that the operations which were commenced related to an undertaking formerly agreed between them. The Eastern detachments are to rendezvous on the Ohio the 1st of November, to move down rapidly on the 15th, and to be at Natchez between the 5th and 15th December, to meet Wilkinson there, and then to determine-what? whether Wilkinson will join? whether he will, after he knows the plan, approve of

it? whether he will a second time turn traitor to his country, and apply those arms to her destruction, which were intrusted to him for her defence? No; all this is previously arranged. The only point to determine, after the junction, is whether it will be better to take Baton Rouge, or to pass it by. The eastern detachment is to proceed under Burr. Where is the western? Under Wilkinson, under the very man who dares now to claim our admiration and gratitude for defeating this very scheme which he himself had planned. Again" Our project, my dear friend, is brought "to the point long desired."-But I waste my time in comments on this document. Those who are not convinced, by a bare perusal, that this is the language of one accomplice to another, will never yield to any reasoning. Add to them the two letters received at the same time from Mr. Dayton, (See Notes 79, 80) and no doubt will remain that the commander in chief of the American army, if not the father of the project, was at least as deeply engaged in it as any of the others. Yet I admit that a letter written to another is not in itself complete evidence of guilt in the person to whom it is addressed. A contrary doctrine would put any innocent man in the power of the first villain, who chose to write to him in the style of an associate. To judge of the weight of such evidence, we must examine the previous connexion of the parties, the motives that might have actuated the writer, and, above all, the conduct of the party on receiving the communication. If we

should in the prior correspondence discover no mystery, no evidence of a previous knowledge of the plan-if the writer could be supposed to have an interest in endeavouring to implicate his correspondent—and if the party receiving the proposition made a full and immediate disclosure, was guilty of no evasion or prevarication in his account of it-I confess that I should think it unjust on such evidence to condemn. Let us then fairly test the conduct of general Wilkinson by these rules.

1st. His previous knowledge of the plan. This may be fairly inferred from his engagement in a similar scheme under the Spanish government, and is fully proved by the mysterious correspondence, which is even now refused to be produced, by his acknowledgment, under oath, that it was calculated to implicate him, by his confession that he had written to Burr that he would be "ready before "him." Ready for what?-Why for a plan, of which, according to general Wilkinson, he knew nothing. And, finally, by his own letters to me, to general Adair, and to colonel M'Kee.

2dly. What motive could Mr. Burr have had in writing such a letter, if the general were ignorant of his plans, and if he had not sanctioned them? Would a conspirator, who is generally supposed to have been a man not deficient in understanding, have made this disclosure to the commander of the army that was to oppose him, unless he had reason to count upon his assistance. I search in vain for some motive, that would have influenced either colonel Burr or Mr. Dayton to write those

letters. I find none which can be made, consistent with the idea of innocence in their correspondent. I have heard of such stratagems, in order to render officers suspected by their commanders; but in those cases it was always contrived, that the paper should fall into the hands of the person whose suspicions it was intended to excite. Here, the letters were sent by a confidential messenger directly to the person to whom they were addressed. They were written, too, some time previous to that fixed for the commencement of the expedition. This discloses the time and place of rendezvous, the order of march, and the number of the forces; so that, unless they were assured of the general's co-operation, they put it completely in his power to destroy their scheme, and ruin its authors. The idea of this being a contrivance to implicate Wilkinson is therefore absurd.

Let us apply, however, our third and surest test. How was this proposition received? when was it disclosed? and has that disclosure been fully made, without any concealment or prevarication? It was received, he tells us, with the caution necessary to procure from the messenger a developement of the plan. [See the general's deposition, Note 81.] But, after obtaining this developement, he writes to colonel Burr a letter, which he dispatched, but afterwards recalled. This is an important feature in the transaction, and I therefore submit the evidence on which I assert it. In the report of Burr's trial communicated to Congress, page 209, there is the following passage:

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"Mr. Wickham" (to general Wilkinson.) think you said that you wrote to colonel Burr "from Natchitoches." General Wilkinson-" You 46 guess well; but if I am not mistaken, you got "that information from Swartwout. Q. Did you "write? A. I did. Q. What did you do with "the letter? A. Destroyed it. Q. Did it go "of your hands? A. It did; it was sent to Nat“chez, to which place I followed, recovered, and "destroyed it. I will give you my reasons for so

out

doing. After writing, I received the letter from "Mr. Donaldson, dated 30th of October, and conveying the information received from Myers Michael, which removed my doubts as to "the extent of Mr. Burr's designs, and their 'si"nister nature. Mr. Wickham, then I under"stand you to say that Mr. Donaldson gave you "the first correct information. A. It excited very "strong apprehensions in my mind, that some general and deep-rooted conspiracy had taken place above." This evidence is important, not only as it shews a continued correspondence with Burr, even after the general acknowledges that he had obtained a knowledge of his plans from the cyphered letter, and from Mr. Swartwout, but for a reason as important to the general, because it convicts him of direct perjury; for in his affidavit, (No. 81,) he directly asserts that Mr. Swartwout informed him he was to meet Burr the 20th of November, and requested him (W.) to write him, which (says the general) I declined.

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