James; Commodore Truxton (perhaps),
Admiral of the Navy. There is not an atom of new _evidence_ which
warrants the supposition that Burr had any design to sever the Western
States from the Union. If he himself had ever contemplated such an
event, it is almost unquestionable that his followers were ignorant of
it.
The scheme exploded. Theodosia and her husband had joined him at the
home of the Blennerhassetts, and they were near him when the
President's proclamation dashed the scheme to atoms, scattered the
band of adventurers, and sent Burr a prisoner to Richmond, charged
with high treason. Mr. Alston, in a public letter to the Governor of
South Carolina, solemnly declared that he was wholly ignorant of any
treasonable design on the part of his father-in-law, and repelled with
honest warmth the charge of his own complicity with a design so
manifestly absurd and hopeless as that of a dismemberment of the
Union. Theodosia, stunned with the unexpected blow, returned with her
husband to South Carolina, ignorant of her father's fate. He was
carried through that State on his way to the North, and there it was
that he made his well-known attempt to appeal to the civil authorities
and get deliverance from the guard of soldiers.
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