de his well-known attempt to appeal to the civil authorities
and get deliverance from the guard of soldiers. From Richmond he wrote
her a hasty note, informing her of his arrest. She and her husband
joined him soon, and remained with him during his trial.

At Richmond, during the six months of the trial, Burr tasted the last
of the sweets of popularity. The party opposed to Mr. Jefferson made
his cause their own, and gathered round the fallen leader with
ostentatious sympathy and aid. Ladies sent him bouquets, wine, and
dainties for his table, and bestowed upon his daughter the most
affectionate and flattering attentions. Old friends from New York and
new friends from the West were there to cheer and help the prisoner.
Andrew Jackson was conspicuously his friend and defender, declaiming
in the streets upon the tyranny of the Administration and the perfidy
of Wilkinson, Burr's chief accuser. Washington Irving, then in the
dawn of his great renown, who had given the first efforts of his
youthful pen to Burr's newspaper, was present at the trial, full of
sympathy for a man whom he believed to be the victim of treachery and
political animosity. Doubtless he was not wanting in compassionate
homage to the young matron from South Carolina. Mr. Irving was then a
lawyer, and had been retained as one of Burr's counsel; not to render
service in the court-room, but in the expectation that his pen would
be employed in staying the torrent of public opinion that was setting
against his client. Whether or not he wrote in his behalf does not
appear. But his private letters, written at Richmond during the trial,
show plainly enough that, if his head was puzzled by the confused and
contradictory evidence, his heart and his imagination were on the side
of the prisoner.

Theodosia's presence at Richmond was of more value to her father than
the ablest of his counsel. Every one appears to have loved, admired,
and sympathized with her. "You can't think," wrote Mrs.
Blennerhassett, "with what joy and pride I read what Colonel Burr says
of his daughter. I never could love one of my own sex as I do her."
Blennerhassett himself was not less her friend. Luther Martin, Burr's
chief counsel, almost worshipped her. "I find," wrote Blennerhassett,

"that Luther Martin's idolatrous admiration of Mrs. Alston
is almost as excessive as my own, but far more beneficial to
his interest and injurious to his judgment, as it is the
medium