to Richmond to be tried for treason.
As has been said, he was acquitted, by a jury of which John Randolph was
foreman, with the sympathy of all the women, of whom he was a favorite
to the day of his death. The trial lasted six months, and Jefferson did
all he could to convict him, with the assistance of William Wirt, just
rising into notice.

Although acquitted, Burr was a ruined man. His day of receptions and
popularity was over. His sad but splendid career came to an inglorious
close. Feeling unsafe in his own country, he wandered abroad, at times
treated with great distinction wherever he went, but always arousing
suspicions. He was obliged to leave England, and wandered as a fugitive
from country to country, without money or real friends. At Paris and
London he suffered extreme poverty, although admired in society. At last
he returned to New York, utterly destitute, and resumed the practice of
the law, but was without social position and generally avoided. He
succeeded in 1832 in winning the hand of a wealthy widow, but he spent
her money so freely that she left him. After the separation he supported
himself with great difficulty, but retained his elegant manner and
fascinating conversation, until he died in the house of a lady friend in
1836, and was buried at Princeton by the side of his father and
grandfather.

Our history narrates no fall from an exalted position more melancholy,
or more richly deserved, than his. Without being dissipated, he was a
bad and unprincipled man from the start. He might have been the pride of
his country, like Hamilton and Jefferson, being the equal of both in
abilities, and at one time in popularity. The school-books have given to
him and to Benedict Arnold an infamous immortality, comparing the one
with Cain, and the other with Judas Iscariot.

The most important measure connected with Jefferson's long
administration was the Non-importation Act, commonly called the Embargo.
It proved in the end a mistake, and shed no glory on the fame of the
President; and yet it perhaps prevented a war, or at least delayed it.

The peace of 1783 and the acknowledgment of American independence did
not restore friendly relations between England and the United States. It
was not in human nature that a proud and powerful state like England
should see the disruption of her empire and her fairest foreign
possession torn from her without embittered feelings, leading to acts
which could not be justifie