Then, at last, his movements became as rapid as they had hitherto been dilatory.
November 7 he wrote to Colonel Cushing from Natchitoches:[1] "On the 15th of this month Burr's declaration is to be made in Tennessee and Kentucky. Hurry, hurry after me; and if necessary, let us be buried together in the ruins of the place we shall defend!" He had at last chosen his part; and having decided to act as the savior of the country, he began to exaggerate the danger. "If I mistake not, we shall have an insurrection of blacks as well as whites to combat."[2] "I shall be with you by the 20th instant," he wrote to Freeman the same day;[3] "in the mean time be you as silent as the grave!" He left Natchitoches November 7, and reached Natchez on the 11th, whence he wrote "from the seat of Major Minor" a letter of alarm to the President, confiding to the messenger an oral account of Burr's letter, for Jefferson's benefit:[4]—
- "This is indeed a deep, dark, and widespread conspiracy, embracing the young and the old, the Democrat and the Federalist, the native and the foreigner, the patriot of '76 and the exotic of yesterday, the opulent and the needy, the 'ins' and the 'outs;' and I fear it will receive strong support in New Orleans from a quarter little suspected. . . . I gasconade not when I
