Wednesday, October 04, 2006

Chapter ll of AARON BURR by Milton Lomask

THE TRIAL AT RICHMOND BEGINS


Burr, an the time of his disappearance into the piney
woods and red clay hills of western Mississippi, was "disguised," according to Wilkinson, "in an old blanket coat begirt with a leathern strap, to which a tin cup was suspended on the left and a scalping knife on the right." Squinched on his head was a weather-stained beaver, whose broad brim, even when deliberately pulled down, failed to extinguish the luster of his dark eyes. When on the night of 18 February, in the village of Wakefield near the Tombigbee River, he and Major Ashley paused to ask directions to the farmhouse of a Colonel Hinson, the eyes gave him away. Nicholas Perkins, who supplied the requested information, was a backwoods attorney, currently eking out a living as head of the Federal Land Office in Mississippi Territory. Perkins had read the governor's proclamation offering a reward of $2000 for the seizure of the former Vice President. He remembered the description in it, the statement that the eyes of the wanted man "sparkled like diamonds." The minute Burr and his companion moved on, Perkins made haste to rouse Sheriff Theodore Brightwell from his bed. Soon the two of them were riding in the wake of the strangers. Reaching the Hinson place about eleven o'clock, they halted at the gate for a conference. It had occurred to Perkins that Burr, recognizing him, might take alarm and escape. He proposed to post himself in the
woods near the farmhouse, while Brightwell went in, confirmed the identity of the man with unusual eyes, and then slipped out to make his report. But once inside, for reasons never revealed, the sheriff stayed where he was and Perkins, after an hour or so of shivering in the bitter cold of the night, resolved to act on his own!

HEY YA'LL,

We gotta an incredible opportunity to focus public attention upon Alabama History.

February 19, 2007 marks the 200th anniversary of Aaron Burr's arrest in present-day Alabama.

Please check all this out and try to help THE BICENTENNIAL REENACTMENT OF AARON BURR'S ARREST IN ALABAMA ON FEBRUARY 19, 1807! http://www.aaronburrassociation.org/


bEST,
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