“Millions for defense, but not one cent for tribute!”
Colonel Burr, being dined, confides to the General how he is not without an ally in the Southwest, and says that Commander Wilkinson, in control for the Government at New Orleans, stands ready to advance his anti-Spanish projects. At the name of “Wilkinson” the General shakes his prudent head. He declares that Commander Wilkinson is a faithless, caitiff creature, with a brandified nose, a coward heart, and a weakness for breaking his word. The crafty Burr, confident to vanity of his own genius for intrigue, insists that he can trust Commander Wilkinson. Then he arranges with the General for the building of a flotilla of flat-boats at the latter's yards, and goes his scheming way. Later, when Colonel Burr is on trial for treason in Richmond, the General will ride over the Blue Ridge to give him aid and comfort, and make street-corner speeches defending him, wherein he will say things more explicit than flattering concerning President Jefferson, who is urging the prosecution of Colonel Burr.
The hours, never resting, never sleeping, march onward with our planter-General, until the procession in its passing is remembered and spoken of as years. Then comes the war with England. That saber scar on the General's head begins to throb, and he sends word to Washington that he is ready, with twenty-five hundred of his hunting-shirt militia, to kill British wherever they shall be found.
The Government thanks him, and orders him with his hunting-shirt followers to report to General Wilkinson at New Orleans. The General does not like this, the Wilkinson in question being that red-nosed renegade one, against whom long ago he warned the ambitious Colonel Burr. For all that, orders are orders; and besides a fight under any commander is not to be despised. The General presently hurries his hunting-shirt forces aboard flatboats, and floats away on the convenient bosom of the Cumberland. He will go down that stream to the Ohio, and so to the Mississippi and to New Orleans. As they float downward with the stream, the General recalls a former voyage when love and the blooming Rachel were his companions, and is heard to sigh.
At Natchez, word from Commander Wilkinson meets the General. He is told to land, and wait for further orders. The General takes his boys of the hunting shirts ashore, and pitches camp. Privily he unbends in oaths and maledictions, all addressed to the ex-grocer Wilkinson; for he thinks the order, preventing his entrance into New Orleans, born of the mean rivalry of that red-nosed ignobility.