Page:Life of Henry Clay (Schurz; v. 1).djvu/49

be more absurd than the attempt made at the time, and repeated at a later period, to hold him in part responsible for Burr's schemes, the true nature of which he discovered only when he had his first interview with President Jefferson at Washington. Then his mortification was great. “It seems,” he wrote to Thomas Hart, of Lexington, “that we have been much mistaken in Burr. When I left Kentucky, I believed him both an innocent and persecuted man. In the course of my journey to this place, still entertaining that opinion, I expressed myself without reserve, and it seems, owing to the freedom of my sentiments at Chillicothe, I have exposed myself to the strictures of some anonymous writer at that place. They give me no uneasiness, as I am sensible that all my friends and acquaintances know me incapable of entering into the views of Burr.” The letter by which Burr had deceived him, he delivered into the President's hands. Nine years later he accidentally met Burr again in New York, where, after aimless wanderings abroad, the adventurer had stealthily returned. Burr advanced to salute him, but Clay refused his hand.