The grief which the death of Hamilton caused in the nation reacted upon Burr; and when the correspondence was published, a storm of condemnation burst upon him. Indictments were found against him in New York and New Jersey. In every pulpit, upon every platform, where the virtues and services of Hamilton were celebrated, the features of his malignant foe were displayed in dramatic contrast. He was compared to Richard III. and Catiline, to Saul, and to the wretch who fired the temple of Diana. This feeling was not confined to orators and clergymen, nor to this country. It reached other communities, and was shared by men of the world like Talleyrand, and retired students like Jeremy Bentham. The former, a few years before his death, related to an American gentleman, that Burr, on his arrival in Paris, in 1810, sent to him and requested an interview. The French statesman could not well refuse to receive an American of such distinction, with whom he was personally acquainted, and by whom he had formerly been hospitably entertained, and told the gentleman who brought the message,--"Say to Col. Burr, that I will receive him to-morrow; but tell him also, that Gen. Hamilton's likeness always hangs over my mantel." Burr did not call upon him. Talleyrand directed that after his death the miniature should be sent to Hamilton's descendants, with some newspaper scraps relating to him, which he had thrust into the lining. When Burr was in England, he became intimate with Bentham. The latter, in his "Memoirs and Correspondence," makes a brief allusion to the acquaintance, in which the following passage occurs: "Burr gave me an account of his duel with Hamilton. He was sure of being able to kill him: _so I thought it little better than a murder_."
Previously to his retirement from the Vice-Presidency, in March, 1805, Burr had formed the design of seeking a home in the Southwest. Little more than a year before, Louisiana had been annexed, and then offered a wide field to an ambitious man. Encouraged by some acquaintances, he projected various political and financial speculations. In April, he repaired to Pittsburg, and started upon a journey down the Ohio and the Mississippi. On the way, curiosity led him to the house of Herman Blennerhassett, and he thus accidentally made the acquaintance of a man whose name has become historic by its association with his own. Blennerhassett was an Irishman by birth; he had inherited a considerable fortune, and was a man of education. Beguiled by the belief that in the retirement of the American forests he would find the solitude most congenial to the pursuit of his favorite studies, he purchased an island in the Ohio River near the mouth of the Little Kanawha. He expended most of his property in building a house and adorning his grounds. The house was a plain wooden structure; and the shrubbery, in its best estate, could hardly have excited the envy of Shenstone. Men of strong character are not dependent upon certain conditions of climate and quiet for the ability to accomplish their purposes. But Blennerhassett was not a man of strong character; neither was he an exception to this rule. He was, at the best, but an idle student; and his zeal for science never carried him beyond a little desultory study of Astronomy and Botany and some absurd experiments in Chemistry. His figure was awkward, his manners were ungracious, and he was so near-sighted that he used to take a servant hunting with him, to show him the game. His credulity and want of worldly knowledge exposed him to the practices of the shrewd frontiers-men among whom he lived. He soon became involved in debt, and at the time of Burr's visit his situation made him a ready volunteer for any enterprise which promised to repair his shattered fortunes. That the enterprise was impracticable, and that he was unfit for it, only made it more attractive to his imaginative and simple mind. The fancy of Wirt has thrown a deceptive romance around the career of Blennerhassett, yet there is enough of truth in the account of the misfortunes which Burr brought upon him and his amiable wife to justify the sympathy with which they have been regarded.