his miscellaneous correspondence, and not from what his biographer
might write, unsupported by documentary testimony. With this view many
of his private letters are selected for publication.

I entertain a hope that I shall escape the charge of egotism. I have
endeavoured to avoid _that_ ground of offence, whatever may have been
my literary sins in other respects. It is proper for me, however, in
this place, and for a single purpose, to depart from the course
pursued in the body of the work. It is a matter of perfect notoriety,
that among the papers left in my possession by the late Colonel Burr,
there was a mass of letters and copies of letters written or received
by him, from time to time, during a long life, indicating no very
strict morality in some of his female correspondents. These letters
contained matter that would have wounded the feelings of families more
extensively than could be imagined. Their publication would have had a
most injurious tendency, and created heartburnings that nothing but
time could have cured.

As soon as they came under my control I mentioned the subject to
Colonel Burr; but he prohibited the destruction of any part of them
during his lifetime. I separated them, however, from other letters in
my possession, and placed them in a situation that made their
publication next to impossible, whatever might have been my own fate.
As soon as Colonel Burr's decease was known, with my own hands I
committed to the fire all such correspondence, and not a vestige of it
now remains.

It is with unaffected reluctance that this statement of facts is made;
and it never would have been made but for circumstances which have
transpired since the decease of Colonel Burr. A mere allusion to these