William Marshall

“ And notable men were there for him to observe; vast forces moving for him to study. Thomas Jefferson had again become a member of the House after his vindication from threatened impeachment. Patrick Henry was a member, too, and William Cabell, Richard Henry Lee, Benjamin Harrison, and other men whose names have become historic. During Marshall's later years in the Legislature, James Madison, George Mason, William Grayson, Edmund Randolph, George Nicholas, and others of like stature became Marshall's colleagues. ”

“ This historic institution of learning turned out some of the ablest and best-educated men of the whole country. Wythe, Bland, Peyton and Edmund Randolph, Taylor of Caroline, Nicholas, Pendleton, Madison, and Jefferson are a few of the William and Mary's remarkable products. Every one of the most distinguished families of Virginia is found among her alumni. (See Catalogue of Alumni, History of William and Mary College, 73-147. An error in this list puts John Marshall in the class of 1775 instead of that of 1780; also, he did not graduate.) ”

“ Twenty-four years afterwards William Wirt, then at the summit of his brilliant career, advising Francis Gilmer upon the art of oratory, recalled Marshall's argument in the British Debts case as an example for Gilmer to follow. Wirt thus contrasts Marshall's method with that of Campbell on the same occasion:—
"Campbell played off all his Apollonian airs; but they were lost. Marshall spoke, as he always does, to the judgment merely and for the simple purpose of convincing. Marshall was justly pronounced one of the greatest men of the country ”

“ See infra, chap. II. When Leeds Parish was organized, we find Thomas Marshall its leading vestryman. He was always a stanch churchman.
[64] Jones, 35; Burnaby,58. But see Maxwell in William and Mary College Quarterly, xix, 73-103; and see Bruce: Econ., i, 425, 427, 585, 587.
[65] "Though tobacco exhausts the land to a prodigious degree, the proprietors take no pains to restore its vigor; they take what the soil will give and abandon it when it gives no longer. They like better to clear new lands than to regenerate the old." (De Warville, 439; and see Fithian, 140.) ”

“ Fourteen years after Marshall's last volume appeared, Justice William Johnson of the Supreme Court published an account of the [Pg 267] period [734] covered by Marshall's work, and it was severely criticized in the North American Review. Jefferson cheers the despondent author and praises his "inestimable" history: "Let me ... implore you, dear Sir, to finish your history of parties.... We have been too careless of our future reputation, while our tories will omit nothing to place us in the wrong." For example, Marshall's "Washington," that "five-volumed libel, ... ”

“ It is important to emphasize the fact that Marshall adhered in his opinions to the Constitution as written, not only because it is a fact which must be recognized if we are to understand the correct value of his work in the field of constitutional law, but also because there exists to-day a popular impression that by implication he stretched to the utmost the powers of the Federal government. ”

“ He was also secretary of the extension movement initiated by the university, and gained for it the success which invariably attended any organising work that he undertook.
Marshall was a man of great and tireless energy, and his attractive personality rendered him very popular with his friends, colleagues, and students. He was an excellent gymnast, and kept himself in training by constant practice. His chief recreation was mountain climbing. ”

“ He was a member of the Virginia Assembly in 1782–1791 and again in 1795–1797; and in 1788, he took a leading part in the Virginia Convention called to act on the proposed constitution for the United States, with Madison ably urging the ratification of that instrument. In 1795 Washington offered him the attorney-generalship, and in 1796, after the retirement of James Monroe, the position of minister to France. Marshall declined both offers because his situation at the bar appeared to him “to be more independent and not less honourable than any other,” and his “preference for it was decided.” ”

“ Each year added to his reputation and made for a better appreciation of his intellectual and moral qualities. The bar of the Supreme Court during his chief-justiceship was the most brilliant which the United States has ever known. Leaders, not only of legal, but political thought were among its members; one, Webster, was a man of genius and commanding position. To a very great degree Marshall impressed on the members of this bar and on the profession generally his own ideas of the correct interpretation of the Constitution and his own love for the union. ”

“ There was John Marshall, once Chief Justice of the United States; once a patriot soldier at Valley Forge; once presiding at the trial of Aaron Burr—whose hand had been raised in a bolder assault; but always the champion of law, the lover of order, the son of republican independence. There hung the portrait of Captain Lawrence—and his dying words carried new courage to the hearts of the mourners: “Don’t Give Up the Ship!”
There was Madison, whose seat of government had been driven from the capital when the British assailed the nation in the war of 1812 ”

“ Thus the theory that animals recapitulate in their own development the ancestry of the race will never be forgotten by those who heard it compressed into the pregnant phrase, ‘They climb up their genealogical tree.’
Perhaps Marshall's greatest distinction was his capacity for organisation. As secretary, and subsequently as chairman, of the board of studies, Marshall rendered most valuable services in the founding and administration of the Victoria University. The correlation of the different sciences in the Faculty of Science is largely due to his labours. ”

“ Canada being considered as the source of all these evils, its conquest continued to be the favourite object of Massachusetts. At length, King William yielded to the solicitations of that colony and determined to employ a force for the reduction of Quebec. Unfortunately the first part of the plan was to be executed in the West Indies, where the capture of Martinique was contemplated. While on that service a contagious fever attacked both the land and sea forces; and, before they reached Boston, thirteen hundred sailors, and eighteen hundred soldiers, were buried. ”

“ Yet in matters pertaining to constitutional construction, they seem to have had hardly any other function than to add the weight of their silent concurrence to the decision of their great chief. Thus the task of expounding the constitution during the most critical period of its history was his, and it was given to him to preside over the Supreme Court when it was called upon to decide four cases of vital importance: Marbury v. Madison, M‘Culloch v. Maryland, Cohens v. Virginia and Gibbons v. Ogden. In each of these cases it is Marshall who writes the opinion of the court ”

“ "Death had to take him sleeping," said Vice-President Marshall; "for if Roosevelt had been awake, there would have been a fight." ”

“ It is time to be old,
To take in sail. (Emerson.)
The last years of Marshall's life were clouded with sadness, almost despair. His health failed; his wife died; the Supreme Court was successfully defied; his greatest opinion was repudiated and denounced by a strong and popular President; his associates on the Bench were departing from some of his most cherished views; and the trend of public events convinced him that his labor to construct an enduring nation, to create institutions of orderly freedom, to introduce stability and system into democracy, had been in vain. ”

“ Conspicuous in the ranks of Federalists, and unsurpassed in debate, was a tall and gaunt young man, with beaming countenance, eyes of piercing brilliancy, and an indescribable kingliness of bearing, who was by and by to become chief justice of the United States, and by his masterly and far-reaching decisions to win a place side by side with Madison and Hamilton among the founders of our national government. John Marshall, second to none among all the illustrious jurists of the English race, was then, at the age of thirty-three, the foremost lawyer in Virginia. ”

“ It was thus that Joseph Story, when a very young lawyer, first fell under Marshall's spell. "I love his laugh," he wrote; "it is too hearty for an intriguer,—and his good temper and unwearied patience are equally agreeable on the bench and in the study." [227] And Marshall wore well. The longer and more intimately men associated with him, the greater their fondness for him. ”

“ The appointment of Story to the Supreme Bench was, like the other determining circumstances in Marshall's career, providential.
Few characters in American history are more attractive than the New England lawyer and publicist who, at the age of thirty-two, took his place at Marshall's side on the Supreme Bench. Hand [Pg 96] some, vivacious, impressionable, his mind was a storehouse of knowledge, accurately measured and systematically arranged. He read everything, forgot nothing. His mental appetite was voracious, and he had a very passion for research. ”

“ When Washington was preparing the final stroke, darkness fell. The exhausted Americans, their clothing drenched with sweat, slept on their arms upon the field of battle, their General-in-Chief himself lying on the ground among the living, the wounded, and the dead. Somewhere on that hard-fought ground, Captain-Lieutenant John Marshall stretched himself by his comrades. Washington was determined to press the attack at break of day. But at midnight the British stole away so silently that the Americans did not hear a sound from their retreat. ”

“ Not more was John Marshall the chief of the accomplished and able men who sat with him on the Supreme Bench at Washington than, even in his advancing years, he was the leader of the convivial spirits who gathered to pitch quoits, drink julep and punch, tell stories, sing songs, make speeches, and play pranks under the trees of Richmond. ”

“ This is not to be wondered at, for, writing twenty years afterward, when Marshall as Chief Justice was at the height of his career, his sister-in-law testifies that his "total negligence of person ... often produced a blush on her [Marshall's wife's] cheek." [530] But he finally secured lodgings, was inoculated, and, made secure from the attacks of the dreaded scourge, back he fared to Virginia and Mary Ambler.
And Marshall made love as he made war, with all his might. A very hurricane of a lover he must have been ”

“ It all came to this, he said, Union or Dissolution, thus again repeating the argument Washington had urged in his letter to Randolph. "Let that glorious pride which once defied the British thunder, reanimate you again," he cried dramatically. [1203] But his fervor, popularity, and influence were not enough.
Marshall, when he came to speak later in the debate, made the same mistake. No more striking illustration exists of how public men, in the hurry and pressure of large affairs, forget the most important events, even when they themselves were principal actors in them. ”

“ John Marshall lived well into the nineteenth century, and his great work was to interpret that Constitution to the country, to give it the meaning which it has for us to-day. Marshall was a Virginian, was just of age at the outbreak of the Revolution, and served in the American army for five years, enlisting as a private and rising to the rank of captain. At the close of the war, he studied law, gained a prominent place in the politics of his state, drew the attention of Washington by his unusual ability, and in 1800 was appointed by him secretary of state. ”

“ Washington tells us that in his surveying trips, he frequently slept on the floor in the room of a settler's cabin where the fireplace was and where husband, wife, children, and visitors stretched themselves for nightly rest; and he remarks that the person was lucky who got the spot nearest the fireplace. [168]
[Pg 54] At the end of a year the embryo Scottish clergyman's character, ability, and services having met the approval of Thomas Marshall and his fellow vestrymen, Thompson returned to England for orders. [169] So ended John Marshall's first instruction from a trained teacher. ”

“ Within a few days after he had become the Federalist candidate, an anonymous writer, signing himself "Freeholder," published in the Richmond newspapers an open letter to Marshall asking him whether he was for the Constitution; whether the welfare of America depended on a foreign alliance; whether a closer connection with Great Britain was desirable; whether the Administration's [Pg 387] conduct toward France was wise; and, above all, whether Marshall was "an advocate of the alien and sedition bills or in the event of your election will you use your influence to obtain a repeal of these laws?" ”

“ With this experience of what war meant, John Marshall could have returned to the safety of Oak Hill and have spent, at that pleasant fireside, the red years that were to follow, as indeed so many in the colonies who then and after merely prated of liberty, actually did. But it was not in the Marshall nature to support a cause with lip service only. Father and son chose the sterner part; and John Marshall was now about to be schooled for four years by grim instructors in the knowledge that strong and orderly government is necessary to effective liberty. ”

“ Thus does greatness, once achieved, throw upon a past career a glory that dazzles the historian's eye; and the early steps of advancement are seen and described as unasked and unwished honors paid by a discerning public to modest and retiring merit. Thus, too, research and fact are ever in collision [Pg 212] with fancy and legend. The cherished story about Marshall's resignation from the Council and "spontaneous" election to the Legislature from his home county is a myth. ”