l^excoA C^ci^la 130! E 302 .6 .n4 C4 Copy 1 Chief Justice John Marshall COMPLIMENTS OF EXERCISES ON THE EVENING OF FEBRUARY 4, 1901, IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT ROOM AT SAVANNAH, IN HONOR OF THE MEMORY OF CHIEF JUSTICE JOHN MARSHALL ADDRESS OF HON. EMORY SPEER DELIVERED AND PUBLISHED AT THE REQUEST OF THE CHATHAM COUNTY BAR a.^ MACON, GEORGIA: THE J. W. BTJRKE COMPANY, 1901. te K CORRESPONDENCE. Savannah, Ga., January 22d, 1901. The Honorable Emory Speer, United States Judge, Savannah, Ga. Dear Sir : In honor of the One Hundredth Anniversary of the appointment of John Marshall as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, the undersigned beg that you will address the members of the Bar of Chatham County at the United States Court room on February 4th next, at such time as will be most agreeable to you, on the life and times of the greatest of the Chief Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States. Please send your reply to Judges Falligant and Norwood. Very respectfully yours, R. Falligant, Judge Superior Court Eastern Judicial Circuit of Georgia. Thomas M. Norwood, Judge City Court of Savannah, and Eighty Members of the Bar. Chambers United States Judge. Savannah, Ga., January 25th, 1901. To the Honorable Robert Falligant, Judge of the Superior Court, Eastern Judicial Circuit of Georgia, and To the Honorable Thomas M. Norwood, Judge of the City Court of Savannah. Gentlemen : I have the great honor to acknowledge the letter signed by yourselves and the members of the learned and renowned Bar of Savannah for whom you preside, inviting me to deliver on the fourth of February, an address on the life and times of Chief Justice Marshall. Believe me that such an invitation from no other body could give me pleasure more sincere, nor could I be assigned a duty more congenial than to attempt to express the reverence I have for the great Expounder of the Constitution. I fear, however, that the continued and exhausting exactions made upon me by the business of the courts now in daily session will seriously interfere with the proper performance of this duty, and while I accept with cordial thanks the honoring invitation, I bespeak in advance the indulgence of my professional brethren. As suggested in 3'^our letter, I take the liberty of indicating that the address v;ill be made at a session of the United States Court, in the United States Court room, at 8 o'clock Monday evening, the fourth of February, at which the Judges, mem- bers of the Bar, their families and friends, and friends of the Court, and more especially the lady friends of us all will be cordially welcomed. I remain. Gentlemen, with great esteem. Very sincerely yours, Emory Spebr. Pursuant to the foregoing correspondence, at 8 o'clock on the evening of the 4th of February, a brilliant audience having crowded the United States Court room at Savannah, large num- bers vainlv seeking admission, Hon. Robert Falligant, Judge Superior Court Eastern Judicial Circuit of Georgia, Hon. Thomas M. Norwood, Judge City Court of Savannah, and Hon. Emory Speer, Judge United States District Court Southern Distridl of Georgia, took seats on the bench, court was formally opened by John M. Barnes, Esq., United States Mar- shal for the Southern Distri(5t of Georgia, when the following exercises were had : Judge Falligant addressing the audience, said : " The exercises will now be opened by prayer by Rev. Bas- com Anthony, of Trinity Methodist Church." Mr. Anthony offered the following prayer, all present reverently standing : O, God, our Father, thou art our God and the God of our fathers. We worship thee uot only for the multitude of thy mercies but for the glory of thy character and the perfe<5lion of thy being. We bless thee that thou hast shown thyself strong in our behalf ; that thou didst lead forth our fore fathers, a feeble folk, and establish them in the earth, sheltering them with thy mighty hand, until thou hast made us their children to inherit the fulness of the earth and to have place among the mighty. We thank thee that thou didst not forsake our fathers ; neither forsake thou us, but lead us as thou didst lead them, so that our feet shall abide in a sure place. We thank thee that when they were oppressed thou didst send them a deliverer, and that when an emergency was upon them thou didst always raise up a man equal to the demands of the hour. We give thee thanks for the great man whose civic virtues we are met this night to recount. May we never lack for capa- ble, honest and God-fearing men in all our judiciary. Give us men to sit in our courts who shall administer unto the people justice tempered with mercy, so that our laws shall be revered and our statutes observed ; so that the mob come not and vio- lence be not found in all the land. Bless thy servant, this minister of justice, who shall speak to us at this tinie of our illustrious dead. Give unto him words worthy bf this occasion and of the great man whose life's work shall be brought before us. May the influence of this hour not exhaust itself in admiration of the virtues of the dead, but may we reproduce in our lives the civic worth we eulogize, and illustrate in our doings the virtues we commemorate. Grant these things unto us that we and our children may abide in peace in the land which thou hast given us, making it not only freedom's home, but by our faithfulness to thee and to one another making it none other than the land of thy delight and the very gate of heaven. These things we ask for Christ's sake. Amen- On the conclusion of the prayer, Judge Falligant arose and addressed the audience as follows : ADDRESS OF JUDGE FALLIGANT. Ladies and Gentlemen : This occasion should be one of deep impress to every patriotic American. We are here to do homage to the charac- ter, ability, and illustrious services of the greatest of Chief Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States upon the centennial of his accession to that high and dignified oflace. The Bench and Bar of the country unite this day with the peo- ple all over the land in universal acclaim of Chief Justice John Marshall. A great English statesman said, "The American Constitu- tion is the most wonderful work ever struck off at a given time by the brain and purpose of man." John Marshall became and was the great expounder of its dormant and far reaching powers. "He helped to achieve independence by his sword in his youth, and in his manhood created a nation by his judicial pen." Of him it has been felicitously said, " Marshall found the constitution paper and made it a power ; he found it a skeleton and clothed it with flesh and blood." Those familiar with our earlier history recall the intensity of party passion perhaps fiercer than at any other period. When the great constitutional decisions were pronounced, which are the foundation of Marshall's imperishable fame, another great Virginia, patriot and thinker, Thomas Jefferson, read them with consternation. Jealous of the reserved rights of the States he wrote, "The germ of the dissolution of our Federal government is in the constitution of the Federal judici- ary, an irresponsible party working like gravity by night and by day, gaining a little to-day and a little to-morrow and advancing its noiseless step like a thief over the field of juris- didlion until all shall be usurped from the States and the gov- ernment of all be consolidated into one." The political history of our country was constantly agitated by conflidling constitutional interpretations. Some were set- tled by that august tribunal the Supreme Court, which Marshall 8 reg:arded the fiual arbiter, but others remained burning ques- tions until the fires were quenched in patriot blood and a final decision rendered in the awful arbitrament of the fiercest and most prolonged civil war the world has known. It was said of an ancient h^ro, " Ulysses has gone upon his travels and there is none in Ithica can bend his bow." This was never true of America. In all crises of her his- tory men have arisen to fill and illustrate the full measure of their country's greatness. Since the days of Marshall no jus- tice of the vSupreme Court has been regarded by the Bench and Bar of the country as more able than the late Associate Justice Samuel F. Miller. In the light of Jefferson's prophetic words it is well to recall what Associate Justice Miller said on the occasion of the Centennial of the Constitution of the United States. Our country had but recently emerged from the supreme test of the most colossal and titanic struggle of history. As the mouthpiece of the Supreme Court he said : " May it be long before such an awful lesson is again needed to decide upon disputed questions of constitutional law. It is not out of place to remark that while the pendulum of public opinion was swung with much force away from the extreme point of States-right dodlrine, there may be danger of its reach- ing the extreme point on the other side. In my opinion the just and equal observance of the rights of the States and of the General Government, as defined by the present constitution is as necessary to the permanent prosperity of our country and to its existence for another century, as it has been for the one whose close we are now celebrating." I must apologize for this brief glance at a great past because I know you are eagerly awaiting the thrilling touch of a master hand. The man and the occasion meet in a brilliant and dis- tinguished Georgian ; and I as a Georgian take peculiar pride and pleasure in introducing one whose fame is already national as a jurist, statesman, and orator, in the plentitude of his splen- did intellectual culture and power and in all the glory of his matchless eloquence, the Hon. Emory Speer. ADDRESS OF JUDGE SPEER. Eadies and Gentlemen : It is interesting to refledl that John Marshall was born in the beautiful county of Fauquier in Virginia, in a terri- tory more than a century thereafter, to become famous to the veterans of Eee, as " Mosby's Confederacy." He was born on the 24th of September, 1755. His father, Thomas Marshall, came from the celebrated county of Westmoreland, referred to by a Governor of Virginia, with a degree of State pride not as yet altogether extindl in Virginians, as " the prolific soil that grows Presidents." It is true that Washington, Madison and Monroe all came from the county of the sturdy patriot, the father of the famous Chief Justice. Marshall, the father, was born the same year with Washington. He was indeed the companion of the patriot commander, when the latter surveyed for his friend Eord Fairfax, the primeval wilderness shading with its imperial frondage the fertile and famous valley of Virginia, and, like Washington, he was one of the first to fly to arms, to resist the aggressions of the British Ministry. He was successively the Colonel in the Third Virginia Infantry, in Woodford's Brigade, and the First Virginia artillery in the Continental line, and fought with distinguished valor at Germantown and Brandy- wine, having three horses killed under him, and largely through his skill and courage at Brandywine the defeated Con- tinental forces were enabled to extricate themselves from dis- aster. Two years after the treaty of peace. Col. Marshall, v/ith the younger members of his family, traversed the romantic passes of the westward mountains, and founded a new home in the heart of the Bluegrass, in a now renowned county of Kentucky, which he caused to be called "Woodford" in honor of his Briga- dier, under whom he had led " the ragged continentals fearing not." Of the father of John Marshall, Justice Story said : " I have often heard the Chief Justice speak of him in terms of the deepest affedliou and reverence. I do not here refer to lO his public remarks, but to his private and familiar conversa- tions with me, when there was no other listener. Indeed he never named his father on these occasions, without dwelling on his character with a fond and winning enthusiasm. It was a theme on which he broke out with spontaneous eloquence, and in a spirit of the most persuasive confidence he would delight to expatiate upon his virtues and talents. ' My father ' would he say with kindled feelings and emphasis, * my father was a far abler man than any of his sons. To him I owe the solid foundation of all my own success in life.' " Oh, what a heritage was this! The tender devotion, the profound gratitude, the unbounded veneration of a son for such a father, incomparably more priceless than wealth, beyond the dreams of avarice, incomparably more priceless to the forma- tion of charadler, to usefulness and happiness in this life, and to the hope of eternal happiness in that to come. Of the mother of John Marshall much is not known. She belongs to that period in the society of the Old Dominion so delightfully portrayed by Thackeray in his "Virginians," but I am quite sure, that unlike the I^ady Esmonds of her times, she did not in stately brocade or rustling silks glide through the mazes of the minuet, or prance with alacrity in the contra dance. She had other engagements. She was the mother of fifteen children, of whom the future Chief Justice was the eld- est, and such was her solicitous care that she reared them all until they were grown. It will be seen that this noble Virginia dame, measured well up to the standard of feminine greatness, defined by the malice of Napoleon, for the contemplation of Madame de Stael. Her maiden name was Mary Isham Keith. Her father was an Episcopal minister and a full cousin of that famous Field Marshal James Keith, perhaps the most renowned of the lyieutenants of the Great Frederick. It is said that all great men are the sons of great mothers. The rule is general, but not universal. It is safer perhaps to say that great men are almost invariably the offspring of parents whose marriage has been the outgrowth of mutual disinterested affe(5lion, and whose devotion is ever ardent, as when the first wave of feeling spray-like broke into motion, and they knew that they loved. In the great Chief Justice, notwithstanding the noble quali- II ties of the father, I think one may see indications that much of the chara(5ler of the son came from the maternal side. In Car- lyle's Life of Frederick the Great there are recorded many traits in Field Marshal Keith, which are discernible in his American cousin. He is a soldier of fortune and, like the expa- triated Scottish gentlemen of that day, offers his sword wher- ever he may have honorable service. Frederick earnestly watches him while he is serving Russia, and concludes what he does is done in " a solid, quietly eminent and valiant manner." "Sagacious, skillful imperturbable, without fear and without noise, a man quietly ever ready." Finally nine years before our Chief Justice is born, his service with the Russians being ended, Frederick grasps eagerly at the Scottish soldier's offer to serve him. " Well worth talking to, though left very dim to us in the Books," writes the same biographer, of a later time, "is Marshal Keith who has been growing gradually with the King, and with everybody ever since he came to these parts in 1747. A man of Scotch type ; the broad accent, with its saga- cities, veracities, with its steadfastly fixed moderation, and its sly twinkles of defensive humor, is still audible to us through the foreign wrappages. Not given to talk, unless there is something to be said, but well capable of it then." All through the wonderful pages of this story of the last of the great Kings, this Scotch cousin of John Marshall is showing these Marshall traits. At the famed battle of Prag, fought May 6, 1757, which sounded through all the world, also commemorated in a com- position alleged to be musical, with which vigorous pianists, mostly feminine, from that day to this have deafened mankind. At the glorious vidlory of Rossbach. At the siege of Olmutz. On the retreat to Koniggratz. At Breslau, and on the bloody day at Hochkirch, where, having saved the Prussian Army, shot through the heart, "Keith's fightings are suddenly all done." "In Hochkirch Church," writes Carlyle, "there is still a fine, modestly impressive Monument to Keith ; modest Urn of black marble on a Pedestal of gray, and in gold letters an inscription." in I^atin, which "goes through you like the clang of steel." "Frederick's sorrow over him is itself, a monument. Twenty years after, Keith had from his Master a Statue, in Berlin, which still stands in the Wilhelm Platz there." 12 Early evincing the power and saueness of his mind, by a strong love of literature, it is said that the future Chief Justice at the age of twelve could recite a large portion of the writings of Pope, and was familiar with Dryden, Shakespeare and Mil- ton. At the age of fourteen he was sent to the classical aca- demy of the Messrs. Campbell, Scotchmen, who had established a famous school in Westmoreland county, where Washington and Monroe and many other famous Virginians had received instrudlion. At the age of eighteen he began the study of law, but was not long permitted to devote himself to the service of that jeal- ous mistress. The war of the Revolution came and the volun- teers of Culpepper, Orange and Fauquier counties organized themselves into a regiment of Minute Men. These were the citizen soldiery of whom John Randolph afterwards said that the}'' were " raised in a minute, armed in a minute, marched iu a minute, fought in a minute, vanquished iu a minute." Appreciating his forceful qualities, his neighbors gave him the appointment of First I^ieutenant in one of the companies. The military career of the future Chief Justice was not brilliant but it was marked by quiet endurance, adtive service and con- stant valor. He was personally engaged with his command at the bloody defeats of Brandywine and Germantown and at the scarcely less bloody, but partial vi(5lory, on that torrid and fam- ous day at Monmouth, and, with the utmost loyalty to the patri- otic cause went into winter quarters at Valley Forge, where also were his father and two brothers with Washington's starving and exhausted army. The story of that memorable encamp- ment is, in every word, radiant with glory for our revolutionary sires. The cold was intense and yet the soldiers were often almost naked and as a rule they were without shoes, so that they could be tracked by the blood from their frozen feet. A messmate of Marshall during this period was I^ieut. Phillip Slaughter. He relates that his own supply of linen was one shirt and that while having this washed he wrapped himself in a blanket. All the while, however, that renowned Prussian martinet, Baron Steuben, was drilling the continental army, and Slaughter had wristbands and a collar made from the bosom of his shirt to complete his uniform for parade. Had he been 13 compelled to throw off his uniform coat, his under-garment would have resembled the vest of Porthos in Dumas' delight- ful story. Of Marshall, this comrade writes affedlionately : " He was the best tempered man I ever knew. During his sufferings at Valley Forge, nothing discouraged, nothing dis- turbed him. If he had only bread to eat it was just as well ; if only meat, it made no difference. If any of the officers mur- mured at the deprivations, he would shame them by his good natured raillery, or encourage them by his own exuberance of spirits. He was an excellent companion, and idolized by the soldiers and his brother officers, whose gloomy hours he enliv- ened by an inexhaustible fund of anecdote." It was at this period that he began to show his judicial capa- city and fairness of mind. He was constantly chosen by his brother officers to decide their many disputes, and his judgment in writing was usually accompanied by such sound reasons that the irritable disputants were generally satisfied. In addition to his service in the field, he was appointed Deputy Judge Advo- cate of the army, and thrown into personal relations with Washington, won the enduring confidence and affe(5lion of His Excellency. It appears, however, that the patriots had need for his services, *other than those judicial. He was a member of the party covering the forlorn hope who, under Mad Anthony Wayne, swarmed up the precipitous height at Stony Point, and with the bayonet mastered entrenchments, which the scien- tific leaders of the British Army had deemed impregnable. That part of the Virginia line to which he was attached being now mustered out, left without a command, the young patriot went to Virginia to obtain service with the new levies from that State. Repairing to the old capitol at Williamsburg to await the hesitating adlion of the State legislature, he took advantage of the opportunity to attend the law ledlures delivered by the famous Chancellor Wythe of William and Mary College, and as a consequence in the ensuing summer was enabled to obtain a license to pradlice law. We may not safely conclude that at this period of his young and vigorous life, it was all work and no play with the soldier student. At Williamsburg, according to a biographer of Jeffer- son, " there were cakes and ale in those days, young girls and 14 dancing at the Raleigh tavern, cards and horses ; and the young Virginians had their full share of all these good things." Jef- ferson had read law with this same Chancellor Wythe, whose private secretary was Henry Clay, the "Mill boy of the 'Slashes,'" that region for the amphibians not far away. Marshall, however, did not fail to make repeated efforts to again obtain adlive service with the patriot forces and with that hope a(5lually walked from his home in Virginia to Philadel- phia. The war, however, was about over. There was a redundancy of oflScers of the Virginia line, and no additional troops being raised, he was unwilling to remain longer a super- numerary and in 1781 resigned his commission, and entered upon the pradlice of the law in his native county of Fauquier. The young soldier lawyer rose rapidly at the bar. His career was not as brilliant from the beginning as that of another soldier lawyer of Scotch descent, who two years before had been called to the bar by the Society of lyincoln's Inn, for after the first argument of Thomas Erskine before I/Ord Mansfield, the attorneys flocked around him with their retainers, and he could rush home to his wife and children flourishing a handful of banknotes and shouting " a nonsuit to the cowheel and tripe." Yet the success of the young Virginian barrister was steady and progressive. With a Keith like modesty he attributed his suc- cess to the friendship of his old comrades in arms, a soldierly disposition which in more recent times has contributed reward and renown to some of our own contemporaries. The close of the Revolution was a fortunate period for the young pradlitioner. The changes of property, the innumerable outstanding debts, contradls, and old controversies long delayed, were fruitful sources of litigation, profitable, at least to counsel. So remarkable was the success of Marshall, that after two years pradlice in Fauquier and adjacent counties he had established a reputation, augmented by his distinguished services in the Virginia Assembly, which justified him in removing his oflfice to Richmond, where almost at once he took the lead among the renowned lawyers of that famous Capital. And they were foe- men worthy of his steel. Among them were such names as James Knuis, Alexander Campbell, Benjamin Botts, Edmund Randolph, John Wickham, and most famous of all Patrick Henry. 15 The eloquent William Wirt has left us a graphic account of Marshall's style of argument in the courts : "All his eloquence consists in the apparently deep self-con- vidlion and the emphatic earnestness of his manner ; the cor- respondent simplicity and energy of his style ; the close and logical connedlion of his thoughts ; and the easy gradations by which he opens his lights on the attentive mind of his hearers. The audience are never permitted to pause for a moment. There is no stopping to weave garlands of flowers, to hang in festoons around a favorite argument. On the contrary every sentence is progressive ; every idea sheds a new light on the subjea." On January 3, 1783, the happy young life of John Marshall received its crowning joy by his intermarriage with Mary Wil- lis Ambler, a daughter of Jaqueline Ambler, Treasurer of Vir- ginia. We are afforded this charming account of his meeting with his sweetheart from a letter from her sister, Mrs. Edward Carrington, published in that interesting work " Colonial Days and Dames" by Anne HoUingsworth Wharton. It seems that the bachelor lawyer had a mind to attend a ball at York and his coming was not unheralded. " Our expedlations," writes Mrs. Carrington, "were raised to the highest pitch, and the little circle of York was on tiptoe on his arrival. Our girls particularly, were emulous who should be the first introduced; it is remarkable that my sister, then only fourteen and diffident beyond all others, declared that we were giving ourselves use- less trouble, for that she, for the first time, had made up her mind to go to the ball (though she had not even been to a dancing school), and was resolved to set her cap at him and eclipse us all. This in the end proved true, and at the first introdudlion he became devoted to her." This union he declared continued the chief happiness of his life and it endured in uninterrupted affedtion and confidence for a period of more than fifty years. We now approach the period of his services as a statesman. His sagacity had enabled him to observe with clearness the defecfls of the government which had for a paper title the old Articles of Confederation, that " pageant of State sovereignity," which all now agree was a government in name and not in fadt. i6 It was ou the 19th of October, 1781, when the famous regulars of I^ord Coruwallis marched out of their works at Yorktown and in the presence of the spic and span regiments of France, and the unkempt but seasoned and warlike veterans of Wash- ington, piled their arms in capitulation. Their bands were not permitted to play either a British or American martial air, and so the red-coated fife and drum corps of King George's army, as in lugubrious procession it marched by, struck up the music of an old song entitled " The world turned upside down," doubtless singularly expressive of their emotions at that time. The preceding years since the "shot heard round the world" at I^exington on the 19th of April, 1775, had been pregnant with the fortunes of America and 5'et for the last term of seven months and a half of the adlual struggle, the war was carried on without a government save the uncertain, insuj6&- cient and largely inutile authority of the Continental Congress. This body termed itself " The Delegates appointed by the good people of these Colonies." Benjamin Franklin, with his rare sagacity, had previously suggested to Congress a scheme for union between the colonies until reconciliation with the mother country, and if that should fail, a perpetual union. For a time his suggestion met with little favor. When, however, the overmastering desire for complete independence dominated the delegates they began to think of union, and so, on the 12th day of June, 1776, the day after the committee was selected to draft the declaration of independence, another committee was appointed to prepare and digest a form of confederation. There was much debate, many changes, and not until the 15th of November, 1777, a year and six months after the debate was begun, did the draft receive the final approval of Congress. It had now to be adopted by the States. There was much hesitation and obje(5lion, and not until March i, 1781, when John Hanson and Daniel Carroll representing the State of Maryland affixed their names to the instrument, did the Thirteen States possess any semblance of an orderly Union. In the absence of anything like Union, the previous years were teeming with events, which every patriot should know, which every American youth, who for a moment has permitted 17 himself to indulge in a distrust of our government, should have stamped upon his memory as if they were chiseled into the liv- ing adamant. The Continental Congress had been without credit. It had no power to colledl taxes, and in the absence of such power taxes were not paid. Therefore obligations of Congress could not be paid and they were dishonored. At the end of the year 1779 a Continental dollar was worth less than two and a half cents. A common expression was that a wagon load of money would not buy a wagon load of provisions. A metaphor of depreciation " not worth a continental" originated then and somewhat expanded still enlivens our vocabulary. It is not an agreeable refledlion to recall that our ally the King of France was lending us money wrung by merciless taxation from the sans culottes, while man for man, the American people were far richer than the people of France. Such is the debility of gov- ernment where there is no power to compel the citizen to bear his share of its burdens. The leaders of the patriots were in despair. Patriotic and devoted regiments, unpaid, naked and starving paraded with their arms, declaring their purpose to go home to obtain food. " Nothing stopped them" writes a con- temporary "save the influence of the commander in chief whom they almost adore." Washington wrote "Certain I am unless Congress is vested with powers by the several States competent to the great pur- poses of war, or assumes them as matter of right, our cause is lost." I^aFayette, writing to that beautiful young wife from whose arms he had flown, to draw his stainless sword for the cause of freedom, declared : "No European army would suffer the one-tenth part of what the American troops suffer. It takes citizens to support hunger nakedness, toil, the total want of pa}-^, which constitutes the condition of our soldiers, the most patient that are to be found in the world." Much had been hoped from the Articles of Confederation, but how futile they were, was now to be seen. The prophetic mind of Hamilton a year previously had enabled him to put his finger on the fatal defedls. Writing of the projedl to Duane he stated "It is neither fit for war nor peace. The idea of an i8 uncontrollable sovereignity in each state will defeat the powers given to Congress and make our union feeble and precarious." The astute Ministry of Great Britain saw this clearly for when peace was declared on September 3, 1783, in its proclamation, they recognized the independence of each of the States named in their successive order, refusing to recognize the indepen- dence of the United States. This malign diplomacy recalls the fable of the woodman in Aesop who could not break the fagot but found it an easy task when he essayed to break the separate twigs. The old Confederation termed itself the United vStates of America, but it had no executive, no judiciary, not a dollar to pay a judge or juror, no power to define crimes against the gen- eral government, nor any procedure to bring criminals to jus- tice howsoever flagrant the wrong may have been. Said a writer of that period "they may declare everything and do nothing," and G.na\\y the Congress of the Confederation after repeated efforts under the impossible system to better affairs silently and informally disbanded. The French Minister wrote to his Government, " there is now in America no general gov- ernment, no president nor head of any one administrative department." To nobody save perhaps Hamilton and Washington were these conditions more plainly apparent than they were to John Marshall. "We may believe that the iron had entered his soul when flaming with patriotic fire, he had trudged afoot from Virginia to Philadelphia to take anew his place with the colors, and a ragged penniless captain of the Continental line, he had been denied admittance to a Philadelphia inn. He knew that John Adams our first Minister to the Court of St. James, though met by the venerable Oglethorpe, the founder of our State who had survived to first welcome the first Minister of the United States, was treated with contempt by the British Ministry who sent no ambassador in return. He knew that when our com- missioners offered a commercial treaty to Great Britain they were asked whether they had credentials from the separate States ; he knew that the public debt could not be renewed ; that the interest could not be met; thatcivil war, bloodshed and disintegration would follow if an attempt to coerce a state to pay 19 its assessment was made, that oursecuritieswere therefore value- less, that British soldiers yet held Detroit and other Western posts, confessedly within the American boundaries fixed by the treaty of peace; that Spain, controlling the Mississippi, was striving to withdraw the allegiance of our people west of the Alleghanies ; that each of the Thirteen States was a separate colledlion distridl, with revenue laws antagonistic to the others; that Counedlicut taxed Massachusetts higher than British imports ; that his gallant comrades of the Revolution without pa)^ or pensions or hope, had repaired to their homes of penury and distress and that our country at home and abroad was rapidl)^ accumulating the contempt of mankind. How John Marshall's soul must have thrilled with joy, when the state of his birth, forwarded to the Constitutional Convention at Phila- delphia the gilded roll of its delegates, at the head of the list the name, George Washington. With what exultation then, did he hail the efforts of that immortal body, who with patriotism the most disinterested, " prophetical and prescient of whate'er the Future had in store " labored with swerveless devotion to con- strudl for our country a Constitution, worthy of its heroic past, adequate to the necessities of the hour, comprehending in its majestic design powers to provide for all the exigencies of an expanding civilization unparalleled in the annals of man, securing the enlightenment, the happiness, the freedom of un- counted millions of the imperial race, who in ages to come will turn with ever increasing adoration to the flag of the freeman's home and hope. Nor was this great Virginian a sentimental, idle supporter of the Constitution. His election to the Virginia Convention of 1766 by the people of Henrico county, then including the city of Richmond, evinced in a striking waj'^ his strong hold upon the affecflions and the confidence of his people. By an unmis- takable majority they were opposed to the adoption of the Con- stitution. They had been wooed into a devotion for separate and unqualified State sovereignty by the native " wood notes wild" of Patrick Henry. On the other hand John Marshall lost no opportunity to make effedtive his cordial advocacy of the Constitution. He was assured that if he would become a candidate, and would oblige himself to vote against the Consti- 20 tution, all opposition would be withdrawn, otherwise he was warned that his eledlion would be contested. He declared " I will vote for the Constitution if I get a chance." The convention composed of renowned representatives- of the " first families of Virginia," met at Richmond on the 2d of June, 1788. The people of the Southern States perhaps more than any others, rejoiced in the opportunity to hear the joint discussions of their famous men, and the Virginia of that day afforded no exception to the rule. The graphic pen of William Wirt, in his life of Patrick Henry, gives us a lively account of the momentous gathering. " Gentlemen," writes he, "from every quarter of the State, were seen thronging to the metropo- lis and speeding their eager way to the building in which the convention held its meeting. Day after day from morning until night the galleries of the house were continually filled with an anxious crowd, who forgot the inconvenience of their situation in the excess of their enjoyment." Marshall was ever prone more to listen than to speak, but when he came forward, with quiet intrepidity as v/ise as fear- less, as Ivanhoe in the Lists of Ashby smote with the point of his lance, and rang again the shield of Brian duBois Guilbert, so he launched his attack upon the coryphaeus of the opposition, the renowned Patrick Henry. The story of this famous debate is familiar history. Patrick Henry struck every note of discord as only he could do, "We shall have a king" he cried, " the army will salute him as a monarch." He seized upon the terrors of a transient thunder storm and invoked the dreadful flash of lightning and the crash- ing of the thunder as marks of the displeasure of heaven upon the proposed Constitution. Marshall then but thirty-three years of age, seems to have impressed himself upon Heniy as a veritable Nestor. " I have " said Henry, " the highest respedl and vena-ation for the honorable gentleman. I have experi- enced his candor upon all occasions." Finally the resistless logic of Marshall, the temperate, lucid, impassive and adroit persuasions of Madison, and the quiet but irresistible power upon the hearts of his countrymen, wielded by the Silent Watchman at Mt. Vernon, prevailed upon the sons of the Old Dominion, and on June the 25th, by a majority of ten she cast 21 her lot with her sister States and voted for the Constitution. And now the Constitution was adopted, Washington the first President riding from Mt. Vernon to New York travel sir g the scene of many stricken fields, hailed with the acclamations of his countrymen, and by white robed choirs of his lovely coun- try women singing odes of welcome as they strewed flowers before him, now seeming more the venerable and venerated sage than the fearless, resolute warrior, with stately ceremonial was inau- gurated the first President of the United States, the government like some mighty machine began its rythmical movement, and the Nation was made. Oh my countrymen, when we contemplate our increasing millions, when we perceive how* they rejoice in the blessings of liberty and law, when we view our goodly heritage, stretching from where waves of summer seas spray the fronds and fruits of Porto Rico, to where frozen tides chafe Alaskan shores ; from the pine clad hills of Maine, to where the spicy breezes waft o'er the distant islands of the South Pacific, when we know that with all our past glories, our mission for humanity is scarcely begun, with what gratefulness and love should we dwell upon the memory of those great men of our race, who made this possible, who made this sure. It was but natural that John Marshall who took such great part in the formation of our government should soon be called to assist in its administration. In the Virginia Assembly, as Envoy to France, as a Mem- ber of Congress, as Secretary of State, he now successively served the people of his State and of the Nation. It was but natural that Marshall should have cherished the highest confi- dence in the wisdom and patriotism of the President, and he accorded an unwavering support to those measures of internal concern, and foreign policy, advised by that pure and exalted patriot, about which it now seems impossible that there could have been a difference of opinion among enlightened men. Appointed with Charles Cotesworth Pickney and Elbridge Gerry on a special mission to France to demand redress and reparation for the injuries committed upon our maritime inter- ests, it fell to the lot of the envoys to detedl and expose the per- fidy of Talleyrand, whose very name in diplomacy is the 22 synonym of all that is brilliant and all that is evil. Talley- rand, nevertheless, betrayed his ignorance of the American charadler, for it was clearly proven by the famous X. Y. Z. let- ters, published in this countr37- by Marshall audPinckney, that he had offered all that America required, provided the envoys would pay $250,000 for his private use and at the same time make a loan to the Dire6lor5^ We all know the scorn and in- dignation with which the proposition was repelled. Returning to America Marshall was met with cordial enthu- siasm everywhere. Mr. Jefferson, who did not love him, has left in a letter written to Madison a pleasing but rather malicious account of this reception, "Marshall was received here (Philadelphia)," he writes, " with the utmost eclat. The Secretary of State and many car- riages with all the city cavalry went to Frankford to meet him, and on his arrival here in the evening the bells rung till late in the night and immense crowds were collected to make part of the show, which was circuitously paraded through the streets before he was set down at the city tavern." A public dinner was given to the great Virginian by Congress, and it was at this dinner that the sentiment was proposed which re-echoed throughout the land and was received everywhere with shouts of acclamation, " Millions for defense but not a cent for tribute." The services rendered bj'^ Marshall in this mission to France were far reaching in their consequences, upon the future of our country. They opened the eyes of the quick sighted French statesmen, to the probity and force of the American character. They were made to understand the confidence of our people, in our vast but yet untested powers. While displeasing to Jeffer- son, the action of the envoys doubtless contributed to the suc- cess of that measure of his administration which adds most largely to his fame, for when a few years later Jefferson was President, and Napoleon was dispatching a powerful military force under his brother in law, to intrench French author- ity in the I^ouisiana territory, and America determined to resist, the First Consul promptly sold to our country, not only the city of New Orleans but the mighty Louisiana Purchase west of the Mississippi, now comprising many of the imperial states of the American Union. The effects of this mission 23 upon the fortunes of Marshall were more immediate. In the summer of 1798 he was tendered the position of Associate Jus- tice of the Supreme Court. A member of Mr. Adams cabinet was disposed to prefer Bushrod Washington, a nephew of the ex-President, but Mr. Adams wrote of Marshall, "He has raised the American people in their own esteem and if the influence of truth and just reasoned argument is not lost in Europe he has raised the consideration of the United States in that quarter." The appointment was made, but it was declined. It is said that a controlling reason for this declina- tion was the earnest solicitation of Washington that Marshall should accept a candidacy for Congress. Mr. Marshall's re-election to Congress was warmly opposed by Mr. Jefferson and his party. The contest was a severe one. It was industriously circulated that Patrick Henry who be- longed to the Jefferson party and whose name was a pillar of strength throughout the state was opposed to Marshall's elec- tion. But this noble Virginian betrayed a magnanimity and patriotism which the politicians of the present day might often imitate with profit to the country. Mr. Henry at once wrote to a friend in Richmond : "John Marshall and his colleagues exhibited the American character as respectable. France in the period of her most tri- umphant fortune beheld them as unappalled * * * ^ell Marshall I love him because he felt and acted as a republican, as an American. I really should give him my vote for Con- gress preferably to any citizen in the State at this junctnre, one only excepted and that one is in another line." That one was Washington. Mr. Marshall was elected, Congress convened, and one of his first duties was to announce in the House the death of the "hero, the patriot and the sage of America." On the 19th of December, 1789, with suppressed voice and deep emotion, Mr. Marshall addressed the chair and informed the country that " Washington lives now only in his own great actions, and in the hearts of an affectionate and afflicted people," He proceeded to offer the resolutions prepared by General Henry I^ee, the fam- ous Ivight Horse Harry of the Revolution, the son of Washing- ton's " Lowland beauty " and the father of our own immortal 24 Robert Edward I,ee. Those resolutions contained that itcper- ishable tribute " First in war, First in peace and First in the hearts of his countrymen." On the reorganization of Mr. Adams' cabinet, Mr. Marshall was nominated as Secretary of War. This he declined, but Mr. Pickering having been removed by the President from the State Department, Mr. Marshall accepted that position, and while holding this office on the 31SL of Jauuarj^ 1801, a little more than one month before the expiration of the Adams Presi- dential term, he was appointed Chief Justice, and this day one hundred years ago, in its first session at the new "Federal City" he took tlie oaih of office and his seat on the bench of the Supreme Court of the United States. He continued however, at the special request of Mr. Adams, to act as Secretar)'- of State, until his successor should be appoint- ed. It was while thus holding over in the State Department, that the political gossips of the Jefferson party have ascribed to Marshall the not very commendable business of signing Fed- eralist nominations to high official positions until lycvi lyincoln the incoming Attorney General of the new Administration, walked into the Secretar3''s office with Mr. Jefferson's watch in hand, pointing to the hour of twelve midnight of March the 3d, and thus stopped the Secretary while many unsigned commis- sions still lay before him on the table. By the credulous this story has been accepted. It seems however that there is no proof of it, and it is clear beyond question, that the incident is abhorrent to the character established b}- Marshall's entire life. If true, Levi lyincoln would have told Jefferson, and 5'et the next day, Jefferson sought out Marshall and not only took the oath of office before him, but on the same day invited him to remain in his cabinet until a successor should be appointed. It is also true that Jefferson did not like Marshall then, and that afi;erv\'ards the dislike amounted to hate. It is also true that Jefferson in his "Anas" published after his death took occa- siou to record every fact within his retentive memory, to the discredit of his political opponents, but he made no charge of this kind against Marshall. It is true that he left behind him a letter iu which he bitterly denounced John Adams' appoint- ment of what he termed the Midnight Judges and others, in the 25 last hours of the Adams administration, but he limits the hour to 9 o'clock at night on the 3d of March. To quote precisely he writes : " Mr. Adams was making appointments not for himself but for his successor until g o'clock of the night at 12 o'clock of which he was to go out of oflSce. This outrage on decency should not have its effect except in the life appointments, as to the others I consider the nominations as nullities." The theatrical appearance of Levi Lincoln before the startling eyes of the Chief Justice and Secretary of State at the mystic hour of midnight, armed with Mr. Jefferson's own watch, if true, would certainly have been recorded by the bus}' pen of the sage of Mouticello. Besides Mr. Jefferson was not a man to part with his watch, without some record of the incident. It is universally known that as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court Marshall won his greatest fame and made an impress upon the fortunes of the nation, which will not perish from the memory of men as long as the sciences of Government and Juris- prudence survive. " From his youth upward " to quote the stately periods of the eloquent Binney " he had been engaged in various stations and offices tending successively to corroborate his health, to expand his affections, to develop his mind, to enrich it with the stores of legal science, to familiarize it with public affairs and with the principles of the Constitution, and before little more than halt his life had run out, producing from the mate- rials supplied by a most bountiful nature a consummate work pre-eminently fitted for the judicial department of the Federal government." As to the personal appearance of the new Chief Justice we have a description from the admiring pen of Joseph Storj' : " Marshall is of a tall, slender figure, not graceful or impos- ing, but erect and steady, his hair is black, his eyes small and twinkling, his forehead rather low but his features are in gen- eral harmonious. His manner is plain, yet dignified and un- affedled modesty diffuses itself through all his adlions." " He examines," continued this great jurist, afterwards to become his associate and intimate friend, "the intricacies of a subject with calm and persevering circumspection and unravels its myste- 26 ries with irresistible acuteness." The Chief Justice seems to have made a great impression at this period upon the mind of that rising New Hampshire lawyer and Congressman, Daniel Webster. "There is no man in the court that strikes me like Marshall" wrote this young New England Titan soon to be known as the Defender, and Marshall the Expot: