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 JOHN MARSHALL 
 
 BY 
 
 JAMES BRADLEY THAYER 
 
 II 
 
 [Reprinted from the Atlantic Monthly for March, 1901] 
 

JOHN MARSHALL.^ 
 
 It was one hundred years ago on the 
 4th of February since the Supreme Court 
 of the United States first sat in the new 
 Capitol at Washington, that " wilderness 
 city, set in a mudhole," of whose begin- 
 nings we have all lately been reading. 
 The court sat with a new Chief Justice, 
 John Marshall, of Virginia. 
 
 At that time he was something over 
 forty-five years old, for he was born on 
 September 24, 1755. His home had al- 
 
 ^ What follows was, in part, contained in 
 an address before the Harvard Law School and 
 the Suffolk Bar, at Cambridge, on February 4, 
 1901, the centennial anniversary of the inau- 
 
 ways been in Virginia. The first twenty 
 years of his life were passed in that part 
 of Prince William County which became, 
 a few years after Marshall's birth, the 
 new, wide-spreading, frontier county of 
 Fauquier, — so named, after a Virginia 
 fashion, from the new royal governor of 
 1758. He was born in the eastern part 
 of it, and after ten years, or so, lived in 
 the western jiart, at Oakhill and in the 
 neighborhood, just under the Blue Ridge. 
 
 guration of Chief Justice Marshall. The con- 
 sideration of the legal side of this great man 
 is necessarily omitted here. 
 
John Marshall. 
 
 They show you still at Midland, on the 
 Southern Railroad, a little south of Ma- 
 nassas, a small, rude heap of bricks and 
 rubbish, as being all that is left of the 
 house where Marshall was born ; and 
 children on the farm reach out to you a 
 handful of the bullets with which that 
 sacred spot and the whole region were 
 thickly sown, before a generation had 
 passed, after his death. Marshall's edu- 
 cation was got from his father, from 
 such teachers as the neighborhood fur- 
 nished, and, for about a year, at a school 
 in Westmoreland County, where his fa- 
 ther and George Washington had attend- 
 ed, and where James Monroe was his own 
 schoolmate. 
 
 His father, Thomas Marshall, — great- 
 grandson of John Marshall, a Royalist 
 captain of cavahy, who had come to Vir- 
 ginia in 1650, — a man of good stock, of 
 a cultivated mind, enterprise, and strong 
 character, had been a neighbor and friend 
 of Washington in Westmoreland County, 
 on the Potomac, where both were born ; 
 and had served under him as a surveyor 
 of the estates of Lord Fairfax, and after- 
 wards as an officer in the French War 
 and the War of Independence. He be- 
 came colonel of a Continental regiment, 
 in which his son John was a lieutenant, 
 and afterwards a captain ; and Colonel 
 Marshall showed distinguished capacity 
 and courage. John Marshall loved and 
 admired him, and declared him to be a 
 far abler man than any of his sons. He 
 took great care in the education of his 
 children, among whom John was the old- 
 est of fifteen. His wife, Mary Randolph 
 Keith, was the daughter of a Scotch 
 clergyman, who had married one of that 
 Randolph family so famous in the his- 
 tory of Virginia. As I have said, all his 
 later youth was passed in the mountain 
 region, under the Blue Ridge. Judge 
 Story declared that it was to the hardy, 
 athletic habits of his youth among the 
 mountains, operating, we may well con- 
 jecture, upon a happy physical inherit- 
 ance, " that he probably owed that robust 
 
 and vigorous constitution which carried 
 him almost to the close of his life with 
 the freshness and firmness of manhood." 
 
 The farmhouse that Marshall's father 
 built at Oakhill is still standing, an un- 
 pretending, small, frame building, having 
 connected with it now, as a part of it, 
 another house built by Marshall's son 
 Thomas. At one time the farm com- 
 prised an estate of six thousand acres. 
 Since 1865 it has passed out of the hands 
 of the family. It is beautifully placed 
 on high, rolling ground, looking over a 
 great stretch of fertile country, and 
 along the chain of the Blue Ridge, close 
 by. To this region, where his children 
 and kindred lived, about a hundred 
 miles from Richmond, Marshall de- 
 lighted to resort in the summer, all his 
 life long. In the autumn of 1807, after 
 the Burr trial, he writes to a friend, 
 " The day after the commitment of Colo- 
 nel Burr for a misdemeanor, I galloped 
 to the mountains." " I am on the wing," 
 he writes to Judge Story in 1828, " for 
 my friends in the upper country, where 
 I shall find rest and dear friends, oc- 
 cupied more with their farms than with 
 party politics." 
 
 When Marshall was about eighteen 
 years old he began to study Blackstone ; 
 but he quickly dropped it, for the troubles 
 with Great Britain thickened, and, like 
 his neighbors, he prepared for fighting. 
 The earliest personal description of Mar- 
 shall that we have belongs to this period- 
 It is jjreserved in Horace Binney's ad- 
 mirable address at Philadelphia, after 
 Marshall's death. He gives it from the 
 pen of an eyewitness, a " venerable kins- 
 man " of Marshall. News had come, in 
 May, 1775, of the fighting at Concord 
 and Lexington. The account shows us 
 the youth, as lieutenant, drilling a com- 
 pany of soldiers in Fauquier County : — 
 
 " He was about six feet high, straight, 
 and rather slendei", of dark complexion, 
 showing little if any rosy red, yet good 
 health, the outline of the face nearly a 
 circle, and, within that, eyes dark to 
 
John Marshall. 
 
 blackness, strong and penetrating, beam- 
 ing with intelligence and good nature ; 
 an upright forehead, rather low, was ter- 
 minated in a horizontal line by a mass 
 of raven-black hair, of unusual thickness 
 and strength. The features of the face 
 were in harmony with this outline, and 
 the temples fully developed. Tlie result 
 of this combination was interesting and 
 very agreeable. The body and limbs in- 
 dicated agility rather than strength, in 
 which, however, he was by no means de- 
 ficient. He wore a purple or pale blue 
 hunting shirt, and trousers of the same 
 material fringed with white. A round 
 black hat, mounted with the buck's tail 
 for a cockade, crowned the figure and 
 the man. He went through the manual 
 exercise by word and motion, deliberate- 
 ly pronounced and performed in the pre- 
 sence of the company, before he required 
 the men to imitate him ; and then pro- 
 ceeded to exercise them with the most 
 perfect temper. . . . 
 
 " After a few lessons the company 
 were dismissed, and informed that if 
 they wished to hear more about the war, 
 and would form a circle about him, he 
 would tell them what he understood about 
 it. The circle was formed, and he ad- 
 dressed the company for something like 
 an hour. He then challenged an ac- 
 quaintance to a game of quoits, and they 
 closed the day with foot races and other 
 athletic exercises, at which there was no 
 betting." 
 
 "This," adds Mr. Binney, "is a jjor- 
 trait, my fellow citizens, to which, in sim- 
 plicity, gayety of heart, and manliness 
 of spirit, in everything but the symbols 
 of the youthful soldier, and one or two 
 of those lineaments which the hand of 
 time, however gentle, changes and per- 
 haps improves, he never lost his resem- 
 blance. All who knew him well will 
 recognize its truth to nature." 
 
 In the war, Marshall served, as might 
 be expected, with courage and fidelity. 
 He was in the first fighting in Virginia, 
 which was in the fall of 1775. at Nor- 
 
 folk ; afterwards he served in New Jer- 
 sey, Pennsylvania, and New York ; and 
 again in Virginia, toward the end of 
 the war. He was at Valley Forge, in 
 the fighting at the Brandywine, Ger- 
 mantown, Monmouth, Stony Point, and 
 Powles Hook, between 1776 and 1779. 
 He served often as judge advocate, and 
 in this way was brought into personal re- 
 lations with Washington and Hamilton. 
 A fellow officer and messmate describes 
 him. during the dreadful winter at Val- 
 ley Forge, as neither discouraged nor dis- 
 turbed by anything, content with what- 
 ever turned up, and cheering everybody 
 by his exuberance of spirits and " his in- 
 exhaustible fund of anecdote." He was 
 " idolized by the soldiers and his brother 
 officers." 
 
 President Quincy gives us a glimpse 
 of him at this period, as he heard him 
 described at a dinner with John Randolph 
 and a large company of Virginians and 
 other Southern gentlemen. They were 
 talking of Marshall's early life and his 
 athletic powers. " It was said," he re- 
 lates, " that he surpassed any man in the 
 army : that when the soldiers were idle 
 at their quarters, it was usual for the 
 officers to engage in matches at quoits, 
 or in jumping and racing ; that he would 
 throw a quoit farther, and beat at a race 
 any other ; that he was the only man 
 who, with a running jump, could clear a 
 stick laid on the heads of two men as 
 tall as himself. On one occasion he ran 
 in his stocking feet with a comrade. His 
 mother, in knitting his stockings, had the 
 legs of blue yarn and the heels of white. 
 This circumstance, combined with his 
 uniform success in the race, led the sol- 
 diei'S, who were always present at these 
 races, to give him the sobrajuet of ' Sil- 
 ver-Heels,' the name by which he was 
 generally known among them." 
 
 Toward the end of 1779, owing to the 
 disbanding of Virginia troops at the end 
 of their term of service, he was left with- 
 out a command, and went to Virginia to 
 await the action of the leoislatui"e as to 
 
John Marshall, 
 
 raising new troops. It was a fortunate 
 visit ; for at Yorktown he met the young 
 girl who, two or three years later, was 
 to become his wife ; and he was also 
 able to improve his leisure by attending, 
 for a few months in the early part of 
 1780, two courses of lectures at the col- 
 lege, on law and natural philosophy. This 
 was all of college or university that he 
 ever saw ; but later he received their 
 highest honors from several universities. 
 Harvard made him doctor of laws in 
 1806. Marshall's opportunity for study- 
 ing law, under George Wythe, at Wil- 
 liam and Mary College, seems to have 
 been owing to a change in the curricu- 
 lum, made, just at that time, at the in- 
 stance of Jefferson, governor of the state, 
 and, in that capacity, visitor of the col- 
 lege. The chair of divinity had just 
 been abolished, and one of law and po- 
 lice, and another of medicine, were sub- 
 stituted. And on December 29 the fac- 
 ulty voted that, " for the encouragement 
 of science, a student, on paying annu- 
 ally 1000 pounds of tobacco, shall be 
 entitled to attend any school of the fol- 
 lowing Professors, viz. : of Law and Po- 
 lice ; of Natural Philosophy and Mathe- 
 matics," etc. Marshall chose the two 
 courses above named ; he must have been 
 one of the very first to avail himself of 
 this new privilege. He remained only 
 one term. In view of what was to hap- 
 pen by and by, it is interesting to ob- 
 serve that his opportunity for an edu- 
 cation in law came, thus, through the 
 agency of Thomas Jefferson. 
 
 The records of the Phi Beta Kappa So- 
 ciety at William and Mary College, where 
 that now famous society had originated 
 less than a year and a half before, show 
 that on the 18th of May, 1780, " Cap- 
 tain John Marshall, being i-ecommended 
 as a gentleman who would make a worthy 
 member of the society, was balloted for 
 and received ; " and three days later he 
 was appointed, with others, " to declaim 
 the question whether any form of gov- 
 ernment is more favorable to public vir- 
 
 tue than a Commonwealth." Bushrod 
 Washington and other well-known names 
 are found among his associates in this 
 chapter, which has been well called " an 
 admirable nursery of patriots and states- 
 men." 
 
 It was in the summer of 1780 that 
 Marshall was licensed to practice law. 
 
 During this visit to Virginia, as I have 
 said, he met at Yorktown the little lady, 
 fourteen years old, who was to become 
 his wife three years later, and the mo- 
 ther of his ten children,^ and was to re- 
 ceive from him the most entire devotion 
 until the day of her death at Christinas, 
 in 1831. Some letters of her older sis- 
 ter, Mrs. Carrington, written to another 
 sister, have lately been printed, which 
 give us a glimpse of Captain Marshall in 
 liis twenty-fifth year. These ladies were 
 the daughters of Jaquelin Ambler, for- 
 mei'ly collector of customs at Yorktown, 
 and then treasurer of the colony, and 
 living in that town, next door to the fam- 
 ily of Colonel Marshall. Their mother 
 was that Rebecca Bur well for whom, un- 
 der the name of " Belinda," Jefferson 
 had languished, in his youthful corre- 
 spondence of some twenty years before. 
 The girls had often heard the captain's 
 letters to his family, and had the high- 
 est exjjectations when they learned that 
 he was coming home from the war. They 
 were to meet him first at a ball, and were 
 contending for the prize beforehand. 
 Mary, the youngest, carried it off. " At 
 the first introduction," writes her sister, 
 who was but one year older, " he became 
 devoted to her." " For my own part," 
 she adds, " I felt not the smallest wish 
 to contest the prize with her. . . . She, 
 with a glance, divined his character, . . . 
 while I, expecting an Adonis, lost all de- 
 sire of becoming agreeable in his eyes 
 when I beheld his awkward, unpolished 
 manner and total negligence of person. 
 How trivial now seem all such objec- 
 tions ! " she exclaims, writing in 1810, 
 and going on to speak with the utmost 
 ^ Only six of his ehildreu grew to full age. 
 
John Marshall. 
 
 admiration of his relations to herself and 
 all her family, and, above all, to his wife. 
 '' His exemplary tenderness to our unfor- 
 tunate sister is without parallel. With 
 a delicacy of frame and feeling that baf- 
 fles all description, she became, early af- 
 ter her mai'riage, a prey to extreme ner- 
 vous affection, which, more or less, has 
 embittered her comfort through her 
 whole life ; but this has only seemed to 
 increase his care and tenderness, and he 
 is, as you know, as entirely devoted as 
 at the moment of their first being mar- 
 ried. Always and under every circum- 
 stance an enthusiast in love, I have 
 very lately heard him declare that he 
 looked with astonishment at the present 
 race of lovers, so totally unlike what he 
 had been himself. His never failing 
 cheerfulness and good humor are a per- 
 petual source of delight to all connected 
 with him, and, I have not a doubt, have 
 been the means of prolonging the life of 
 her he is so tenderly devoted to." 
 
 " He was her devoted lover to the very 
 end of her life," another member of his 
 family connection has said. And Judge 
 Story, in speaking of him after his wife's 
 death, described him as " the most ex- 
 traordinary man I ever saw for the depth 
 and tenderness of his feelings." 
 
 A little touch of his manner to his 
 wife is seen in a letter, which is in print, 
 written to her from the city of Washing- 
 ton, on February 23, 1825, in his seven- 
 tieth year. He had received an injury 
 to his knee, about which Mrs. Marshall 
 was anxious. " I shall be out," he writes, 
 " in a few days. All the ladies of the 
 secretaries have been to see me, some 
 more than once, and have brought me 
 more jelly than I could eat, and many 
 other things. I thank them, and stick 
 to my barley broth. Still I have lots of 
 time on my hands. How do you think 
 I beguile it ? I am almost tempted to 
 leave you to guess, until I write again. 
 You must know that I begin with the 
 ball at York, our splendid assembly at 
 the Palace in Williamsburg, my visit to 
 
 Richmond for a fortnight, my return to 
 the field, and the very welcome recep- 
 tion you gave me on my arrival at Dover, 
 our little tiffs and makings-up, my feel- 
 ings when Major A. was courting you, 
 my trip to the Cottage [the Ambler home 
 in Hanover County, where the marriage 
 took place], — the thousand little inci- 
 dents, deeply affecting, in turn." 
 
 This " ball at York " was the one of 
 which Mrs. Carrington wrote ; and of 
 the '• assembly at the Palace " she also 
 gave an account, remarking that " Mar- 
 shall was devoted to my sister." 
 
 Miss Martineau, who saw him the year 
 before he died, speaks with great empha- 
 sis of what she calls his '' reverence " 
 and his affectionate respect for women. 
 There were many signs of this all 
 through his life. Even in the grave 
 and too monotonous course of his Life 
 of Washington, one comes now and then 
 upon a little gleam of this sort, that 
 lights up the page ; as when he speaks 
 of Washington's engagement to Mrs. 
 Custis, a lady " who to a large fortune 
 and a fine person added those amiable 
 accomplishments which . . . fill with 
 silent but unceasing felicity the quiet 
 scenes of private life." When he is re- 
 turning from France, in 1798, he writes 
 gayly back from Bordeaux to the Secre- 
 tary of Legation at Paris : " Present me 
 to my friends in Paris ; and have the 
 goodness to say to Madame Vilette, in 
 my name and in the handsomest man- 
 ner, everything which respectful friend- 
 ship can dictate. When you have done 
 that, you will have rendered not quite 
 half justice to my sentiments." "He 
 was a man," said Judge Story, " of deep 
 sensibility and tenderness ; . . . what- 
 ever may be his fame in the eyes of the 
 world, that which, in a just sense, was 
 his brightest glory was the purity, affec- 
 tionateness, liberality, and devotedness 
 of his domestic life." 
 
 Marshall left the army in 1781, when 
 most of the fighting in Virginia was over ; 
 he began practice in Fauquier County, 
 
John Marshall. 
 
 when the courts were opened, after Corn- 
 wallis's surrender, in October of that 
 year. 
 
 Among his neighbors he was always 
 a favorite. In the spring of 1782 he 
 was elected to the Assembly, and in the 
 autumn to the important office of member 
 of the Executive Council. "■ Young Mr. 
 Marshall," wrote Edmund Pendleton, 
 presiding judge of the Court of Ap- 
 peals, to Madison, in November of that 
 year, " is elected a councilor. . . . He 
 is clever, but I think too young for that 
 department, which he should rather have 
 earned, as a retirement and reward, by 
 ten or twelve years of hard service." 
 But, whether young or old, the people 
 were forever forcing him into public life. 
 Eight tinv's he was sent to the Assem- 
 bly ; in 1788 to the Federal Convention 
 of Virginia, and in 1798 to Congress. 
 Add to this his service as envoy to France 
 in 1797-1798, and as Secretary of State 
 in 1800-1801. 
 
 Unwelcome as it was to him, almost 
 always, to have his brilliant and congen- 
 ial place and prospects at the bar thus 
 interfered with, we can see now what 
 an admirable preparation all this was 
 for the great station for which, a little 
 later, to the endless benefit of his coun- 
 try, he was destined. What drove him 
 into office so often was, in a great de- 
 gree, that deliglitful and remarkable 
 combination of qualities which made 
 everybody love and trust him, even his 
 political adversaries, so that he could be 
 chosen when no one else of his party 
 was available. In this way, happily for 
 his country, he was led to consider, early 
 and deeply, those difficult problems of 
 government that distressed the country 
 in the dark period after the close of the 
 war, and during the first dozen years of 
 the Federal Constitution. 
 
 As regards the effect of his earlier 
 experience in enlarging the circle of a 
 patriot's thoughts and affections, he him- 
 self has said : " I am disposed to as- 
 cribe my devotion to the Union, and to 
 
 a government competent to its preserva- 
 tion, at least as much to casual circum- 
 stances as to judgment. I had grown up 
 at a time . . . when the maxim ' United 
 we stand, divided we fall ' was the maxim 
 of every orthodox American ; and I had 
 imbibed these sentiments so thoroughly 
 that they constituted a part of my being. 
 I carried them with me into the army, 
 where I found myself associated with 
 brave men from different states who were 
 risking life and everything valuable in a 
 common cause, . . . and where I was 
 confirmed in the habit of considering 
 America as my country and Congress as 
 my government." It was this confirmed 
 " habit of considering America as my 
 country," communicated by him to his 
 countrymen, which enabled them to car- 
 ry through the great struggle of forty 
 years ago, and to save for us all, North 
 and South, the inestimable treasure of 
 the Union. 
 
 After Marshall's marriage, in Janu- 
 ary, 1783, he made Richmond his home 
 for the rest of his life. It was still a 
 little town, but it had lately become the 
 capital of the state, and the strongest 
 men at the bar gradually gathered there. 
 Marsliall met them all. One has only 
 to look at the law reports of Call and 
 Washington to see the place that he 
 won. He is found in most of the im- 
 portant cases. In his time no man's 
 name occurs oftener, probably none so 
 often. 
 
 At first, he had brought from the 
 army, and from his home on the fron- 
 tier, simple and rustic ways which sur- 
 prised some persons at Richmond, whose 
 conception of greatness was associated 
 with very different models of dress and 
 behavior. " He was one morning stroll- 
 ing," we are told, " through the streets 
 of Richmond, attired in a plain linen 
 roundabout and shorts, with his hat un- 
 der his arm, from which he was eating 
 cherries, when he stopped in the porch 
 of the Eagle Hotel, indulged in a little 
 pleasantry with the landlord, and then 
 
John Marshall. 
 
 passed on." A gentleman from the 
 country was present, who had a case 
 coming on before the Court of Appeals, 
 and was referred by the landlord to 
 Marshall as the best lawyer to employ. 
 But " the careless, languid air " of Mar- 
 shall had so prejudiced the man that he 
 refused to employ him. The clerk, when 
 this client entered the court room, also 
 recommended Marshall, but the other 
 would have none of him. A venerable- 
 looking lawyer, with j^owdered wig and 
 in black cloth, soon entered, and the gen- 
 tleman engaged him. In the first case 
 that came up, this man and Marshall 
 spoke on opposite sides. The gentleman 
 listened, saw his mistake, and secured 
 Marshall at once ; frankly telling him 
 the whole story, and adding that while 
 he had come with one hundred dollars 
 to pay his lawyer, he had but five dollars 
 left. Marshall good-naturedly took this, 
 and helped in the case. In the Virginia 
 Federal Convention of 1788, at the age 
 of thirty-three, he is described, rising 
 after Monroe had spoken, as " a tall 
 young man, slovenly dressed in loose 
 summer apparel. . . . His manners, like 
 those of Monroe, were in strange con- 
 trast with those of Edmund Randolph 
 or of Grayson." 
 
 In such stories as these, one is re- 
 minded, as he is often reminded, of a 
 resemblance between Marshall and Lin- 
 coln. Very different men they were, 
 but both thorough Americans, with un- 
 borrowed character and manners, and a 
 lifelong flavor derived from no other 
 soil. 
 
 At the height of Marshall's reputa- 
 tion, in 1797, a French writer, who had 
 visited Riclmiond lately, in speaking of 
 Edmund Randolph, says, '• He has a 
 great practice, and stands, in that re- 
 spect, nearly on a par with Mr. J. Mar- 
 shall, the most esteemed and celebrated 
 counselor of this town." He mentions 
 Marshall's annual income as being four 
 or five thousand dollars. " Even by his 
 friends," it is added, " he is taxed with 
 
 some little propensity to indolence, but 
 he nevertheless displays great superiority 
 when he applies his mind to business." 
 Another contemporary, who praises his 
 force and eloquence in speaking, yet 
 says : " It is difficult to rouse his facul- 
 ties. He begins with reluctance, hesi- 
 tation, and vacancy of eye. . . . He re- 
 minds one of some great bird, which 
 flounders on the earth for a while before 
 it acquires impetus to sustain its soaring 
 flight." And finally, William Wirt, who 
 was seventeen years Marshall's junior, 
 and came to the bar in 1792, when Mar- 
 shall was nearly at the head of it, writ- 
 ing anonymously in 1804, describes him 
 as one " who, without the advantage of 
 person, voice, attitude, gesture, or any of 
 the ornaments of an orator, deserves to 
 be considered as one of the most eloquent 
 men in the world." He attributes to 
 him " one original and almost su^iernat- 
 ural faculty, ... of developing a sub- 
 ject by a single glance of his mind. . . . 
 His eyes do not fly over a landscape 
 and take in its various objects with more 
 promptitude and facility than his mind 
 embraces and analyzes the most complex 
 subject. . . . All his eloquence consists 
 in the apparently deep self-conviction 
 and the emphatic earnestness and en- 
 ergy of his style, the close and logical 
 connection of his thoughts, and the easy 
 gradations by which he opens his lights 
 on the attentive minds of his hearers." 
 
 In 1795 he declined the office of 
 Attorney General of the United States, 
 and in 1796 that of Minister to France, 
 both offered him by Washington. When 
 President Adams persuaded him in 1797 
 to go. with Pinckney and Gerry, as envoy 
 to France, he wrote to Gerry of " General 
 Marshall " (as he was then called, from 
 his rank of brigadier general, since 1793. 
 in the Virginia militia), " He is a plain 
 man, very sensible, cautious, guarded, 
 and learned in the law of nations." The 
 extraordinary details of that unsuccess- 
 ful six months' attempt to come to terms 
 with France are found in Marshall's 
 
John Marshall. 
 
 very able dispatches and in the diary 
 which he kept ; for, with the instinct of 
 a man of affairs, he remembered that " a 
 note is worth a cartload of recollections." 
 His own part in the business was marked 
 by great moderation and ability, and on 
 his return, in 1798, he was received at 
 Philadelphia with remarkable demon- 
 strations and the utmost enthusiasm. A 
 correspondent of Rufus King, writing 
 from New York in July of that year, says, 
 " No two men can be more beloved and 
 honored than Pinckney and Marshall ; " 
 and again in November : " Saving Gen- 
 eral Washington, I believe the Presi- 
 dent, Pinckney, and Marshall are the 
 most popular characters now in our coun- 
 try. There is a certain something in the 
 correspondence of Pinckney and Mar- 
 shall . . . that has united all heads and 
 hearts in their eulogy." It is understood 
 that the cori-espondence was by Marshall. 
 Gerry had allowed himself in a measure 
 to be detached by the Directory from 
 liis associates, to their great displeasure. 
 With them, in important resjiects, he 
 disagreed. 
 
 It was in 1798 that Adams offered to 
 Marshall the seat on the Supreme Bench, 
 made vacant by the death of James Wil- 
 son. He declined it ; and it went to his 
 old associate at William and Mary Col- 
 lege, Bushrod Washington. Marshall 
 did yield, however, to General Washing- 
 ton's urgent request to stand for Congress 
 that year ; and apparently it was for a 
 consultation on this question that he went 
 to Mount Vernon, in the summer, in com- 
 pany with the coming judge. On their 
 way they met with a misadventure which 
 gave great amusement to Washington, 
 and of which he enjoyed telling his 
 friends. They came on horseback, and 
 carried but one pair of saddlebags, each 
 using one side. Arriving thoroughly 
 drenched by rain, they were shown to a 
 chamber to change their garments. One 
 opened his side of the bags and drew 
 forth a black bottle of whiskey. He in- 
 sisted that he had opened his compan- 
 
 ion's repository. Unlocking the other 
 side, they found a big twist of tobacco, 
 some corn bread, and the equipment of 
 a pack saddle. They had exchanged 
 saddlebags with some traveler, and now 
 had to appear in a ludicrous misfit of 
 borrowed clothes. 
 
 The election of Marshall to Congress 
 excited great interest. AVashington 
 heartily rejoiced in it. Jefferson, on the 
 other hand, remarked that while Mar- 
 shall might trouble the Republicans some- 
 what, yet he would now be unmasked. 
 He had been popular with the mass of 
 the people, Jefferson said, from his " lax, 
 lounging manners," and with wiser men 
 through a " profound hypocrisy." But 
 now his British principles would stand 
 revealed. 
 
 The New England Federalists were 
 very curious about him ; they had been 
 alarmed and outraged, during the cam- 
 paign, by his expressing opposition to the 
 alien and sedition laws ; but they were 
 much impressed by him. Theodore Sedg- 
 wick wrote to Rufus King that he had 
 " great powers, and much dexterity in 
 the application of them. . . . We can do 
 nothing without him." But Sedgwick 
 wished that " his education had been on 
 the other side of the Delaware." George 
 Cabot wrote to King : " General Marshall 
 is a leader. . . . But you see in him the 
 faults of a Virginian. . . . He thinks too 
 much of that state, and he expects that 
 the world will be governed by rules of 
 logic." But Cabot hopes to see him im- 
 prove, and adds, " He seems calculated 
 to act a great part." In the end, the 
 Northern Federalists were disappointed 
 in finding him too moderate. He held 
 the place of leader of the House, and 
 passed into the Cabinet in May, 1800 ; 
 and on January 31, 1801, he \ras com- 
 missioned as Chief Justice. 
 
 Very soon after entering upon his 
 duties as Chief Justice he undertook to 
 write the Life of Washington. This 
 gave him a great deal of trouble and 
 mortification. It proved to be an im- 
 
John Marshall. 
 
 9 
 
 meiise labor ; the publishers were im- 
 portunate, and he was driven into print 
 before he was ready. The result was a 
 work in five volumes, appearing from 
 1802 to 1804, full of the most valuable 
 and authentic material, well repaying pe- 
 rusal, yet put together with singular lack 
 of literary skill, and in many ways a great 
 disappointment. In the later years of his 
 life, he revised it, corrected some errors, 
 shortened it, and published it in three 
 volumes : one of them as a sej^arate pre- 
 liminary history of the colonial period, 
 and the other two as the Life of Wash- 
 ington. This work, in its original form, 
 gave great offense to Jefferson, written, 
 as it was, from the point of view of a 
 constant admirer and supporter of the 
 policy of Washington ; a " five volume 
 libel," Jefferson called it. 
 
 Jeft'erson had a ludicrous misconcep- 
 tion as to Marshall's real character. Re- 
 ferring in 1810 to the " batture " case, 
 in V7hich Edward Livingston sued him, 
 and which was to come before Marshall, 
 he says that he is certain what the result 
 of the case should be, but nobody can tell 
 what it will be ; for " the Judge's mind 
 [is] of that gloomy malignity which will 
 never let him forego the opportunity of 
 satiating it upon a victim. . . . And to 
 whom is my appeal ? From the judge 
 in Burr's case to himself and his associ- 
 ate justices in Marbury v. Madison. Not 
 exactly, however. I observe old Gushing 
 is dead. [Judge Gushing had died a 
 fortnight before.] At length, then, we 
 have a chance of getting a Republican 
 majority in the Supreme Judiciary." 
 And he goes on to express his confi- 
 dence in the " appointment of a decided 
 Republican, with nothing equivocal about 
 him." 
 
 Who was to be this decided and un- 
 equivocal Republican ? Jefferson was 
 anxious about it, and wrote to Madison, 
 suggesting Judge Tyler, of Virginia, and 
 reminding the President of Marshall's 
 " rancorous hostility to his country." 
 Who was it, in fact, that was appointed ? 
 
 Who but Joseph Story ! — a Republican, 
 indeed, but one whom Jefferson, in this 
 very year, was designating as a " pseudo- 
 Republican," and who soon became Mar- 
 shall's warmest admirer and most faith- 
 ful su^jporter. 
 
 In those efforts on the part of some 
 of the leaders of Virginia and the South, 
 early in the century, to riil themselves of 
 slavery, to which we at the North have 
 never done sufficient justice, Marshall 
 took an active part. The American Col- 
 onization Society was organized in 1816 
 or 1817, with Bushrod Washington for 
 president. In 1823 an auxiliary society 
 was organized at Richmond, of which 
 Marshall was president, an office which 
 he held nearly or quite up to the time of 
 his death. It is interesting to observe 
 that one of the plans for colonization 
 was to have worked out the abolition of 
 slavery in Virginia in the year 1901. 
 Of slavery Marshall wrote to a friend, 
 in 1826 : "I concur with you in think- 
 ing that nothing portends more calamity 
 and mischief to the Southern states than 
 their slave population. Yet they seem 
 to cherish the evil, and to view with im- 
 movable prejudice and dislike every- 
 thing which may tend to diminish it. I 
 do not wonder that they should resist 
 any attempt, should one be made, to 
 interfere with the rights of property, but 
 they have a feverish jealousy of mea- 
 sures which may do good without the 
 hazard of harm, that, I think, very un- 
 wise." 
 
 As to Marshall's religious affiliations, 
 he was a regular and devoted attendant, 
 all his life, of the Episcopal church, in 
 which he was brought up ; taking an ac- 
 tive part in the services and the responses, 
 and kneeling in prayer, we are told, even 
 when the pews were so narrow that his 
 tall form had to be accommodated by 
 the projection of his feet into the aisle. 
 His friend, Bishop Meade, the Episco- 
 pal bishop of Virginia, states that he 
 was never a communicant in that church ; 
 and he quotes a letter from an Episcopal 
 
10 
 
 John Marshall. 
 
 clergyman who often visited Mrs. Har- 
 vie, Marshall's only daughter, in her last 
 illness, and who reports from her the 
 statement that, during the last months of 
 his life, he told her the reason that he 
 had never joined the Episcopal church, 
 namely, that he was a Unitarian in opin- 
 ion. It is added, however, in the same 
 letter, that Mrs. Harvie, a person " of the 
 strictest probity, the most humble jjiety, 
 and the most clear and discriminating 
 mind," also said that, during these last 
 months, Marshall read Keith on Prophe- 
 cy, and was convinced by that work, and 
 the fuller investigation to which it led, 
 of the Supreme Divinity of Jesus, and 
 wished to commune, but tliought it his 
 duty to do it publicly ; and while waiting 
 for the opportunity, died. 
 
 The reader of such a statement seems 
 to perceive or to conjecture an anxiety 
 to relieve the memory of the Chief Jus- 
 tice of an opprobrium. Whatever the 
 exact fact may be about this late change 
 in opinion, we, in tlie latitude of New 
 England, are not likely to be surprised 
 or shocked that Marshall shared, during 
 his active life, the speculative opinions of 
 his friend Judge Story. 
 
 We often hear of the Chief Justice 
 at his " Quoit Club." He was a fa- 
 mous player at quoits. A club had been 
 formed by some of the early Scotch set- 
 tlers of Richmond, and it came to in- 
 clude among its members leading men 
 of the city, such as Marshall, Wirt, 
 Nicholas, Call, Munford, and others. 
 Chester Harding, the artist who painted 
 the full-length portrait of Marshall that 
 hangs in the Harvard Law School, tells 
 us of seeing him at the Quoit Club. For- 
 tunately, language does not, like paint, 
 limit the artist to a single moment of 
 time. He gives us the Chief Justice in 
 
 ^ In speaking of this same Club, Mr. G. W. 
 Munford says : " We have seen Mr. Marshall, 
 in later times, when he was Chief Justice of 
 the United States, on his hands and knees, with 
 a straw and a penknife, the blade of the knife 
 stuck through the straw, holding it between 
 
 VOL. LXXXVII. — NO. 521. 22 
 
 action. Marshall was then attending 
 the Virginia Constitutional Convention, 
 which sat from October, 1829, to Janu- 
 ary, 1830. The Quoit Club used to 
 meet every week in a beautiful grove, 
 about a mile from the city. Harding 
 went early. " I watched," he says, 
 '' for the coming of the old chief. He 
 soon approached, with his coat on his 
 arm and his hat in his hand, which he 
 was using as a fan. He walked directly 
 up to a large bowl of mint julep, which 
 had been prepared, and drank off a tum- 
 blerful of the liquid, smacked his lijjs, 
 and then turned to the company with 
 a cheerful ' How are you, gentlemen ? ' 
 He was looked upon as the best pitcher 
 of the party, and could throw heavier 
 quoits than any other member of the 
 Club. The game began with great ani- 
 mation. There were several ties ; and 
 before long I saw the great Chief Justice 
 of the United States down on his knees, 
 measuring the contested distance with a 
 straw, with as much earnestness as if it 
 had been a point of law ; and if he 
 proved to be in the right, the woods 
 would ring with his triumphant shout." ^ 
 An entertaining account has been pre- 
 served ^ of a meeting of the Club, held, 
 apparently, while Marshall was still at 
 the bar, at which he and Wickham — a 
 leading Virginia lawyer, one of the coun- 
 sel of Aaron Burr — were the caterers. 
 At the table Marshall announced that at 
 the last meeting two members had in- 
 troduced politics, a forbidden subject, 
 and had been fined a basket of cham- 
 pagne, and that this was now produced, 
 as a warning to evil doers ; as the Club 
 seldom drank this article, they had no 
 champagne glasses, and must drink it in 
 tumblers. Those who played quoits re- 
 tired, after a while, for a game. Most 
 
 the edge of the quoit and the hub ; and when it 
 was a very doubtful question, pinching or biting 
 off the ends of the straw, until it would fit to 
 a hair." 
 
 - In The Two Parsons, by G. W. Munford. 
 
John Marshall. 
 
 11 
 
 of the members had smooth, highly 
 polished brass quoits. But Marshall's 
 were large, rough, heavy, and of iron, 
 such as few of the members could throw 
 well from hub to hub. Marshall him- 
 self threw them with great success and 
 accuracy, and often "rang the meg." 
 On this occasion Marshall and the Rev. 
 Mr. Blair led the two pai'ties of players. 
 Marshall played first, and rang the 
 meg. Parson Blair did the same, and 
 his quoit came down plumply on top of 
 Marshall's. There was uproarious ap- 
 plause, which drew out all the others 
 from the dinner ; and then came an an- 
 imated controversy as to what should 
 be the effect of this exploit. They all 
 returned to the table, had another bot- 
 tle of champagne, and listened to argu- 
 ments : one from Marshall for his view, 
 and one from Wickham for Parson 
 Blair. The company decided against 
 Marshall. His argument is a humor- 
 ous companion piece to any one of his 
 elaborate judicial opinions. He began 
 by formulating the question, " Who is 
 winner when the adversary quoits are 
 on the meg at the same time ? " He 
 then stated the facts, and remarked 
 that the question was one of the true 
 construction and application of the rules 
 of the game. The one first ringing the 
 meg has the advantage. No other one 
 can succeed who does not begin by dis- 
 placing this first one. The parson, he 
 willingly allowed, deserves to rise higher 
 and higher in everybody's esteem ; but 
 then he must n't do it by getting on an- 
 other's back in this fashion. That is 
 more like leapfrog than quoits. Then, 
 again, the legal maxim is, Cifjus est 
 solum, ejus est usque ad caelum. His 
 own right as first occupant extends to 
 the vault of heaven ; no opponent can 
 gain any advantage by squatting on his 
 back. He must either bring a writ of 
 ejectment, or drive him out vi et armis. 
 And then, after further argument of the 
 same sort, he asked judgment, and sat 
 down amidst great applause. 
 
 Mr. Wickham then rose, and made an 
 argument of a similar pattern. No rule, 
 he said, requires an impossibility. Mr. 
 Marshall's quoit is twice as large as any 
 other ; and yet it flies from his arm like 
 the iron ball at the Grecian games from 
 the arm of Ajax. It is an iron quoit, un- 
 polished, jagged, and of enormous weight. 
 It is impossible for an ordinaiy quoit to 
 move it. With much more of the same 
 sort, he contended that it was a drawn 
 game. After very animated voting, de- 
 signed to keep up the uncertainty as 
 long as possible, it was so decided. An- 
 other trial was had, and Marshall clear- 
 ly won. 
 
 All his life he played this game. 
 There is an account of a country barbe- 
 cue in the mountain region, where a cas- 
 ual guest saw an old man emerge from 
 a thicket which bordered a brook, car- 
 rying a- pile of flat stones as high as 
 he could hold between his right arm 
 and his chin. He stepped briskly up 
 to the company and threw them down. 
 " There ! Here are quite enough for 
 us all." 
 
 Of Marshall's simple habits, remarka- 
 ble modesty, and engaging simplicity of 
 conduct and demeanor, every one who 
 knew him speaks. " What was it in 
 him which most impressed you ? " asked 
 one of his descendants, now a distin- 
 guished judge, of an older relative who 
 had known him. " His humility," was 
 her answer. " With Marshall," wrote 
 President Quincy, "I had considerable 
 acquaintance during the eight years I 
 was member of Congress, from 1805 to 
 1813, played chess with him, and never 
 failed to be impressed with the frank, 
 cordial, childlike simplicity and unpre- 
 tending manner of the man, of whose 
 strength and breadth of intellectual power 
 I was . . . well apprised." 
 
 *' Nothing was more usual," we are 
 told, as regards his life in Richmond, 
 " than to see him returning from mar- 
 ket, at sunrise, with poultry in one hand 
 and a basket of vegetables in the other." 
 
12 
 
 John Marshall. 
 
 And again, some one speaks of meeting 
 him on horseback, at sunrise, with a bag 
 of seeds before him, on his way to his 
 farm, three or four miles out of town. 
 This was the farm at which, as he writes 
 to James Monroe, his old friend and 
 schoolmate, " I pass a considei-able por- 
 tion of my time in laborious relaxation.'" 
 The Italics are his own. 
 
 In speaking of Marshall's personal 
 qualities and ways, I must quote from 
 the exquisite passages in Judge Story's 
 address, delivered in the fall of 1835, to 
 the Suffolk Bar, in which his own true 
 affection found expression: "Uijon a 
 first introduction he would be thought to 
 be cold and reserved ; but he was nei- 
 ther the one nor the other. It was sim- 
 ply a habit of easy taciturnity, watching, 
 as it were, his own turn to follow the 
 line of conversation, and not to presume 
 to lead it. . . . Meet him in a stage- 
 coach as a stranger, and travel with him 
 a whole day, and you would only be 
 struck with his readiness to administer 
 to the accommodation of others, and his 
 anxiety to appropriate least to himself. 
 Be with him the unknown guest at an 
 inn, and he seemed adjusted to the very 
 scene ; partaking of the warm welcome 
 of its comforts, whenever found ; and if 
 not found, resigning himself without 
 complaint to its meanest arrangements. 
 He had great simplicity of character, 
 manners, dress, and depoi-tment, and yet 
 with a natural dignity that suppressed 
 impertinence and silenced rudeness. His 
 simplicity . . . had an exquisite naivete, 
 which charmed every one, and gave a 
 sweetness to his familiar conversation 
 approaching to fascination. The first 
 impression of a stranger, upon his intro- 
 duction to him, was generally that of dis- 
 appointment. It seemed hardly credible 
 that such simplicity should be the accom- 
 paniment of such acknowledged great- 
 ness. The consciousness of power was 
 not there ; the air of office was not there ; 
 
 ^ Some of my readers will thank me for say- 
 hig that the dealer who furnishes this portrait 
 
 there was no play of the lights or shades 
 of rank, no study of effect in tone or 
 bearing." 
 
 Of Marshall's appearance on the bench 
 we have a picture in one of Story's let- 
 ters from Washington, while he was at 
 the bar. He is writing in 1808, the 
 year after the Burr trial. " Marshall," 
 he says, "is of a tall, slender figure, 
 not graceful or imposing, but erect and 
 steady. His hair is black, his eyes small 
 and twinkling, his forehead rather low, 
 but his features are in general harmo- 
 nious. His manners are I3lain, yet dig- 
 nified ; and an unaffected modesty dif- 
 fuses itself through all his actions. His 
 dress is very simple, yet neat ; his lan- 
 guage chaste, but hardly elegant ; it does 
 not flow rapidly, but it seldom wants 
 precision. In conversation he is quite 
 familiar, but is occasionally embarrassed 
 by a hesitancy and drawling. ... I love 
 his laugh, — it is too hearty for an in- 
 triguer, — and his good temper and un- 
 wearied patience are equally agreeable 
 on the bench and in the study." 
 
 Daniel Webster, in 1814, wrote to his 
 brother : " There is no man in the court 
 that strikes me like Marshall. He is a 
 plain man, looking very much like Colo- 
 nel Adams, and about three inches taller. 
 I have never seen a man of whose intel- 
 lect I had a higher opinion." 
 
 In the year 1808, when Judge Story 
 wrote what has been quoted above, Mar- 
 shall was sketched in chalk by St. Me- 
 min. It is a beautiful portrait, which its 
 present owner, Mr. Thomas Marshall 
 Smith, of Baltimore, John Marshall's 
 great-grandson, has generously permit- 
 ted to be copied for the use of the pub- 
 lic.i 
 
 It was in 1830 that Chester Harding, 
 the artist, painted for the Boston Athe- 
 naeum the full-length portrait of which, 
 a little later, he made the replica after- 
 wards purchased, by subscription, for the 
 Law School. " I consider it," says Hard- 
 in photogravure is Mr. C. Klackner, of New 
 York. 
 
John Marshall. 
 
 13 
 
 ing, " a good picture.^ I had great plea- 
 sure in painting the whole of such a man. 
 . . . When I was ready to draw the fig- 
 ure into his picture, I asked him, in order 
 to save time, to come to my room in the 
 evening. . . . An evening was appoint- 
 ed ; but he could not come until after 
 the ' consultation,' which lasts until about 
 eight o'clock." It will be remembered 
 that the judges, at that time, used to 
 lodge together, in one house. " It was a 
 warm evening," continues Harding, " and 
 I was standing on my steps waiting for 
 him, when he soon made his appearance, 
 but, to my surprise, without a hat. I 
 showed him into my studio, and stepped 
 back to fasten the front door, when I en- 
 countered [several gentlemen] who knew 
 the judge very well. They had seen 
 him passing by their hotel in his hatless 
 condition, and with long strides, as if in 
 gi'eat haste, and had followed, curious 
 to know the cause of such a strange ap- 
 pearance. . . . He said that the consul- 
 tation lasted longer than he expected, 
 and he hurried off as quickly as jjossible 
 to keep his appointment with me." He 
 declined the offer of a baton his return. 
 " Oh no, it is a warm night ; I shall not 
 need one." 
 
 The next year, 1831, was a sad one 
 for Marshall. The greatest apprehen- 
 sions were felt for his health. " Wirt," 
 says John Quincy Adams in his Diary, 
 on February 13, 1831, " spoke to me, also, 
 in deep concern and alarm at the state 
 of Chief Justice Marshall's health." In 
 the autumn he went to Philadelphia to 
 undergo the torture of the operation of 
 lithotomy, before the days of ether. It 
 was the last operation performed by the 
 distinguished surgeon Dr. Physick. An- 
 other eminent surgeon, who assisted him. 
 Dr. Randall, has given an account of this 
 occasion, in which he says : — 
 
 " It will be readily admitted that, in 
 
 ^ The half-length, sitting portrait of Mar- 
 shall, in the dining hall at Cambridge, was 
 painted by Harding, in 1828, for the Chief Jus- 
 tice himself ; and by him given to Judge Story, 
 
 consequence of Judge Marshall's very 
 advanced age, the hazard attending the 
 operation, however skillfully performed, 
 was considerably increased. I consider 
 it but an act of justice, due to the mem- 
 ory of that great and good man, to state 
 that, in my opinion, his recovery was in 
 a great degree owing to his extraordi- 
 nary self-possession, and to the calm and 
 philosophical views which he took of his 
 case, and the various circumstances at- 
 tending it. 
 
 " It fell to my lot to make the neces- 
 sary preparations. In the discharge of 
 this duty I visited him on the morning 
 of the day fixed on for the operation, 
 two hours previously to that at which it 
 was to be performed. Upon entering 
 his room I found him engaged in eating 
 his breakfast. He received me with a 
 pleasant smile upon his countenance, 
 and said : ' Well, doctor, you find me 
 taking breakfast, and I assure you I 
 have had a good one. I thought it very 
 probable that this might be my last 
 chance, and therefore I was determined 
 to enjoy it and eat heartily.' I expressed 
 the great pleasure which I felt at seeing 
 him so cheerful, and said that I hoped 
 all would soon be happily over. He 
 replied to this that he did not feel the 
 least anxiety or uneasiness respecting 
 the operation or its results. He said 
 that he had not the slightest desire to 
 live, laboring under the sufferings to 
 which he was then subjected ; that he 
 was perfectly ready to take all the 
 chances of an operation, and he knew 
 there were many against him ; and that 
 if he could be relieved by it he was will- 
 ing to live out his appointed time, but if 
 not, would rather die than hold exist- 
 ence accompanied with the pain and 
 misery which he then endured. 
 
 " After he finished his breakfast I 
 administered to him some medicine ; he 
 
 " to be preserved, when I shall sleep with my 
 fathers, as a testimonial of sincere and affec- 
 tionate friendship." Story bequeathed it to the 
 college. 
 
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 
 
 14 
 
 John Marshall. 
 
 then inquired at what hour the opera- 
 tion would be performed. I mentioned 
 the hour of eleven. He said, ' Very 
 well ; do you wish me now for any other 
 purpose, or may I lie down and go to 
 sleep ? ' I was a good deal surprised at 
 this question, but told him that if he 
 could sleep it would be very desirable. 
 He immediately placed himself upon the 
 bed, and fell into a profound sleep, and 
 continued so until I was obliged to rouse 
 him in order to undergo the operation. 
 He exhibited the same fortitude, scarce- 
 ly uttering a murmur, throughout the 
 whole procedure, which, from the pecul- 
 iar nature of his complaint, was neces- 
 sarily tedious." 
 
 From the patient over a thousand cal- 
 culi were taken. He had a perfect re- 
 covery ; nor did the disorder ever return. 
 On Christmas Day of that year, as I 
 have said, his wife died, the object of his 
 tenderest affection ever since he had first 
 seen her, more than fifty years before. 
 
 It was at this period, in 1831 and 
 1832, that Inman's fine portrait of him, 
 now hanging in the Law Institute of 
 Philadelphia, was painted, for the bar 
 of that city. A replica is on the walls 
 of the state library in Richmond, which 
 Marshall himself bought for one of his 
 sons. This portrait is regarded as the 
 best of those painted in his later life. 
 Certainly it best answers the description 
 of him by an English traveler, who, see- 
 ing him in the spring of 1835, remarked 
 that "the venerable dignity of his ap- 
 pearance would not suffer in compari- 
 son with that of the most respected and 
 distinguished-looking peer in the British 
 House of Lords." 
 
 ^ Many a " severe contusion " must he have 
 suffered in those primitive days, from upsets 
 and jolting's, in driving every year between 
 Richmond and Washingion, some 120 miles 
 each way; from Richmond to Raleigh and 
 back, in attending his North Carolina circuit, 
 about 175 miles each way ; and between Rich- 
 
 011 769 495 
 
 After his recovery, in 1831, Marshall 
 seems to have been in good health down 
 to the early part of 1835. Then, we 
 are told, he suffered " severe contu- 
 sions " ^ in the stagecoach in returning 
 from Washington. His health now rap- 
 idly declined. He went again for relief* 
 to Philadelphia, and died there on July 
 6, 1835, of a serious disorder of the 
 liver. He had missed from his bedside 
 his oldest son, Thomas, for whom he had 
 been asking. Upon the gravestone of 
 that son, behind the old house at Oak- 
 hill, you may read the pathetic tragedy, 
 withheld from his father, that accounts 
 for his absence. While hastening to 
 Philadelphia, at the end of June, he was 
 passing through the streets of Baltimore 
 in the midst of a tempest, and was kille(i - - 
 by the falling of a chimney in the storm. 
 The body of the great Chief Justice 
 was carried home with every demonstra- 
 tion of respect and reverence. It was 
 buried by the side of his wife, in the 
 Shockoe Hill Cemetery in Richmond. 
 There, upon horizontal tablets, are two 
 inscriptions of affecting simplicity, both 
 written by himself. The first runs thus : 
 "John Marshall, Son of Thomas and 
 Mary Marshall, was born the 24th of Sep- 
 tember, 1755, Intermarried with Mary 
 Willis Ambler, the 3d of January, 1783. 
 Departed this life the [6th] day of July, 
 1835." The second, thus: "Sacred to 
 the memory of Mrs. Mary Willis Mar- 
 shall, Consort of John Marshall, Born 
 the 13th of March, 1766, Departed this 
 life the 25th of December, 1831. This 
 stone is devoted to her memory by him 
 who best knew her worth. And most de- 
 plores her loss." 
 
 James Bradley Thayer. 
 
 mond and Oakhill, his country place, every 
 summer, about 100 miles each way. For in- 
 stance, in 1812, Cranch, the reporter, remarks 
 that Marshall was not present at the beginning 
 of the term, as he " received an injury by the 
 oversetting of the stagecoach on his journey 
 from Richmond." 
 
 H 
 
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 
 
 011 769 495 1 
 
 PHOTOFILE ENVELOPES 
 
 MADE FROM 
 nro \ 4 A T TuC n A ncn