It is surprising that gentlemen cannot dismiss their private animosities but will bring them in the Assembly. (Marshall.)
In 1783, a small wooden building stood among the two or three hundred little frame houses[614] which, scattered irregularly from the river to the top of the hill, made up the town of Richmond at the close of the Revolution. It was used for "balls," public banquets, and other functions which the merriment or inclination of the miniature Capital required. But its chief use was to house the legislative majesty of Virginia. In this building the General Assembly of the State held its bi-yearly sessions. Here met the representatives of the people after their slow and toilsome journey on horseback through the dense forests and all but impassable roads from every county of the Commonwealth.[615]
The twenty years that had passed since Marshall's father entered the House of Burgesses had brought changes in the appearance and deportment of Virginia's legislative body corresponding to those in the government of the newly established State. But few elegancies of velvet coat, fine lace, silk stocking, and silver buckle were to be seen in the Virginia Legislature of 1783. Later these were to reappear to some extent; but at the close of the Revolution democracy was rampant, and manifested itself in clothing and manners as well as in curious legislation and strange civil convulsions.
The visitor at a session of the Old Dominion's lawmakers beheld a variegated array—one member in homespun trousers thrust into high boots; still another with the fringed Indian leggings and hunting-shirt of the frontier. Some wore great-coats, some jackets, and, in general, an ostentatious disregard of fashionable apparel prevailed, which occasional silk knee-breeches and stockings emphasized.
The looker-on would have thought this gathering of Virginia lawmakers to be anything but a deliberative body enacting statutes for the welfare of over four hundred thousand people. An eye-witness records that movement, talk, laughter went on continuously; these Solons were not quiet five minutes at a time.[616] All debating was done by a very few men.[617] The others "for most part ... without clear ... ideas, with little education or knowledge ... merely ... give their votes."[618]
Adjoining the big room where this august assembly sat, was an anteroom; and at the entrance between these two rooms stood a burly doorkeeper, who added to the quiet and gravity of the proceedings by frequently calling out in a loud voice the names of members whom constituents or visitors wanted to see; and there was a constant running back and forth. The anteroom itself was a scene of conversational tumult. Horse-racing, runaway slaves, politics, and other picturesque matters were the subjects discussed.[619] Outsiders stood in no awe of these lawgivers of the people and voiced their contempt, ridicule, or dislike quite as freely as their approval or admiration.[620]
Into this assembly came John Marshall in the fall of 1782. Undoubtedly his father had much to do with his son's election as one of Fauquier County's representatives. His predominant influence, which had made Thomas Marshall Burgess, Sheriff, and Vestryman before the Revolution, had been increased by his admirable war record; his mere suggestion that his son should be sent to the House of Delegates would have been weighty. And the embryo attorney wanted to go, not so much as a step in his career, but because the Legislature met in the town where Mary Ambler lived. In addition to his father's powerful support, his late comrades, their terms of enlistment having expired, had returned to their homes and were hotly enthusiastic for their captain.[621] He was elected almost as a matter of course.
No one in that motley gathering called the House of Delegates was dressed more negligently than this young soldier-lawyer and politician from the backwoods of Fauquier County. He probably wore the short "round about" jacket, which was his favorite costume. And among all that free-and-easy crowd no one was less constrained, less formal or more sociable and "hail-fellow, well-met" than this black-eyed, laughter-loving representative from the up country.
But no one had a sounder judgment, a more engaging personality, or a broader view of the drift of things than John Marshall. And notable men were there for him to observe; vast forces moving for him to study. Thomas Jefferson had again become a member of the House after his vindication from threatened impeachment. Patrick Henry was a member, too, and William Cabell, Richard Henry Lee, Benjamin Harrison, and other men whose names have become historic. During Marshall's later years in the Legislature, James Madison, George Mason, William Grayson, Edmund Randolph, George Nicholas, and others of like stature became Marshall's colleagues.
It took eighteen days to organize the House at the first session John Marshall attended.[622] The distance that members had to come was so great, traveling so hard and slow, that not until November 9 had enough members arrived to make a quorum.[623] Thomas Jefferson and Patrick Henry were two of the absent and several times were ordered to be taken into the custody of the sergeant-at-arms.[624] The Journal for Friday, November 8, gravely announces that "it was ordered that Mr. Thomas Jefferson, one of the members for Albemarle county who was taken into the custody of a special messenger by Mr. Speaker's warrant, agreeable to an order of the 28th ult., be discharged out of custody; it appearing to the House that he has good cause for his present non-attendance."[625]