Studying this attack and defense of master swordsmen, following the tactical maneuvers of America's ablest politicians, a partisan on one side, yet personally friendly with members of the other, John Marshall was waiting for the call that should bring him into the battle and, by the method which he employed throughout his life, preparing to respond when the Constitutionalist managers should give the word. He was listening to the arguments on both sides, analyzing them, and, by that process of absorption with which he was so peculiarly and curiously gifted, mastering the subjects under discussion. Also, although casual, humorous, and apparently indifferent, he nevertheless was busy, we may be sure, with his winning ways among his fellow members.
Patrick Henry's effort was one of the two or three speeches made during the three weeks of debate which actually may have had an effect upon votes.[1200] The Constitutionalists feared that Henry would take the floor next morning to follow up his success and deepen the profound impression he had made. To prevent this and to break the force of Henry's onslaught, they put forward Governor Randolph, who was quickly recognized by the chair. Madison and Nicholas were held in reserve.[1201]
But in vain did Randolph employ his powers of oratory, argument, and persuasion in the great speech beginning "I am a child of the Revolution," with which he attempted to answer Henry. There is no peace; "the tempest growls over you.... Justice is suffocated," he said; legal proceedings to collect debts are "obscured by legislative mists." As an illustration of justice, consider the case of Josiah Philips, executed without trial or witness, on a bill of attainder passed without debate on the mere report of a member of the Legislature: "This made the deepest impression on my heart and I cannot contemplate it without horror."[1202] As to "the American spirit" expressed through the militia being competent to the defense of the State, Randolph asked: "Did ever militia defend a country?"
Randolph's speech was exhaustive and reached the heights of real eloquence. It all came to this, he said, Union or Dissolution, thus again repeating the argument Washington had urged in his letter to Randolph. "Let that glorious pride which once defied the British thunder, reanimate you again," he cried dramatically.[1203] But his fervor, popularity, and influence were not enough.
Marshall, when he came to speak later in the debate, made the same mistake. No more striking illustration exists of how public men, in the hurry and pressure of large affairs, forget the most important events, even when they themselves were principal actors in them.
Although the time had not properly come for the great logician of the Constitution to expound it, the situation now precipitated the psychological hour for him to strike. The chair recognized a slender, short-statured man of thirty-seven, wearing a handsome costume of blue and buff with doubled straight collar and white ruffles on breast and at wrists. His hair, combed forward to conceal baldness, was powdered and fell behind in the long beribboned queue of fashion. He was so small that he could not be seen by all the members; and his voice was so weak that only rarely could he be heard throughout the hall.[1204] Such was James Madison as he stood, hat in hand and his notes in his hat, and began the first of those powerful speeches, the strength of which, in spite of poor reporting, has projected itself through more than a hundred years.
At first he spoke so low that even the reporter could not catch what he said.[1205] He would not, remarked Madison, attempt to impress anybody by "ardent professions of zeal for the public welfare." Men should be judged by deeds and not by words. The real point was whether the Constitution would be a good thing or a bad thing for the country. Henry had mentioned the dangers concealed in the Constitution; let him specify and prove them. One by one he caught and crushed Henry's points in the jaws of merciless logic.
What, for the gentle Madison, was a bold blow at the opposition shows how even he was angered. "The inflammatory violence wherewith it [the Constitution] was opposed by designing, illiberal, and unthinking minds, begins to subside. I will not enumerate the causes from which, in my conception, the heart-burnings of a majority of its opposers have originated." His argument was unanswerable as a matter of pure reason and large statesmanship, but it made little headway and had only slight if any influence. "I am not so sanguine," reported Washington's nephew to the General at Mount Vernon, "as to ... flatter myself that he made many converts."[1206]
The third gun of the powerful battery which the Constitutionalists had arranged to batter down the results of Henry's speech was now brought into action. George Nicholas again took the floor. He was surprised that Mason's resolution to debate the Constitution clause by clause had not been followed. But it had not been, and therefore he must speak at large. While Nicholas advanced nothing new, his address was a masterpiece of compact reasoning.[1207]
Age and middle age had spoken for the Constitution; voices from the bench and the camp, from the bar and the seats of the mighty, had pleaded for it; and now the Constitutionalists appealed to the very young men of the Convention through one of the most attractive of their number. The week must not close with Henry's visions of desolation uppermost in the minds of the members. On Saturday morning the chair recognized Francis Corbin of Middlesex. He was twenty-eight years old and of a family which had lived in Virginia from the early part of the seventeenth century. He had been educated in England at the University of Cambridge, studied law at the Inner Temple, was a trained lawyer, and a polished man of the world.