When advised of what everybody then supposed to be the definitive settlement of this vexed controversy, Robert Morris wrote John Marshall that "altho' you were obliged to give up a part of your claim yet it was probably better to do that than to hold a contest with such an opponent [State of Virginia]. I will give notice to Mṛ Jaṣ Marshall of this compromise."[538] John Marshall, now sure of the title, and more anxious than ever to consummate the deal by paying the Fairfax heir, hastened to Philadelphia to see Morris about the money.
"Your Brother John Marshall Esqṛ is now in this City," writes Robert Morris to his son-in-law, "and his principal business I believe is to see how you are provided with Money to pay Lord Fairfax.... I am so sensible of the necessity there is for your being prepared for Lord Fairfax's payment that there is nothing within my power that I would not do to enable you to meet it."[539]
The members of the Marshall syndicate pressed their Philadelphia backer unremittingly, it appears, for a few days later he answers what seems to have been a petulant letter from Colston assuring that partner in the Fairfax transaction that he is doing his utmost to "raise the money to enable Mr. James Marshall to meet the Payments for your Purchase at least so far as it is incumbent on me to supply the means.... From the time named by John Marshall Esqre when here, I feel perfect Confidence, because I will furnish him before that period with such Resources & aid as I think cannot fail."[540]
PAGE OF JAMES MARSHALL'S ACCOUNT WITH ROBERT MORRIS SHOWING PAYMENT OF £7700 TO FAIRFAX
(Facsimile)
Finally Marshall's brother negotiated the loan, an achievement which Morris found "very pleasing, as it enables you to take the first steps with Lord Fairfax for securing your bargain."[541] Nearly forty thousand dollars of this loan was thus applied. In his book of accounts with Morris, James M. Marshall enters: "Jany 25 '97 To £7700 paid the Revḍ Denny Fairfax and credited in your [Morris's] account with me 7700" (English pounds sterling).[542] The total amount which the Marshalls had agreed to pay for the remnant of the Fairfax estate was "fourteen thousand pounds British money."[543] When Robert Morris became bankrupt, payment of the remainder of the Fairfax indebtedness fell on the shoulders of Marshall and his brother.
This financial burden caused Marshall to break his rule of declining office and to accept appointment as one of our envoys to France at the time of Robert Morris's failure and imprisonment for debt; for from that public employment of less than one year, Marshall, as we shall see, received in the sorely needed cash, over and above his expenses, three times the amount of his annual earnings at the bar.[544] "Mr. John Marshall has said here," relates Jefferson after Marshall's return, "that had he not been appointed minister [envoy] to France, he was desperate in his affairs and must have sold his estate [the Fairfax purchase] & that immediately. That that appointment was the greatest God-send that could ever have befallen a man."[545] Jefferson adds: "I have this from J. Brown and S. T. Mason [Senator Mason]."[546]
So it was that Marshall accepted a place on the mission to France[547] when it was offered to him by Adams, who "by a miracle," as Hamilton said, had been elected President.[548]
FOOTNOTES:
[456] Southern Literary Messenger, 1836, ii, 181-91; also see Howe, 266.