Wolcott "cordially thanks" Marshall for "the obliging expressions of" his "friendship." He accepts the office "with sentiments of gratitude and good will," and agrees to Marshall's wish for reconciliation with Adams, "not only without reluctance or reserve but with the highest satisfaction."[1332] Thus did Marshall end one of the feuds which so embarrassed the Administration of John Adams.[1333]
Until nine o'clock[1334] of the night before Jefferson's inauguration, Adams continued to nominate officers, including judges, and the Senate to confirm them. Marshall, as Secretary of State, signed and sealed the commissions. Although Adams was legally within his rights, the only moral excuse for his conduct was that, if it was delayed, Jefferson would make the appointments, control the National Judiciary, and through it carry out his States' Rights doctrine which the Federalists believed would dissolve the Union; if Adams acted, the most the Republicans could do would be to oust his appointees by repealing the law.[1335]
The angry but victorious Republicans denounced Adams's appointees as "midnight judges." It was a catchy and clever phrase. It flew from tongue to tongue, and, as it traveled, it gathered force and volume. Soon a story grew up around the expression. Levi Lincoln, the incoming Attorney-General, it was said, went, Jefferson's watch in his hand, to Marshall's room at midnight and found him signing and sealing commissions. Pointing to the timepiece, Lincoln told Marshall that, by the President's watch, the 4th of March had come, and bade him instantly lay down his nefarious pen; covered with humiliation, Marshall rose from his desk and departed.[1336]
This tale is, probably, a myth. Jefferson never spared an enemy, and Marshall was his especial aversion. Yet in his letters denouncing these appointments, while he savagely assails Adams, he does not mention Marshall.[1337] Jefferson's "Anas," inspired by Marshall's "Life of Washington," omits no circumstance, no rumor, no second, third, or fourth hand tale that could reflect upon an enemy. Yet he never once refers to the imaginary part played by Marshall in the "midnight judges" legend.[1338]
Jefferson asked Marshall to administer to him the presidential oath of office on the following day. Considering his curiously vindictive nature, it is unthinkable that Jefferson would have done this had he sent his newly appointed Attorney-General, at the hour of midnight, to stop Marshall's consummation of Adams's "indecent"[1339] plot.
Indeed, in the flush of victory and the multitude of practical and weighty matters that immediately claimed his entire attention, it is probable that Jefferson never imagined that Marshall would prove to be anything more than the learned but gentle Jay or the able but innocuous Ellsworth had been. Also, as yet, the Supreme Court was, comparatively, powerless, and the Republican President had little cause to fear from it that stern and effective resistance to his anti-national principles, which he was so soon to experience. Nor did the Federalists themselves suspect that the Virginia lawyer and politician would reveal on the Supreme Bench the determination, courage, and constructive genius which was presently to endow that great tribunal with life and strength and give to it the place it deserved in our scheme of government.
In the opinions of those who thought they knew him, both friend and foe, Marshall's character was well understood. All were agreed as to his extraordinary ability. No respectable person, even among his enemies, questioned his uprightness. The charm of his personality was admitted by everybody. But no one had, as yet, been impressed by the fact that commanding will and unyielding purpose were Marshall's chief characteristics. His agreeable qualities tended to conceal his masterfulness. Who could discern in this kindly person, with "lax, lounging manners," indolent, and fond of jokes, the heart that dared all things? And all overlooked the influence of Marshall's youth, his determinative army life, his experience during the disintegrating years after Independence was achieved and before the Constitution was adopted, the effect of the French Revolution on his naturally orderly mind, and the part he had taken and the ineffaceable impressions necessarily made upon him by the tremendous events of the first three Administrations of the National Government.
Thus it was that, unobtrusively and in modest guise, Marshall took that station which, as long as he lived, he was to make the chief of all among the high places in the Government of the American Nation.
FOOTNOTES:
[1093] Adams to McHenry, May 5, 1800; Steiner, 453.