Nor were Presidential dinners, the bestowal of patronage hitherto offensively refused, and attentions of the Cabinet, the limit of the efforts to win the coöperation of the man who was to preside over the trial of Samuel Chase. Senator Giles drew a petition to the Governor of New Jersey begging that the prosecution of Burr for murder be dropped, and to this paper he secured the signature of nearly all the Republican Senators.[503]
Burr accepted these advances with grave and reserved dignity; but he understood the purpose that inspired them, did not commit himself, and remained uninfluenced and impartial. Throughout the momentous trial the Vice-President was a model presiding officer. "He conducted with the dignity and impartiality of an angel, but with the rigor of a devil," records a Washington newspaper that was bitterly hostile to Burr personally and politically.[504]
When Chase took his place in the box, the Sergeant-at-Arms brought him a chair; but Burr, adhering to the English custom, which required prisoners to stand when on trial in court, ordered it to be taken away.[505] Upon the request of the elderly Justice, however, Burr quickly relented and the desired seat was provided.[506]
Chase was, in appearance, the opposite of the diminutive and graceful Vice-President. More than six feet tall, with thick, broad, burly shoulders, he was a picture of rugged and powerful physical manhood, marred by an accumulation of fat which his generous manner of living had produced. Also he was afflicted with an agonizing gout, with which it seems so many of "the fathers" were cursed. His face was broad and massive, his complexion a brownish red.[507] "Bacon face" was a nickname applied to him by the Maryland bar.[508] His head was large, his brow wide, and his hair was thick and white with the snows of his sixty-four winters.[509]
The counsel that surrounded the impeached Justice were brilliant and learned.[510] They were Joseph Hopkinson, who six years before, upon Marshall's return from France, had written "Hail Columbia; or, The President's March"; Philip Barton Key, brother of the author of "The Star-Spangled Banner";[511] Robert Goodloe Harper, one of the Federalist leaders in Congress during the ascendancy of that party; and Charles Lee, Attorney-General under President Adams when Marshall was Secretary of State, and one of Marshall's most devoted friends.[512]
But in the chair next to Chase sat a man who, single-handed and alone, was more than a match for all the managers of the House put together. Luther Martin of Maryland—of medium height, broad-shouldered, near-sighted, absent-minded, shabbily attired, harsh of voice, now sixty-one years old, with gray hair beginning to grow thin and a face crimsoned by the brandy which he continually imbibed—was the dominating figure of this historic contest.[513]
Weary and harried as he was, Randolph opened the trial with a speech of some skill. He contrasted the conduct of Chase in the trial of Callender with that of Marshall in a trial in Richmond in 1804 at which Marshall had presided. "Sir," said Randolph, "in the famous case of Logwood,[514] whereat the Chief Justice of the United States presided, I was present, being one of the grand jury who found a true bill against him.... The government was as deeply interested in arresting the career of this dangerous and atrocious criminal, who had aimed his blow against the property of every man in society, as it could be in bringing to punishment a weak and worthless scribbler [Callender]."
But how had Marshall acted in the conduct of that trial? "Although," continued Randolph, "much testimony was offered by the prisoner, which did by no means go to his entire exculpation, although much of that testimony was of a very questionable nature, none of it was declared inadmissable." Marshall suffered it "to go to the jury, who were left to judge of its weight and credibility"; nor had he required "any interrogatories to the witnesses ... to be reduced to writing,"—such a thing never had been done in Virginia before the tyrannical ruling of Chase in the trial of Callender.
"No, Sir!" he cried. "The enlightened man who presided in Logwood's case knew that, although the basest and vilest of criminals, he was entitled to justice, equally with the most honorable member of society." Marshall "did not avail himself of the previous and great discoveries in criminal law, of this respondent [Chase]"; Marshall "admitted the prisoner's testimony to go to the jury"; Marshall "never thought it his right or his duty to require questions to be reduced to writing"; Marshall "gave the accused a fair trial according to law and usage, without any innovation or departure from the established rules of criminal jurisprudence in his country."
