Going about his duties in Washington, or, at home, plodding out to the farm near Richmond, joking or gossiping with friends, and caring for his afflicted wife, Marshall heard the thunders of popular denunciation gradually swallowed up in the louder and ever-increasing reverberations that heralded approaching war with Great Britain. Before the clash of arms arrived, however, his level common sense and intelligent courage were again called upon to deal with another of those perplexing conditions which produced, one by one, opinions from the Supreme Bench that have become a part of the living, growing, yet stable and enduring Constitution of the American Nation.
FOOTNOTES:
[1153] Blennerhassett Papers: Safford, 298.
Blennerhassett wrote this comment when the trial was nearly over. He said that two hundred men acted as a bodyguard to Burr on his way to court each day.
[1154] Parton: Burr, 481.
[1155] April 1, 1807, "Register," Plumer MSS. Lib. Cong.
[1156] Swartwout was then twenty-four years old.
[1157] Parton: Jackson, i, 335.
[1158] Swartwout challenged Wilkinson after the trial was over.
[1159] See brief account of this incident, including Swartwout's open letter to Wilkinson, in Blennerhassett Papers: Safford, footnote to 459-60.