Roane, Ritchie, Taylor, and the Republican organization of Virginia had anticipated that the Chief Justice would render a Nationalist opinion; but they were not prepared for the bold and crushing blows which he rained upon their fanatically cherished theory of Localism. As soon as they recovered from their surprise and dismay, they opened fire from their heaviest batteries upon Marshall and the National Judiciary. The way was prepared for them by a preliminary bombardment in the Weekly Register of Hezekiah Niles.
This periodical had now become the most widely read and influential publication in the country; it had subscribers from Portland to New Orleans, from Savannah to Fort Dearborn. Niles had won the confidence of his far-flung constituency by his honesty, courage, and ability. He was the prototype of Horace Greeley, and the Register had much the same hold on its readers that the Tribune came to have thirty years later.
In the first issue of the Register, after Marshall's opinion was delivered, Niles began an attack upon it that was to spread all over the land. "A deadly blow has been struck at the sovereignty of the states, and from a quarter so far removed from the people as to be hardly accessible to public opinion," he wrote. "The welfare of the union has received a more dangerous wound than fifty Hartford conventions ... could inflict." Parts of Marshall's opinion are "incomprehensible. But perhaps, as some people tell us of what they call the mysteries of religion, the common people are not to understand them, such things being reserved only for the priests!!"[852]
The opinion of the Chief Justice was published in full in Niles's Register two weeks after he delivered it,[853] and was thus given wider publicity than any judicial utterance previously rendered in America. Indeed, no pronouncement of any court, except, perhaps, that in Gibbons vs. Ogden,[854] was read so generally as Marshall's opinion in M'Culloch vs. Maryland, until the publication of the Dred Scott decision thirty-eight years later. Niles continues his attack in the number of the Register containing the Bank opinion:
It is "more important than any ever before pronounced by that exalted tribunal—a tribunal so far removed from the people, that some seem to regard it with a species of that awful reverence in which the inhabitants of Asia look up to their princes."[855] This exasperated sentence shows the change that Marshall, during his eighteen years on the bench, had wrought in the standing and repute of the Supreme Court.[856] The doctrines of the Chief Justice amount to this, said Niles—"congress may grant monopolies" at will, "if the price is paid for them, or without any pecuniary consideration at all." As for the Chief Justice personally, he "has not added ... to his stock of reputation by writing it—it is excessively labored."[857]
Papers throughout the country copied Niles's bitter criticisms,[858] and public opinion rapidly crystallized against Marshall's Nationalist doctrine. Every where the principle asserted by the Chief Justice became a political issue; or, rather, his declaration, that that principle was law, made sharper the controversy that had divided the people since the framing of the Constitution.
In number after number of his Register Niles, pours his wrath on Marshall's matchless interpretation. It is "far more dangerous to the union and happiness of the people of the United States than ... foreign invasion.[859] ... Certain nabobs in Boston, New York, Philadelphia and Baltimore, ... to secure the passage of an act of incorporation, ... fairly purchase the souls of some members of the national legislature with money, as happened in Georgia, or secure the votes of others by making them stockholders, as occurred in New York, and the act is passed.[860]... We call upon the people, the honest people, who hate monopolies and privileged orders, to arise in their strength and purge our political temple of the money-changers and those who sell doves—causing a reversion to the original purity of our system of government, that the faithful centinel may again say, 'All's Well!'"[861]
Extravagant and demagogical as this language of Niles's now seems, he was sincere and earnest in the use of it. Copious quotations from the Register have been here made because it had the strongest influence on American public opinion of any publication of its time. Niles's Register was, emphatically, the mentor of the country editor.[862]
At last the hour had come when the Virginia Republican triumvirate could strike with an effect impossible of achievement in 1816 when the Supreme Court rebuked and overpowered the State appellate tribunal in Martin vs. Hunter's Lessee.[863] Nobody outside of Virginia then paid any attention to that decision, so obsessed was the country by speculation and seeming prosperity. But in 1819 the collapse had come; poverty and discontent were universal; rebellion against Nationalism was under way; and the vast majority blamed the Bank of the United States for all their woes. Yet Marshall had upheld "the monster." The Virginia Junto's opportunity had arrived.
No sooner had Marshall returned to Richmond than he got wind of the coming assault upon him. On March 23, 1819, the Enquirer published his opinion in full. The next day the Chief Justice wrote Story: "Our opinion in the Bank case has aroused the sleeping spirit of Virginia, if indeed it ever sleeps. It will, I understand, be attacked in the papers with some asperity, and as those who favor it never write for the publick it will remain undefended & of course be considered as damnably heretical."[864] He had been correctly informed. The attack came quickly.