In truth, Marshall’s was a reverent mind, and it sprang instinctively to the defense of ideas and institutions whose value had been tested. Unfortunately, in his Life of Washington Marshall seems to have given this propensity a somewhat undue scope. There were external difficulties in dealing with such a subject apart from those inherent in a great biography, and Marshall’s volumes proved to be a general disappointment. Still hard pressed for funds wherewith to meet his Fairfax investment, he undertook this work shortly after he became Chief Justice, at the urgent solicitation of Judge Bushrod Washington, the literary executor of his famous uncle. Marshall had hoped to make this incursion into the field of letters a very remunerative one, for he and Washington had counted on some thirty thousand subscribers for the work. The publishers however, succeeded in obtaining only about a quarter of that number, owing partly at least to the fact that Jefferson had no sooner learned of the enterprise than his jealous mind conceived the idea that the biography must be intended for partisan purposes. He accordingly gave the alarm to the Republican press and forbade the Federal postmasters to take orders for the book. At the same time he asked his friend Joel Barlow, then residing in Paris, to prepare a counterblast, for which he declared himself to be “rich in materials.” The author of the Columbiad, however, declined this hazardous commission, possibly because he was unwilling to stand sponsor for the malicious recitals that afterwards saw light in the pages of the Anas.
But apart from this external opposition to the biography, Marshall found a source of even keener disappointment in the literary defects due to the haste with which he had done his work. The first three volumes had appeared in 1804, the fourth in 1805, and the fifth, which is much the best, in 1807. Republican critics dwelt with no light hand upon the deficiencies of these volumes, and Marshall himself sadly owned that the “inelegancies” in the first were astonishingly numerous. But the shortcomings of the work as a satisfactory biography are more notable than its lapses in diction. By a design apparently meant to rival the improvisations of Tristram Shandy, the birth of the hero is postponed for an entire volume, in which the author traces the settlement of the country. At the opening of the second volume “the birth of young Mr. Washington” is gravely announced, to be followed by an account of the Father of his Country so devoid of intimate touches that it might easily have been written by one who had never seen George Washington.
Nevertheless, these pages of Marshall’s do not lack acute historical judgments. He points out, for instance, that, if the Revolution had ended before the Articles of Confederation were adopted, permanent disunion might have ensued and that, faulty as it was, the Confederation “preserved the idea of Union until the good sense of the Nation adopted a more efficient system.” Again, in his account of the events leading up to the Convention of 1787, Marshall rightly emphasizes facts which subsequent writers have generally passed by with hardly any mention, so that students may read this work with profit even today. But the chief importance of these volumes lay, after all, in the additional power which the author himself derived from the labor of their preparation. In so extensive an undertaking Marshall received valuable training for his later task of laying the foundations of Constitutional Law in America. One of his chief assets on the bench, as we have already seen, was his complete confidence in his own knowledge of the intentions of the Constitution—a confidence which was grounded in the consciousness that he had written the history of the Constitution’s framing.
Most of Marshall’s correspondence, which is not voluminous, deals with politics or legal matters. But there are letters in which the personal side of the Chief Justice is revealed. He gives his friend Story a touching account of the loss of two of his children. He praises old friends and laments his inability to make new ones. He commends Jane Austen, whose novels he has just finished reading. “Her flights,” he remarks, “are not lofty, she does not soar on eagle’s wings, but she is pleasing, interesting, equable, and yet amusing.” He laments that he “can no longer debate and yet cannot apply his mind to anything else.” One recalls Darwin’s similar lament that his scientific work had deprived him of all liking for poetry.
The following letter, which Marshall wrote the year before his death to his grandson, a lad of fourteen or fifteen, is interesting for its views on a variety of subjects and is especially pleasing for its characteristic freedom from condescension:
I had yesterday the pleasure of receiving your letter of the 29th of November, and am quite pleased with the course of study you are pursuing. Proficiency in Greek and Latin is indispensable to an accomplished scholar, and may be of great real advantage in our progress through human life. Cicero deserves to be studied still more for his talents than for the improvement in language to be derived from reading him. He was unquestionably, with the single exception of Demosthenes, the greatest orator among the ancients. He was too a profound Philosopher. His “de officiis” is among the most valuable treatises I have ever seen in the Latin language.
History is among the most essential departments of knowledge; and, to an American, the histories of England and of the United States are most instructive. Every man ought to be intimately acquainted with the history of his own country. Those of England and of the United States are so closely connected that the former seems to be introductory to the latter. They form one whole. Hume, as far as he goes, to the revolution of 1688, is generally thought the best Historian of England. Others have continued his narrative to a late period, and it will be necessary to read them also.
There is no exercise of the mind from which more valuable improvement is to be drawn than from composition. In every situation of life the result of early practice will be valuable. Both in speaking and writing, the early habit of arranging our thoughts with regularity, so as to point them to the object to be proved, will be of great advantage. In both, clearness and precision are most essential qualities. The man who by seeking embellishment hazards confusion, is greatly mistaken in what constitutes good writing. The meaning ought never to be mistaken. Indeed the readers should never be obliged to search for it. The writer should always express himself so clearly as to make it impossible to misunderstand him. He should be comprehended without an effort.
The first step towards writing and speaking clearly is to think clearly. Let the subject be perfectly understood, and a man will soon find words to convey his meaning to others. Blair, whose lectures are greatly and justly admired, advises a practice well worthy of being observed. It is to take a page of some approved writer and read it over repeatedly until the matter, not the words, be fully impressed on the mind. Then write, in your own language, the same matter. A comparison of the one with the other will enable you to remark and correct your own defects. This course may be pursued after having made some progress in composition. In the commencement, the student ought carefully to reperuse what he has written, correct, in the first instance, every error of orthography and grammar. A mistake in either is unpardonable. Afterwards revise and improve the language.
I am pleased with both your pieces of composition. The subjects are well chosen and of the deepest interest. Happiness is pursued by all, though too many mistake the road by which the greatest good is to be successfully followed. Its abode is not always in the palace or the cottage. Its residence is the human heart, and its inseparable companion is a quiet conscience. Of this, Religion is the surest and safest foundation. The individual who turns his thoughts frequently to an omnipotent omniscient and all perfect being, who feels his dependence on, and his infinite obligations to that being will avoid that course of life which must harrow up the conscience.
Marshall was usually most scrupulous to steer clear of partisan politics both in his letters and in his conversation, so that on one occasion he was much aroused by a newspaper article which had represented him “as using language which could be uttered only by an angry party man.” But on political issues of a broader nature he expressed himself freely in the strict privacy of correspondence at least, and sometimes identified himself with public movements, especially in his home State. For instance, he favored the gradual abolition of slavery by private emancipation rather than by governmental action. In 1823 he became first president of the Richmond branch of the Colonization Society; five years later he presided over a convention to promote internal improvements in Virginia; and in 1829 he took a prominent part in the deliberations of the State Constitutional Convention.
In the broader matters of national concern his political creed was in thorough agreement with his constitutional doctrine. Nullification he denounced as “wicked folly,” and he warmly applauded Jackson’s proclamation of warning to South Carolina. But Marshall regarded with dismay Jackson’s aggrandizement of the executive branch, and the one adverse criticism he has left of the Constitution is of the method provided for the election of the President. In this connection he wrote in 1830: “My own private mind has been slowly and reluctantly advancing to the belief that the present mode of choosing the Chief Magistrate threatens the most serious danger to the public happiness. The passions of men are influenced to so fearful an extent, large masses are so embittered against each other, that I dread the consequences.… Age is, perhaps, unreasonably timid. Certain it is that I now dread consequences that I once thought imaginary. I feel disposed to take refuge under some less turbulent and less dangerous mode of choosing the Chief Magistrate.” Then follows the suggestion that the people of the United States elect a body of persons equal in number to one-third of the Senate and that the President be chosen from among this body by lot. Marshall’s suggestion seems absurd enough today, but it should be remembered that his fears of national disorder as a result of strong party feeling at the time of presidential elections were thoroughly realized in 1860 when Lincoln’s election led to secession and civil war, and that sixteen years later, in the Hayes-Tilden contest, a second dangerous crisis was narrowly averted.
In the campaign of 1832 Marshall espoused privately the cause of Clay and the United States Bank, and could not see why Virginia should not be of the same opinion. Writing to Story in the midst of the campaign he said: “We are up to the chin in politics. Virginia was always insane enough to be opposed to the Bank of the United States, and therefore hurrahs for the veto. But we are a little doubtful how it may work in Pennsylvania. It is not difficult to account for the part New York may take. She has sagacity enough to see her interests in putting down the present Bank. Her mercantile position gives her a control, a commanding control, over the currency and the exchanges of the country, if there be no Bank of the United States. Going for herself she may approve this policy; but Virginia ought not to drudge for her.” To the end of his days Marshall seems to have refused to recognize that the South had a sectional interest to protect, or at least that Virginia’s interests were sectional; her attachment to State Rights he assigned to the baneful influence of Jeffersonianism.
The year 1831 dealt Marshall two severe blows. In that year his robust constitution manifested the first signs of impairment, and he was forced to undergo an operation for stone. In the days before anæsthetics, such an operation, especially in the case of a person of his advanced years, was attended with great peril. He faced the ordeal with the utmost composure. His physician tells of visiting Marshall the morning he was to submit to the knife and of finding him at breakfast: