Thomas Marshall sat beneath its spell.
And John Marshall, now nineteen years old, heard those words from his father’s lips, as the family clustered around the fireside of Oak Hill, their Blue Ridge home.
The effect on John Marshall’s mind and spirit was heroic and profound.
Albert J. Beveridge (Arranged)
THE YOUNG LIEUTENANT
When John Marshall was nineteen, he was about six feet high, straight, and rather slender, and of dark complexion. His eyes were dark to blackness, strong and penetrating, beaming with intelligence and good nature. His raven black hair was of unusual thickness.
He was Lieutenant of a Company, and wore a purple or pale blue hunting shirt, and trousers of the same material fringed with white. A round black hat, with a buck-tail for a cockade, crowned his figure.
The news of the Battle of Lexington reached him, and he was soon on the muster-field training his Company.
First, he made his men a speech, telling them that he had come to meet them as fellow soldiers, who were likely to be called on to defend their Country and their own rights and liberties—that there had been a battle at Lexington in which the Americans were victorious, but that more fighting was expected—that soldiers were called for—and that it was time to brighten their firearms, and learn to use them in the field—and that, if they would fall into a single line, he would show them the new manual exercise, for which purpose he had brought his own gun.