In a letter to Judge Peters, of Philadelphia, dated November 23, 1807, just after the Burr trial, after thanking his correspondent for a volume of “Admiralty Reports,” he has something to say of that case:—
“I have as yet been able only to peep into the book, not to read many of the cases. I received it while fatigued, and occupied with the most unpleasant case which has ever been brought before a judge in this or, perhaps, in any other country which affected to be governed by laws; since the decision of which I have been entirely from home. The day after the commitment of Colonel Burr for a misdemeanor I galloped to the mountains, whence I only returned in time to perform my North Carolina circuit, which terminates just soon enough to enable me to be here to open the court for the ancient dominion. Thus you perceive I have sufficient bodily employment to prevent my mind from perplexing itself about the attentions paid me in Baltimore and elsewhere. I wish I could have had as fair an opportunity to let the business go off as a jest here as you seem to have had in Philadelphia; but it was most deplorably serious, and I could not give the subject a different aspect by treating it in any manner which was in my power. I might, perhaps, have made it less serious to myself by obeying the public will, instead of the public law, and throwing a little more of the sombre upon others.”
[CHAPTER VII]
MARSHALL AS A CITIZEN AND A NEIGHBOR
There is more to be said of Marshall’s private and personal life. After he went on the bench, his principal non-judicial work, in the nature of public service, seems to have been writing the “Life of Washington,” with the later revision and reconstruction of that work, and his activity in a few matters of not too partisan a sort, such as were likely to engage the attention of a public-spirited citizen.
In 1813, at a meeting of the citizens of Richmond, he was appointed member of a Committee of Vigilance, to aid in defending the city against attack from the British. On June 28 he made a report, for a sub-committee, that it was inexpedient to undertake to fortify the city. After stating the topographical and other reasons for such an opinion, the report goes on thus: “Your committee are too conscious of their destitution of professional skill to advance with any confidence the opinion they have formed; but the resolution under which they act having made it their duty to give an opinion, they say, though with much diffidence, that they do not think any attempt to fortify the city advisable. It is to be saved by operations in the open field, by facing the enemy with a force which may deter him from any attempt to penetrate the interior of our country, and which may impress him with the danger of separating himself from his ships. If this protection cannot be afforded, Richmond must share the fate of other places which are in similar circumstances. Throughout the world, open towns belong to the army which is master of the country.… If the militia be put into the best condition for service, if the light artillery be well manned and supplied with horses, so as to move with celerity to any point where its services may be required; if the cavalry be kept entire and in active service; if the precaution of supplying in sufficient quantity all the implements of war be taken, your committee hope and believe that this town will have no reason to fear the invading foe.”[42]
In those efforts on the part of some of the leaders of Virginia and the South, early in the century, to rid themselves of slavery, to which we at the North have never done sufficient justice, Marshall took an active part.
The American Colonization Society was organized in 1816 or 1817, with Bushrod Washington for president. In 1823 an auxiliary society was organized at Richmond, of which Marshall was president, an office which he held nearly or quite up to the time of his death. It is interesting to observe that one of the plans for colonization was to have worked out the abolition of slavery in Virginia in the year 1901. Of slavery Marshall wrote to a friend, in 1826: “I concur with you in thinking that nothing portends more calamity and mischief to the Southern States than their slave population. Yet they seem to cherish the evil, and to view with immovable prejudice and dislike everything which may tend to diminish it. I do not wonder that they should resist any attempt, should one be made, to interfere with the rights of property, but they have a feverish jealousy of measures which may do good without the hazard of harm, that, I think, very unwise.”
In 1828, Marshall presided, in Virginia, over a convention to promote internal improvements. On this subject he held and freely expressed views, such as are now generally entertained, as to the power of the general government, and the expediency of exerting them.[43]
In 1829, he allowed himself to be elected to the Virginia convention for revising the state constitution, and took an active part in the debates. “Tall, in a long surtout of blue, with a face of genius and an eye of fire,” is the description that is given of him in the convention. On several questions he influenced greatly the course of the convention, especially in continuing, for a score of years to come, the judicial tenure of office during good behavior.
Marshall’s membership of the society of Free Masons is sometimes spoken of. It should be said that he lived to condemn that organization. During the political excitement which followed the abduction of Morgan, he was asked for information as to some praise of Freemasonry which had been publicly attributed to him, and replied, in October, 1833, that he was not particularly interested in the anti-masonic excitement. “The agitations which convulse the North did not pass the Potomac. Consequently … I felt no inclination to volunteer in a distant conflict, in which the wounds that might be received would not be soothed by the consoling reflection that he suffered in the performance of a necessary duty.” And he added that he had “never affirmed that there was any positive good or ill in the institution itself.” This cautious letter is illustrated by an earlier one, in July, 1833, in which, writing confidentially to Edward Everett, he says that he became a Mason soon after he entered the army, and afterwards continued in the society because his neighbors did. “I followed the crowd for a time, without attaching the least importance to its object or giving myself the trouble to inquire why others did. It soon lost its attraction, and though there are several lodges in the city of Richmond, I have not been in one of them for more than forty years, except on an invitation to accompany General Lafayette, nor have I been a member of one of them for more than thirty. It was impossible not to perceive the useless pageantry of the whole exhibition.” And he adds that he has become convinced “that the institution ought to be abandoned, as one capable of producing much evil and incapable of producing any good which might not be effected by safe and open means.”[44]