Among those who paid their respects to Marshall, on his return from France, was Thomas Jefferson, the Vice-President, whose correspondence shows him at the time expressing the most unflattering opinion of the envoys. Jefferson wrote to Marshall the following note: “In after years,” says Mrs. Hardy, one of Marshall’s descendants,[14] “the Chief Justice frequently laughed over it, saying, ‘Mr. Jefferson came very near telling me the truth; the added un to lucky, policy alone demanded.’” The note ran thus: “Thos. Jefferson presents his compliments to General Marshall. He had the honor of calling at his lodgings twice this morning, but was so {un}^lucky as to find that he was out on both occasions. He wished to have expressed in person his regret that a pre-engagement for to-day, which could not be dispensed with, would prevent him the satisfaction of dining in company with Genl. Marshall, and, therefore, begs leave to place here the expressions of that respect which in company with his fellow-citizens he bears him.
“Genl. Marshall,
at Oeller’s Hotel, June 23d, 1798.”
In 1798 Adams offered to Marshall the seat on the Supreme Bench, made vacant by the death of James Wilson. He declined it; and it went to his old associate at William and Mary College, Bushrod Washington. Marshall did yield, however, to General Washington’s urgent request to stand for Congress that year. He held out long against Washington’s arguments, and only yielded, at last, when that venerated man called attention to his own recent sacrifice in accepting the unwelcome place of lieutenant-general of the army. When that went into the scale it was too much. Marshall was then on a visit to Mount Vernon, whither he had been invited in August or September, in company with Washington’s nephew, the coming judge.
On their way to Mount Vernon, the two travelers met with a misadventure which gave great amusement to Washington, and of which he enjoyed telling his friends. They came on horseback, and carried but one pair of saddlebags, each using one side. Arriving thoroughly drenched by rain, they were shown to a chamber to change their garments. One opened his side of the bags and drew forth a black bottle of whiskey. He insisted that he had opened his companion’s repository. Unlocking the other side, they found a big twist of tobacco, some corn bread, and the equipment of a pack-saddle. They had exchanged saddlebags with some traveler, and now had to appear in a ludicrous misfit of borrowed clothes.[15]
The election of Marshall to Congress excited great interest.[16] Washington heartily rejoiced in it. Jefferson, on the other hand, remarked that while Marshall might trouble the Republicans somewhat, yet he would now be unmasked. He had been popular with the mass of the people, Jefferson said, from his “lax, lounging manners,” and with wiser men through a “profound hypocrisy.” But now his British principles would stand revealed.
The New England Federalists were very curious about him; they had been alarmed and outraged, during the campaign, by his expressing opposition to the alien and sedition laws; but they were much impressed by him. Theodore Sedgwick wrote to Rufus King that he had “great powers, and much dexterity in the application of them.… We can do nothing without him.” But Sedgwick wished that “his education had been on the other side of the Delaware.” George Cabot wrote to King: “General Marshall is a leader.… But you see in him the faults of a Virginian.… He thinks too much of that State, and he expects that the world will be governed by rules of logic.” But Cabot hopes to see him improve, and adds, “He seems calculated to act a great part.” In the end, the Northern Federalists were disappointed in finding him too moderate. He held the place of leader of the House, and passed into the cabinet in May, 1800. On January 31, 1801, he was commissioned as Chief Justice.
[CHAPTER II]
ARGUMENTS AND SPEECHES; LIFE OF WASHINGTON; RELATIONS WITH JEFFERSON
There is little room for quotations from Marshall’s speeches or dispatches.
Some reference has already been made to his earliest reported argument in court, in 1786. In the Virginia Federal Convention, in 1788, Marshall’s principal speeches related to the subjects of taxation, the militia, and the judiciary. These, so far as preserved, are found in the third volume of Elliot’s Debates, and in Dr. Grigsby’s very interesting History of that Convention, in the tenth volume of the “Virginia Historical Collections.” Nothing remains of a famous speech in support of Jay’s treaty, at a public meeting in Richmond in 1795. A summary of his strong but unsuccessful argument in 1796, in the case of Ware v. Hylton (3 Dallas 199), as to the claims of British creditors, his only case before the Supreme Court of the United States, is preserved in the volume of reports. This argument attracted much attention among the statesmen at Philadelphia. “I then became acquainted,” he wrote to a friend, “with Mr. Cabot, Mr. Ames, Mr. Dexter, and Mr. Sedgwick of Massachusetts, Mr. Wadsworth of Connecticut, and Mr. King of New York.… I was particularly intimate with Mr. Ames.”