He died during the first term of the administration of President Jackson, and is appropriately noticed in this work next after Mr. Madison, with whom he had been so long and so intimately associated, both in public and in private life; and whose successor he had been in successive high posts, including that of the presidency itself. He is one of our eminent public characters which have not attained their due place in history; nor has any one attempted to give him that place but one—Mr. John Quincy Adams—in his discourse upon the life of Mr. Monroe. Mr. Adams, and who could be a more competent judge? places him in the first line of American statesmen, and contributing, during the fifty years of his connection with the public affairs, a full share in the aggrandisement and advancement of his country. His parts were not shining, but solid. He lacked genius, but he possessed judgment: and it was the remark of Dean Swift, well illustrated in his own case and that of his associate friends, Harley and Bolingbroke (three of the rarest geniuses that ever acted together, and whose cause went to ruin notwithstanding their wit and eloquence), that genius was not necessary to the conducting of the affairs of state: that judgment, diligence, knowledge, good intentions, and will, were sufficient. Mr. Monroe was an instance of the soundness of this remark, as well as the three brilliant geniuses of Queen Anne's time, and on the opposite side of it. Mr. Monroe had none of the mental qualities which dazzle and astonish mankind; but he had a discretion which seldom committed a mistake—an integrity that always looked to the public good—a firmness of will which carried him resolutely upon his object—a diligence that mastered every subject—and a perseverance that yielded to no obstacle or reverse. He began his patriotic career in the military service, at the commencement of the war of the revolution—went into the general assembly of his native State at an early age—and thence, while still young, into the continental Congress. There he showed his character, and laid the foundation of his future political fortunes in his uncompromising opposition to the plan of a treaty with Spain by which the navigation of the Mississippi was to be given up for twenty-five years in return for commercial privileges. It was the qualities of judgment, and perseverance, which he displayed on that occasion, which brought him those calls to diplomacy in which he was afterwards so much employed with three of the then greatest European powers—France, Spain, Great Britain. And it was in allusion to this circumstance that President Jefferson afterwards, when the right of deposit at New Orleans had been violated by Spain, and when a minister was wanted to recover it, said, "Monroe is the man: the defence of the Mississippi belongs to him." And under this appointment he had the felicity to put his name to the treaty which secured the Mississippi, its navigation and all the territory drained by its western waters, to the United States for ever. Several times in his life he seemed to miscarry, and to fall from the top to the bottom of the political ladder: but always to reascend as high, or higher than ever. Recalled by Washington from the French mission, to which he had been appointed from the Senate of the United States, he returned to the starting point of his early career—the general assembly of his State—served as a member from his county—was elected Governor; and from that post restored by Jefferson to the French mission, soon to be followed by the embassies to Spain and England. Becoming estranged from Mr. Madison about the time of that gentleman's first election to the presidency, and having returned from his missions a little mortified that Mr. Jefferson had rejected his British treaty without sending it to the Senate, he was again at the foot of the political ladder, and apparently out of favor with those who were at its top. Nothing despairing, he went back to the old starting point—served again in the Virginia general assembly—was again elected Governor: and from that post was called to the cabinet of Mr. Madison, to be his double Secretary of State and War. He was the effective power in the declaration of war against Great Britain. His residence abroad had shown him that unavenged British wrongs was lowering our character with Europe, and that war with the "mistress of the seas" was as necessary to our respectability in the eyes of the world, as to the security of our citizens and commerce upon the ocean. He brought up Mr. Madison to the war point. He drew the war report which the committee on foreign relations presented to the House—that report which the absence of Mr. Peter B. Porter, the chairman, and the hesitancy of Mr. Grundy, the second on the committee, threw into the hands of Mr. Calhoun, the third on the list and the youngest of the committee; and the presentation of which immediately gave him a national reputation. Prime mover of the war, he was also one of its most efficient supporters, taking upon himself, when adversity pressed, the actual duties of war minister, financier, and foreign secretary at the same time. He was an enemy to all extravagance, to all intrigue, to all indirection in the conduct of business. Mr. Jefferson's comprehensive and compendious eulogium upon him, as brief as true, was the faithful description of the man—"honest and brave." He was an enemy to nepotism, and no consideration or entreaty—no need of the support which an office would give, or intercession from friends—could ever induce him to appoint a relative to any place under the government. He had opposed the adoption of the constitution until amendments were obtained; but these had, he became one of its firmest supporters, and labored faithfully, anxiously and devotedly, to administer it in its purity. He was the first President under whom the author of this View served, commencing his first senatorial term with the commencement of the second presidential term of this last of the men of the revolution who were spared to fill the office in the great Republic which they had founded.
CHAPTER CXLIX.
DEATH OF CHIEF JUSTICE MARSHALL.
He died in the middle of the second term of General Jackson's presidency, having been chief justice of the Supreme Court of the United States full thirty-five years, presiding all the while (to use the inimitable language of Mr. Randolph), "with native dignity and unpretending grace." He was supremely fitted for high judicial station:—a solid judgment, great reasoning powers, acute and penetrating mind: with manners and habits to suit the purity and the paucity of the ermine:—attentive, patient, laborious: grave on the bench, social in the intercourse of life: simple in his tastes, and inexorably just. Seen by a stranger come into a room, and he would be taken for a modest country gentleman, without claims to attention, and ready to take the lowest place in company, or at table, and to act his part without trouble to any body. Spoken to, and closely observed, he would be seen to be a gentleman of finished breeding, of winning and prepossessing talk, and just as much mind as the occasion required him to show. Coming to man's estate at the beginning of the revolution he followed the current into which so many young men, destined to become eminent, so ardently entered; and served in the army, and with notice and observation, under the eyes of Washington. Elected to Congress at an early age he served in the House of Representatives in the time of the elder Mr. Adams, and found in one of the prominent questions of the day a subject entirely fitted to his acute and logical turn of mind—the case of the famous Jonathan Robbins, claiming to be an American citizen, reclaimed by the British government as a deserter, delivered up, and hanged at the yard-arm of an English man-of-war. Party spirit took up the case, and it was one to inflame that spirit. Mr. Marshall spoke in defence of the administration, and made the master speech of the day, when there were such master speakers in Congress as Madison, Gallatin, William B. Giles, Edward Livingston, John Randolph. It was a judicial subject, adapted to the legal mind of Mr. Marshall, requiring a legal pleading: and well did he plead it. Mr. Randolph has often been heard to say that it distanced competition—leaving all associates and opponents far behind, and carrying the case. Seldom has one speech brought so much fame, and high appointment to any one man. When he had delivered it his reputation was in the zenith: in less than nine brief months thereafter he was Secretary at War, Secretary of State, Minister to France, and Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. Politically, he classed with the federal party, and was one of those high-minded and patriotic men of that party, who, acting on principle, commanded the respect of those even who deemed them wrong.
CHAPTER CL.
DEATH OF COL. BURR, THIRD VICE-PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES.
He was one of the few who, entering the war of independence with ardor and brilliant prospects, disappointed the expectations he had created, dishonored the cause he had espoused, and ended in shame the career which he had opened with splendor. He was in the adventurous expedition of Arnold through the wilderness to Quebec, went ahead in the disguise of a priest to give intelligence of the approach of aid to General Montgomery, arrived safely through many dangers, captivated the General by the courage and address which he had shown, was received by him into his military family; and was at his side when he was killed. Returning to the seat of war in the Northern States he was invited by Washington, captivated like Montgomery by the soldierly and intellectual qualities he had shown, to his headquarters, with a view to placing him on his staff; but he soon perceived that the brilliant young man lacked principle; and quietly got rid of him. The after part of his life was such as to justify the opinion which Washington had formed of him; but such was his address and talent as to rise to high political distinction: Attorney General of New-York, Senator in Congress, and Vice-President of the United States. At the close of the presidential election of 1800, he stood equal with Mr. Jefferson in the vote which he received, and his undoubted successor at the end of Mr. Jefferson's term. But there his honors came to a stand, and took a downward turn, nor ceased descending until he was landed in the abyss of shame, misery, and desolation. He intrigued with the federalists to supplant Mr. Jefferson—to get the place of President, for which he had not received a single vote—was suspected, detected, baffled—lost the respect of his party, and was thrown upon crimes to recover a position, or to avenge his losses. The treasonable attempt in the West, and the killing of General Hamilton, ended his career in the United States. But although he had deceived the masses, and reached the second office of the government, with the certainty of attaining the first if he only remained still, yet there were some close observers whom he never deceived. The early mistrust of Washington has been mentioned: it became stronger as Burr mounted higher in the public favor; and in 1794, when a senator in Congress, and when the republican party had taken him for their choice for the French mission in the place of Mr. Monroe recalled, and had sent a committee of which Mr. Madison was chief to ask his nomination from Washington, that wise and virtuous man peremptorily refused it, giving as a categorical reason, that his rule was invariable, never to appoint an immoral man to any office. Mr. Jefferson had the same ill opinion of him, and, notwithstanding his party zeal, always considered him in market when the federalists had any high office to bestow. But General Hamilton was most thoroughly imbued with a sense of his unworthiness, and deemed it due to his country to balk his election over Jefferson; and did so. His letters to the federal members of Congress painted Burr in his true character, and dashed far from his grasp, and for ever, the gilded prize his hand was touching. For that frustration of his hopes, four years afterwards, he killed Hamilton in a duel, having on the part of Burr the spirit of an assassination—cold-blooded, calculated, revengeful, and falsely-pretexted. He alleged some trivial and recent matter for the challenge, such as would not justify it in any code of honor; and went to the ground to kill upon an old grudge which he was ashamed to avow. Hard was the fate of Hamilton—losing his life at the early age of forty-two for having done justice to his country in the person of the man to whom he stood most politically opposed, and the chief of the party by which he had been constrained to retire from the scene of public life at the age of thirty-four—the age at which most others begin it—he having accomplished gigantic works. He was the man most eminently and variously endowed of all the eminent men of his day—at once soldier and statesman, with a head to conceive, and a hand to execute: a writer, an orator, a jurist: an organizing mind, able to grasp the greatest system; and administrative, to execute the smallest details: wholly turned to the practical business of life, and with a capacity for application and production which teemed with gigantic labors, each worthy to be the sole product of a single master intellect; but lavished in litters from the ever teeming fecundity of his prolific genius. Hard his fate, when, withdrawing from public life at the age of thirty-four, he felt himself constrained to appeal to posterity for that justice which contemporaries withheld from him. And the appeal was not in vain. Statues rise to his memory: history embalms his name: posterity will do justice to the man who at the age of twenty was "the principal and most confidential aid of Washington," who retained the love and confidence of the Father of his country to the last; and to whom honorable opponents, while opposing his systems of policy, accorded honor, and patriotism, and social affections, and transcendental abilities.—This chapter was commenced to write a notice of the character of Colonel Burr; but that subject will not remain under the pen. At the appearance of that name, the spirit of Hamilton starts up to rebuke the intrusion—to drive back the foul apparition to its gloomy abode—and to concentrate all generous feeling on itself.