The Life of John Marshall, Volume 3: Conflict and construction, 1800-1815. Beveridge Albert Jeremiah
of the United States.
Ames. See Ames, Fisher. Works.
Channing: Jeff. System. See Channing, Edward. Jeffersonian System, 1801-11.
Channing: U.S. See Channing, Edward. History of the United States.
Chase Trial. See Chase, Samuel. Trial.
Corwin. See Corwin, Edward Samuel. Doctrine of Judicial Review.
Cutler. See Cutler, William Parker, and Julia Perkins. Life, Journals, and Correspondence of Manasseh Cutler.
Dillon. See Marshall, John. Life, Character, and Judicial Services. Edited by John Forrest Dillon.
Eaton: Prentiss. See Eaton, William. Life.
Jay: Johnston. See Jay, John. Correspondence and Public Papers.
Jefferson Writings: Washington. See Jefferson, Thomas, Writings. Edited by Henry Augustine Washington.
King. See King, Rufus. Life and Correspondence.
McCaleb. See McCaleb, Walter Flavius. Aaron Burr Conspiracy.
McMaster: U.S. See McMaster, John Bach. History of the People of the United States.
Marshall. See Marshall, John. Life of George Washington.
Memoirs, J. Q. A.: Adams. See Adams, John Quincy. Memoirs.
Morris. See Morris, Gouverneur. Diary and Letters.
N.E. Federalism: Adams. See New-England Federalism, 1800-1815, Documents relating to. Edited by Henry Adams.
Plumer. See Plumer, William. Life.
Priv. Corres.: Colton. See Clay, Henry. Private Correspondence. Edited by Calvin Colton.
Records Fed. Conv.: Farrand. See Records of the Federal Convention of 1787.
Story. See Story, Joseph. Life and Letters.
Trials of Smith and Ogden. See Smith, William Steuben, and Ogden, Samuel Gouverneur. Trials for Misdemeanors.
Wharton: Social Life. See Wharton, Anne Hollingsworth. Social Life in the Early Republic.
Wharton: State Trials. See Wharton, Francis. State Trials of the United States during the Administrations of Washington and Adams.
Wilkinson: Memoirs. See Wilkinson, James. Memoirs of My Own Times.
Works: Colton. See Clay, Henry. Works.
Works: Ford. See Jefferson, Thomas. Works. Federal Edition. Edited by Paul Leicester Ford.
Writings, J. Q. A.: Ford. See Adams, John Quincy. Writings. Edited by Worthington Chauncey Ford.
THE LIFE OF JOHN MARSHALL
CHAPTER I
DEMOCRACY: JUDICIARY
Rigorous law is often rigorous injustice. (Terence.)
The Federalists have retired into the Judiciary as a stronghold, and from that battery all the works of republicanism are to be battered down. (Jefferson.)
There will be neither justice nor stability in any system, if some material parts of it are not independent of popular control. (George Cabot.)
A strange sight met the eye of the traveler who, aboard one of the little river sailboats of the time, reached the stretches of the sleepy Potomac separating Alexandria and Georgetown. A wide swamp extended inland from a modest hill on the east to a still lower elevation of land about a mile to the west.1 Between the river and morass a long flat tract bore clumps of great trees, mostly tulip poplars, giving, when seen from a distance, the appearance of "a fine park."2
Upon the hill stood a partly constructed white stone building, mammoth in plan. The slight elevation north of the wide slough was the site of an apparently finished edifice of the same material, noble in its dimensions and with beautiful, simple lines,3 but "surrounded with a rough rail fence 5 or 6 feet high unfit for a decent barnyard."4 From the river nothing could be seen beyond the groves near the banks of the stream except the two great buildings and the splendid trees which thickened into a seemingly dense forest upon the higher ground to the northward.5
On landing and making one's way through the underbrush to the foot of the eastern hill, and up the gullies that seamed its sides thick with trees and tangled wild grapevines,6 one finally reached the immense unfinished structure that attracted attention from the river. Upon its walls laborers were languidly at work.
Clustered around it were fifteen or sixteen wooden houses. Seven or eight of these were boarding-houses, each having as many as ten or a dozen rooms all told. The others were little affairs of rough lumber, some of them hardly better than shanties. One was a tailor shop; in another a shoemaker plied his trade; a third contained a printer with his hand press and types, while a washerwoman occupied another; and in the others there was a grocery shop, a pamphlets-and-stationery shop, a little dry-goods shop, and an oyster shop. No other human habitation of any kind appeared for three quarters of a mile.7
A broad and perfectly straight clearing had been made across the swamp between the eastern hill and the big white house more than a mile away to the westward. In the middle of this long opening ran a roadway, full of stumps, broken by deep mud holes in the rainy season, and almost equally deep with dust when the days were dry. On either border was a path or "walk" made firm at places by pieces of stone; though even this "extended but a little way." Alder bushes grew in the unused spaces of this thoroughfare, and in the depressions stagnant water stood in malarial pools, breeding myriads of mosquitoes. A sluggish stream meandered across this avenue and broadened into the marsh.8
A few small houses, some of brick and some of wood, stood on the edge of this long, broad embryo street. Near the large stone building at its western end were four or five structures of red brick, looking much like ungainly warehouses. Farther westward on the Potomac hills was a small but pretentious town with its many capacious brick and stone residences, some of them excellent in their architecture and erected solidly by skilled workmen.9
Other openings in the forest had been cut at various places in the wide area east of the main highway that connected the two principal structures already described. Along these forest avenues were scattered houses of various materials, some finished and some in the process of erection.10 Here and there unsightly gravel pits and an occasional brick kiln added to the raw unloveliness of the whole.
Such was the City of Washington, with Georgetown near by, when Thomas Jefferson became President and John Marshall Chief Justice of the United States – the Capitol, Pennsylvania Avenue, the "Executive Mansion" or "President's Palace," the department buildings near it, the residences, shops, hostelries, and streets. It was a picture of sprawling aimlessness, confusion, inconvenience, and utter discomfort.
When considering the events that took place in the National Capital as narrated in these volumes, – the debates in Congress, the proclamations of Presidents, the opinions of judges, the intrigues of politicians, – when witnessing the scenes in which Marshall and Jefferson and Randolph and Burr and Pinckney and Webster were actors, we must think of Washington as a dismal place, where few and unattractive houses were scattered along muddy openings in the forests.
There was on paper a harmonious plan of a splendid city, but the realization of that plan had scarcely begun. As a situation for living, the Capital of the new Nation was, declared Gallatin, a "hateful place."
Gallatin to his wife, Jan. 15, 1801, Adams:
Plumer to Thompson, Jan. 1, 1803, Plumer MSS. Lib. Cong.
Gallatin to his wife, Jan. 15, 1801, Adams:
Hunt, 10.
Gallatin to his wife,
Bryan, i, 357-58.
A few of these are still standing and occupied.
Gallatin to his wife,