University of Virginia Library

The celebrated historian and naturalist, Volney, needs no recommendation from

G. Washington

John Marshall, late
Chief Justice of the
United States, was born
at a locality called Germantown,
in this county,
9 miles below Warrenton.
The house in
which he was born is not in existence. When he was quite young, the family moved to
Goose's Creek, under Manassa's Gap, near the Blue Ridge, and still later to Oak Hill,
where the family lived at the commencement of the revolution. His father, Thomas
Marshall, was a planter of limited means and education, but of strong natural powers,
which, cultivated by observation and reflection, gave him the reputation of extraordinary
ability. He served with distinction in the revolution, as a colonel in the continental
army. John was the eldest of fifteen children. The narrow fortune of Col. Marshall,
and the sparsely inhabited condition of Fauquier, compelled him to be almost exclusively
the teacher of his children, and to his instructions the Chief-Justice said, "he
owed the solid foundation of all his success in life." He early implanted in his eldest
son a taste for English literature, especially for poetry and history. At the age of twelve,
John had transcribed the whole of Pope's Essay on Man, and some of his Moral Essays;
and had committed to memory many of the most interesting passages of that distinguished
poet.

At the age of 14 he was placed with the Rev. Mr. Campbell, in Westmoreland, where,
for a year, he was instructed in Latin, and had for a fellow-student James Monroe. The
succeeding year was passed at his father's, where he continued the study under the Rev.
Mr. Thompson, a Scotch gentleman, which "was the whole of the classical tuition he
ever obtained. By the assistance of his father, however, and the persevering efforts of
his own mind, he continued to enlarge his knowledge, while he strengthened his body by
Shardy, athletic exercises in the open air. He engaged in field sports; he indulged his

solitary meditations amidst the wildest scenery of nature; he delighted to brush away
the earliest dews of the morning.' " To these early habits in a mountain region he
owed a vigorous constitution. The simple manner of living among the people of those
regions of that early day, doubtless contributed its share. He ever recurred with fondness
to that primitive mode of life, when he partook with a keen relish balm tea and
mush; and when the females used thorns for pins.

In the summer of 1775 he was appointed Lieut. in the "Minute Battalion," and had
an honorable share in the battle of Great Bridge. In July, 1776, he was appointed 1st
Lieut. in the 11th Virginia regiment, on the continental establishment, which marched
to the north in the ensuing winter; and in May, 1777, he was promoted to a captaincy.
He was in the skirmish at Iron Hill, and at the battles of Brandywine, Germantown,
and Monmouth. He was one of that body of men, never surpassed in the history of
the world, who, unpaid, unclothed, unfed, tracked the snows of Valley Forge with the
blood of their footsteps in the rigorous winter of 1778, and yet turned not their faces
from their country in resentment, or from their enemies in fear.

That part of the Virginia line which was not ordered to Charleston, (S. C.,) being in
effect dissolved by the expiration of the term of enlistment of the soldiers, the officers
(among whom was Captain Marshall) were, in the winter of 1779-80, directed to return
home, in order to take charge of such men as the state legislature should raise for them.
It was during this season of inaction that he availed himself of the opportunity of attending
a course of law lectures given by Mr. Wythe, afterwards chancellor of the state;
and a course of lectures on natural philosophy, given by Mr. Madison, president of William
and Mary College in Virginia. He left this college in the summer vacation of
1780, and obtained a license to practise law. In October he returned to the army, and
continued in service until the termination of Arnold's invasion. After this period, and
before the invasion of Phillips, in February, 1781, there being a redundancy of officers
in the Virginia line, he resigned his commission.

During the invasion of Virginia, the courts of law were not reopened until after the
capitulation of Lord Cornwallis. Immediately after that event, Mr. Marshall commenced
the practice of law, and soon rose into distinction at the bar.

In the spring of 1782, he was elected a member of the state legislature, and in the
autumn of the same year, a member of the executive council. In January, 1783, he
married Miss Ambler, the daughter of a gentleman who was then treasurer of the
state, and to whom he had become attached before he left the army. This lady lived
for nearly fifty years after her marriage, to partake and enjoy the distinguished honors
of her husband. In 1784, he resigned his seat at the council-board in order to return
to the bar; and he was immediately afterwards again elected a member of the legislature
for the county of Fauquier, of which he was then only nominally an inhabitant, his
actual residence being at Richmond. In 1787 he was elected a member from the county
of Henrico; and though at that time earnestly engaged in the duties of his profession,
he embarked largely in the political questions which then agitated the state, and indeed
the whole confederacy.

Every person at all read in our domestic history must recollect the dangers and difficulties
of those days. The termination of the revolutionary war left the country impoverished
and exhausted by its expenditures, and the national finances at a low state
of depression. The powers of Congress under the confederation, which even during the
war were often prostrated by the neglect of a single state to enforce them, became in
the ensuing peace utterly relaxed and inefficient.

Credit, private as well as public, was destroyed. Agriculture and commerce were
crippled. The delicate relation of debtor and creditor became daily more and more
embarrassed and embarrassing; and, as is usual upon such occasions, every sort of expedient
was resorted to by popular leaders, as well as by men of desperate fortunes, to
inflame the public mind, and to bring into odium those who labored to preserve the public
faith, and to establish a more energetic government. The whole country was soon
divided into two great parties, the one of which endeavored to put an end to the public
evils by the establishment of a government over the Union, which should be adequate
to all its exigencies, and act directly on the people; the other was devoted to state
authority, jealous of all federal influence, and determined at every hazard to resist its
increase.

It is almost unnecessary to say, that Mr. Marshall could not remain an idle or indifferent
spectator to such scenes. As little doubt could there be of the part he would take
in such a contest. He was at once arrayed on the side of Washington and Madison.
In Virginia, as everywhere else, the principal topics of the day were paper money, the

collection of taxes, the preservation of public faith, and the administration of civil justice.
The parties were nearly equally divided upon all these topics; and the contest
concerning them was continually renewed. In such a state of things, every victory
was but a temporary and questionable triumph, and every defeat still left enough of hope
to excite to new and strenuous exertions. The affairs, too, of the confederacy were
then at a crisis. The question of the continuance of the Union, or a separation of the
states, was freely discussed; and, what is almost startling now to repeat, either side of
it was maintained without reproach. Mr. Madison was at this time, and had been for
two or three years, a member of the House of Delegates, and was, in fact, the author of
the resolution for the general convention at Philadelphia to revise the confederation.
He was at all times the enlightened advocate of union, and of an efficient federal government,
and he received on all occasions the steady support of Mr. Marshall. Many have
witnessed with no ordinary emotions, the pleasure with which both of these gentlemen
looked back upon their co-operation at that period, and the sentiments of profound respect
with which they habitually regarded each other.

Both of them were members of the convention subsequently called in Virginia for the
ratification of the federal constitution. This instrument having come forth under the
auspices of General Washington and other distinguished patriots of the revolution, was
at first favorably received in Virginia, but it soon encountered decided hostility. Its
defence was uniformly and most powerfully maintained there by Mr. Marshall. He was
then not thirty years old. It was in these debates that Mr. Marshall's mind acquired
the skill in political discussion which afterwards distinguished him, and which would of
itself have made him conspicuous as a parliamentarian, had not that talent been overshadowed
by his renown in a more soberly illustrious though less dazzling career. Here,
too, it was that he conceived that deep dread of disunion, and that profound conviction
of the necessity for closer bonds between the states, which gave the coloring to the whole
texture of his opinions upon federal politics in after-life.

The constitution being adopted, Mr. Marshall was prevailed upon to serve in the
legislature until 1792. From that time until 1795, he devoted himself exclusively to his
profession. In 1795, when Jay's Treaty was "the absorbing theme of bitter controversy,"
he was elected to the House of Delegates, and his speech in its defence, says
Judge Story, "has always been represented as one of the noblest efforts of his genius.
His vast powers of reasoning were displayed with the most gratifying success. . . . . .
The fame of this admirable argument spread through the Union. Even with his political
enemies it enhanced the estimate of his character; and it brought him at once to
the notice of some of the most eminent statesmen who then graced the councils of the
nation."

Soon after he, with Messrs. Pinkney and Gerry, were sent by President Adams as
envoys extraordinary to France. The Directory refused to negotiate, and though the
direct object of the embassy failed, much was effected by the official papers the envoys
addressed to Talleyrand, her minister of foreign relations, in showing France to be in
the wrong. These papers—models of skilful reasoning, clear illustration, accurate detail,
and urbane and dignified moderation—have always been attributed to Marshall, and
bear internal marks of it. Such was the impression made by the dispatches, that on the
arrival of Mr. Marshall in New York, in June, 1798, his entry had the éclat of a triumph.
A public dinner was given to him by both houses of congress, "as an evidence
of affection for his person, and of their grateful approbation of the patriotic firmness with
which he sustained the dignity of his country during his important mission;" and the
country at large responded with one voice to the sentiment pronounced at this celebration:
"Millions for defence, but not a cent for tribute."

Mr. Marshall was elected to Congress in 1799. He had been there not three weeks,
when it became his lot to announce the death of Washington. Never could such an
event have been told in language more impressive or more appropriate. "Mr. Speaker,
—The melancholy event, which was yesterday announced with doubt, has been rendered
too certain. Our Washington is no more! The hero, the patriot, and the sage of America;
the man on whom in times of danger every eye was turned, and all hopes were placed,
lives now only in his own great actions, and in the hearts of an affectionate and afflicted
people," &c., &c.

That House of Representatives abounded in talent of the first order for debate; and
none were more conspicuous than John Marshall. Indeed, when the law or constitution
were to be discussed, he was, confessedly, the first man in the house. When he
discussed them, he exhausted them; nothing more remained to be said; and the impression
of his argument effaced that of every one else.

In 1800 he was appointed secretary of state, an office which he held but a few months.
He was appointed chief-justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, January 31,
1801; "not only without his own solicitation, (for he had in fact recommended another to
the office,) but by the prompt and spontaneous choice of President Adams, upon his own
unassisted judgment. The nomination was unanimously confirmed by the Senate. How
well he filled that office is known to his countrymen. We shall not attempt to protract
our account of the last thirty-five years of Judge Marshall's life. It was spent in the
diligent and upright, as well as able discharge of his official duties; sometimes presiding
in the Supreme Court at Washington, sometimes assisting to hold the circuit federal
courts in Virginia and North Carolina. His residence was in Richmond, whence it was
his frequent custom to walk out, a distance of three or four miles, to his farm. He had
also a farm in his native county, Fauquier, which he annually visited, and where he
always enjoyed a delightful intercourse with numerous relations and friends. Twice in
these thirty-five years, he may be said to have mingled in political life; but not in party
politics. In 1828 he was a member of a convention, held in Charlottesville, to devise a
system of internal improvement for the state, to be commended to the legislature. In
1829 he was a member of the convention to revise and amend the state constitution,
where he delivered a speech regarded as an unrivalled specimen of lucid and conclusive
reasoning.

"No man more highly relished social, and even convivial enjoyments. He was a
member of a club which for forty-eight summers has met once a fortnight near Richmond,
to pitch quoits and mingle in relaxing conversation; and there was not one more delightedly
punctual in his attendance at these meetings, or who contributed more to their
pleasantness; scarcely one who excelled him in the manly game, from which the `Quoit
Club' drew its designation. He would hurl his iron ring of two pounds weight, with
rarely erring aim, fifty-five or sixty feet; and at some chef-d'œuvre of skill in himself
or his partner, would spring up and clap his hands with all the light-hearted enthusiasm
of boyhood. Such is the old age which follows a temperate, an innocent, and a useful
life."

Chief-Justice Marshall died at Philadelphia, July 6th, 1835, in his 80th year. "The
love of simplicity and dislike of ostentation, which had marked his life, displayed itself
also in his last days. Apprehensive that his remains might be encumbered with the
vain pomp of a costly monument, and a laudatory epitaph, he, only two days before his
death, directed the common grave of himself and his consort, to be indicated by a plain
stone, with this simple and modest inscription:"

This unostentatious inscription, with the blanks only filled, is carved on the plain white
marble monument erected over his remains, in the grave-yard at Shoccoe Hill, Richmond.

The late Francis W. Gilmer, a young man of the finest promise, of whom it is said,
"had he not prematurely been cut off by the hand of death, would have ranked with
the foremost men of his age and country," thus described the intellectual character of
Judge Marshall:—

The foregoing memoir of Marshall is abridged from an exceedingly interesting one in
the Southern Literary Messenger for February, 1836, which is partly original and partly
compiled from the eulogies on his life and character, by Horace Binney, Judge Story,
and Edgar Snowden. We have, in addition, collected a few reminiscences and anecdotes
from different gentlemen, of high respectability, which we presume to be authentic:

Marshall was noted for extreme plainness of person and address, and a child-like simplicity

of character. His carelessness of his personal attire, in early life particularly, is
well known, and on one occasion, (as stated in the Literary Messenger,) while travelling,
occasioned his being refused admittance into a public house. On the occasion which
we are now to relate, it caused him the loss of a generous fee. Marshall, when just
rising on the professional ladder, was one morning strolling through the streets of Richmond,
attired in a plain linen roundabout and shorts, with his hat under his arm, from
which he was eating cherries, when he stopped in the porch of the Eagle hotel, indulged
in some little pleasantry with the landlord, and then passed on. Mr. P., an elderly gentleman
from the country, then present, who had a case coming on before the court of
appeals, was referred by the landlord to Marshall, as the best advocate for him to employ;
but the careless, languid air of the young lawyer, had so prejudiced Mr. P. that
he refused to engage him. On entering court, Mr. P. was a second time referred by the
clerk of the court, and a second time he declined. At this moment entered Mr. V., a
venerable-looking legal gentlemen, in a powdered wig and black coat, whose dignified
appearance produced such an impression on Mr. P. that he at once engaged him. In
the first case which came on, Marshall and Mr. V. each addressed the court. The
vast inferiority of his advocate was so apparent, that at the close of the case, Mr. P. introduced
himself to young Marshall, frankly stated the prejudice which had caused him,
in opposition to advice, to employ Mr. V.; that he extremely regretted his error, but knew
not how to remedy it. He had come into the city with one hundred dollars, as his lawyer's
fee, which he had paid, and had but five left, which, if Marshall chose, he would
cheerfully give him, for assisting in the case. Marshall, pleased with the incident, accepted
the offer, not, however, without passing a sly joke at the omnipotence of a powdered
wig and black coat.

Marshall was accustomed to go to market, and frequently unattended. "Nothing
was more usual than to see him returning at sunrise, with poultry in one hand and vegetables
in the other" On one of these occasions, a would-be fashionable young man from
the North, who had recently removed to Richmond, was swearing violently because he
could hire no one to take home his turkey. Marshall stepped up, and ascertaining of
him where he lived, replied, "That is my way, and I will take it for you." When arrived
at his dwelling, the young man inquired, "What shall I pay you?" "Oh, nothing,"
was the rejoinder, "you are welcome; it was on my way, and no trouble."
"Who is that polite old gentleman who brought home my turkey for me?" inquired the
other of a by-stander, as Marshall stepped away. "That," replied he, "is John Marshall,
Chief-Justice of the United States." The young man, astounded, exclaimed,
"Why did he bring home my turkey?" "To give you a severe reprimand, and learn
you to attend to your own business," was the answer.

The venerable Capt. Philip Slaughter, now (May, 1844) living in Culpeper, was a
messmate of Marshall's in the revolution. He says Marshall was the best tempered
man he ever knew. During their sufferings at Valley Forge, nothing discouraged, nothing
disturbed him; if he had only bread to eat it was just as well; if only meat it made no
difference. If any of the officers murmured at their deprivations, he would shame them
by good-natured raillery, or encourage them by his own exuberance of spirits. He was
an excellent companion, and idolized by the soldiers and his brother officers, whose
gloomy hours were enlivened by his inexhaustible fund of anecdote.

For sterling honesty no man ever exceeded Marshall. He never would, knowingly,
argue in defence of injustice, or take a legal advantage at the expense of moral honesty.
A case of the latter is in point. He became an endorser on a bond amounting to several
thousand dollars. The drawer failed, and Marshall paid it, although he knew it could
be avoided, inasmuch as the holder had advanced the amount at more than legal interest.

He possessed a noble generosity. In passing through Culpeper, on his way to Fauquier,
he fell in company with Mr. S., an old fellow-officer in the army of the revolution.
In the course of conversation, Marshall learned that there was a lien upon the estate of
his friend to the amount of $3000, about due, and he was greatly distressed at the prospect
of impending ruin. On bidding farewell, Marshall privately left a check for the
amount, which being presented to Mr. S. after his departure, he, impelled by a chivalrous
independence, mounted, and spurred on his horse until he overtook his friend. He
thanked him for his generosity, but refused to accept it. Marshall strenuously persisted
in its acceptance, and the other as strongly persisted in not accepting. Finally it
resulted in a compromise, by which Marshall took security on the lien, but never called
for pay.

Gen. Simon Kenton was born in this county, May 15th, 1755. His parentage was
humble, and his education was entirely neglected. At the early age of 16, he became
entangled in the snares of a young coquette, and soon had a severe battle with a rival
by the name of Leitchman. Supposing he had killed him, he fled to Kentucky, and became
one of the boldest pioneers of that then wilderness country, and one of the bravest
that ever encountered the wiles of the Indians. His life was one of eventful incident.
On being taken prisoner by them, on one occasion, he was eight times exposed to the
gauntlet—three times tied to the stake to be burnt, and often thought himself on the eve
of a terrible death. But Providence at last interposed in his favor, and he escaped. He
was a spy in Dunmore's war. He acted in the same capacity under the gallant Col.
George Rogers Clarke, in the revolution. He shared in Wayne's victory, and distinguished
himself through the whole of the Indian wars of that day. He died in Ohio,
in 1837, aged 82. His once gigantic form was broken by age; and his last days, it is
said, were spent in poverty and neglect.