The Life of John Marshall Volume IV Part 8

"Ye G.o.ds, what havoc does ambition make 'Mong all your works."[223]

During the six or eight weeks that the Supreme Court sat each year, Marshall was the same in manner and appearance in Washington as he was among his neighbors in Richmond--the same in dress, in habits, in every way. Once a pract.i.tioner sent his little son to Marshall's quarters for some legal papers. The boy was in awe of the great man. But the Chief Justice, detecting the feelings of the lad, remarked: "Billy, I believe I can beat you playing marbles; come into the yard and we will have a game." Soon the Chief Justice of the United States and the urchin were hard at play.[224]

If he reached the court-room before the hour of convening court, he sat among the lawyers and talked and joked as if he were one of them;[225]

and, judging from his homely, neglected clothing, an uninformed onlooker would have taken him for the least important of the company. Yet there was about him an unconscious dignity that prevented any from presuming upon his good nature, for Marshall inspired respect as well as affection. After their surprise and disappointment at his ill attire and want of impressiveness,[226] attorneys coming in contact with him were unfailingly captivated by his simplicity and charm.

It was thus that Joseph Story, when a very young lawyer, first fell under Marshall's spell. "I love his laugh," he wrote; "it is too hearty for an intriguer,--and his good temper and unwearied patience are equally agreeable on the bench and in the study."[227] And Marshall wore well. The longer and more intimately men a.s.sociated with him, the greater their fondness for him. "I am in love with his character, positively in love," wrote Story after twenty-four years of close and familiar contact.[228] He "rises ... with the nearest survey," again testified Story in a magazine article.[229]

When, however, the time came for him to open court, a transformation came over him. Clad in the robes of his great office, with the a.s.sociate Justices on either side of him, no king on a throne ever appeared more majestic than did John Marshall. The kindly look was still in his eye, the mildness still in his tones, the benignity in his features. But a gravity of bearing, a firmness of manner, a concentration and intentness of mind, seemed literally to take possession of the man, although he was, and appeared to be, as unconscious of the change as he was that there was anything unusual in his conduct when off the bench.[230]

Marshall said and did things that interested other people and caused them to talk about him. He was noted for his quick wit, and the bar was fond of repeating anecdotes about him. "Did you hear what the Chief Justice said the other day?"--and then the story would be told of a bright saying, a quick repartee, a picturesque incident. Chief Justice Gibson of Pennsylvania, when a young man, went to Marshall for advice as to whether he should accept a position offered him on the State Bench.

The young attorney, thinking to flatter him, remarked that the Chief Justice had "reached the acme of judicial distinction." "Let me tell you what that means, young man," broke in Marshall. "The acme of judicial distinction means the ability to look a lawyer straight in the eyes for two hours and not hear a d.a.m.ned word he says."[231]

Wherever he happened to be, nothing pleased Marshall so much as to join a convivial party at dinner or to attend any sort of informal social gathering. On one occasion he went to the meeting of a club at Philadelphia, held in a room at a tavern across the hall from the bar.

It was a rule of the club that every one present should make a rhyme upon a word suddenly given. As he entered, the Chief Justice observed two or three Kentucky colonels taking their accustomed drink. When Marshall appeared in the adjoining room, where the company was gathered, he was asked for an extemporaneous rhyme on the word "paradox." Looking across the hall, he quickly answered:

"In the Blue Gra.s.s region, A 'Paradox' was born, The corn was full of kernels And the 'colonels' full of corn."[232]

But Marshall heartily disliked the formal society of the National Capital. He was, of course, often invited to dinners and receptions, but he was usually bored by their formality. Occasionally he would brighten his letters to his wife by short mention of some entertainment. "Since being in this place," he writes her, "I have been more in company than I wish.... I have been invited to dine with the President with our own secretaries & with the minister of France & tomorrow I dine with the British minister.... In the midst of these gay circles my mind is carried to my own fireside & to my beloved wife."[233]

Again: "Soon after dinner yesterday the French Charge d'affaires called upon us with a pressing invitation to be present at a party given to the young couple, a gentleman of the French legation & the daughter of the secretary of the navy who are lately married. There was a most brilliant illumination which we saw and admired, & then we returned."[234] Of a dinner at the French Legation he writes his wife, it was "rather a dull party. Neither the minister nor his lady could speak English and I could not speak French. You may conjecture how far we were from being sociable. Yesterday I dined with M^r Van Buren the secretary of State.

It was a grand dinner and the secretary was very polite, but I was rather dull through the evening. I make a poor return for these dinners.

I go to them with reluctance and am bad company while there. I hope we have seen the last, but I fear we must encounter one more.[235] With the exception of these parties my time was never pa.s.sed with more uniformity. I rise early, pour [_sic_] over law cases, go to court and return at the same hour and pa.s.s the evening in consultation with the Judges."[236]

Chester Harding relates that, when he was in Washington making a full-length portrait of the Chief Justice,[237] Marshall arrived late for the sitting, which had been fixed for eight o'clock in the evening.

He came without a hat. Congressman Storrs and one or two other men, having seen Marshall, bare-headed, hurrying by their inn with long strides, had "followed, curious to know the cause of such a strange appearance." But Marshall simply explained to the artist that the consultation lasted longer than usual, and that he had hurried off without his hat. When the Chief Justice was about to go home, Harding offered him a hat, but he said, "Oh, no! it is a warm night, I shall not need one."[238]

No attorney practicing in the Supreme Court was more unreserved in social conversation than was the Chief Justice. Sometimes, indeed, on a subject that appealed to him, Marshall would do all the talking, which, for some reason, would occasionally be quite beyond the understanding of his hearer. Of one such exhibition Fisher Ames remarked to Samuel Dexter: "I have not understood a word of his argument for half an hour." "And I," replied the leader of the Ma.s.sachusetts bar, "have been out of my depth for an hour and a half."[239]

The members of the Supreme Court made life as pleasant for themselves as they could during the weeks they were compelled to remain in "this dismal" place, as Daniel Webster described the National Capital.

Marshall and the a.s.sociate Justices all lived together at one boarding-house, and thus became a sort of family. "We live very harmoniously and familiarly,"[240] writes Story, one year after his appointment. "My brethren are very interesting men," he tells another friend. We "live in the most frank and unaffected intimacy. Indeed, we are all united as one, with a mutual esteem which makes even the labors of Jurisprudence light."[241]

Sitting about a single table at their meals, or gathered in the room of one of them, these men talked over the cases before them. Not only did they "moot every question as" the arguments proceeded in court, but by "familiar conferences at our lodgings often come to a very quick, and ... accurate opinion, in a few hours," relates that faithful chronicler of their daily life, Joseph Story.[242] Story appears to have been even more impressed by the comradery of the members of the Supreme Court than by the difficulty of the cases they had to decide.

None of them ever took his wife with him to Washington, and this fact naturally made the personal relations of the Justices peculiarly close.

"The Judges here live with perfect harmony," Story reiterates, "and as agreeably as absence from friends and from families could make our residence. Our intercourse is perfectly familiar and unconstrained, and our social hours when undisturbed with the labors of law, are pa.s.sed in gay and frank conversation, which at once enlivens and instructs."[243]

This "gay and frank conversation" of Marshall and his a.s.sociates covered every subject--the methods, manners, and even dress of counsel who argued before them, the fortunes of public men, the trend of politics, the incident of the day, the gossip of society. "Two of the Judges are widowers," records Story, "and of course objects of considerable attraction among the ladies of the city. We have fine sport at their expense, and amuse our leisure with some touches at match-making. We have already ensnared one of the Judges, and he is now (at the age of forty-seven) violently affected with the tender pa.s.sion."[244]

Thus Marshall, in his relation with his fellow occupants of the bench, was at the head of a family as much as he was Chief of a court. Although the discussion of legal questions occurred continuously at the boarding-house, each case was much more fully examined in the consultation room at the Capitol. There the court had a regular "consultation day" devoted exclusively to the cases in hand. Yet, even on these occasions, all was informality, and wit and humor brightened the tediousness. These "consultations" lasted throughout the day and sometimes into the night; and the Justices took their meals while the discussions proceeded. Amusing incidents, some true, some false, and others a mixture, were related of these judicial meetings. One such story went the rounds of the bar and outlived the period of Marshall's life.

"We are great ascetics, and even deny ourselves wine except in wet weather," Story dutifully informed his wife. "What I say about the wine gives you our rule; but it does sometimes happen that the Chief Justice will say to me, when the cloth is removed, 'Brother Story, step to the window and see if it does not look like rain.' And if I tell him that the sun is shining brightly, Judge Marshall will sometimes reply, 'All the better, for our jurisdiction extends over so large a territory that the doctrine of chances makes it certain that it must be raining somewhere.'"[245]

When, as sometimes happened, one of the a.s.sociate Justices displeased a member of the bar, Marshall would soothe the wounded feelings of the lawyer. Story once offended Littleton W. Tazewell of Virginia by something said from the bench. "On my return from court yesterday," the Chief Justice hastened to write the irritated Virginian, "I informed M^r Story that you had been much hurt at an expression used in the opinion he had delivered in the case of the Palmyra. He expressed equal surprize and regret on the occasion, and declared that the words which had given offense were not used or understood by him in an offensive sense. He a.s.sented without hesitation to such modification of them as would render them in your view entirely unexceptionable."[246]

As Chief Justice, Marshall shrank from publicity, while printed adulation aggravated him. "I hope to G.o.d they will let me alone 'till I am dead," he exclaimed, when he had reached that eminence where writers sought to portray his life and character.[247]

He did, however, appreciate the recognition given from time to time by colleges and learned societies. In 1802 Princeton conferred upon him the honorary degree of LL.D.; in 1806 he received the same degree from Harvard and from the University of Pennsylvania in 1815. In 1809, as we have seen, he was elected a corresponding member of the Ma.s.sachusetts Historical Society; on January 24, 1804, he was made a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences; and, in 1830, was elected to the American Philosophical Society. All these honors Marshall valued highly.

This, then, was the man who presided over the Supreme Court of the United States when the decisions of that tribunal developed the National powers of the Const.i.tution and gave stability to our National life. His control of the court was made so easy for the Justices that they never resented it; often, perhaps, they did not realize it. The influence of his strong, deep, clear mind was powerfully aided by his engaging personality. To agree with him was a pleasure.

Marshall's charm was as great as his intellect; he was never irritable; his placidity was seldom ruffled; not often was his good nature disturbed. His "great suavity, or rather calmness of manner, cannot readily be conceived," testifies George Bancroft.[248] The sheer magnitude of his views was, in itself, captivating, and his supremely lucid reasoning removed the confusion which more complex and subtle minds would have created in reaching the same conclusion. The elements of his mind and character were such, and were so combined, that it was both hard and unpleasant to differ with him, and both easy and agreeable to follow his lead.

Above all other influences upon his a.s.sociates on the bench, and, indeed, upon everybody who knew him, was the sense of trustworthiness, honor, and uprightness he inspired.[249] Perhaps no public man ever stood higher in the esteem of his contemporaries for n.o.ble personal qualities than did John Marshall.

When reviewing his constructive work and marveling at his influence over his judicial a.s.sociates, we must recall, even at the risk of iteration, the figure revealed by his daily life and habits--"a man who is tall to awkwardness, with a large head of hair, which looked as if it had not been lately tied or combed, and with dirty boots,"[250] a body that seemed "without proportion," and arms and legs that "dangled from each other and looked half dislocated," dressed in clothes apparently "gotten from some antiquated slop-shop of second-hand raiment ... the coat and breeches cut for n.o.body in particular."[251] But we must also think of such a man as possessed of "style and tones in conversation uncommonly mild, gentle, and conciliating."[252] We must think of his hearty laughter, his "imperturbable temper,"[253] his shyness with strangers, his quaint humor, his hilarious unreserve with friends and convivial jocularity when with intimates, his cordial warm-heartedness, una.s.suming simplicity and sincere gentleness to all who came in contact with him--a man without "an atom of gall in his whole composition."[254] We must picture this distinctive American character among his a.s.sociates of the bench in the Washington boarding-house no less than in court, his luminous mind guiding them, his irresistible personality drawing from them a real and lasting affection. We must bear in mind the trust and confidence which so powerfully impressed those who knew the man. We must imagine a person very much like Abraham Lincoln.

Indeed, the resemblance of Marshall to Lincoln is striking. Between no two men in American history is there such a likeness. Physically, intellectually, and in characteristics, Marshall and Lincoln were of the same type. Both were very tall men, slender, loose-jointed, and awkward, but powerful and athletic; and both fond of sport. So alike were they, and so identical in their negligence of dress and their total unconsciousness of, or indifference to, convention, that the two men, walking side by side, might well have been taken for brothers.

Both Marshall and Lincoln loved companionship with the same heartiness, and both had the same social qualities. They enjoyed fun, jokes, laughter, in equal measure, and had the same keen appreciation of wit and humor. Their mental qualities were the same. Each man had the gift of going directly to the heart of any subject; while the same lucidity of statement marked each of them. Their style, the simplicity of their language, the peculiar clearness of their logic, were almost identical.

Notwithstanding their straightforwardness and amplitude of mind, both had a curious subtlety. Some of Marshall's opinions and Lincoln's state papers might have been written by the same man. The "Freeholder"

questions and answers in Marshall's congressional campaign, and those of Lincoln's debate with Douglas, are strikingly similar in method and expression.

Each had a genius for managing men; and Marshall showed the precise traits in dealing with the members of the Supreme Court that Lincoln displayed in the Cabinet.

Both were born in the South, each on the eve of a great epoch in American history when a new spirit was awakening in the hearts of the people. Although Southern-born, both Marshall and Lincoln sympathized with and believed in the North; and yet their manners and instinct were always those of the South. Marshall was given advantages that Lincoln never had; but both were men of the people, were brought up among them, and knew them thoroughly. Lincoln's outlook upon life, however, was that of the humblest citizen; Marshall's that of the well-placed and prosperous. Neither was well educated, but each acquired, in different ways, a command of excellent English and broad, plain conceptions of government and of life. Neither was a learned man, but both created the materials for learning.

Marshall and Lincoln were equally good politicians; but, although both were conservative in their mental processes, Marshall lost faith in the people's steadiness, moderation, and self-restraint; and came to think that impulse rather than wisdom was too often the temporary moving power in the popular mind, while the confidence of Lincoln in the good sense, righteousness, and self-control of the people became greater as his life advanced. If, with these distinctions, Abraham Lincoln were, in imagination, placed upon the Supreme Bench during the period we are now considering, we should have a good idea of John Marshall, the Chief Justice of the United States.

It is, then, largely the personality of John Marshall that explains the hold, as firm and persistent as it was gentle and soothing, maintained by him upon the a.s.sociate Justices of the Supreme Court; and it is this, too, that enables us to understand his immense popularity with the bar--a fact only second in importance to the work he had to do, and to his influence upon the men who sat with him on the bench.

For the lawyers who practiced before the Supreme Court at this period were most helpful to Marshall.[255] Many of them were men of wide and accurate learning, and nearly all of them were of the first order of ability. No stronger or more brilliant bar ever was arrayed before any bench than that which displayed its wealth of intellect and resources to Marshall and his a.s.sociates.[256] This a.s.sertion is strong, but wholly justified. Oratory of the finest quality, though of the old rhetorical kind, filled the court-room with admiring spectators, and entertained Marshall and the other Justices, as much as the solid reasoning illuminated their minds, and the exhaustive learning informed them.

Marshall encouraged extended arguments; often demanded them. Frequently a single lawyer would speak for two or three days. No limit of time was put upon counsel.[257] Their reputation as speakers as well as their fame as lawyers, together with the throngs of auditors always present, put them on their mettle. Rhetoric adorned logic; often enc.u.mbered it. A conflict between such men as William Pinkney, Luther Martin of Maryland, Samuel Dexter of Ma.s.sachusetts, Thomas Addis Emmet of New York, William Wirt of Virginia, Joseph Hopkinson of Pennsylvania, Jeremiah Mason of New Hampshire, Daniel Webster, Henry Clay, and others of scarcely less distinction, was, in itself, an event. These men, and indeed all the members of the bar, were Marshall's friends as well as admirers.

The appointment of Story to the Supreme Bench was, like the other determining circ.u.mstances in Marshall's career, providential.

Few characters in American history are more attractive than the New England lawyer and publicist who, at the age of thirty-two, took his place at Marshall's side on the Supreme Bench. Handsome, vivacious, impressionable, his mind was a storehouse of knowledge, accurately measured and systematically arranged. He read everything, forgot nothing. His mental appet.i.te was voracious, and he had a very pa.s.sion for research. His industry was untiring, his memory unfailing. He supplied exactly the accomplishment and toilsomeness that Marshall lacked. So perfectly did the qualities and attainments of these two men supplement one another that, in the work of building the American Nation, Marshall and Story may be considered one and the same person.

Where Marshall was leisurely, Story was eager. If the attainments of the Chief Justice were not profuse, those of his young a.s.sociate were opulent. Marshall detested the labor of investigating legal authorities; Story delighted in it. The intellect of the older man was more ma.s.sive and sure; but that of the youthful Justice was not far inferior in strength, or much less clear and direct in its operation. Marshall steadied Story while Story enriched Marshall. Each admired the other, and between them grew an affection like that of father and son.

Story's father, Elisha Story, was a member of the Republican Party, a rare person among wealthy and educated men in Ma.s.sachusetts at the time Jefferson founded that political organization. The son tells us that he "naturally imbibed the same opinions," which were so reprobated that not "more than four or five lawyers in the whole state ... _dared_ avow themselves republicans. The very name was odious."[258]

[Ill.u.s.tration]

Joseph Story was born in Marblehead, Ma.s.sachusetts, September 18, 1779, one of a family of eighteen children, seven by a first wife and eleven by a second. He was the eldest son of the second wife, who had been a Miss Pedrick, the daughter of a rich merchant and shipowner.[259]

No young member of the Ma.s.sachusetts bar equaled Joseph Story in intellectual gifts and acquirements. He was a graduate of Harvard, and few men anywhere had a broader or more accurate education. His personality was winning and full of charm. Yet, when he began practice at Salem, he was "persecuted" with "extreme ... virulence" because of his political opinions.[260] He became so depressed by what he calls "the petty prejudices and sullen coolness of New England, ... bigoted in opinion and satisfied in forms," where Federalism had "persecuted ...

[him] unrelentingly for ... [his] political principles," that he thought seriously of going to Baltimore to live and practice his profession. He made headway, however, in spite of opposition; and, when the growing Republican Party, "the whole" of which he says were his "warm advocates,"[261] secured the majority of his district, Story was sent to Congress. "I was ... of course a supporter of the administration of Mr.

Jefferson and Mr. Madison," although not "a mere slave to the opinions of either." In exercising what he terms his "independent judgment,"[262]

Story favored the repeal of the Embargo, and so earned, henceforth, the lasting enmity of Jefferson.[263]

Because of his recognized talents, and perhaps also because of the political party to which he belonged, he was employed to go to Washington as attorney for the New England and Mississippi Company in the Yazoo controversy.[264] It was at this period that the New England Federalist leaders began to cultivate him. They appreciated his ability, and the a.s.sertion of his "independent principles" was to their liking.

Harrison Gray Otis was quick to advise that seasoned politician, Robert Goodloe Harper, of the change he thought observable in Story, and the benefit of winning his regard. "He is a young man of talents, who commenced Democrat a few years since and was much fondled by his party,"

writes Otis. "He discovered however too much sentiment and honor to go _all lengths_ ... and a little attention from the right sort of people will be very useful to him & to us."[265]

The wise George Cabot gave Pickering the same hint when Story made one of his trips to Washington on the Yazoo business. "Though he is a man whom the Democrats support," says Cabot, "I have seldom if ever met with one of sounder mind on the princ.i.p.al points of national policy. He is well worthy the civil attention of the most respectable Federalists."[266]

It was while in the Capital, as attorney before Congress and the Supreme Court in the Georgia land controversy, that Story, then twenty-nine years old, met Marshall; and impulsively wrote of his delight in the "hearty laugh," "patience," consideration, and ability of the Chief Justice. On this visit to Washington the young Ma.s.sachusetts lawyer took most of his meals with the members of the Supreme Court.[267] At that time began the devotion of Joseph Story to John Marshall which was to prove so helpful to both for more than a generation, and so influential upon the Republic for all time.