Born in Fauquier County, Va., Sept. 24, 1755: died at Philadelphia, July 6, 1835. A celebrated American jurist. He served in the Revolutionary War; was a member of the Virginia convention to ratify the constitution in 1788; was a United States envoy to France 1797–98; was a member of Congress from Virginia 1799–1800; was secretary of state 1800–1801; and was chief justice of the United States Supreme Court 1801–35. He published a “Life of Washington” (5 vols. 1804–07), the first volume of which was published separately under the title of “A History of the American Colonies” (1824).

Personal

  The … of the United States is, in his person, tall, meager, emaciated; his muscles relaxed, and his joints so loosely connected, as not only to disqualify him, apparently, for any vigorous exertion of body, but to destroy every thing like elegance and harmony in his air and movements. Indeed, in his whole appearance and demeanor; dress, attitudes, gesture; sitting, standing or walking; he is as far removed from the idolized graces of Lord Chesterfield, as any other gentleman on earth. To continue the portrait; his head and face are small in proportion to his height; his complexion swarthy; the muscles of his face, being relaxed, give him the appearance of a man of fifty years of age, nor can he be much younger, his countenance has a faithful expression of great good humor and hilarity; while his black eyes—that unerring index—possess an irradiating spirit, which proclaims the imperial powers of the mind that sits enthroned within.

  Marshall is of a tall, slender figure, not graceful nor imposing, but erect and steady. His hair is black, his eyes small and twinkling, his forehead rather low; but his features are in general harmonious. His manners are plain, yet dignified; and an unaffected modesty diffuses itself through all his actions. His dress is very simple, yet neat; his language chaste, but hardly elegant; it does not flow rapidly, but it seldom wants precision…. He has not the majesty and compactness of thought of Dr. Johnson; but in subtle logic he is no unworthy disciple of David Hume.

  We then went into the Supreme Court. Your father will tell you that it is the most dignified body in the United States. It is a small room, and looks like a handsome cell in a monastery. The ceiling is like a scallop-shell: all is marble. Chief Justice Marshall was presiding, and reading an opinion. His voice is feeble. His face has a fine union of intellect and tranquility, the seal of a well-spent life upon it.

  He had no frays in boyhood. He had no quarrels or outbreakings in manhood. He was the composer of strifes. He spoke ill of no man. He meddled not with their affairs. He viewed their worst deeds through the medium of charity. He had eight sisters and six brothers, with all of whom, from youth to age, his intercourse was marked by the utmost kindness and affection; and, although his eminent talents, high public character, and acknowledged usefulness, could not fail to be a subject of pride and admiration to all of them, there is no one of his numerous relatives, who has had the happiness of a personal association with him, in whom his purity, simplicity, and affectionate benevolence did not produce a deeper and more cherished impression than all the achievements of his powerful intellect.

  With Judge Story sometimes came the man to whom he looked up with feelings little short of adoration; the aged Chief-Justice Marshall. There was almost too much mutual respect in our first meeting; we knew something of his individual merits and services; and he maintained through life, and carried to his grave, a reverence for woman as rare in its kind as in its degree. It had all the theoretical fervour and magnificence of Uncle Toby’s, with the advantage of being grounded upon an extensive knowledge of the sex. He was the father and the grandfather of women; and out of this experience he brought, not only the love and pity which their offices and position command, and the awe of purity which they excite in the minds of the pure, but a steady conviction of their intellectual equality with men; and, with this, a deep sense of their social injuries. Throughout life he so invariably sustained their cause, that no indulgent libertine dared to flatter and humor, no sceptic, secure in the possession of power, dared to scoff at the claims of woman in the presence of Marshall, who, made clear-sighted by his purity, knew the sex far better than either. How delighted we were to see Judge Story bring in the tall, majestic, bright-eyed old man!—old by chronology, by the lines on his composed face, and by his services to the republic; but so dignified, so fresh, so present to the time, that no feeling of compassionate consideration for age dared to mix with the contemplation of him.

  A tall, venerable man; his hair tied in a cue, according to olden custom, and with a countenance indicating that simplicity of mind and benignity which so eminently distinguish his character. I had the pleasure of several long conversations with him, and was struck with admiration at the extraordinary union of modesty and power, gentleness and force which his mind displays. His house is small, and more humble in appearance than those of the average of successful lawyers or merchants. I called three times upon him; there is no bell to the door; once I turned the handle of it, and walked in unannounced; on the other two occasions he had seen me coming, and lifted the latch and received me at the door, although he was at the time suffering from some very severe contusions received in the stage while travelling on the road from Fredericksburg to Richmond. I verily believe there is not a particle of vanity in his composition, unless it be of that venial and hospitable nature which induces him to pride himself on giving to his friends the best glass of Madeira in Virginia.

  I can never forget how he would prostrate his tall form before the rude low benches without backs at Cool Spring Meeting-House, in the midst of his children and grandchildren, and his old neighbours. In Richmond he always set an example to the gentlemen of the same conformity, though many of them did not follow it.

  The residence of the Chief Justice in Richmond was built by himself, and situated on Shockhoe Hill. Though without the slightest architectural pretensions, it was commodious, and the grounds were ample. No man was more attached to his home, and his judicial labors were so distributed, that he was enabled to spend the most of each year in the midst of his family. The session of the Supreme Court at Washington, and the Circuit Courts for Virginia and North Carolina completed the annual round of his judicial duties. Having considerable leisure, and being fond of agriculture, he purchased a farm three or four miles from Richmond, which he visited frequently, often on foot. He also owned a farm in Fauquier, his native county, to which he made an annual visit. His family and social attachments were warm and constant, and his periodical visits to Fauquier were always highly enjoyed both by himself and his numerous relatives and friends. He took great delight in social, and even convivial, pleasures. He was a member of the Barbecue, or Quoit Club, at Richmond, for more than forty years; and no one participated in the exercise and recreation that took place at their meetings with more zest and enthusiasm than himself.

  The day after my arrival at the capital [1826] I called upon Judge Story, at the Supreme Court, as he had requested me to do. Immediately upon adjournment he presented me to the Chief Justice and Judge Bushrod Washington, both gentlemen whom I had much desired to meet. The first view of Judge Marshall was not impressive. He struck me as a tall man who regretted his height, because he had not the knack of carrying it off with ease and dignity. His manner was so simple as to be almost rustic; and, were it not for the brilliancy of his eyes, he might have been taken for a mere political judge instead of the recognized expositor of the Constitution.

  He presided for the last time in the Supreme Court in the winter season of 1835…. His tomb in Shocko Hill Cemetery consists of a marble slab, held by four upright columns. Upon the slab is the simple inscription he wrote two days before his death: “John Marshall, son of Thomas and Mary Marshall, was born on the 24th of September, 1755; intermarried with Mary Willis Ambler, the 3d of January, 1783; departed this life the 6th of July, 1835.

  As the years pass, the fame of this great man continues to shine with undiminished lustre, and so will continue until the firmament from whence beam the glories of Tribonian and D’Aguesseau, of Hale and Mansfield, is rolled together like a scroll.

  The hundredth anniversary of the day, February 4, 1801, when John Marshall took oath as Chief Justice of the United States was honored in the centres of population in this country by many meetings, especially of lawyers, by many addresses of weight and significance, by dinners, by many articles in the magazines, and due attention from the newspapers. Marshall’s reputation is vastly greater than it was a hundred years ago…. It is reassuring that such a public servant as he, whose service was intellectual, and was concerned with fundamental principles, should be remembered and honored as he has been so long after his death. It is a wholesome thing that a great judge should be so honored. Most of the judges of our Supreme Court devote themselves to the public service at great sacrifice of their private interests. They are hard-worked and meagrely paid. It is well that they should have such assurance as may come from these late tributes paid to Marshall that the work of a great judge is not forgotten.

Chief Justice

  The character of his mind, its patience, its calmness, its power of analysis and generalization, and the steadiness of its movements, made him peculiarly fitted for the exposition of constitutional law. Whatever rank may be assigned to him as a common lawyer, in this department he stands confessedly alone and without a rival.

  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 sanctity 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 anybody. Spoken to and closely observed, he could 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.

  His opinions do not abound in displays of learning. His simplicity—a character so conspicuous in all his writings and actions—that first and highest characteristic of true greatness—led him to say and do just what was necessary and proper to the purpose in hand. Its reflected consequences on his own fame as a scholar, a statesman, or a jurist seem never once to have occurred to him. As a judge, the Old World may be fairly challenged to produce his superior. His style is a model,—simple and masculine; his reasoning direct, cogent, demonstrative, advancing with a giant’s pace and power, and yet withal so easy evidently to him as to show clearly a mind in the constant habit of such efforts.

  His judicial career alone extends through a continuous period of thirty-five years. I believe, if not the longest, it is the most successful, the most brilliant, the most honorable of any on record. Its history is the history of the Supreme Court through this entire period. Its published decisions alone fill more than thirty volumes of Reports.

  Who among them [the ancient Greeks and Romans] dispensed public justice and laid broad and deep the foundations of constitutional law like John Marshall?

  He kept himself at the front on all questions of constitutional law, and, consequently, his master hand is seen in every case which involved that subject. At the same time he and his co-workers, whose names are, some of them, almost as familiar as his own, were engaged in laying, deep and strong, the foundations on which the jurisprudence of the country has since been built. Hardly a day now passes in the court he so dignified and adorned without reference to some decision of his time as establishing a principle which, from that day to this, has been accepted as undoubted law.

  “The Expounder of the Constitution.” A title given to John Marshall, chief justice of the United States from 1801 till his death. His decisions in the supreme court raised that court to a point of public respect and professional reputation which has not since been surpassed, and particularly in the departments of constitutional and commercial law he is considered of the highest authority.

  That which Hamilton, in the bitterness of defeat, had called “a frail and worthless fabric,” Marshall converted into a mighty instrument of government. The Constitution which began as an agreement between conflicting States. Marshall, continuing the work of Washington and Hamilton, transformed into a charter of national life. When his life closed, his work was done—a nation had been made. Before he died, he heard this great fact declared with unrivalled eloquence by Webster. It was reserved to another generation to put Marshall’s work to the last and awful test of war, and to behold it come forth from that dark ordeal triumphant and supreme. John Marshall stands in history as one of that small group of men who have founded states. He was a nation-maker, a state-builder. His monument is in the history of the United States, and his name is written upon the Constitution of his country.

  If it be true—as it is beyond cavil—that to Washington more than to any other man is due the birth of the American nation, it is equally true beyond cavil that to Marshall more than to any other man is it due that the Nation has come safely through the trying ordeals of infantile weakness and youthful effervescence, and has triumphantly emerged into well-developed and lusty manhood.

The Life of George Washington, 1804–07

  Mr. Madison and myself have cut out a piece of work for you, which is, to write the history of the United States, from the close of the war downwards. We are rich ourselves in materials, and can open all the public archives to you; but your residence here is essential, because a great deal of the knowledge of things is not on paper, but only within ourselves, for verbal communication. John Marshall is writing the Life of General Washington from his papers. It is intended to come out just in time to influence the next Presidential election. It is written, therefore, principally with a view to electioneering purposes. But it will, consequently, be out in time to aid you with information, as well as to point out the perversions of truth necessary to be rectified. Think of this, and agree to it.

  The life of Washington by Judge Marshall, like the life of Chaucer by Godwin, is rather a history of the period when he flourished than the real biography of the individual.

  Mr. Marshall is not one of those ready writers, who run over a large mass of materials with a careless or indifferent eye, and sit down to write their first impressions, and fill up the spaces left vacant of facts with plausible conjectures, or imaginary events. He does not listen with implicit faith to every idle tale told by artless credulity or vulgar prejudice. He does not seek the title of superior wisdom by unsettling the truths of history, and proving, that all writers, but himself, have mistaken the facts and the characters of former times. He does not construct any new narrative of events, and in his own closet show how fields were lost or won, by drawing upon the resources of his own fancy. He does not dispute the veracity of persons nearest the scenes, simply because his own theory would be broken down by any admission in their favor. Far different is his course, and far different his ambition. The habits of his mind are close investigation, caution, patience, and a steady devotion to the weight of evidence. He examines all the materials before him with the sobriety and impartiality of judicial life. His conclusions, therefore, if they are not always absolutely correct, are such as it is difficult to resist, and never without very strong historical support. We have no hesitation in declaring, that the present work contains the most authentic history of the colonies, which is extant; and that it may be relied on with entire safety, as combining accuracy with variety of information.

  After the able, accurate, and comprehensive work of Chief-Justice Marshall, it would be presumptuous to attempt a historical biography of Washington.

  Ramsay was a fluent, graceful, and eloquent writer of history, perhaps excelling, in ease and perspicuity, Marshall, the celebrated writer of the “Life of Washington;” a work which is highly valuable, as interweaving in the life of that great man the most material points of American history during his long and eventful career. It evinces more strength of mind and detail of research than eloquence and interest, but will always remain the first authority for that period of our annals.

  To judge of the service which Mr. Sparks has rendered the country, we must compare the previous accounts of Washington’s career with that which we now possess. All that is contained in Marshall is meagre and incomplete in comparison with the copious details and ample illustrations with which we are at present furnished.

  In 1804, he published the “Biography of Washington,” which for candour, accuracy, and comprehension, will forever be the most authentic history of the Revolution.

  There is no attempt to dazzle by studied elegance, harmonious diction, or brilliant ornament, but they are written in a plain and unpretending style, substantiated by historical facts, and possess great weight on account of conclusions so well drawn as to be extremely difficult of resistance, even when not borne out by their antecedent propositions. His own reflections are presented in such an unostentatious mode as not to offend, but to add a charm to the facts he narrates; yet while we must admit their ability, and the candor with which they are expressed, we cannot deny, that like some of his legal opinions, they are colored by the political sentiments which were so firmly rooted in his breast.

  This work is very authentic and accurate, except the first volume on Colonial History. It is written with great simplicity and perspicuity; but it has lost much of its interest and attraction since the appearance of Sparks’s immortal work.

  This author had not so large advantages in the way of materials as some of the later writers, but his political acumen and his judicial equipoise were such as to give his work a great and a permanent importance. The first volume is devoted to a description of the colonial period, and it still remains one of the most satisfactory works we have on the subject. The last volume is also of great importance as a view of Washington’s administration.

  The first great contribution to American historical literature.

  Neither was Marshall altogether fitted to write a great book; he was not a literary man nor a scholar; he did not understand the art of composition, and of making a vivid, condensed, attractive narrative. He wrote a useful book, as a man of his ability could not fail to do in dealing with subjects with which he was thoroughly familiar, and in which he was deeply interested; he had further the advantage which arises always from personal acquaintance with the subject of the memoir and from entire sympathy with him. For the student of American history the book must thus have a value; but general readers have long since forgotten it, and leave it neglected on the shelves of the old libraries. It has long been out of print, and copies of it are not in demand even by reason of rarity. Jefferson was so far right in his prognostications concerning it that it is now universally regarded as a decidedly Federalist biography.

  Our first American biography of scope and dignity.