The Chief Justice may not have been the severest student or the most learned lawyer, but he was certainly, all things considered, the ablest judge that had ever occupied a seat upon the bench of the Supreme Court of the United States. No man was ever more rigidly just or strictly impartial in all cases of _meum and tuum_ that were brought before him for adjudication. Under a disposition the most genial, and a childlike simplicity and frankness of manner he cherished during his whole life, as all his race have done, Federal principles and Federal prejudices of the most ultra character. These, though ordinarily kept in due check by a commendable and exemplary self-command,--a virtue he shared with, if he had not in some degree imbibed it from, his friend and neighbor, General Washington,--had nevertheless been warmed by the circumstances of the moment to a high temperature. The inducements by which he was almost forced into public life by the General, shortly before the death of the latter, have been narrated in the account I have given of my conversation with his nephew, Judge Washington, at Mount Vernon.[32] Unhappily impressed with the idea that his own as well as the interests of the country depended upon the support of Mr. Adams' administration, General Washington for once, and fortunately only for a brief season, lent himself to partisan movements and used his controlling influence to induce Mr. Marshall to offer for Congress, and in no other case has the high estimate he formed of a man's capacity been more signally verified by the result. Marshall became at once, through the influence of a single speech of extraordinary power, a leader in the House of Representatives during the most stormy period of the administration of John Adams, was subsequently appointed Secretary of War and Secretary of State by Mr. Adams, and held the latter office until his party, and the administration with it, were overthrown by the Republicans under the lead of Mr. Jefferson. He was then transferred by Mr. Adams to the place of Chief Justice. Other circumstances lent their influence to infuse ill-will into the personal relations of Jefferson and Marshall. They were natives of the same State, and although they had stood as Whigs side by side in the Revolution, the political principles maintained by Mr. Jefferson, after the establishment of our Independence, were so much more in harmony with those of Virginia as to place Marshall's views ever after under the ban of her opinion, notwithstanding the qualified sanction they received front General Washington. On the part of Mr. Jefferson, the unfriendly feelings which he believed were entertained toward him by the Chief Justice were, for him, quite earnestly reciprocated. This is shown by the following pointed extract from his letter to myself, in which, speaking of the alterations and other uses that had been made of his letter to Mazzei, he adds, "and even Judge