Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images available at The Internet Archive) The Riverside Biographical Series NUMBER 7 JOHN MARSHALL BY JAMES BRADLEY THAYER [Illustration: portrait of J Marshall] JOHN MARSHALL BY JAMES BRADLEY THAYER BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY The Riverside Press, Cambridge 1901 COPYRIGHT, 1901, BY JAMES BRADLEY THAYER ALL RIGHTS RESERVED PREFATORY NOTE The writer has drawn with entire freedom from an address delivered by him at Cambridge on February 4, 1901, before the Harvard Law School and the Bar Association of the City of Boston, and from an article on John Marshall in the Atlantic Monthly for March, 1901. J. B. T. CAMBRIDGE, March 30, 1901. CONTENTS CHAP. PAGE I. HIS LIFE BEFORE BECOMING CHIEF JUSTICE; HIS PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS 1 II. ARGUMENTS AND SPEECHES; LIFE OF WASHINGTON; RELATIONS WITH JEFFERSON 39 III. THE BEGINNINGS OF THE CHIEF JUSTICE’S CAREER; AMERICAN CONSTITUTIONAL LAW; MARBURY V. MADISON 54 IV. MARSHALL’S CONSTITUTIONAL OPINIONS 82 V. THE WORKING OF OUR SYSTEM OF CONSTITUTIONAL LAW 102 VI. LETTERS OF MARSHALL 111 VII. MARSHALL AS A CITIZEN AND A NEIGHBOR 123 VIII. HIS LAST DAYS 147 _The portrait is from a miniature by St. Mémin._ JOHN MARSHALL CHAPTER I HIS LIFE BEFORE BECOMING CHIEF JUSTICE; HIS PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS In beginning his “Life of Washington,” Chief Justice Marshall states that Washington was born in 1732, “near the banks of the Potowmac,” in Westmoreland County, Virginia; mentions his employment by Lord Fairfax, the proprietor of the Northern Neck, as surveyor of his estates in the western part of that region; and adds that, in the performance of these duties, “he acquired that information respecting vacant lands, and formed those opinions concerning their future value, which afterwards contributed greatly to the increase of his private fortune.”