This was the opinion of a unanimous court, in which five out of the seven judges had been nominated by a Republican President. But it caused great excitement at the South. On March 24, 1819, Marshall wrote from Richmond to Judge Story: “Our opinion in the bank case has roused the sleeping spirit of Virginia, if indeed it ever sleeps. It will, I understand, be attacked in the papers with some asperity, and as those who favor it never write for the public it will remain undefended, and of course be considered as _damnably heretical_.” Again, two months later, “The opinion in the bank case continues to be denounced by the Democracy of Virginia.... If the principles which have been advanced on this occasion were to prevail the Constitution would be converted into the old Confederation.” Another great opinion, of the same class, and also bitterly attacked, was given in the case of Cohens _v._ Virginia, in 1821. This case came up on a writ of error from a local court at Norfolk. Cohens had been convicted of selling lottery tickets there, contrary to the statute of Virginia. He had set up as a defense an act of Congress providing for drawing lotteries in the city of Washington, and insisted that this authorized his selling tickets in Virginia. When the case reached the Supreme Court of the United States, the counsel for the State first denied the jurisdiction of that court, on the ground, among others, that the Constitution allowed no such appeal from a state court, and that the Judiciary Act of 1789 was unconstitutional in purporting to authorize it. In an elaborate opinion by Marshall, one of his greatest efforts, these contentions were negatived. When afterwards, the case came to be argued on the merits, the decision below was sustained, on the ground that the act of Congress did not purport to authorize the sale of tickets in any State which forbade the sale of them. Here again the court was unanimous; and it was composed of the same judges who decided McCulloch _v._ Maryland. But the reception of Cohens _v._ Virginia at the South was even worse than that accorded the other case. Judge Roane, of the Court of Appeals in Virginia, attacked the opinion anonymously in the newspapers, with what Marshall called “coarseness and malignity.” Jefferson, also, bitterly objected to it.