In 1813, at a meeting of the citizens of Richmond, he was appointed member of a Committee of Vigilance, to aid in defending the city against attack from the British. On June 28 he made a report, for a sub-committee, that it was inexpedient to undertake to fortify the city. After stating the topographical and other reasons for such an opinion, the report goes on thus: “Your committee are too conscious of their destitution of professional skill to advance with any confidence the opinion they have formed; but the resolution under which they act having made it their duty to give an opinion, they say, though with much diffidence, that they do not think any attempt to fortify the city advisable. It is to be saved by operations in the open field, by facing the enemy with a force which may deter him from any attempt to penetrate the interior of our country, and which may impress him with the danger of separating himself from his ships. If this protection cannot be afforded, Richmond must share the fate of other places which are in similar circumstances. Throughout the world, open towns belong to the army which is master of the country.... If the militia be put into the best condition for service, if the light artillery be well manned and supplied with horses, so as to move with celerity to any point where its services may be required; if the cavalry be kept entire and in active service; if the precaution of supplying in sufficient quantity all the implements of war be taken, your committee hope and believe that this town will have no reason to fear the invading foe.”[42] In those efforts on the part of some of the leaders of Virginia and the South, early in the century, to rid themselves of slavery, to which we at the North have never done sufficient justice, Marshall took an active part. The American Colonization Society was organized in 1816 or 1817, with Bushrod Washington for president. In 1823 an auxiliary society was organized at Richmond, of which Marshall was president, an office which he held nearly or quite up to the time of his death. It is interesting to observe that one of the plans for colonization was to have worked out the abolition of slavery in Virginia in the year 1901. Of slavery Marshall wrote to a friend, in 1826: “I concur with you in thinking that nothing portends more calamity and mischief to the Southern States than their slave population. Yet they seem to cherish the evil, and to view with immovable prejudice and dislike everything which may tend to diminish it. I do not wonder that they should resist any attempt, should one be made, to interfere with the rights of property, but they have a feverish jealousy of measures which may do good without the hazard of harm, that, I think, very unwise.”