Among his neighbors he was always a favorite. In the spring of 1782 he was elected to the Assembly, and in the autumn to the important office of member of the “Privy Council, or Council of State,” consisting of eight persons chosen by joint ballot of the two houses of the Assembly. “Young Mr. Marshall,” wrote Edmund Pendleton, presiding judge of the Court of Appeals, to Madison, in November of that year, “is elected a councilor.... He is clever, but I think too young for that department, which he should rather have earned, as a retirement and reward, by ten or twelve years of hard service.” But, whether young or old, the people were forever forcing him into public life. Eight times he was sent to the Assembly; in 1788 to the Federal Convention of Virginia, and in 1798 to Congress. Unwelcome as it was to him, almost always, to have his brilliant and congenial place and prospects at the bar thus interfered with, we can see now what an admirable preparation all this was for the great station, which, a little later, to the endless benefit of his country, he was destined to fill. What drove him into office so often was, in a great degree, that delightful and remarkable combination of qualities which made everybody love and trust him, even his political adversaries, so that he could be chosen when no one else of his party was available. In this way, happily for his country, he was led to consider, early and deeply, those difficult problems of government that distressed the country in the dark period after the close of the war, and during the first dozen years of the Federal Constitution. As regards the effect of his earlier experience in enlarging the circle of a patriot’s thoughts and affections, he himself has said: “I am disposed to ascribe my devotion to the Union, and to a government competent to its preservation, at least as much to casual circumstances as to judgment. I had grown up at a time ... when the maxim, ‘United we stand, divided we fall,’ was the maxim of every orthodox American; and I had imbibed these sentiments so thoroughly that they constituted a part of my being. I carried them with me into the army, where I found myself associated with brave men from different States who were risking life and everything valuable in a common cause; ... and where I was confirmed in the habit of considering America as my country and Congress as my government.” It was this confirmed “habit of considering America as my country,” communicated by him to his countrymen, which enabled them to carry through the great struggle of forty years ago, and to save for us all, North and South, the inestimable treasure of the Union.