Of the strictly legal part of his argument Webster himself has left us a synopsis. Fully three-quarters of it dealt with the questions which had been discussed by Mason before the State Supreme Court under the New Hampshire Constitution and was largely irrelevant to the great point at issue at Washington. Joseph Hopkinson, who was now associated with Webster, contributed far more to the content of Marshall's opinion; yet he, too, left one important question entirely to the Chief Justice's ingenuity, as will be indicated shortly. Fortunately for the College its opponents were ill prepared to take advantage of the vulnerable points of its defense. For some unknown reason, Bartlett and Sullivan, who had carried the day at Exeter, had now given place to William Wirt and John Holmes. Of these the former had just been made Attorney-General of the United States and had no time to give to the case--indeed he admitted that "he had hardly thought of it till it was called on." As for Holmes, he was a "kaleidoscopic politician" and barroom wit, best known to contemporaries as "the noisy eulogist and reputed protégé of Jefferson." A remarkable strategy that, which stood such a person up before John Marshall to plead the right of state Legislatures to dictate the fortunes of liberal institutions! The arguments were concluded on Thursday, the 12th of March. The next morning the Chief Justice announced that the Court had conferred, that there were different opinions, that some of the judges had not arrived at a conclusion, and that consequently the cause must be continued. Webster, however, who was apt to be much in "the know" of such matters, ventured to place the different judges thus: "The Chief and Washington," he wrote his former colleague Smith, "I have no doubt, are with us. Duvall and Todd perhaps against us; the other three holding up--I cannot much doubt but that Story will be with us in the end, and I think we have much more than an even chance for one of the others."