At the outset (to cling for a moment to our nautical metaphor) the Court was obliged to put forth on an unknown sea. Its sailing orders under the new Constitution were unique. Precedents, those charts and lighthouses of the judicial mariner, were lacking. Progress was tentative and groping. Little wonder therefore that at first the business of the Court was meager and membership in its body seemed less attractive than membership in the judiciary of a state. Robert Hanson Harrison, one of President Washington's original appointees to the Supreme bench, declined to serve, preferring to accept a state judicial office. John Rutledge, another of the original appointees, resigned after a few months, preferring the position of Chancellor of his native state to which he had been chosen. John Jay, the first Chief Justice, resigned to become Governor of New York, and later declined a reappointment as Chief Justice in words indicating entire lack of faith in the powers and future of the Court. Nevertheless, the first period of the Court was by no means barren of achievement. A beginning was made. The supremacy of the national authority under the new Constitution was asserted. So stoutly indeed was it maintained in the memorable case of _Chisholm v. Georgia_,[1] that the country was thrown into a ferment. The Court had entertained a suit against a sovereign state by a private citizen of another state and rendered a decision in favor of the private citizen. The legislature of the sovereign state concerned (Georgia) responded by a statute denouncing the penalty of death against anyone who should presume to enforce any process upon the judgment within its jurisdiction. The matter was taken up in Congress and resulted in the proposal, and subsequent ratification by the states, of a constitutional amendment designed to prevent such actions in future.[2] It has been the fashion to speak of this incident as a striking example of the recall of judicial decisions. Such indeed it was. The decision did not suit the popular frame of mind and was promptly overruled in the method prescribed by the Constitution. It went a long way, however, toward establishing the Supreme Court as a power to be reckoned with on the side of national supremacy and authority. [Footnote 1: 2 Dallas, 419, decided in 1793.] [Footnote 2: Amendment XI.] Three years later the Court again took occasion to assert the national supremacy in no uncertain fashion. The case was _Ware v. Hylton_[1] and the Court laid down the proposition that a treaty of the Federal Government (in this case the treaty of peace with Great Britain) nullified previous state laws dealing with the subject matter. It is an interesting circumstance that one of the counsel on the losing side in this case was John Marshall of Virginia, and that this was the only case he ever argued before the tribunal through which he was destined to play so momentous a part in history. [Footnote 1: 3 Dallas, 199, decided in 1796.]