Albert J. Beveridge

Marshall has written libels on one side. (Jefferson.)

What seemed to him to pass for dignity, will, by his reader, be pronounced dullness. (Edinburgh Review.)

That work was hurried into the world with too much precipitation. It is one of the most desirable objects I have in this life to publish a corrected edition. (Marshall.)

Although the collapse of the Chase impeachment made it certain that Marshall would not be removed from office, and he was thus relieved from one source of sharp anxiety, two other causes of worry served to make this period of his life harried and laborious. His heavy indebtedness to Denny Fairfax[592] continuously troubled him; and, worse still for his peace of mind, he was experiencing the agonies of the literary composer temperamentally unfitted for the task, wholly unskilled in the art, and dealing with a subject sure to arouse the resentment of Jefferson and all his followers. Marshall was writing the "Life of Washington."

In a sense it is fortunate for us that he did so, since his long and tiresome letters to his publishers afford us an intimate view of the great Chief Justice and reveal him as very human. But the biography itself was to prove the least satisfactory of all the labors of Marshall's life.

Not long after the death of Washington, his nephew, Bushrod Washington, had induced Marshall to become the biographer of "the Father of his Country." Washington's public and private papers were in the possession of his nephew. Although it was advertised that these priceless original materials were to be used in this work exclusively, many of Washington's writings had already been used by other authors.

Marshall needed little urging to undertake this monumental labor. Totally unfamiliar with the exhausting toil required of the historian, he deemed it no great matter to write the achievements of his idolized leader. Moreover, he was in pressing need of money with which to pay the remaining $31,500[593] which his brother and he still owed on the Fairfax purchase, as well as the smaller but yet annoying sum due their brother-in-law, Rawleigh Colston, for his share of the estate which the Marshall brothers had bought of him.[594] To discharge these obligations, Marshall had nothing but his salary and the income from his lands, which were wholly insufficient to meet the demands upon him. Some of his plantations, in fact, were "productive only of expense & vexation."[595]

Marshall and Bushrod Washington made extravagant estimates of the prospective sales of the biography and of the money they would receive. Everybody, they thought, would be eager to buy the true story of the life of America's "hero and sage." Perhaps the multitude could not afford volumes so expensive as those Marshall was to write, but there would be tens of thousands of prosperous Federalists who could be depended upon to purchase at a generous price a definitive biography of George Washington.[596]

Nor was the color taken from these rosy expectations by the enthusiasm of those who wished to publish the biography. When it became known that the book was to be produced, many printers applied to Bushrod Washington "to purchase the copyright,"[597] among them C. P. Wayne, a successful publisher of Philadelphia, who made two propositions to bring out the work. After a consultation with Marshall, Bushrod Washington wrote Wayne: "Being ignorant of such matters ... we shall therefore decline any negotiation upon the subject for the present."[598]

After nearly two years of negotiation, Marshall and his associate decided that the biography would require four or five volumes, and arrived at the modest opinion that there would be "30,000 subscribers in America.... Less than a dollar a volume cannot be thought of," and this price should yield to the author and his partner "$150,000, supposing there to be five volumes. This ... would content us, whilst it would leave a very large profit" to the publisher. But, since the number of subscribers could not be foretold with exactness, Marshall and Bushrod Washington decided to "consent to receive $100,000 for the copyright in the United States"; and they sternly announced that, "less than this sum we will not take."[599]

Wayne sought to reduce the optimism of Marshall and Washington by informing them that "the greatest number of subscribers ever obtained for any one publication in this country was ... 2000 and the highest sum ever paid in for the copyright of any one work ... was 30,000 Dollars." Wayne thinks that Marshall's work may sell better, but is sure that more than ten thousand sets cannot be disposed of for many years. He gives warning that, if the biography should contain anything objectionable to the British Government, the sale of it would be prevented in England, as was the case with David Ramsay's "History of the Revolution."[600]

Marshall and Washington also "rec^d propositions for the purchase of the right to sell in G^t. Britain," and so informed Wayne, calling upon him to "say so" if he wished to acquire British, as well as American rights, "knowing the grounds upon which we calculate the value in the United States."[601]

So we find Marshall counting on fifty thousand dollars[602] at the very least from his adventure in the field of letters. His financial reckoning was expansive; but his idea of the time within which he could write so important a history was grotesque. At first he counted on producing "4 or 5 volumes in octavos of from 4 to 500 pages each" in less than one year, provided "the present order of the Courts be not disturbed or very materially changed."[603]

It thus appears that Marshall expected the Federalist Judiciary Act of 1801 to stand; that he would not be called upon to ride the long, tiresome, time-consuming Southern circuit; and that, with no great number of cases to be disposed of by the Supreme Court, he would have plenty of leisure to write several large volumes of history in a single year.

But the Republican repeal of the act gave the disgusted Chief Justice "duties to perform," as John Randolph expressed it. Marshall was forthwith sent upon his circuit riding, and his fondly anticipated relief from official labors vanished. Although he had engaged to write the biography during the winter following Washington's death, not one line of it had he penned at the time the contract for publication was made in the autumn of 1802. He had, of course, done some reading of the various histories of the period; but he had not even begun the examination of Washington's papers, the subsequent study of which proved so irksome to him.

After almost two years of bartering, a contract was made with Wayne to print and sell the biography. This agreement, executed September 22, 1802, gave to the publisher the copyright in the United States and all rights of the authors "in any part of North and South America and in the West India Islands." The probable extent of the work was to be "four or five volumes in Octavo, from four to five hundred pages" each; and it was "supposed" that these would "be compleated in less than two years"—Marshall's original estimate of time having now been doubled.

Wayne engaged to pay "one dollar for every volume of the aforesaid work which may be subscribed for or which may be sold and paid for." It was further covenanted that the publisher should "not demand" of the public "a higher price than three dollars per volume in boards."[604] This disappointed Marshall, who had insisted that the volumes must be sold for four dollars each, a price which Wayne declared the people would not pay.[605]

It would seem that for a long time Marshall tried to conceal the fact that he was to be the author; and, when the first volume was about to be issued, strenuously objected to the use of his name on the title-page. However, Jefferson soon got wind of the project. The alert politician took swift alarm and promptly suggested measures to counteract the political poison with which he was sure Marshall's pen would infect public opinion. He consulted Madison, and the two picked out the brilliant and versatile Joel Barlow, then living in Paris, as the best man to offset the evil labor in which Marshall was engaged.

"Mr. Madison and myself have cut out a piece of work for you," Jefferson wrote Barlow, "which is to write the history of the United States, from the close of the War downwards. We are rich ourselves in materials, and can open all the public archives to you; but your residence here is essential, because a great deal of the knowledge of things is not on paper, but only within ourselves for verbal communication."

Then Jefferson states the reason for the "piece of work" which he and Madison had "cut out" for Barlow: "John Marshall is writing the life of Gen. Washington from his papers. It is intended to come out just in time to influence the next presidential election." The imagination of the party manager pictured Marshall's work as nothing but a political pamphlet. "It is written therefore," Jefferson continues, "principally with a view to electioneering purposes; but it will consequently be out in time to aid you with information as well as to point out the perversions of truth necessary to be rectified."[606]

Thus Marshall's book was condemned before a word of it had been written, and many months before the contract with Wayne was signed—a circumstance that was seriously to interfere with subscriptions to the biography. Jefferson's abnormal sensitiveness to even moderate criticism finally led him to the preparation of the most interesting and untrustworthy of all his voluminous papers, as a reply to Marshall's "Washington."[607]

News was sent to Republicans all over the country that Marshall's book was to be an attack upon their party. Wayne tells Marshall and Washington of the danger, but Washington testily assures the nervous publisher that he need have no fear: "The democrats may say what they please and I have expected they would say a great deal, but this is at least not intended to be a party work nor will any candid man have cause to make this charge."[608]

The contract signed, Wayne quickly put in motion the machinery to procure subscribers. Of this mechanism, the most important part should have been the postmasters, of whom Wayne expected to make profitable use. There were twelve hundred of them, "each acquainted with all the gentlemen of their respective neighborhoods ... and their neighbors would subscribe at request, when they would not to a stranger.... All letters to and from these men go free of postage," Wayne advised Marshall, while assuring the anxious author that "every Post Master in the United States holds a subscription paper."[609] But, thanks to Jefferson, the postmasters were to prove poor salesmen of the product of Marshall's pen.

Other solicitors, however, were also put to work: among them the picturesque Mason Locke Weems, part Whitefield, part Villon, a delightful mingling of evangelist and vagabond, lecturer and politician, writer and musician.[610] Weems had himself written a "Life of Washington" which had already sold extensively among the common people.[611] He had long been a professional book agent with every trick of the trade at his fingers' ends, and was perfectly acquainted with the popular taste.

First, the parson-subscription agent hied himself to Baltimore. "I average 12 sub^s pr day. Thank God for that," he wrote to his employer. He is on fire with enthusiasm: "If the Work be done handsomely, you will sell at least 20,000," he brightly prophesies. Within a week Weems attacks the postmasters and insists that he be allowed to secure sub-agents from among the gentry: "The Mass of Riches and of Population in America lie in the Country. There is the wealthy Yeomanry; and there the ready Thousands who w^d. instantly second you were they but duly stimulated."[612]

Almost immediately Weems discovered a popular distrust of Marshall's forthcoming volumes: "The People are very fearful that it will be prostituted to party purposes," he informs Wayne. "For Heaven's Sake, drop now and then a cautionary Hint to John Marshall Esq. Your all is at stake with respect to this work. If it be done in a generally acceptable manner you will make your fortune. Otherwise the work will fall an Abortion from the press."[613]

Weems's apprehension grew. Wayne had written that the cities would yield more subscribers than the country. "For a moment, admit it," argues Weems: "Does it follow that the Country is a mere blank, a cypher not worth your notice? Because there are 30,000 wealthy families in the City and but 20,000 in the Country, must nothing be tried to enlist 5000, at least of these 20,000??? If the Fed^s sh^d be disappointed, and the Demo^s disgusted with Gen^l. Marshals performance, will it not be very convenient to have 4 to 5000 good Rustic Blades to lighten your shelves & to shovel in the Dol^$."[614]

The dean of book agents evidently was having a hard time, but his resourcefulness kept pace with his discouragement: "Patriotic Orations—Gazetter Puffs—Washingtonian Anecdotes, Sentimental, Moral Military and Wonderful—All sh^d be Tried," he advises Wayne.[615] Again, he notes the failure of the postmasters to sell Marshall's now much-talked-of book. "In six months," he writes from Martinsburg, Virginia, "the P. Master here got 1. In ½ day. I thank God, I've got 13 sub^s."[616]

The outlook for subscriptions was even worse in New England. Throughout the whole land, there was, it seems, an amazing indifference to Washington's services to the Nation. "I am sorry to inform you," Wayne advised Marshall and his associate, "that the Prospect of an extensive Subscription is gloomy in N. England, particularly they argue it is too Expensive and wait for a cheaper Edition—'tis like Americans, Mr. Wolcott and Mr. Pickering say they are loud in their professions, but attempt to touch their purses and they shut them in a moment."[617]

Writing from Fredericksburg, Virginia, Weems at last mingles cheer with warning: "Don't indulge a fear—let no sigh of thine arise. Give Old Washington fair play and all will be well. Let but the Interior of the Work be Liberal & the Exterior Elegant, and a Town House & a Country House, a Coach and Sideboard and Massy Plate shall be thine." Still, he declared, "I sicken when I think how much may be marr^d."[618]

A week later found the reverend solicitor at Carlisle, Pennsylvania, and here the influence of politics on the success of Marshall's undertaking again crops out: "The place had been represented to me," records Weems, "as a Nest of Anti Washingtonian Hornets who w^d draw their Stings at mention of his name—and the Fed [torn] Lawyers are all gone to York—However, I dash^d in among them and thank God have obtain^d already 17 good names."[619]

By now even the slow-thinking Bushrod Washington had become suspicious of Jefferson's postmasters: "The postmasters being (I believe) Democrats.[620] Are you sure they will feel a disposition to advance the work?"[621] Later he writes: "I would not give one honest soliciting agent for 1250 quiescent postmasters."[622]

A year passed after the first subscriptions were made, and not even the first volume had appeared. Indeed, no part of the manuscript had been finished and sent to the publisher. Wayne was exasperated. "I am extremely anxious on this subject," he complains to Bushrod Washington, "as the Public evince dissatisfaction at the delay. Each hour I am questioned either verbally or by letter relative to it & its procrastination. The subscription seems to have received a check in consequence of an opinion that it is uncertain when the work will go to press. Twelve thousand dollars is the Total Cash yet rece^d—not quite 4,000 subscribers."[623]

By November, 1803, many disgusted subscribers are demanding a refund of the money, and Wayne wants the contract changed to the payment of a lump sum. The "Public [are] exclaiming against the price of 3 Doll^s per vol.," and his sanguine expectations have evaporated: "I did hope that I should realize half the number of subscribers you contemplated, thirty thousand; ... but altho' two active, and twelve hundred other agents have been employed 12 months, the list of names does not amount to one seventh of the contemplated number."[624]

Wayne insists on purchasing the copyright "for a moderate, specifick sum" so that he can save himself from loss and "that the Publick disgust may be removed." He has heard, he says, and quite directly, that the British rights have been sold "at two thousand doll^s!!!"—and this in spite of the fact that, only the previous year, Marshall and Washington "expected Seventy Thousand."[625]

At last, more than three years after Marshall had decided to embark upon the uncertain sea of authorship, he finished the first of the five volumes. And such a mass of manuscript! "It will make at least Eight hundred pages!!!!" moaned the distraught publisher. At that rate, considering the small number of subscribers and the greatly increased cost of paper and labor,[626] Wayne would be ruined. No title-page had been sent, and Marshall's son, who had brought the manuscript to Philadelphia, "astonished" Wayne by telling him "that his father's name was not to appear in the Title."[627]

When Marshall learned that the publisher demanded a title-page bearing his name, he insisted that this was unnecessary and not required by the copyright law. "I am unwilling," he hastened to write Wayne, "to be named in the book or in the clerk's office as the author of it, if it be avoidable." He cannot tell how many volumes there will be, or even examine, before some time in May, 1804, Washington's papers relating to the period of his two administrations. The first volume he wants "denominated an introduction." It is too long, he admits, and authorizes Wayne to split it, putting all after "the peace of 1763" into the second volume.[628]

Marshall objects again to appearing as the author: "My repugnance to permitting my name to appear in the title still continues, but it shall yield to your right to make the best use you can of the copy." He does not think that "the name of the author being given or withheld can produce any difference in the number of subscribers"; but, since he does not wish to leave Wayne "in the Opinion that a real injury has been sustained," he would "submit scruples" to Wayne and Washington, "only requesting that [his] name may not be given but on mature consideration and conviction of its propriety." In any case, Marshall declares: "I wish not my title in the judiciary of the United States to be annexed to it."

He writes at great length about punctuation, paragraphing, capital letters, and spelling, giving minute directions, but leaves much to Wayne's judgment. As to spelling: "In any doubtful case I wou^d decidedly prefer to follow Johnson."[629] Two other long letters about details of printing the first volume followed. By the end of March, 1804, his second volume was ready.[630]

He now becomes worried about "the inaccuracies ... the many and great defects in composition" of the first two volumes; but "the hurried manner in which it is press^d forward renders this inevitable." He begs Bushrod Washington to "censure and alter freely.... You mistake me very much if you think I rank the corrections of a friend with the bitter sarcasms of a foe, or that I shou^d feel either wounded or chagrined at my inattentions being pointed out by another."[631]

Once more the troubled author writes his associate, this time about the spelling of "Chesapeak" and "enterprise," the size of the second volume, and as to "the prospects of subscribers."[632] Not until June, 1804, did Marshall give the proof-sheets of the first volume even "a hasty reading" because of "the pressure of ... official business."[633] Totally forgotten was the agreed plan to publish maps in a separate volume, although it was thus "stated in the prospectus."[634] He blandly informs the exasperated publisher that he must wait a long time after publishing the volumes describing the Revolution and those on the Presidency of Washington before the manuscript of the last volume can be sent to press—this when many subscribers were clamoring for the return of the money they had paid, and the public was fast losing interest in the book. Large events had meanwhile filled the heavens of popular interest, and George Washington's heroic figure was already becoming dim and indistinct.

The proof-sheets of the second volume were now in Marshall's hands; but the toil of writing, "super-intending the copying," and various other avocations "absolutely disabled" him, he insists, from giving them any proper examination. He had no idea that he had been so careless in his writing and is anxious to revise the work for a second edition. He complains of his health and says he must spend the summer in the mountains, where, of course, he "cannot take the papers with [him] to prosecute the work." He will, however, read the pages of the first two volumes while on his vacation.

The manuscript of the third he had finished and sent to Bushrod Washington.[635] When Wayne saw the length of it, his Quaker blood was heated to wrath. Did Marshall's prolixity know no limit? The first two volumes had already cost the publisher far more than the estimate—would not Washington persuade Marshall to be more concise?[636]

By midsummer of 1804 the first two volumes appeared. They were a dismal performance. Nevertheless, one or two Federalist papers praised them, and Marshall was as pleased as any youthful writer by a first compliment. He thanks Wayne for sending the reviews and comments on one of them: "The very handsome critique in the 'Political and Commercial Register' was new to me." He modestly admits: "I cou^d only regret that there was in it more of panuegyric than was merited. The editor ... manifests himself to be master of a style of a very superior order and to be, of course, a very correct judge of the composition of Others."

Marshall is somewhat mollified that his parentage of the biography has been revealed: "Having, Heaven knows how reluctantly, consented against my judgement to be known as the author of the work in question I cannot be insensible to the opinions entertained of it. But, I am much more solicitous to hear the strictures upon it"—than commendation of it—because, he says, these would point out defects to be corrected. He asks Wayne, therefore, to send to him at Front Royal, Virginia, "every condemnatory criticism.... I shall not attempt to polish every sentence; that wou^d require repeated readings & a long course of time; but I wish to correct obvious imperfections & the animadversions of others wou^d aid me very much in doing so."[637]

Within three weeks Marshall had read his first volume in the form in which it had been delivered to subscribers, and was "mortified beyond measure to find that it [had] been so carelessly written." He had not supposed that so many "inelegancies ... cou^d have appeared in it," and regrets that he must require Wayne to reset the matter "so materially." He informs his publisher, nevertheless, that he is starting on his vacation in the Alleghanies; and he promises that when he returns he "will ... review the corrections" he has made in the first volume, although he would "not have time to reperuse the whole volume."[638]

Not for long was the soul of the perturbed author to be soothed with praise. He had asked for "strictures"; he soon got them. Wayne promptly sent him a "Magazine[639] containing a piece condemnatory of the work." Furthermore, the books were not going well; not a copy could the publisher sell that had not been ordered before publication. "I have all those on hand which I printed over the number of subscribers," Wayne sourly informs the author.

In response to Marshall's request for time for revision, Wayne is now willing that he shall take all he wishes, since "present prospects would not induce [him] to republish," but he cautions Marshall to "let the idea of a 2^d edit. revised and corrected remain a secret"; if the public should get wind of such a purpose the stacks of volumes in Wayne's printing house would never be sold. He must have the manuscript of the "fourth vol. by the last of September at furthest.... Can I have it?—or must I dismiss my people."

At the same time he begs Marshall to control his redundancy: "The first and second vols. have cost me (1500) fifteen hundred dollars more than calculated!"[640]

It was small wonder that Marshall's first two bulky books, published in the early summer of 1804, were not hailed with enthusiasm. In volume one the name of Washington was mentioned on only two minor occasions described toward the end.[641] The reader had to make his way through more than one hundred thousand words without arriving even at the cradle of the hero. The voyages of discovery, the settlements and explorations of America, and the history of the Colonies until the Treaty of Paris in 1763, two years before the Stamp Act of 1765, were treated in dull and heavy fashion.

The author defends his plan in the preface: No one connected narrative tells the story of all the Colonies and "few would ... search through the minute details"; yet this he held to be necessary to an understanding of the great events of Washington's life. So Marshall had gathered the accounts of the various authorities[642] in parts of the country and in England, and from them made a continuous history. If there were defects in the book it was due to "the impatience ... of subscribers" which had so hastened him.

The volume is poorly done; parts are inaccurate.[643] To Bacon's Rebellion are given only four pages.[644] The story of the Pilgrims is fairly well told.[645] A page is devoted to Roger Williams and six sympathetic lines tell of his principles of liberty and toleration.[646] The Salem witchcraft madness is well treated.[647] The descriptions of military movements constitute the least disappointing parts of the volume. The beginnings of colonial opposition to British rule are tiresomely set out; and thus at last, the reader arrives within twelve years of Bunker Hill.

Marshall admits that every event of the Revolutionary War has been told by others who had examined Washington's "immensely voluminous correspondence," and that he had copied these authors, sometimes using their very language. Still, he promises the reader "a particular account of his [Washington's] own life."[648]

One page and three lines at the beginning of the second volume are all that Marshall gives of the ancestry, birth, environment, upbringing, education, and experiences of George Washington, up to the nineteenth year of his age. On the second page the hero, fully uniformed and accoutred, is plunged into the French and Indian Wars. Braddock's defeat, already described in the first volume, is repeated and elaborated.[649] Six lines, closing the first chapter, disposes of Washington in marriage and describes the bride.[650]

About three pages are devoted to the Stamp Act speeches in the British Parliament; while but one short paragraph is given to the immortal resolutions of Patrick Henry and the passage of them by the Virginia House of Burgesses. Not a word describes the "most bloody" debate over them, and Henry's time-surviving speech is not even referred to.[651] All mention of the fact that Washington was a fellow member with Henry and voted for the resolutions is omitted. Henry's second epoch-making speech at the outbreak of the Revolution is not so much as hinted at, nor is any place found for the Virginia Resolutions for Arming and Defense, which his unrivaled eloquence carried.

The name of the supreme orator of the Revolution is mentioned for the second time in describing the uprising against Lord Dunmore,[652] and then Marshall adds this footnote: "The same gentleman who had introduced into the assembly of Virginia the original resolution against the stamp act."[653]

Marshall's account of the development of the idea of independence is scattered.[654] He gives with unnecessary completeness certain local resolutions favoring it,[655] while to the great Declaration less than two pages[656] are assigned. It is termed "this important paper"; and a footnote disposes of the fact that "Mr. Jefferson, Mr. John Adams, Mr. Franklin, Mr. Sherman, and Mr. R. R. Livingston, were appointed to prepare this declaration; and the draft reported by the committee has been generally attributed to Mr. Jefferson."[657] A report of the talk between Washington and Colonel Paterson of the British Army, concerning the title by which Washington insisted upon being addressed,[658] is given one and one third times the space that is bestowed upon the Declaration of Independence.

Marshall is satisfactory only when dealing with military operations. He draws a faithful picture of the condition of the army;[659] quotes Washington's remorseless condemnations of the militia,[660] short enlistments, and the democratic spirit among men and officers.[661] When writing upon such topics, Marshall is spirited; his pages are those of the soldier that, by nature, he was.

The earliest objection to Marshall's first two volumes came from American Tories, who complained of the use of the word "enemy" as applied to the British military forces. Wayne reluctantly calls Marshall's attention to this. Marshall replies: "You need make no apology for mentioning to me the criticism of the word 'enemy.' I will endeavor to avoid it where it can be avoided."[662]

Unoffended by such demands, Marshall was deeply chagrined by other and entirely just criticisms. Why, he asks, had not some one pointed out to him "some of those objections ... to the plan of the work" before he wrote any part of it? He wishes "very sincerely" that this had been done. He "should very readily have relinquished [his own] opinion ... if [he] had perceiv^d that the public taste required a different course." Thus, by implication, he blames Wayne or Bushrod Washington, for his own error of judgment.

Marshall also reproaches himself, but in doing so he saddles on the public most of the burden of his complaints: "I ought, indeed, to have foreseen that the same impatience which precipitated the publication wou^d require that the life and transactions of Mr. Washington should be immediately entered upon." Even if he had stuck to his original plans, still, he "ought to have departed from them so far as to have composed the introductory volume at leizure after the principal work was finished."

Marshall's "mortification" is, he says, also "increased on account of the careless manner in which the work has been executed." For the first time in his life he had been driven to sustained and arduous mental labor, and he found, to his surprise, that he "had to learn that under the pressure of constant application, the spring of the mind loses its elasticity.... But regrets for the past are unavailing," he sighs. "There will be great difficulty in retrieving the reputation of the first volume.... I have therefore some doubts whether it may not be as well to drop the first volume for the present—that is not to speak of a republication of it."

He assures Wayne that he need have no fears that he will mention a revised edition, and regrets that the third volume is also too long; his pen has run away with him. He would shorten it if he had the copy once more; but since that cannot be, perhaps Wayne might omit the last chapter. Brooding over the "strictures" he had so confidently asked for, he grows irritable. "Whatever might have been the execution, the work wou^d have experienced unmerited censure. We must endeavor to rescue what remains to be done from such [criticism] as is deserved. I wish you to consult Mr. Washington."[663]

Another very long letter from Front Royal quickly follows. Marshall again authorizes the publisher himself to cut the bulk of the third volume, in the hope that it "will not be so defective.... It shall be my care to render the 4th more fit for the public eye." He promises Wayne that, in case of a second edition,[664] he will shorten his interminable pages which shall also "receive very material corrections." But a corrected and improved edition! "On this subject ... I remain silent.... Perhaps a free expression of my thoughts ... may add to the current which seems to set against it." Let the public take the first printing "before a second is spoken of."[665]

Washington drew on the publisher[666] and wrote Wayne that "the disappointment will be very great if it is not paid." In December, 1804, Wayne sent the first royalty. It amounted to five thousand dollars.[667]

Our author needed money badly. "I do not wish to press you upon the subject of further remittances but they will be highly acceptable," Washington tells Wayne, "particularly to Mr. Marshall, whose arrangements I know are bottomed upon the expectation of the money he is to receive from you."[668] In January, 1805, Wayne sent Washington another thousand dollars—"which I have paid," says Washington, "to Mr. Marshall as I shall also do of the next thousand you remit."[669] Thus pressed, Wayne sends more money, and by January 1, 1805, Marshall and Washington have received the total sum of eight thousand seven hundred and sixty dollars.[670]

Toward the end of February, 1805, Marshall completed the manuscript of the fourth volume. He was then in Washington, and sent two copies from there to Philadelphia by Joseph Hopkinson, who had just finished his notable work in the Chase impeachment trial. "They are both in a rough state; too rough to be sent ... but it was impossible to have them recopied," Marshall writes Wayne. He admits they are full of errors in capitalization, punctuation, and spelling, but adds, "it has absolutely been impossible to make corrections in these respects."[671] This he "fears will produce considerable difficulty." Small wonder, with the Chase trial absorbing his every thought and depressing him with heavy anxiety.

Marshall's relief from the danger of impeachment is at once reflected in his correspondence with Wayne. Two weeks after the acquittal of Chase, he placidly informs his publisher that the fifth volume will not be ready until the spring of 1806 at the earliest. It is "not yet commenced," he says, "but I shall however set about it in a few days." He explains that there will be little time to work on the biography. "For the ensuing twelve months I shall scarcely have it in my power to be five in Richmond."[672] Three months later he informs Wayne that it will be "absolutely impossible" to complete the final volume by the time mentioned. "I regret this very seriously but it is a calamity for which there is no remedy."

The cause of this irremediable calamity was "a tour of the mountains"—a journey to be made "for [his] own health and that of [his] family" from which he "cannot return till October." He still "laments sincerely that an introductory volume was written because [he] finds it almost impossible to compress the civil administration into a single volume. In doing it," he adds, "I shall be compelled to omit several interesting transactions & to mutilate others."[673]

At last Marshall's eyes are fully opened to what should have been plain to him from the first. Nobody wanted a tedious history of the discovery and settlement of America and of colonial development, certainly not from his pen. The subject had been dealt with by more competent authors.

But the terrible years following the war, the Constitutional period, the Administrations of Washington and the first half of that of Adams, the decisive part played by Washington throughout this critical time of founding and constructing—all these were virgin fields. They constituted, too, as vital an epoch in American history as the Revolution itself. Marshall's own life had been an important part of it, and he was not unequipped to give it adequate treatment.

Had Marshall written of these years, it is probable that the well-to-do Federalists alone would have purchased the thirty thousand sets that Marshall originally counted on to be sold. He would have made all the money he had expected, done a real public service, and achieved a solid literary fame. His "Life of Washington" might have been the great social, economic, political, and Constitutional history of the foundation processes of the Government of the American Nation. His entire five volumes would not have been too many for such a work.

But all this matter relating to the formative years of the Nation must now be crowded between two covers and offered to an indifferent, if not hostile, public—a public already "disgusted," as the publisher truly declared, by the unattractive rehash of what had already been better told.

Wayne again presses for a change in the contract; he wants to buy outright Marshall's and Washington's interests, and end the bankrupting royalty he is paying them: "If you were willing to take 70000$ for 30000 Sub^s I thought it would not be deemed illiberal in offering twenty thousand dollars for four thousand subscribers—this was two-sevenths of the original sum for less than one-seventh of the subscribers contemplated." Wayne asks Marshall and Washington to "state the lowest sum" they will take. Subscriptions have stopped, and in three years he has sold only "two copies ... to non-subscribers." But the harried publisher sends two thousand dollars more of royalty.[674]

In the autumn of 1805, upon returning from his annual vacation, Marshall is anxious to get to work, and he must have the Aurora and Freneau's Gazette quickly. His "official duties recommence ... on the 22^d of November from which time they continue 'till the middle of March." Repeating his now favorite phrase, he says, "It is absolutely impossible to get the residue of the work completed in the short time which remains this fall." He has been sorely vexed and is a cruelly overworked man: "The unavoidable delays which have been experienced, the immense researches among volumes of manuscript, & chests of letters & gazettes which I am compelled to make will impede my progress so much that it is absolutely impossible" to finish the book at any early date.[675]

Want of money continually embarrasses Marshall: "What payments my good Sir, will it be in your power to make us in the course of this & the next month?" Bushrod Washington asks Wayne. "I am particularly anxious," he explains, "on account of Mr. M.... His principal dependence is upon this fund."[676] Marshall now gets down to earnest and continuous labor and by July, 1806, actually finishes the fifth and only important volume of the biography.[677]

During all these years the indefatigable Weems continued his engaging career as book agent, and, like the subscribers he had ensnared, became first the victim of hope deferred and then of unrealized expectations. The delay in the publication of Marshall's first volumes and the disfavor with which the public received them when finally they appeared, had, it seems, cooled the ardor of the horseback-and-saddlebag distributor of literary treasures. At all events, he ceases to write his employer about Marshall's "Life of Washington," but is eager for other books.[678] Twice only, in an interval of two years, he mentions Marshall's biography, but without spirit or enthusiasm.[679] In the autumn of 1806, he querulously refers to Marshall and Washington: "I did not call on you [Wayne] for increase of Diurnal Salary. I spoke to Judge W. I hope and expect that he and Gen. M.[680] will do me something."

Marshall's third volume, which had now appeared, is an improvement on the first two. In it he continues his narrative of the Revolutionary War until 1779, and his statement of economic and financial conditions[681] is excellent. The account of the battles of Brandywine and Germantown, in both of which he had taken part,[682] is satisfactory,[683] and his picture of the army in retreat is vivid.[684] He faithfully relates the British sentiment among the people.[685] Curiously enough, he is not comprehensive or stirring in his story of Valley Forge.[686] His descriptions of Lafayette and Baron von Steuben are worthy.[687] Again and again he attacks the militia,[688] and is merciless in his criticism of the slip-shod, happy-go-lucky American military system. These shortcomings were offset, he says, only by the conduct of the enemy.[689] The treatment of American prisoners is set forth in somber words,[690] and he gives almost a half-page of text[691] and two and a half pages of appendix[692] to the murder of Miss McCrea.

The story of the battle of Monmouth in which Marshall took part is told with spirit.[693] Nineteen pages[694] are devoted to the history of the alliance with the French monarch, and no better rÉsumÉ of that event, so fruitful of historic results, ever has been given. The last chapter describes the arrival of the British Commission of Conciliation, the propositions made by them, the American answer, the British attempts to bribe Congress,[695] followed by the Indian atrocities of which the appalling massacres at Kingston and Wyoming were the worst.

The long years of writing, the neglect and crudity of his first efforts, and the self-reproval he underwent, had their effect upon Marshall's literary craftsmanship. This is noticeable in his fourth volume, which is less defective than those that preceded it. His delight in verbiage, so justly ridiculed by Callender in 1799,[696] is a little subdued, and his sense of proportion is somewhat improved. He again criticizes the American military system and traces its defects to local regulations.[697] The unhappy results of the conflict of State and Nation are well presented.[698]

The most energetic narrative in the volume is that of the treason of Benedict Arnold. In telling this story, Marshall cannot curb the expression of his intense feeling against this "traitor, a sordid traitor, first the slave of his rage, then purchased with gold." Marshall does not economize space in detailing this historic betrayal of America,[699] imperative as the saving of every line had become.

He relates clearly the circumstances that caused the famous compact between Denmark, Sweden, and Russia known as "The Armed Neutrality," formed in order to check Great Britain's power on the seas. This was the first formidable assertion of the principle of equality among nations on the ocean. Great Britain's declaration of war upon Holland, because that country was about to join "The Armed Neutrality," and because Holland appeared to be looking with favor upon a commercial treaty which the United States wished to conclude with her, is told with dispassionate lucidity.[700]

Marshall gives a compact and accurate analysis—by far the best work he has done in the whole four volumes—of the party beginnings discernible when the clouds of the Revolutionary War began to break. He had now written more than half a million words, and this description was the first part of his work that could be resented by the Republicans. The political division was at bottom economic, says Marshall—those who advocated honest payment of public debts were opposed by those who favored repudiation; and the latter were also against military establishments and abhorred the idea of any National Government.[701]

The fourth volume ends with the mutiny of part of the troops, the suppression of it, Washington's farewell to his officers, and his retirement when peace was concluded.

Marshall's final volume was ready for subscribers and the public in the autumn of 1807, just one year before the Federalist campaign for the election of Jefferson's successor—four years later than Jefferson had anticipated.[702] It was the only political part of Marshall's volumes, but it had not the smallest effect upon the voters in the Presidential contest.

Neither human events nor Thomas Jefferson had waited upon the convenience of John Marshall. The Federalist Party was being reduced to a grumbling company of out-of-date gentlemen, leaders in a bygone day, together with a scattered following who, from force of party habit, plodded along after them, occasionally encouraged by some local circumstance or fleeting event in which they imagined an "issue" might be found. They had become anti-National, and, in their ardor for Great Britain, had all but ceased to be American. They had repudiated democracy and assumed an attitude of insolent superiority, mournful of a glorious past, despairing of a worthy future.[703]

Marshall could not hope to revive the fast weakening Federalist organization. The most that he could do was to state the principles upon which opposing parties had been founded, and the determinative conflicts that had marked the evolution of them and the development of the American Nation. He could only set forth, in plain and simple terms, those antagonistic ideas which had created party divisions; and although the party to which one group of those ideas had given life was now moribund, they were ideas, nevertheless, which would inevitably create other parties in the future.

The author's task was, therefore, to deal not only with the years that had gone; but, through his treatment of the past, with the years that were to come. He must expound the philosophy of Nationalism as opposed to that of Localism, and must enrich his exposition by the unwritten history of the period between the achievement of American Independence and the vindication of it in our conflict with France.

Marshall was infinitely careful that every statement in his last volume should be accurate; and, to make sure of this, he wrote many letters to those who had first-hand knowledge of the period. Among others he wrote to John Adams, requesting permission to use his letters to Washington. Adams readily agreed, although he says, "they were written under great agitation of mind at a time when a cruel necessity compelled me to take measures which I was very apprehensive would produce the evils which have followed from them. If you have detailed the events of the last years of General Washington's Life, you must have run the Gauntlet between two infuriated factions, armed with scorpions.... It is a period which must however be investigated, but I am very confident will never be well understood."[704]

Because of his lack of a sense of proportion in planning his "Life of Washington," and the voluminousness of the minor parts of it, Marshall had to compress the vital remainder. Seldom has a serious author been called upon to execute an undertaking more difficult. Marshall accomplished the feat in creditable fashion. Moreover, his fairness, restraint, and moderation, even in the treatment of subjects regarding which his own feelings were most ardent, give to his pages not only the atmosphere of justice, but also something of the artist's touch.

Washington's Nationalism is promptly and skillfully brought into the foreground.[705] An excellent account of the Society of the Cincinnati contains the first covert reflection on Jefferson.[706] But the state of the country under the Articles of Confederation is passed over with exasperating brevity—only a few lines are given to this basic subject.[707]

The foundation of political parties is stated once more and far better—"The one ... contemplated America as a nation," while "the other attached itself to state authorities." The first of these was made up of "men of enlarged and liberal minds ... who felt the full value of national honour, and the full obligation of national faith; and who were persuaded of the insecurity of both, if resting for their preservation on the concurrence of thirteen distinct sovereignties"; and with these far-seeing and upright persons were united the "officers of the army" whose experience in war had weakened "local prejudices."[708]

Thus, by mentioning the excellence of the members of one party, and by being silent upon the shortcomings of those of the other party, Marshall imputes to the latter the reverse of those qualities which he praises—a method practiced throughout the book, and one which offended Jefferson and his followers more than a direct attack could have done.

He succinctly reviews the attempts at union,[709] and the disputes between America and Great Britain over the Treaty of Peace;[710] he quickly swings back to the evolution of political parties and, for the third time, reiterates his analysis of debtor and Localist as against creditor and Nationalist.

"The one [party] struggled ... for the exact observance of public and private engagements"; to them "the faith of a nation, or of a private man was deemed a sacred pledge." These men believed that "the distresses of individuals" could be relieved only by work and faith, "not by a relaxation of the laws, or by a sacrifice of the rights of others." They thought that "the imprudent and idle could not be protected by the legislature from the consequences of their indiscretion; but should be restrained from involving themselves in difficulties, by the conviction that a rigid compliance with contracts would be enforced." Men holding these views "by a natural association of ideas" were "in favour of enlarging the powers of the federal government, and of enabling it to protect the dignity and character of the nation abroad, and its interests at home."[711]

With these principles Marshall sharply contrasts those of the other party: "Viewing with extreme tenderness the case of the debtor, their efforts were unceasingly directed to his relief"; they were against "a faithful compliance with contracts"—such a measure they thought "too harsh to be insisted on ... and one which the people would not bear." Therefore, they favored "relaxing ... justice," suspending the collection of debts, remitting taxes. These men resisted every attempt to transfer from their own hands into those of Congress all powers that were, in reality, National. Those who held to such "lax notions of honor," were, in many States, "a decided majority of the people," and were very powerful throughout the country. Wherever they secured control, paper money, delay of justice, suspended taxes "were the fruits of their rule"; and where they were in the minority, they fought at every election for the possession of the State Governments.

In this fashion Marshall again states those antipodal philosophies from which sprang the first two American political parties. With something like skill he emphasizes the conservative and National idea thus: "No principle had been introduced [in the State Governments] which could resist the wild projects of the moment, give the people an opportunity to reflect, and allow the good sense of the nation time for exertion." The result of "this instability in principles which ought if possible to be rendered immutable, produced a long train of ills."[712] The twin spirits of repudiation and Localism on one side, contending for the mastery against the companion spirits of faith-keeping and Nationalism on the other, were from the very first, says Marshall, the source of public ill-being or well-being, as one or the other side prevailed.

Then follows a review of the unhappy economic situation which, as Marshall leaves the reader to infer, was due exclusively to the operation of the principles which he condemns by the mere statement of them.[713] So comes the Philadelphia Convention of 1787 that was deemed by many "an illegitimate meeting."[714]

Although Washington presided over, and was the most powerful influence in, the Constitutional Convention, Marshall allots only one short paragraph to that fact.[715] He enumerates the elements that prepared to resist the Constitution; and brings out clearly the essential fact that the proposed government of the Nation was, by those who opposed it, considered to be "foreign." He condenses into less than two pages his narrative of the conflict over ratification, and almost half of these few lines is devoted to comment upon "The Federalist."

Marshall writes not one line or word of Washington's power and activities at this critical moment. He merely observes, concerning ratification, that "the intrinsic merits of the instrument would not have secured" the adoption of the Constitution, and that even in some of the States that accepted it "a majority of the people were in the opposition."[716]

He tells of the pressure on Washington to accept the Presidency. To these appeals and Washington's replies, he actually gives ten times more space than he takes to describe the formation, submission, and ratification of the Constitution itself.[717] After briefly telling of Washington's election to the Presidency, Marshall employs twenty pages in describing his journey to New York and his inauguration.

Then, with quick, bold strokes, he lays the final color on his picture of the state of the country before the new government was established, and darkens the tints of his portrayal of those who were opposing the Constitution and were still its enemies. In swift contrast he paints the beginnings of better times, produced by the establishment of the new National Government: "The new course of thinking which had been inspired by the adoption of a constitution that was understood to prohibit all laws impairing the obligation of contracts, had in a great measure restored that confidence which is essential to the internal prosperity of nations."[718]

He sets out adequately the debates over the first laws passed by Congress,[719] and is generous in his description of the characters and careers of both Jefferson and Hamilton when they accepted places in Washington's first Cabinet.[720] He joyfully quotes Washington's second speech to Congress, in which he declares that "to be prepared for war is one of the most effectual means of preserving peace"; and in which the people are adjured "to discriminate the spirit of liberty from that of licentiousness."[721]

An analysis of Hamilton's First Report on the Public Credit follows. The measures flowing from it "originated the first regular and systematic opposition to the principles on which the affairs of the union were administered."[722] In condensing the momentous debate over the establishment of the American financial system, Marshall gives an excellent summary of the arguments on both sides of that controversy. He states those of the Nationalists, however, more fully than the arguments of those who opposed Hamilton's plan.[723]

While attributing to Hamilton's financial measures most of the credit for improved conditions, Marshall frankly admits that other causes contributed to the new-found prosperity: By "progressive industry, ... the influence of the constitution on habits of thinking and acting," and especially by "depriving the states of the power to impair the obligation of contracts, or to make any thing but gold and silver a tender in payment of debts, the conviction was impressed on that portion of society which had looked to the government for relief from embarrassment, that personal exertions alone could free them from difficulties; and an increased degree of industry and economy was the natural consequence."[724]

Perhaps the most colorful pages of Marshall's entire work are those in which he describes the effect of the French Revolution on America, and the popular hostility to Washington's Proclamation of Neutrality[725] and to the treaty with Great Britain negotiated by John Jay.[726]

In his treatment of these subjects he reveals some of the sources of his distrust of the people. The rupture between the United States and the French Republic is summarized most inadequately. The greatest of Washington's state papers, the immortal "Farewell Address,"[727] is reproduced in full. The account of the X. Y. Z. mission is provokingly incomplete; that of American preparations for war with France is less disappointing. Washington's illness and death are described with feeling, though in stilted language; and Marshall closes his literary labors with the conventional analysis of Washington's character which the world has since accepted.[728]

Marshall's fifth volume was received with delight by the disgruntled Federalist leaders. A letter of Chancellor James Kent is typical of their comments. "I have just finished ... the last Vol. of Washington's Life and it is worth all the rest. It is an excellent History of the Government and Parties in this country from Vol. 3 to the death of the General."[729]

Although it had appeared too late to do them any harm at the election of 1804, the Republicans and Jefferson felt outraged by Marshall's history of the foundation period of the Government. Jefferson said nothing for a time, but the matter was seldom out of his thoughts. Barlow, it seems, had been laggard in writing a history from the Republican point of view, as Jefferson had urged him to do.

Three years had passed since the request had been made, and Barlow was leaving for Paris upon his diplomatic mission. Jefferson writes his congratulations, "yet ... not unmixed with regret. What is to become of our past revolutionary history? Of the antidotes of truth to the misrepresentations of Marshall?"[730]

Time did not lessen Jefferson's bitterness: "Marshall has written libels on one side,"[731] he writes Adams, with whom a correspondence is opening, the approach of old age having begun to restore good relations between these former enemies. Jefferson's mind dwells on Marshall's work with increasing anxiety: "On the subject of the history of the American Revolution ... who can write it?" he asks. He speaks of Botta's "History,"[732] criticizing its defects; but he concludes that "the work is nevertheless a good one, more judicious, more chaste, more classical, and more true than the party diatribe of Marshall. Its greatest fault is in having taken too much from him."[733]

Marshall's "party diatribe" clung like a burr in Jefferson's mind and increased his irritation with the passing of the years. Fourteen years after Marshall's last volume appeared, Justice William Johnson of the Supreme Court published an account of the period[734] covered by Marshall's work, and it was severely criticized in the North American Review. Jefferson cheers the despondent author and praises his "inestimable" history: "Let me ... implore you, dear Sir, to finish your history of parties.... We have been too careless of our future reputation, while our tories will omit nothing to place us in the wrong." For example, Marshall's "Washington," that "five-volumed libel, ... represents us as struggling for office, and not at all to prevent our government from being administered into a monarchy."[735]

In his long introduction to the "Anas," Jefferson explains that he would not have thought many of his notes "worth preserving but for their testimony against the only history of that period which pretends to have been compiled from authentic and unpublished documents." Had Washington himself written a narrative of his times from the materials he possessed, it would, of course, have been truthful: "But the party feeling of his biographer, to whom after his death the collection was confided, has culled from it a composition as different from what Genl. Washington would have offered, as was the candor of the two characters during the period of the war.

"The partiality of this pen is displayed in lavishments of praise on certain military characters, who had done nothing military, but who afterwards, & before he wrote, had become heroes in party, altho' not in war; and in his reserve on the merits of others, who rendered signal services indeed, but did not earn his praise by apostatising in peace from the republican principles for which they had fought in war."

Marshall's frigidity toward liberty "shews itself too," Jefferson continues, "in the cold indifference with which a struggle for the most animating of human objects is narrated. No act of heroism ever kindles in the mind of this writer a single aspiration in favor of the holy cause which inspired the bosom, & nerved the arm of the patriot warrior. No gloom of events, no lowering of prospects ever excites a fear for the issue of a contest which was to change the condition of man over the civilized globe.

"The sufferings inflicted on endeavors to vindicate the rights of humanity are related with all the frigid insensibility with which a monk would have contemplated the victims of an auto da fÉ. Let no man believe that Gen. Washington ever intended that his papers should be used for the suicide of the cause, for which he had lived, and for which there never was a moment in which he would not have died."

Marshall's "abuse of these materials," Jefferson charges, "is chiefly however manifested in the history of the period immediately following the establishment of the present constitution; and nearly with that my memorandums [the "Anas"] begin. Were a reader of this period to form his idea of it from this history alone, he would suppose the republican party (who were in truth endeavoring to keep the government within the line of the Constitution, and prevent it's being monarchised in practice) were a mere set of grumblers, and disorganisers, satisfied with no government, without fixed principles of any, and, like a British parliamentary opposition, gaping after loaves and fishes, and ready to change principles, as well as position, at any time, with their adversaries."[736]

Jefferson denounces Hamilton and his followers as "monarchists," "corruptionists," and other favorite Jeffersonian epithets, and Marshall is again assailed: "The horrors of the French revolution, then raging, aided them mainly, and using that as a raw head and bloody bones they were enabled by their stratagems of X. Y. Z. in which this historian was a leading mountebank, their tales of tub-plots, Ocean massacres, bloody buoys, and pulpit lyings, and slanderings, and maniacal ravings of their Gardiners, their Osgoods and Parishes, to spread alarm into all but the firmest breasts."[737]

Criticisms of Marshall's "Life of Washington" were not, however, confined to Jefferson and the Republicans. Plumer thought the plan of the work "preposterous."[738] The Reverend Samuel Cooper Thatcher of Boston reviewed the biography through three numbers of the Monthly Anthology.[739] "Every reader is surprized to find," writes Mr. Thatcher, "the history of North America, instead of the life of an individual.... He [Washington] is always presented ... in the pomp of the military or civil costume, and never in the ease and undress of private life." However, he considers Marshall's fifth volume excellent. "We have not heard of a single denial of his fidelity.... In this respect ... his work [is] unique in the annals of political history."

Thatcher concludes that Marshall's just and balanced treatment of his subject is not due to a care for his own reputation: "We are all so full of agitation and effervescence on political topicks, that a man, who keeps his temper, can hardly gain a hearing." Indeed, he complains of Marshall's fairness: he writes as a spectator, instead of as "one, who has himself descended into the arena ... and is yet red with the wounds which he gave, and smarting with those which his enemies inflicted in return"; but the reviewer charges that these volumes are full of "barbarisms" and "grammatical impurities," "newspaper slang," and "unmeaning verbiage."

The Reverend Timothy Flint thought that Marshall's work displayed more intellect and labor than "eloquence and interest."[740] George Bancroft, reviewing Sparks's "Washington," declared that "all that is contained in Marshall is meagre and incomplete in comparison."[741] Even the British critics were not so harsh as the New York Evening Post, which pronounced the judgment that if the biography "bears any traces of its author's uncommon powers of mind, it is in the depths of dulness which he explored."[742]

The British critics were, of course, unsparing. The Edinburgh Review called Marshall's work "unpardonably deficient in all that constitutes the soul and charm of biography.... We look in vain, through these stiff and countless pages, for any sketch or anecdote that might fix a distinguishing feature of private character in the memory.... What seemed to pass with him for dignity, will, by his reader, be pronounced dullness and frigidity."[743] Blackwood's Magazine asserted that Marshall's "Life of Washington" was "a great, heavy book.... One gets tired and sick of the very name of Washington before he gets half through these ... prodigious ... octavos."[744]

Marshall was somewhat compensated for the criticisms of his work by an event which soon followed the publication of his last volume. On August 29, 1809, he was elected a corresponding member of the Massachusetts Historical Society. In a singularly graceful letter to John Eliot, corresponding secretary of the Society at that time, Marshall expresses his thanks and appreciation.[745]

As long as he lived, Marshall worried over his biography of Washington. When anybody praised it, he was as appreciative as a child. In 1827, Archibald D. Murphey eulogized Marshall's volumes in an oration, a copy of which he sent to the Chief Justice, who thanks Murphey, and adds: "That work was hurried into a world with too much precipitation, but I have lately given it a careful examination and correction. Should another edition appear, it will be less fatiguing, and more worthy of the character which the biographer of Washington ought to sustain."[746]

Toilsomely he kept at his self-imposed task of revision. In 1816, Bushrod Washington wrote Wayne to send Marshall "the last three volumes in sheets (the two first he has) that he may devote this winter to their correction."[747]

When, five years later, the Chief Justice learned that Wayne was actually considering the risk of bringing out a new edition, Marshall's delight was unbounded. "It is one of the most desirable objects I have in this life to publish a corrected edition of that work. I would not on any terms, could I prevent it, consent that one other set of the first edition should be published."[748]

Finally, in 1832, the revised biography was published. Marshall clung to the first volume, which was issued separately under the title "History of the American Colonies." The remaining four volumes were, seemingly, reduced to two; but they were so closely printed and in such comparatively small type that the real condensation was far less than it appeared to be. The work was greatly improved, however, and is to this day the fullest and most trustworthy treatment of that period, from the conservative point of view.[749]

Fortunately for Marshall, the work required of him on the Bench gave him ample leisure to devote to his literary venture. During the years he consumed in writing his "Life of Washington" he wrote fifty-six opinions in cases decided in the Circuit Court at Richmond, and in twenty-seven cases determined by the Supreme Court. Only four of them[750] are of more than casual interest, and but three of them[751] are of any historical consequence. All the others deal with commercial law, practice, rules of evidence, and other familiar legal questions. In only one case, that of Marbury vs. Madison, was he called upon to deliver an opinion that affected the institutions and development of the Nation.