The Life of John Marshall, Volume 1: Frontiersman, soldier, lawmaker, 1755-1788

This amazing bill actually passed the House on its first and second reading and there seems to be no doubt that it would have become a law had not Henry at that time been elected Governor, which took him "out of the way," to use Madison's curt phrase. John Marshall favored this bill.

741

Journal, H.D. (2d Sess., 1784), 41.

742

Ib.

743

See note 5, p. 239, ante.

744

Marshall to Monroe, Dec., 1784; MS. Monroe Papers, Lib. Cong.; also partly quoted in Henry, ii, 219.

745

See infra, chap. IX.

746

One of the curious popular errors concerning our public men is that which pictures Washington as a calm person. On the contrary, he was hot-tempered and, at times, violent in speech and action. It was with the greatest difficulty that he trained himself to an appearance of calmness and reserve.

747

Story, in Dillon, iii, 338, 343.

748

Journal, H.D. (Oct. Sess., 1787), 7.

749

Ib., 11, 15.

750

Pennsylvania Packet, Nov. 10, 1787: Pa. Hist. Soc.

751

Infra, chaps. XI and XII.

752

Pennsylvania Packet, Nov. 10, 1787; also see in Rowland, ii, 176.

753

Infra, chaps. IX, XII; and also Washington to Lafayette, Feb. 7, 1788; Writings: Ford, xi, 220.

754

Pennsylvania Packet, Nov. 10, 1787; Pa. Hist. Soc.

755

Journal, H.D. (Oct. Sess., 1787), 15.

756

Ib.

757

Ib., 95.

758

Ib. (Dec., 1787), 143, 177.

759

Hening, xii, 462-63.

760

Weld, i, 37-38; also, Morris, ii, 393-94.

761

Weld, i, 38.

762

Baily's Journal (1796-97), 108.

763

Ib., 109-10.

764

Professor Beard, in his exposition of the economic origins of the Constitution, shows that nearly all of the men who framed it were wealthy or allied with property interests and that many of them turned up as holders of Government securities. (Beard: Econ. I. C., chap. v.) As a matter of fact, none but such men could have gone to the Federal Convention at Philadelphia, so great were the difficulties and so heavy the expenses of travel, even if the people had been minded to choose poorer and humbler persons to represent them; at any rate, they did not elect representatives of their own class until the Constitution was to be ratified and then, of course, only to State Conventions which were accessible.

765

Weld, i, 47-48.

766

Johnston to Iredell, Jan. 30, 1790; McRee, ii, 279.

767

"Letters of a Federal Farmer," no. 2; Ford: P. on C., 292.

768

Ib., no. 3, 302.

769

De Warville made a record trip from Boston to New York in less than five days. (De Warville, 122.) But such speed was infrequent.

770

Josiah Quincy's description of his journey from Boston to New York in 1794. (Quincy: Figures of the Past, 47-48.)

771

De Warville, 138-39.

772

Watson, 266.

773

"The road is execrable; one is perpetually mounting and descending and always on the most rugged roads." (Chastellux, 20.)

774

Elliott, ii, 21-22.

775

"In December last, the roads were so intollerably bad that the country people could not bring their forage to market, though actually offered the cash on delivery." (Pickering to Hodgdon; Pickering: Pickering, i, 392.)

776

Cooper, 1875-86, as quoted in Hart, iii, 98.

777

Ib.

778

Watson, 270. Along one of the principal roads of New York, as late as 1804, President Dwight discovered only "a few lonely plantations" and he "occasionally found a cottage and heard a distant sound of an axe and of a human voice. All else was grandeur, gloom, and solitude." (Halsey: Old New York Frontier, 384.)

779

Hart, iii, 116.

780

Mag. Western Hist., i, 530.

781

Justice Cushing to Chief Justice Jay, Oct. 23, 1792; Jay: Johnston, iii, 450.

782

Memoirs of Talleyrand: Broglie's ed., i, 176-77.

783

Washington to Jay, Nov. 19, 1790; Jay: Johnston, iii, 409.

784

Jefferson to Washington, March 27, 1791; Cor. Rev.: Sparks, iv, 366.

785

Washington's Diary: Lossing, Feb. 25, 1791.

786

Washington to Jay, Dec. 13, 1789; Jay: Johnston, iii, 381.

787

Jefferson to T. M. Randolph, March 28, 1790; Works: Ford, vi, 36.

788

Weld, i, 91.

789

Bayard to Rodney, Jan. 5, 1801; Bayard Papers: Donnan, ii, 118.

790

Schoepf, ii, 46.

791

Ib., 78.

792

Ib., 45.

793

Grigsby, i, 26.

794

Weld, i, 170.

795

Watson, 60.

796

Davis, 372.

797

Schoepf, ii, 95.

798

Wilkinson: Memoirs, i, 9-10. The distance which General Wilkinson's mother thought "so far away" was only forty miles.

799

Schoepf, ii, 53.

800

Zachariah Johnson, in Elliott, iii, 647.

801

Journal, H.D. (1790), 13.

802

Madison to Lee, July 7, 1785; Writings: Hunt, ii, 149-51.

803

Ib.

804

Boston was not a "city" in the legal interpretation until 1822.

805

Chastellux, 225. "The difficulty of finding the road in many parts of America is not to be conceived except by those strangers who have travelled in that country. The roads, which are through the woods, not being kept in repair, as soon as one is in bad order, another is made in the same manner, that is, merely by felling trees, and the whole interior parts are so covered that without a compass it is impossible to have the least idea of the course you are steering. The distances, too, are so uncertain as in every county where they are not measured, that no two accounts resemble each other. In the back parts of Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia, I have frequently travelled thirty miles for ten, though frequently set right by passengers and negroes." (Ib. Translator's note.)

806

Smyth, Tour of the United States, i, 102-103.

807

Watson, 40. "Towards the close of the day I found myself entangled among swamps amid an utter wilderness, and my horse almost exhausted in my efforts to overtake Harwood. As night closed upon me I was totally bewildered and without a vestige of a road to guide me. Knowing the impossibility of retracing my steps in the dark, through the mazes I had traversed, I felt the necessity of passing the night in this solitary desert … in no trifling apprehension of falling a prey to wild beasts before morning." (Ib.)

808

Ib.

809

"I waited at Baltimore near a week before I could proceed on my journey the roads being rendered impassable." (Baily's Journal (1796-97), 107.)

810

Memoirs of Talleyrand: Broglie's ed., i, 177.

811

Madison to Jefferson, Dec. 21, 1794; Writings: Hunt, vi, 227.

812

Madison to Jefferson, Jan. 26, 1795; ib., 230.

813

"Your favor of July 6 having been addressd to Williamsburg, instead of Orange C. Ho[u]se, did not come to hand till two days ago." (Madison to Livingston, Aug. 10, 1795; ib., vi, 234.)

814

Lee to Henry, May 28, 1789; Henry, iii, 387.

815

Lee to Henry, Sept. 27, 1789; Henry, iii, 402.

816

Ephraim Douglass to Gen. James Irvine, 1784; Pa. Mag. Hist. and Biog., i, 50.

817

Madison to Washington, Feb. 15, 1788; and King to Madison, Feb. 6, 1788; Writings: Hunt, v, footnote to p. 100.

818

Madison to Washington, Feb. 11, 1788: Writings: Hunt, v, 99.

819

Madison to Washington, Feb. 15, 1788; ib., 100.

820

The Randolph-Clinton Correspondence; see infra, chap. x.

821

Jay to Wolcott, mailed June 23, and received by Wolcott Aug. 16, 1794; Gibbs, i, 157.

822

Ib., 160.

823

Jefferson to Short, Nov. 21, 1789; Works: Ford, vi, 20.

824

So notorious was this practice that important parts of the correspondence of the more prominent politicians and statesmen of the day always were written in cipher. Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe appear to have been especially careful to take this precaution. (See Washington's complaint of this tampering with the mails in a letter to Fairfax, June 25, 1786; Writings: Sparks, ix, 175.) Habitual violation of the mails by postmasters continued into the first decades of the nineteenth century.

825

Washington to Lafayette, Feb. 7, 1788; Writings: Ford, xi, 218.

826

Kettell, in Eighty Years' Progress, ii, 174.

827

Pa. Mag. Hist. and Biog., ix, 444.

828

Am. Ant. Soc. Pubs., xxiii, Part ii, 254-330.

829

Goodrich, i, 61.

830

Schoepf, ii, 61; see note, ib. Even this journal died for want of subscribers.

831

Salem Gazette, Sept. 13, 1791; Hist. Col., Topsfield (Mass.) Hist. Soc., iii, 10.

832

Washington to Humphreys, Dec. 26, 1786; Writings: Ford, xi, 98-103.

833

Washington to General Knox, Dec. 26, 1786; ib., 103-05.

834

Writings: Smyth, x, 36 et seq. This arraignment of the press by America's first journalist was written when Franklin was eighty-three years old and when he was the most honored and beloved man in America, Washington only excepted. It serves not only to illuminate the period of the beginning of our Government, but to measure the vast progress during the century and a quarter since that time.

835

Jefferson to Mrs. Adams, Paris, Sept. 25, 1785; Works: Ford, iv, 465.

836

"Country Printer," in Freneau, iii, 60. Freneau thus describes the country editor of that day: —

"Three times a week, by nimble geldings drawn,A stage arrives; but scarcely deigns to stop.Unless the driver, far in liquor gone,Has made some business for the black-smith-shop;Then comes this printer's harvest-time of news,Welcome alike from Christians, Turks, or Jews."Each passenger he eyes with curious glance,And, if his phiz be mark'd of courteous kind,To conversation, straight, he makes advance,Hoping, from thence, some paragraph to find,Some odd adventure, something new and rare,To set the town a-gape, and make it stare."All is not Truth ('tis said) that travellers tell —So much the better for this man of news;For hence the country round, that know him well,Will, if he prints some lies, his lies excuse.Earthquakes, and battles, shipwrecks, myriads slain —If false or true – alike to him are gain."Ask you what matter fills his various page?A mere farrago 'tis, of mingled things;Whate'er is done on Madam Terra's stageHe to the knowledge of his townsmen brings:One while, he tells of monarchs run away;And now, of witches drown'd in Buzzard's bay."Some miracles he makes, and some he steals;Half Nature's works are giants in his eyes;Much, very much, in wonderment he deals, —New-Hampshire apples grown to pumpkin size,Pumpkins almost as large as country inns,And ladies bearing, each, – three lovely twins."

Freneau was himself a country printer in New Jersey, after editing the National Gazette in Philadelphia. Thus the above description was from his personal experience and in a town in a thickly settled part, on the main road between New York and Philadelphia.

837

Goodrich, i, 38.

838

A letter from Salem Town about 1786-87; in American Journal of Education, xiii, 738.

839

Van Santvoord: Memoirs of Eliphalet Nott, 19.

840

Davis, 333.

841

"Many cannot read or write, and many that can, know nothing of geography and other branches. The country is too thinly settled to carry out a system of common schools." (Howe, 153, speaking of western Virginia about 1830.)

842

Weld, i, 168. But President Tyler says that the boys Weld saw were grammar-school pupils.

843

Watson, 269.

844

Chastellux, 319-20.

845

De Warville, 126-27.

846

Ib., 145 and 450.

847

Ib., 145. All travelers agree as to the wretched condition of Rhode Island; and that State appears to have acted as badly as it looked. "The … infamous [scenes] in Rhode Island have done inexpressable injury to the Republican character," etc. (Madison to Pendleton, Feb. 24, 1787; Writings: Hunt, ii, 319.)

848

De Warville, 132.

849

Weld, i, 113.

850

De Warville, 186-87.

851

De Warville, 186 and 332. See La Rochefoucauld's description of this same type of settler as it was several years after De Warville wrote. "The Dwellings of the new settlers … consist of huts, with roofs and walls which are made of bark and in which the husband, wife and children pass the winter wrapped up in blankets… Salt pork and beef are the usual food of the new settlers; their drink is water and whiskey." (La Rochefoucauld, i, 293-96.)

852

Freneau, iii, 74.

853

Knox to Washington, Feb. 10, 1788; Writings: Ford, xi, footnote to 229. And see infra, chap. VIII.

854

De Warville, 187. In 1797, La Rochefoucauld speaks of "the credulity and ignorance of the half-savage sort of people who inhabit the back settlements." (La Rochefoucauld, i, 293.)

855

"A relaxation is observable among all orders of society. Drunkenness is the prevailing vice, and with few exceptions, the source of all other evils. A spirit, or rather a habit, of equality is diffused among this people as far as it possibly can go… The inhabitants exhibit to strangers striking instances both of the utmost cleanliness and excessive nastiness," (La Rochefoucauld, i, 125.)

During Washington's second term as President, La Rochefoucauld thus describes manners in western Pennsylvania: "They are much surprised at a refusal to sleep with one, two, or more men, in the same bed, or between dirty sheets, or to drink after ten other persons out of the same dirty glass… Whiskey mixed with water is the common drink in the country." (Ib.)

856

Ib., i, 293-96. See infra, note 4, pp. 281-82.

857

Watson, 266.

858

"You see [in Maryland and Virginia] real misery and apparent luxury insulting each other." (De Warville, 159.)

859

Chastellux, 279, and translator's note.

860

Anburey, ii, 331-32.

861

De Warville, 242.

862

"Soon after entering Virginia, and at a highly respectable house, I was shocked … at seeing for the first time, young negroes of both sexes, from twelve even to fifteen years old, not only running about the house but absolutely tending table, as naked as they came into the world… Several young women were at the table, who appeared totally unmoved." (Watson, 33.) Watson's statement may perhaps be questionable; a livelier description, however, was given with embellishments, some years later. (See translator's note to Chastellux, 245; and see Schoepf, ii, 47.)

863

Anburey, ii, 331-32.

864

Ib., 332-33.

865

Weld, i, 192. See Weld's description of "gouging." And see Fithian's interesting account; Fithian, 242-43.

866

Schoepf, ii, 89.

867

Ib., 91-95.

868

Jefferson to Chastellux, Sept. 2, 1785; Thomas Jefferson Correspondence, Bixby Collection: Ford, 12; and see Jefferson to Donald, July 28, 1787; Jefferson's Writings: Washington, ii, 193, where Jefferson says that the qualities of Virginians are "indolence, extravagance, and infidelity to their engagements."

869

Weld, i, 199.

870

Schoepf, ii, 34. This strange phenomenon was witnessed everywhere, even in a place then so far remote as Maine. "Elegant women come out of log or deal huts [in Maine] all wearing fashionable hats and head dresses with feathers, handsome cloaks and the rest of their dress suitable to this." (La Rochefoucauld, ii, 314.)

871

Ib., 89; and Weld, i, 199, 236. The reports of all travelers as to the want of fresh meat in the Valley are most curious. That region was noted, even in those early days, for its abundance of cattle.

872

Ib., 144.

873

"Notes on Virginia": Jefferson; Works: Ford, iv, 69; and see Weld, i, 114, for similar diet in Pennsylvania.

874

Ib., 183-84.

875

Weld, i, 206. "Sigars and whiskey satisfy these good people who thus spend in a quarter of an hour in the evening, the earnings of a whole day. The landlord of the Inn has also a distillery of whiskey," writes La Rochefoucauld, in 1797, of the mountain people of Virginia. He thus describes the houses and people living in the valley towards Staunton: "The habitations are in this district more numerous than on the other side of the Blue Mountains, but the houses are miserable; mean, small log houses, inhabited by families which swarm with children. There exists here the same appearance of misery as in the back parts of Pennsylvania." (La Rochefoucauld, iii, 173-76.)

876

"It took a good deal of New England rum to launch a 75 ton schooner … to raise a barn … or to ordain a regular minister… Workingmen in the fields, in the woods, in the mills and handling logs and lumber on the river were supplied with regular rations of spirits." (Maine Hist. Soc. Col. (2d Series), vi, 367-68.)

The rich people of Boston loved picnic parties in the near-by country, at which was served "Punch, warm and cold, before dinner; excellent beef, Spanish and Bordeaux wines, cover their tables … Spruce beer, excellent cyder, and Philadelphia porter precede the wines." (De Warville, 58.) This inquiring Frenchman called on Hancock, but found that he had a "marvelous gout which dispenses him from all attentions and forbids the access to his house." (Ib., 66.) As to New England country stores, "you find in the same shop, hats, nails, liquors." (Ib., 127.)

877

La Rochefoucauld, iv, 577.

878

Washington to Green (an employee) March 31, 1789; Writings: Ford, xi, 377.

879

Memoirs of Talleyrand: Broglie's ed., i, footnote to 181; and see Talleyrand's description of a brandy-drinking bout at this house in which he participated.

880

Schoepf, ii, 47.

881

Watson, 252.

882

Chastellux, 224; see also 243.

883

La Rochefoucauld, iv, 119.

884

Ib., 590.

885

See infra, II, chap. II.

886

De Warville, 262.

887

Watson, 261-62. "The indolence and dissipation of the middling and lower classes of white inhabitants in Virginia are such as to give pain… Horse-racing, cock-fighting, and boxing-matches are standing amusements, for which they neglect all business." (Ib.; and see Chastellux, 292, translator's note. Also see Chastellux's comments on the economic conditions of the Virginians, 291-93.) For habits of Virginians nearly twenty years after Watson wrote, see La Rochefoucauld, iii, 75-79.

888

"The session assembles here, besides the neighboring judges, lawyers, and parties whose causes are to be tried, numbers of idle people who come less from desire to learn what is going forward than to drink together," says La Rochefoucauld; and see his picturesque description of his arrival at the close of court day at Goochland Court-House. (La Rochefoucauld, iii, 126-29.)

889

One man to every five men, women, and children, which is a high estimate.

890

Madison to Jefferson, Aug. 12, 1786; Writings: Hunt, ii, 261.

891

Randolph in the Virginia Constitutional Convention estimated that the colonies could have put four hundred thousand soldiers in the field. (Elliott, iii, 76-77.)

892

It is a curious fact, however, that in his journey through France Jefferson observed no bad conditions, but, on the whole, his careful diary states that he found the people "well clothed and well fed," as Professor Hazen expresses it. For impartial treatment of this subject see Hazen, 1-21.

893

Writings: Conway, i, 69 et seq.

894

"Common Sense had a prodigious effect." (Franklin to Le Veillard, April 15, 1787; Writings: Smyth, ix, 558.) "Its popularity was unexampled… The author was hailed as our angel sent from Heaven to save all from the horrors of Slavery… His pen was an appendage [to the army] almost as necessary and formidable as its cannon." (Cheetenham, 46-47, 55.) In America alone 125,000 copies of Common Sense were sold within three months after the pamphlet appeared. (Belcher, i, 235.)

"Can nothing be done in our Assembly for poor Paine? Must the merits of Common Sense continue to glide down the stream of time unrewarded by this country? His writings certainly have had a powerful effect upon the public mind. Ought they not, then, to meet an adequate return?" (Washington to Madison, June 12, 1784; Writings: Ford, x, 393; and see Tyler, i, 458-62.) In the Virginia Legislature Marshall introduced a bill for Paine's relief. (Supra, chap, VI.)

895

Graydon, 358.

896

Common Sense: Paine; Writings: Conway, i, 61. Paine's genius for phrase is illustrated in the Crisis, which next appeared. "These are the times that try men's souls"; "Tyranny like hell, is not easily conquered"; "The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot," are examples of Paine's brilliant gift.