Mar: Marcy through Marvin

See below for annotated biographies of American abolitionists and anti-slavery activists. Sources include: Scribner’s Dictionary of American Biography and Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography.


MARCY, William Learned, 1786-1857, New York, statesman.  American Colonization Society, Vice-President, 1837-1840.  U.S. Senator and Governor of New York. 

(Staudenraus, P. J. The African Colonization Movement, 1816-1865. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961; Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume IV, p. p. 203; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 6, Pt. 2, p. 274)

Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume IV, p. p. 203:

MARCY, William Learned, statesman, born in Southbridge, Massachusetts, 12 December, 1786; died in Ballston Spa., New York, 4 July, 1857. He was graduated at Brown in 1808, and then studied law in Troy, New York, where, after being admitted to the bar, he opened an office. The war with Great Britain soon began, and young Marcy, holding a lieutenancy in a light-infantry company, tendered the services of his command to the governor of New York. This offer was accepted, and the company was sent to French Mills, on the northern frontier. On the night of 23 October, 1812, he surprised and captured the Canadian forces that were stationed at St. Regis. These were the first prisoners taken on land, and their flag was the first captured during the war. This exploit gained for him recognition from General Henry Dearborn, and his command was attached to the main army, but, after serving the time for which he had enlisted, he returned to his practice, having attained the rank of captain. In 1816 he was appointed recorder of Troy, but his opposition to De Witt Clinton led to his removal from office, and remains as one of the earliest cases of political proscription in the history of New York. He then became editor of the “Troy Budget,” a daily newspaper, which he soon made a well-known organ of the Democratic party. The earnest support that he gave to Martin Van Buren resulted in his affiliation with the division of the Democratic party of which Van Buren was leader, and in 1821 he was made adjutant-general of the state militia. He was a member of the “Albany regency.” (See CAGGER, PETER.) His political capabilities showed themselves to advantage in the passage of the act that authorized a convention to revise the constitution. He became in 1823 comptroller of the state, an important office at that time, owing to the large expenditures on the Erie and Champlain canals, and the increase of the state debt. In 1829 he was appointed one of the associate justices of the supreme court of New York, and in that capacity presided over numerous important trials, among which was that of the alleged murderers of William Morgan (q. v.). He continued on the bench until 1831, when he was elected as a Democrat to the U. S. senate, serving from 5 December, 1831, and becoming chairman of the judiciary committee. His maiden speech was in answered to Henry Clay's aspersions on Martin Van Buren, and was followed soon afterward by his answer to Daniel Webster's speech on the apportionment. His career as a senator gained for him a strong hold on the confidence of the people of his state and elsewhere. He resigned in 1833 to fill the governorship of New York, to which he had been elected, and held that office through three terms, until 1839. For a fourth time he was nominated, but he was defeated by William H. Seward. In 1839 he was appointed by Martin Van Buren one of the commissioners to decide upon the claims against the government of Mexico, under the convention of that year, and was so occupied until 1842. He presided over the Democratic state convention at Syracuse in September, 1843, and during the subsequent canvass he used his influence in causing the state of New York to cast its votes for James K. Polk, by whom, after his election, he was invited to become secretary of war. The duties of that office were performed by him with signal ability, especially during the Mexican war. The difficulties of his task were somewhat increased by the fact that the two victorious generals, Winfield Scott and Zachary Taylor, were of the opposing political party, and charged Mr. Marcy with using his official power to embarrass and retard their military operations. These accusations were made so persistently and openly that it became necessary for him to defend him self against such attacks, which he did with so much force that he completely silenced all censure. During his term of office he exerted his diplomatic powers to advantage in the settlement of the Oregon boundary question, also advocating the tariff of 1846, and opposing all interference on the slavery question. At the close of his term of office he retired to private life, but in 1853 he returned to Washington as secretary of state under Franklin Pierce. While in this office he carried on a correspondence with the Austrian authorities in reference to the release of Martin Koszta by Captain Duncan N. Ingraham (q. v.). The questions that were involved were in a measure new, and affected all governments that recognized the laws of nations. His state papers on Central American affairs, on the enlistment question, on the Danish sound dues, and on many other topics of national interest, still further exhibited his ability as a writer, statesman, and diplomatist. On the close of Pierce's administration, he again retired to private life, and four months afterward he was found dead one evening in his library with an open volume before him. Mr. Marcy had the reputation of being a shrewd political tactician, and probably has never been surpassed in this respect by any one in New York except Martin Van Buren. He was regarded among his countrymen of all parties as a statesman of the highest order of administrative and diplomatic ability. Appletons’ Cyclopædia of American Biography, 1888.


MARRIOT, Charles, Athens, New York, Society of Friends, Quaker, radical abolitionist. Member of the American Anti-Slavery Society (AASS), member of the Executive Committee, 1840-1842, Manager, 1834-1838.

(Drake, Thomas. Quakers and Slavery in America. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1950, pp. 160, 162; Mabee, Carleton. Black Freedom: The Nonviolent Abolitionists from 1830 Through the Civil War. London: Macmillan, 1970, pp. 186, 387n11; Abolitionist)


MARSH, Charles, 1765-1849, Vermont, attorney, U.S. Congressman.  Life member, original charter member, and supporter of the American Colonization Society (ACS).  Officer, Vermont auxiliary of the ACS. 

(Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume IV, p. 216; Biographical Dictionary of the U.S. Congress 1774-1927 (1928); Staudenraus, P. J. The African Colonization Movement, 1816-1865. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961, pp. 70, 76)

Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume IV, p. 216:

MARSH, Charles, lawyer, born in Lebanon, Connecticut, 10 July, 1765; died in Woodstock, Vermont, 11 January, 1849. He settled with his parents in Vermont before the Revolutionary war, and was graduated at Dartmouth in 1786. After studying law he was admitted to the bar and practised at Woodstock, Vermont, for about fifty years, becoming the senior member of the profession in Vermont. In 1797 he was appointed by President Washington to the office of district attorney of his state, and later was elected as a Federalist to congress, serving from 4 December, 1815, to 3 March, 1817. While in Washington he was a founder of the American colonization society, and he was a liberal benefactor of various missionary and Bible societies. He was prominent in the Dartmouth college controversy, a trustee in 1809-'49, and received the degree of LL. D. from that college in 1828. Mr. Marsh was president of the Vermont Bible society and vice-president of the American Bible society and of the American education society. Appletons’ Cyclopædia of American Biography, 1888.


MARSH, GEORGE PERKINS (March 15, 1801-July 23, 1882), lawyer, diplomat, and scholar.  In 1834 he was elected to Congress as a Whig, and during two successive terms proved himself a supporter of high tariff and in opposition to slavery and the Mexican War.  He joined the Republican party in 1856.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 6, Pt. 2, pp.  297-298:

MARSH, GEORGE PERKINS (March 15, 1801-July 23, 1882), lawyer, diplomat, and scholar, a first cousin of James Marsh [q.v.], was born at Woodstock, Vermont. His father, Charles Marsh, an eminent lawyer, was a descendant of John Marsh who settled at Hartford, Connecticut, in 1636, and the son of Joseph Marsh, a former lieutenant-governor of Vermont; his mother, Susan (nee Perkins), at the time of her marriage to his father was the widow of Josias Lyndon Arnold. His ancestors on both sides belonged to the intellectual aristocracy of New England. Brought up in a family of Puritan restraint, George was a frail and serious child who played by preference with girls and almost ruined his eyesight when he was seven by too assiduous reading. Unable for long periods to use his eyes, he learned by listening to others read and entered Dartmouth College in 1816 having had only a few months of formal schooling. There he was recognized as the most brilliant scholar in his class. Studious almost to excess, he learned French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, and German in his spare time, yet a dry humor made him not unpopular with classmates. In 1820 he graduated with highest honors and immediately tried teaching, but finding it distasteful, studied law in his father's office. Admitted to the bar in 1825, he practised in Burlington, Vermont, where he not only became prominent in his profession but also found time to familiarize himself with the Scandinavian languages. On April 10, 1828, he married Harriet, daughter of Ozias Buell of Burlington, and her death in 1833, within a few days of that of the older of their two sons, was a crushing blow. Six years later he married Caroline, daughter of Benjamin Crane of Berkley, Massachusetts. Meanwhile his ability as a lawyer, business man, and scholar had been recognized, and in 1835 he was appointed by the governor to the supreme executive council of the state. In 1834 he was elected to Congress as a Whig, and during two successive terms proved himself a cogent if dry speaker in support of high tariff and in opposition to slavery and the Mexican War.

In 1849 President Taylor appointed him minister to Turkey, and at Constantinople his encyclopedic knowledge of languages was most useful. He cooperated with Sir Stratford Canning in aiding many refugees from the central European revolutions of 1848 and arranged for the departure of Kossuth and fifty compatriots on an American frigate. In the summer of 1852 he was sent to Athens, where the United States had no regular diplomatic representative, to investigate the case of Jonas King [q.v.], an American missionary imprisoned by the local authorities. After careful study of the copious evidence in modern Greek, Marsh found him the victim of unscrupulous and bigoted persecution and returned the next spring to demand redress. While the Greek government procrastinated, the minister was recalled to Constantinople by an acrimonious dispute over Martin Koszta, a Hungarian revolutionist half-naturalized in the United States and illegally seized in Smyrna by an Austrian naval commander. Instructed by John Porter Brown [q.v.], the American charge at Constantinople, Captain Duncan N. Ingraham [q.v.] of the American sloop of war St. Louis had demanded the prisoner and cleared his ship for action to enforce compliance before the Austrian discreetly delivered him to the French consul. Marsh and the Austrian ambassador pointed out with equal correctness that both naval officers had flagrantly disregarded the sovereignty of Turkey, but the Porte did nothing, and excitement soon died down.

Recalled by a new administration in 1854, Marsh labored to mend his bankrupt fortunes, acted as railroad commissioner for the state of Vermont, and delivered at Columbia University and the Lowell Institute lectures on English philology and etymology which established his reputation as an outstanding authority in those fields. Having joined the Republican party in 1856, he was sent by President Lincoln as the first United States minister to the new kingdom of Italy in 1860. This post he held for the remaining twenty-one years of his life, gaining great prestige with the Italian government through his obvious hone sty and sympathy with their aims, and building up a greater reputation as a scholar by his numerous reviews and encyclopedia articles. He died at Vallombrosa, near Florence, and was buried in the Protestant Cemetery at Rome.

A man of great personal dignity and reserve, Marsh was master of a punning humor and could turn a compliment prettily. with interests which ranged from comparative grammar to physiography and from the gathering of reptiles for the Smithsonian Institution to the collection of engravings, which were ultimately acquired by the Smithsonian, he was a sort of universal genius, a conscientious and erudite scholar in many fields. His early interest in Scandinavia resulted in the publication of A Compendious Grammar of the Old-Northern or Icelandic Language (1838), largely a compilation from the work of R. K. Rask; while another aspect of the same study showed itself in his preaching a gospel of old Teutonic simplicity and virtue, to which he attributed everything good in the English tradition (The Goths in New-England, 1843). His travels in the Near East inspired The Camel, His Organization, Habits, and Uses, Considered with Reference to His Introduction into the United States (1856). He was one of the early workers associated with the Oxford Dictionary (J. A. H. Murray, A New English Dictionary, volume I, 1888, Preface, p. v). His Lectures on the English Language (1860) and The Origin and History of the English Language (1862) were excellent philological and etymological works for their day but have since become antiquated. His Man and Nature, or Physical Geography as Modified by Human Action (1864; revised edition of 1874 entitled The Earth as Modified by Human Action), embodying the fruit of many years' acute observation during his extensive travels, has been called "the fountainhead of the conservation movement" (Lewis Mumford, The Brown Decades, 1931, p. 78). It was a pioneer effort "to suggest the possibility and the importance of the restoration of disturbed harmonies and the material improvement of waste and exhausted regions" (Preface, quoted by Mumford, p. 75), and had a significant influence both at home and abroad.

[H. L. Koopman, Bibliog. of George Perkins Marsh (1892); Caroline Crane Marsh, Life and Letters of G. P. March (1888), projected as a two-volume work, only one volume published; S. G. Brown, A Discourse Commemorative of the Hon. George Perkins Marsh (1883); D. W. Marsh, Marsh Genealogy (1895); H. L. Mencken, The American Language (1919), pp. 8, 144; Proc. American Acad. Arts and Sci., volume XVIII (1883); Atti delta R. Accademia dei Lincei ... 1882-83 (3 series VII, 1883); the Nation (New York), July 27, August 3, October 12, 1882; New York Times, July 25, 1882.]

W. L. W., Jr.


MARSHALL, John, 1755-1835, Virginia, jurist, Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.  American Colonization Society (ACS), Vice-President, 1833-1836.  Life member of the ACS.  President of county auxiliaries in Virginia.  Donated funds to ACS.  Supported colonization movement.  Marshall believed that colonization would help the country and prevent “a danger [slavery] whose extent can scarcely be estimated.”  He counseled freedmen to go to Liberia. 

(Staudenraus, P. J. The African Colonization Movement, 1816-1865. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961, pp. 70, 107, 108, 118, 180, 224; Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume IV, pp. 222-225; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 6, Pt. 2, p. 315; Longacre, James B. & James Herring, National Portrait Gallery of Distinguished Americans.  Philadelphia: American Academy of Fine Arts, 1834-1839).

Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume IV, pp. 222-225:

Marshall, John, jurist, born in Germantown, Fauquier county, Virginia, 24 September, 1755; died in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 6 July, 1835, received from childhood a thorough course of domestic education in English literature, and when he was sufficiently advanced his father procured the services of a private teacher, Reverend James Thompson, an Episcopal clergyman from Scotland, who was afterward minister of Leeds parish. At fourteen years of age John was sent to Westmoreland county, and placed at the school where his father and Washington had been pupils. James Monroe was one of his fellow-students. After remaining there for a year he returned to Oak Hill and continued his classical studies under the direction of Mr. Thompson, but he never had the benefit of a college education. He began the study of law at the age of eighteen, and used Blackstone's “Commentaries,” then recently published, but he had hardly begun his legal studies when the controversy with the mother country came to a crisis. The tea bill, the Boston port bill, the congress of 1774, followed one another in quick succession, and every question at issue was thoroughly discussed at Oak Hill just at the period of young Marshall's life to make the most indelible impression upon his intellectual and moral character. Military preparations were not neglected. John Marshall joined an independent body of volunteers and devoted himself with much zeal to the training of a company of militia in his neighborhood. Among the first to take the field was Thomas Marshall. A regiment of minutemen was raised in the summer of 1775 in Culpeper, Orange, and Fauquier counties, of which be was appointed major, and his son John a lieutenant. On their green hunting-shirts they bore the motto “Liberty or death!” and on their banner was the emblem of a coiled rattlesnake, with the inscription “Don't tread on me!” They were armed with rifles, knives, and tomahawks. They had an engagement with Governor Dunmore's forces at Great Bridge on 9 December, in which Lieut. Marshall showed coolness and skill in handling his men. After this, in 1776, the father and son were in separate organizations. Thomas Marshall was appointed colonel in the 3d Virginia infantry of the Continental line, and John's company was reorganized and attached to the 11th regiment of Virginia troops, which was sent to join Washington's army in New Jersey. Both were in most of the principal battles of the war until the end of 1779. John was promoted to a captaincy in May, 1779. His company distinguished itself at the battle of the Brandywine. He was engaged in the pursuit of the British and the subsequent retreat at Germantown, was with the army in winter-quarters at Valley Forge, and took part in the actions at Monmouth, Stony Point, and Paulus Hook. His marked good sense and discretion and his general popularity often led to his being selected to settle disputes between his brother officers, and he was frequently employed to act as deputy judge-advocate. This brought him into extensive acquaintance with the officers, and into personal intercourse with General Washington and Colonel Alexander Hamilton, an acquaintance that subsequently ripened into sincere regard and attachment. The term of enlistment of his regiment having expired, Captain Marshall, with other supernumerary officers, was ordered to Virginia to take charge of any new troops that might be raised by the state, and while he was detained in Richmond during the winter of 1779-'80, awaiting the action of the legislature, he availed himself of the opportunity to attend the law lectures of George Wythe, of William and Mary college, and those of Prof. (afterward Bishop) Madison on natural philosophy. In the summer of 1780 Marshall received a license to practise law, but, on the invasion of Virginia by General Alexander Leslie in October, he joined the army again under Baron Steuben, and remained in the service until Arnold, after his raid on James river, had retired to Portsmouth. This was in January, 1781. He then resigned his commission, and studied law.

He had spent nearly six years in arduous military service, exposed to the dangers, enduring the hardships, and partaking the anxieties of that trying period. The discipline of those six years could not have failed to strengthen the manliness of his character and greatly enlarge his knowledge of the chief men, or those who became such, from every part of the country, and of their social and political principles. Though it was a rough and severe school, it was instructive, and produced a maturity and self-dependence that could not have been acquired by a much longer experience under different circumstances. As soon as the courts were re-opened young Marshall began practice, and quickly rose to high distinction at the bar. In the spring of 1782 he was elected to the house of burgesses, and in the autumn a member of the state executive council. On 3 January, 1783, he married Mary Willis Ambler, daughter of the state treasurer, with whom he lived for nearly fifty years, and about the same time he took up his permanent residence in Richmond. In the spring of 1784 he resigned his seat at the council board in order to devote himself more exclusively to his profession, but he was immediately returned to the legislature by Fauquier county, though he retained only a nominal residence there. In 1787 he was elected to represent Henrico, which includes the city of Richmond. He was a decided advocate of the new U. S. constitution, and in 1788 was elected to the state convention that was called to consider its ratification. His own constituents were opposed to its provisions, but chose him in spite of his refusal to pledge himself to vote against its adoption. In this body he spoke only on important questions, such as the direct power of taxation, the control of the militia, and the judicial power—the most important features of the proposed government, the absence of which in the Confederation was the principal cause of its failure. On these occasions he generally answered Patrick Henry, the most powerful opponent of the constitution, and he spoke with such force of argument and breadth of views as greatly to affect the final result, which was a majority in favor of ratification. The acceptance of the constitution by Virginia was entirely due to the arguments of Marshall and James Madison in the convention which recorded eighty-nine votes for its adoption against seventy-nine contrary voices. When the constitution went into effect, Marshall acted with the party that desired to give it fair scope and to see it fully carried out. His great powers were frequently called into requisition in support of the Federal cause, and in defence of the measures of Washington's administration. His practice, in the mean time, became extended and lucrative. He was employed in nearly every important cause that came up in the state and United States courts in Virginia. In addition to these labors, he served in the legislature for the two terms that followed the ratification of the constitution, contemporary with the sittings of the first congress under it, when those important measures were adopted by which the government was organized and its system of finance was established, all of which were earnestly discussed in the house of burgesses. He also served in the legislatures of 1795 and 1796, when the controversies that arose upon Jay's treaty and the French revolution were exciting the country. At this post he was the constant and powerful advocate of Washington's administration and the measures of the government. The treaty was assailed as unconstitutionally interfering with the power of congress to regulate commerce; but Marshall, in a speech of remarkable power, demonstrated the utter fallacy of this argument, and it was finally abandoned by the opponents of the treaty, who carried a resolution simply declaring the treaty to be inexpedient.

In August, 1795, Washington offered him the place of attorney-general, which had been made vacant by the death of William Bradford, but he felt obliged to decline it. In February, 1796, he attended the supreme court at Philadelphia to argue the great case of the British debts, Ware vs. Hylton, and while he was there received unusual attention from the leaders of the Federalist party in congress. He was now, at forty-one years of age, undoubtedly at the head of the Virginia bar; and in the branches of international and public law, which, from the character of his cases and his own inclination, he had profoundly studied, he probably had no superior, if he had an equal, in the country. In the summer of 1796 Washington tendered him the place of envoy to France to succeed James Monroe, but he declined it, and General Charles C. Pinckney was appointed. As the French Directory refused to receive Mr. Pinckney, and ordered him to leave the country, no other representative was sent to France until John Adams became president. In June, 1797, Mr. Adams appointed Messrs. Pinckney, Marshall, and Elbridge Gerry as joint envoys. Marshall's appointment was received with great demonstrations of satisfaction at Richmond, and on setting out for Philadelphia he was escorted several miles out of the city by a body of light horse, and his departure was signalized by the discharge of cannon. The new envoys were as unsuccessful in establishing diplomatic relations with the French republic as General Pinckney had been. They arrived at Paris in October, 1797, and communicated with Talleyrand, the minister for foreign affairs, but were cajoled and trifled with. Secret agents of the minister approached them with a demand for money—50,000 pounds sterling for private account, and a loan to the government. Repelling these shameful suggestions with indignation, the envoys sent Talleyrand an elaborate paper, prepared by Marshall, which set forth with great precision and force of argument the views and requirements of the United States, and their earnest desire for maintaining friendly relations with France. But it availed nothing. Pinckney and Marshall, who were Federalists, were ordered to leave the territories of the republic, while Gerry, as a Republican, was allowed to remain. The news of these events was received in this country with the deepest indignation. “History will scarcely furnish the example of a nation, not absolutely degraded, which has experienced from a foreign power such open contumely and undisguised insult as were on this occasion suffered by the United States, in the persons of their ministers,” wrote Marshall afterward in his “Life of Washington.”

Marshall returned to the United States in June, 1798, and was everywhere received with demonstrations of the highest respect and approval. At a public dinner given to him in Philadelphia, one of the toasts was “Millions for defence; not a cent for tribute,” which sentiment was echoed and re-echoed throughout the country. Patrick Henry wrote to a friend: “Tell Marshall I love him because he felt and acted as a republican, as an American.” In August Mr. Adams offered him a seat on the supreme bench, which had been made vacant by the death of Judge James Wilson, but he declined it, and his friend, Bushrod Washington, was appointed. In his letter to the secretary of state, declaring his intention to nominate Marshall, President Adams said: “Of the three envoys the conduct of Marshall alone has been entirely satisfactory, and ought to be marked by the most decided approbation of the public. He has raised the American people in their own esteem, and if the influence of truth and justice, reason and argument, is not lost in Europe, he has raised the consideration of the United States in that quarter of the world.” As the elections approached, Mr. Marshall was strongly urged to become a candidate for congress, consented much against his inclination, was elected in April, 1799, and served a single session. One of the most determined assaults that was made against the administration at this session was in relation to the case of Jonathan Robbins, alias Thomas Nash, who had been arrested in Charleston at the instance of the British consul, on the charge of mutiny and murder on the British frigate “Hermione,” and who, upon habeas corpus, was delivered up to the British authorities by Judge Thomas Bee, in pursuance of the requisition of the British minister upon the president, and of a letter from the secretary of state to Judge Bee advising and requesting the delivery. Resolutions censuring the president and Judge Bee were offered in the house; but Marshall, in a most elaborate and powerful speech, triumphantly refuted all the charges and assumptions of law on which the resolutions were based, and they were lost by a decided vote. This speech settled the principles that have since guided the government and the courts of the United States in extradition cases, and is still regarded as an authoritative exposition of international law on the subject of which it treats. The session lasted till 14 May, but on the 7th Marshall was nominated as secretary of war in place of James McHenry, who had resigned; and before confirmation, on the 12th, he was nominated and appointed secretary of state in place of Timothy Pickering, who had been removed. He filled this office with ability and credit during the remainder of Adams's administration. His state papers are luminous and unanswerable, especially his instructions to Rufus King, minister to Great Britain, in relation to the right of search, and other difficulties with that country.

Chief-Justice Ellsworth having resigned his seat on the bench in November, 1800, the president, after offering the place to John Jay, who declined it, conferred the appointment on Mr. Marshall. The tradition is, that after the president had had the matter under consideration for some time, Mr. Marshall (or General Marshall, as he was then called) happened one day to suggest a new name for the place, when Mr. Adams promptly said: “General Marshall, you need not give yourself any further trouble about that matter. I have made up my mind about it.” “I am happy to hear that you are relieved on the subject,” said Marshall. “May I ask whom you have fixed upon?” “Certainly,” said the president; “I have concluded to nominate a person whom it may surprise you to hear mentioned. It is a Virginia lawyer, a plain man by the name of John Marshall.” He was nominated on 20 January, unanimously confirmed, and presided in the court at the February term, though he was still holding the office of secretary of state. He at once took, and always maintained, a commanding position in the court, not only as its nominal but as its real head. The most important opinions, especially those on constitutional law, were pronounced by him. The thirty volumes of reports, from 1st Cranch to 9th Peters, covering a period of thirty-five years, contain the monuments of his great judicial power and learning, which are referred to as the standard authority on constitutional questions. They have imparted life and vigor not only to the constitution, but to the national body politic. It is not too much to say that for this office no other man could have been selected who was equally fitted for the task he had before him. To specify and characterize the great opinions that he delivered would be to write a treatise on American constitutional law. They must themselves stand as the monuments and proper records of his judicial history. It is reported by one of his descendants that he often said that if he was worthy of remembrance his best biography would be found in his decisions in the supreme court. Their most striking characteristics are crystalline clearness of thought, irrefragable logic, and a wide and statesman-like view of all questions of public consequence. In these respects he has had no superior in this or any other country. Some men seem to be constituted by nature to be masters of judicial analysis and insight. Such were Papinian, Sir Matthew Hale, and Lord Mansfield, each in his particular province. Such was Marshall in his. They seemed to handle judicial questions as the great Euler did mathematical ones, with giant ease. As an instance of the simplicity with which he sometimes treated great questions may be cited his reasoning on the power of the court to decide upon the constitutionality of acts of congress. It had been claimed before; but it was Marshall's iron logic that settled it beyond controversy. “It is a proposition too plain to be contested,” said he, in Marbury vs. Madison, “that the constitution controls any legislative act repugnant to it; or that the legislature may alter the constitution by an ordinary act. Between these alternatives there is no middle ground. The constitution is either a superior, paramount law, unchangeable by ordinary means, or it is on a level with ordinary legislative acts, and, like other acts, is alterable when the legislature shall please to alter it. If the former part of the alternative be true, then a 1egislative act contrary to the constitution is not law; if the latter part be true, then written constitutions are absurd attempts, on the part of the people, to limit a power in its own nature illimitable.”

The incidents of Marshall's life, aside from his judicial work, after he went upon the bench, are few. In 1807 he presided, with Judge Cyrus Griffin, at the great state trial of Aaron Burr, who was charged with treason and misdemeanor. Few public trials have excited greater interest than this. President Jefferson and his adherents desired Burr's conviction, but Marshall preserved the most rigid impartiality and exact justice throughout the trial, acquitting himself, as always, to the public satisfaction. In 1829 he was elected a delegate to the convention for revising the state constitution of Virginia, where he again met Madison and Monroe, who were also members, but much enfeebled by age. The chief justice did not speak often, but when he did speak, though he was seventy-four years of age, his mind was as clear and his reasoning as solid as in younger days. His deepest interest was excited in reference to the independence of the judiciary. He remained six years after this on the bench of the supreme court. In the spring of 1835 he was advised to go to Philadelphia for medical advice, and did so, but without any beneficial result, and died in that city.

In private Chief-Justice Marshall was a man of unassuming piety and amiability of temper. He was tall, plain in dress, and somewhat awkward in appearance, but had a keen black eye, and overflowed with geniality and kind feeling. He was the object of the warmest love and veneration of all his children and grandchildren. Judge Marshall published, at the request of the first president's family, who placed their records and private papers at his disposal, a “Life of Washington” (5 vols., Philadelphia, 1804-'7), of which the first volume was afterward issued separately as “A History of the American Colonies” (1824). The whole was subsequently revised and condensed (2 vols., 1832). In this work he defended the policy of Washington's administration against the arguments and detractions of the Republicans. A selection from his decisions has been published, entitled “The Writings of John Marshall, late Chief Justice of the United States, upon the Federal Constitution” (Boston, 1839), under the supervision of Justice Joseph Story. His life has been written by George Van Santvoord, in his “Sketches of the Chief Justices” (New York, 1854); and by Henry Flanders, in his “Lives and Times of the Chief Justices” (2d series, Philadelphia, 1858). See also “Eulogy on the Life and Character of Marshall,” by Horace Binney (Philadelphia, 1835); “Discourse upon the Life, Character, and Services of John Marshall,” in Joseph Story's “Miscellaneous Writings” (Boston, 1852); “Chief-Justice Marshall and the Constitutional Law of his Time,” an address by Edward J. Phelps (1879); and “John Marshall,” by Allan B. Magruder (Boston, 1885). Appletons’ Cyclopædia of American Biography, 1888.

Biography from National Portrait Gallery of Distinguished Americans:

JOHN MARSHALL (the present Chief Justice of the United States,) was born in Fauquier county, in the state of Virginia, on the 24th of September, l 755. His father was Thomas Marshall of the same state, who served with great distinction in the revolutionary war, as a colonel in the line of the continental army. Colonel Marshall was a planter of a very small fortune, and had received but a narrow education. These deficiencies, however, were amply supplied by the gifts of nature. His talents were of a high order, and he cultivated them with great diligence and perseverance, so that he maintained throughout his whole life, among associates of no mean character, the reputation of being a man of extraordinary ability. No better proof need be adduced to justify this opinion, than the fact that he possessed the unbounded confidence, admiration, and reverence of all his children, at the period of life when they were fully able to appreciate his worth and compare him with other men of known eminence. There are those yet living, who have often listened with delight to the praises bestowed on him by filial affection; and have heard the declaration emphatically repeated from the lips of one of his most gifted sons, that his father was an abler man than any of his children. Such praise from such a source is beyond measure precious. It warms while it elevates. It is a tribute of gratitude to the memory of a parent after death has put the last seal upon his character, and at a distance of time, when sorrow has ceased its utterance, and left behind it the power calmly to contemplate his excellence.

Colonel Marshall had fifteen children, seven of whom are now living; and it has long been a matter of public fame, that all the children, females as well as males, possessed superior intellectual endowments. John was the eldest child; and was of course the first to engage the solicitude of his father. In the local position of the family, at that time almost upon the frontier settlements of the country, (for Fauquier was a frontier county,) it was of course, that the early education of all the children should devolve upon its head. Colonel Marshall superintended the studies of his eldest son, and gave him a decided taste for English literature, and especially for history and poetry. At the age of twelve he had transcribed Pope's Essay on Man, and also some of his moral essays. The love of poetry, thus awakened in his warm and vigorous mind, never ceased to exert a commanding influence over it. He became enamored of the classical writers of the old school, and was instructed by their solid sense, and their beautiful imagery. In the enthusiasm of youth, he often indulged himself in poetical compositions, and freely gave up his hours of leisure to those delicious dreamings of the muse, which (say what we may) constitute some of the purest sources of pleasure in the gay scenes of life, and some of the sweetest consolations in adversity and affliction, throughout every subsequent period of it. It is well known, that he has continued to cultivate this favorite study, and to read with intense interest the gay as well as the loftier productions of the divine art. One of the best recommendations of the taste for poetry in early life is, that it does not die with youth; but affords to maturer years an invigorating energy, and to old age a serene and welcome employment, always within reach, and always coming with a fresh charm. Its gentle influence is then like that so happily treated by Gray. The lover of the muses may truly say,

I feel the gales that round ye blow
A momentary bliss bestow,
As, waving fresh their gladsome wing,
My weary soul they seem to soothe, 
And redolent of joy and youth to breathe a second spring.

The contrast, indeed, is somewhat striking between that close reasoning, which almost rejects the aid of ornament, in the juridical labors of the Chief Justice, and that generous taste, which devotes itself with equal delight to the works of fiction and song. Yet the union has been far less uncommon than slight observers are apt to imagine. Lord Hardwicke and Lord Mansfield had an ardent thirst for general literature, and each of them was a cultivator, if not a devotee, of the lighter productions of the imagination.

There being at that time no grammar school in the part of the country where Colonel Marshall resided, his son was sent, at the age of fourteen, about a hundred miles from home, and placed under the tuition of a Mr. Campbell, a clergyman of great respectability. He remained with him a year, and then returned home, and was put under the care of a Scotch gentleman, who was just introduced into the parish as pastor; and 'resided in his father's family. He pursued his classical studies under this gentleman's direction, while he remained in the family, which was about a year; and at the termination of it, he had commenced reading Horace and Livy. His subsequent mastery of the classics was the result of his own efforts, without any other aid than his grammar and dictionary. He never had the benefit of an education at any college, and his attainments in learning have been nursed by the solitary vigils of his own genius. His father, however, continued to superintend his English education, to cherish his love of knowledge, to give a solid cast to his acquirements, and. to store his mind with the most valuable materials. He was not merely a watchful parent, but an instructive and affectionate friend, and soon became the most constant, as he was at the time almost the only intelligent, companion of his son. The time not devoted to his society was passed in "hardy athletic exercises, and probably to this circumstance is owing that robust constitution, which yet seems fresh and firm in a green old age.

About the time when young Marshall entered his eighteenth year, the controversy between Great Britain and her American colonies began to assume a portentous aspect, and engaged, and indeed absorbed, the attention of all the colonists, whether they were young, or old, in private and secluded life, or in political and public bodies. He entered into it with all the zeal and enthusiasm of a youth, full of love for his country and liberty, arid deeply sensible of its rights and its wrongs.  He devoted much time to acquiring the first rudiments of military exercise in a voluntary independent company, composed of gentlemen of the county; to training a militia company in the neighborhood, and to reading the political essays of the day. For these animating pursuits, the preludes of public resistance, he was quite content to relinquish the classics, and the less inviting, but with reference to his future destiny, the more profitable Commentaries of Sir William Blackstone.

In the summer of 1775, he received an appointment as first lieutenant in a company of minute-men enrolled for actual service, who were assembled in battalion on the first of the ensuing September. In a few days they were ordered to march into the lower country, for the purpose of defending it against a small regular and predatory force commanded by Lord Dunmore. They constituted part of the troops destined for the relief of Norfolk; and Lieutenant Marshall was engaged in the battle of the Great Bridge, where the British troops, under Lord Dunmore, were repulsed with great gallantry. The way being thus opened by the retreat of the British, he marched with the provincials to Norfolk, and was present when that city was set on fire by a detachment from the British ships then lying in the river.

In July, 1776, he was appointed first lieutenant in the eleventh Virginia regiment on the continental establishment; and in the course of the succeeding winter, he marched to the north, where; in May, 1777, he was promoted to the rank of captain. He was subsequently engaged in the skirmish at Iron Hill with the light infantry, and fought in the memorable battles of Brandywine, Germantown, and Monmouth.

That part of the Virginia line, which was not ordered to Charleston (South Carolina,) being in effect dissolved by the expiration of the term of enlistment of the soldiers, the officers (among whom was Captain Marshall) were, in the winter of 1779-80, directed to return home, in order to take charge of such men as the state legislature should raise for em. It was during this seaso11 of inaction that he availed himself pf the opportunity of attending a course of law lectures given by Mr. Wythe, afterwards chancellor of the state; and a course of lectures on' natural philosophy, given by Mr. Madison, president of William and Mary College in Virginia. He left this college in the summer vacation of 1780, and obtained a license to practice law. In October he returned to the army, and continued in service until the termination of Arnold’s invasion. After this period, and before the invasion of Phillips, in February, 1781, there being a redundancy of officers in the Virginia line, he resigned his commission.

During the invasion of Virginia, the courts of law were suspended, " and were not reopened until after the capitulation of Lord Cornwallis. Immediately after that event Mr. Marshall commenced the practice of law, and soon rose into distinction at the bar.

In the spring of 1782, he was elected a member of the state legislature, and in the autumn of the same year a member of the executive council. In January, 1783, he married Miss Ambler, the daughter of a gentleman who was then treasurer of the state, and to whom he had become attached before he left the army. This lady lived for nearly fifty years after her marriage, to partake and to enjoy the distinguished honors of her husband. In 1784, he resigned his seat at the council board, in order to return to the bar; and he was immediately afterwards again elected a member of the legislature for the county of Fauquier, of which he was then only nominally an inhabitant, his actual residence being at Richmond.  In 1787 he was elected a member from the county of Henrico; and though at that time earnestly engaged in the duties of his profession, he embarked largely in the political questions which then agitated the state, and indeed the whole confederacy.

Every person at all read in our domestic history must recollect the dangers and difficulties of those days. The termination of the revolutionary war left the country impoverished and exhausted by its expenditures, and the national finances at a low state of depression. The powers of congress under the confederation, which, even during the war, were often prostrated by the neglect of a single state to enforce them, became in the ensuing peace utterly relaxed and inefficient.

Credit, private as well as public, was destroyed. Agriculture and commerce were crippled. The delicate relation of debtor and creditor became daily more and more embarrassed and embarrassing; and, as is usual upon such occasions, every sort of expedient was resorted to by popular leaders, as well as by men of desperate fortunes, to inflame the public mind, and to bring into odium those who labored to preserve the public faith, and to establish a more energetic government. The whole country was soon divided into two great parties, the one of which endeavored to put an end to the public evils by the establishment of a government over the Union, which should be adequate to all its exigencies, and act directly on the people; the other was devoted to state authority, jealous of all federal influence, and determined at every hazard to resist its increase.

It is almost unnecessary to. say, that Mr. Marshall could not remain an idle or indifferent spectator of such scenes. As little doubt could there be of the part he would take in such a contest. He was at once arrayed on the side of Washington and Madison. In Virginia, as every where else, the principal topics of the day were paper money, the collection of taxes, the preservation of public faith, and the administration of civil justice. The parties were nearly equally divided upon all these topics; and the contest concerning them was continually renewed. In such a state of things, every victory was but a temporary and questionable triumph, and every defeat still left enough of hope to excite to new and strenuous exertions. The affairs, too, of the confederacy were then at a crisis. The question of the continuance of the Union, or a separation of the states, was freely discussed; and, what is almost startling now to repeat, either side of it was maintained without reproach. Mr. Madison was at this time, and had been for two or three years, a member of the house of delegates, and was in fact the author of the resolution for the general convention at Philadelphia to revise the confederation. He was at all times the enlightened advocate of union, and of an efficient federal government, and he received on all occasions the steady support of Mr. Marshall. Many have witnessed, with no ordinary emotions, the pleasure with which both of these gentlemen look back upon their cooperation at that period, and the sentiments of profound respect with which they habitually regard each other.

Both of them were members of the convention subsequently called in Virginia for the ratification of the federal constitution. This instrument, having come forth under the auspices of General Washington and other distinguished patriots of the Revolution, was at first favorably received in Virginia, but it soon encountered decided hostility. Its defence was uniformly and most powerfully maintained there by Mr. Marshall.
The debates of the Virginia convention are in print. But we have been assured by the highest authority, that the printed volume affords but a very feeble and faint sketch of the actual debates on that occasion, or of the vigor with which every attack was urged, and every onset repelled, against the constitution. The best talents of the state were engaged in the controversy. The principal debates were conducted by Patrick Henry and James Madison, as leaders. But on three great occasions, namely, the debates on the power of taxation, the power over the militia, and the power of the judiciary, Mr. Marshall gave free scope to his genius, and argued with a most commanding ability.

It is very difficult for the present generation to conceive the magnitude of the dangers to which we were then exposed, or to realize the extent of the obstacles which were opposed to the adoption of the constitution. Notwithstanding all the sufferings of the people, the acknowledged imbecility of the government, and the almost desperate state of our public affairs, there were men of high character, and patriots too, who clung to the old confederation with an enthusiastic attachment, and saw in the grant of any new powers, indeed of any powers, to a national government, nothing but oppression and tyranny, slavery of the people and destruction of the state governments on the one hand, and universal despotism and overwhelming taxation on the other. Time, the great umpire and final judge of these questions, has indeed now abundantly shown how vain were the fears, and how unsound the principles of the opponents of the constitution. The prophecies of its friends have been abundantly fulfilled in the growth and solid prosperity of their country; far, indeed, beyond their most sanguine expectations.  But our gratitude can never be too warm to those eminent men who stemmed the torrent of public prejudice, and with a wisdom and prudence, almost surpassing human power, laid the foundations of that government, which saved us at the hour when we were ready to perish.  After twenty-five days of ardent and eloquent discussion, to which justice never has been, and never can now be done, (during which nine states adopted the constitution,) the question was carried in its favor in the convention of Virginia by a majority of ten votes only.

The adoption of the constitution of the United States having been thus secured, Mr. Marshall immediately formed the determination to relinquish public life, and to devote himself to the arduous duties of his profession.
A man of his eminence could, however, with very great difficulty adhere rigidly to his original resolve. The state legislature having, in December, 1788, passed an act allowing a representative to the city of Richmond, Mr. Marshall was almost unanimously invited to become a candidate. With considerable reluctance he yielded to the public wishes, being principally influenced in his acceptance of the station, by the increasing hostility manifested in the state against the national government, and his own anxious desire to give the latter his decided and public support. He continued in the legislature, as a representative of Richmond, for the years 1789, 1790, and 1791. During this period every important measure of the national government was discussed in the state legislature with great freedom, and no inconsiderable acrimony. On these occasions Mr. Marshall vindicated the national government with a manly and zealous independence.

After the termination of the session of the legislature, in 1791, Mr. Marshall voluntarily retired. But the events which soon afterwards occurred in Europe, and extended a most awakening influence to America, did not long permit him to devote himself to professional pursuits. The French revolution, in its early dawn, was hailed with universal enthusiasm in America. In its progress for a considerable period, it continued to maintain among us an almost unanimous approbation. Many causes conduced to this result. Our partiality for France, from R. grateful recollection of her services in our own revolutionary contest, was ardent and undisguised. It was heightened by the consideration, that she was herself now engaged in a struggle for liberty, and was endeavoring to shake off oppressions under which she had been groaning for centuries. The monarchs in Europe were combined in a mighty league for the suppression of this new and alarming insurrection against the claims of legitimacy. It was not difficult to foresee, that if they were successful in this enterprise, we ourselves had but a questionable security for our own independence. It would be natural for them, after having completed their European conquests, to cast their eyes to the origin of the evil, and to feel that their dynasties were not. quite safe, (even though, the Atlantic rolled between us and them,) while a living example of liberty, so seductive and so striking, remained in the western hemisphere. 

It may be truly said, that our government partook largely of the general interest, and did not hesitate to express it in a manner not incompatible with the strict performance of the duties of neutrality. Mr. Marshall was as warmly attached to the cause of France as any of his considerate countrymen.

After the death of Louis XVI., feelings of a different sort began to mix themselves, not only in the public councils, but in private life. Those, whose reflections reached beyond the events of the day, began to entertain fears, lest, in our enthusiasm for the cause of France, we might be plunged into war, and thus jeopard our own vital interests. The task of preserving neutrality was of itself sufficiently difficult when the mass of the people was put in motion by the cheering sounds of liberty and equality, which were wafted on every breeze across the Atlantic. The duty, however, was imperative; and the administration determined to perform it with the most guarded good faith.

The decided part taken by Mr. Marshall could not long remain unnoticed. He was attacked with great asperity in the newspapers and pamphlets of the day, and designated, by way of significant reproach, as the coadjutor and friend of Alexander Hamilton.
Against these attacks he defended himself with a zeal and ability proportioned to his own sincere devotion to the calJ.se which he espoused.

At the spring election for the state legislature in the year 1795, Mr. Marshall was not a candidate; but he was nevertheless chosen under somewhat peculiar circumstances. From the time of his withdrawing from the legislature, two opposing candidates had divided the city of Richmond; the one, his intimate friend, and holding the same political sentiments with himself; the other, a most zealous partisan of the opposition. Each election between these gentlemen, who were both popular, had been decided by a small majority, and the approaching contest was entirely doubtful. Mr. Marshall attended the polls at an early hour, and gave his vote for his friend. While at the polls, a gentleman demanded that a poll should be opened for Mr. Marshall. The latter was greatly surprised at the proposal, and unhesitatingly expressed his dissent; at the same time, he announced his willingness to become a candidate the next year. He retired from the polls, and immediately gave his attendance to the business of one of the courts, which was then in session. A poll was, however, opened for him in his absence by the gentleman who first suggested it, notwithstanding his positive refusal. The election was suspended for a few minutes; a consultation took place among the freeholders; they determined to support him; and in the evening he received the information of his election. A more honorable tribute to his merits could not have been paid; and his election was a most important and timely measure in favor of the administration.

It will be recollected, that the treaty with Great Britain, negotiated by Mr. Jay in 1794, was the subject of universal discussion at this period. No sooner w:as its ratification advised by the senate, than public meetings were called in all our principal cities, for the purpose of inducing the president to withhold his ratification, and if this object were not attained: then to prevent in congress the passage of the appropriations necessary to carry it into effect. The topics of animadversion were not confined to the expediency of the treaty in its principal provisions, but the bolder ground was assumed, that the negotiation of a commercial treaty by the executive was an unconstitutional act, and an infringement of the power given to congress to regulate commerce. Mr. Marshall took an active part in the discussions upon the treaty. Feeling, that the ratification of it was - indispensable to the preservation of peace, that its main provisions were essentially beneficial to the United States, and comported with its true dignity and interests; he addressed himself with the most diligent attention to an examination of the nature and extent of all its provisions, and of all the objections urged against it. No state in the Union exhibited a more intense hostility to it than Virginia, upon the points both of expediency and constitutionality; and in no state were the objections urged with more impassioned and unsparing earnestness. The task, therefore, of meeting and overthrowing them was of no ordinary magnitude, and required all the resources of the ablest mind. Mr. Marshall came to the task with a thorough mastery of every topic connected with it. At a public meeting of the citizens of Richmond he carried a series of resolutions, approving the conduct of the executive.

But a more difficult and delicate duty remained to be performed. It was easy to foresee that the controversy would soon find its way from the public forum into the legislative bodies; and would be there renewed with the bitter animosity of party spirit. Indeed, so unpopular was the treaty in Virginia, that Mr. Marshall’s friends were exceedingly solicitous that he should avoid engaging in any debate in the legislature on the subject, as it would be a sacrifice of the remains of his well-deserved popularity; and it might be even questioned if he could there deliver his sentiments without exposure to some rude attacks. His answer to all such suggestions was uniform; that he should not move any measure to excite a debate; but if the subject were brought forward by others, he should, at every hazard, vindicate the administration, and assert his own opinions. He was incapable of shrinking from a just expression of his own independence. The subject was soon introduced by his political opponents, and the constitutional objections were urged with triumphant confidence. That, particularly, which denied the constitutional right of the executive to conclude a commercial treaty, was selected and insisted on as a favorite and unanswerable position. The speech of Mr. Marshall on this occasion has been always represented as one of the noblest efforts of his genius. His vast powers of reasoning were employed with the most gratifying success. He demonstrated, not only from the words of the constitution, and the universal practice of nations, that a commercial treaty was within the constitutional powers of the executive, but that this opinion had been maintained and sanctioned by Mr. Jefferson, by the whole delegation of Virginia in congress, and by the leading members in the convention on both sides. His argument was decisive; the constitutional ground was abandoned; and the resolutions of the assembly were confined to a simple disapprobation of the treaty in point of expediency.

The constitutional objections were again urged in congress in the celebrated debate on the British treaty, in the spring of 1796; and there finally assumed the mitigated shape of a right claimed on the part of congress to grant or withhold appropriations to carry treaties into effect. The higher ground, that commercial treaties were not, when ratified, the supreme law of the land, was abandoned; and the subsequent practice of the government has, without question, under every administration, conformed to the construction vindicated by Mr. Marshall. The fame of this admirable argument spread through the Union. Even with his political enemies, it enhanced the elevation of his character; and it brought him at once to the notice of some of the most eminent statesmen who then graced our public councils.

After this period, President Washington invited Mr. Marshall to accept the office of attorney general; but he declined it, upon the ground of its interference with his lucrative practice in Virginia. He continued in the state legislature; but did not, from his other engagements, take an active part in the ordinary business. He confined his attention principally to those questions which involved the main interests of the country, and brought into discussion the policy and the principles of the national parties. 

Upon the recall of Mr. Monroe as minister, from France, President Washington solicited Mr. Marshall to accept the appointment as his successor; but he respectfully declined, and General Pinckney, of South Carolina, was appointed in his stead.

Mr. Marshall was not, however, long permitted to act upon his own judgment and choice. The French government refused to receive General Pinckney, as minister from the United States; and the administration, being sincerely anxious to exhaust every measure of conciliation, not incompatible with the national dignity, for the preservation of peace, resorted to the extraordinary measure of sending a commission of three envoys. Within a year from the time of the first offer, Mr. Adams having succeeded to the presidency, appointed Mr. Marshall one of these envoys, in conjunction with General Pinckney and Mr. Gerry.

After some hesitation, Mr. Marshall accepted the appointment, and soon afterward embarked for Amsterdam. On his arrival at The Hague he met General Pinckney, and having received passports they proceeded to Paris. The mission was unsuccessful; the envoys were never accredited by the French government, and Mr. Marshall returned to America in the. summer of 1798. Upon him principally devolved the duty of preparing the official despatches. They have been universally attributed to his pen, and are models of skilful reasoning, forcible illustration, accurate detail, and urbane and dignified moderation. In the annals of our diplomacy there are no papers upon which an American can look back with more unmixed pride and pleasure.

Mr. Marshall, on his return home, found that he had sustained no loss by  a diminution of professional business, and looked forward to a resumption of his labors with high hopes.  He peremptorily refused for a considerable time to become a candidate for congress, and avowed his determination to remain at the bar. At this juncture he was invited by General Washington to pass a few days at Mount Vernon; and having accepted the invitation, he went there in company with Mr. Justice Washington, the nephew of General Washington, and a highly distinguished judge of the Supreme Court of the United States, whose death the public have recently had occasion to lament.

What took place upon that occasion we happen to have the good fortune to know from an authentic source. General Washington did not for a moment disguise the object of his invitation; it was to urge upon Mr. Marshall and Mr. Washington the propriety of their becoming candidates for congress. Mr. Washington yielded to the wishes of his uncle without a struggle. But Mr. Marshall resisted on the ground of his situation, and the necessity of attending to his private affairs. The reply of General Washington to these suggestions will never be forgotten by those who heard it. It breathed the spirit of the loftiest virtue and patriotism. He said, that there were crises in national affairs which made it the duty of a citizen to forego his private for the public interest. He considered the country to be then in one of these. He detailed his opinions freely on the nature of the controversy with France, and expressed his conviction, that the best interests of America depended upon the character of the ensuing congress. The conversation was long, animated, and impressive; full of the deepest interest, and the most unreserved confidence. The exhortation of General Washington had its effect. Mr. Marshall yielded to his representations, and became a candidate, and was, after an ardent contest, elected, and took his seat in congress in December, 1799. While he was yet a candidate, he was offered a seat on the bench of the supreme court, then vacant by the death of Mr. Justice Iredell. Upon his declining it, President Adams appointed Mr. Justice Washington, who was thus prevented from becoming a member of congress.

The session of congress in the winter of 1799-1800 will forever be memorable in the annals of America.  Men of the highest talents and most commanding influence in the Union were there assembled, and arrayed with all the hostility of party spirit, and all the zeal of conscious responsibility, against each other.  Every important measure of the administration was subjected to the most scrutinizing criticism; and was vindicated with a warmth proportionate to the ability of the attack. Mr. Marshall took an active part in the debates, and distinguished himself in a manner which will not easily be forgotten.

In May, 1800, Mr. Marshall was, without the slightest personal ' communication, nominated by the president to the office of secretary, of war, upon the dismissal of Mr. M'Henry. We believe that the first information received of it by Mr. Marshall was at the department itself, where he went to transact some business previous to his return to Virginia. He immediately wrote a letter, requesting the nomination to be withdrawn by the president. It was not; and his appointment was confirmed by the senate. The rupture between the president and Colonel Pickering, who was then secretary of state, soon afterwards occurred, and Mr. Marshall was appointed his successor. This was indeed an appointment in every view most honorable to his merits, and for which he was in the highest degree qualified.

On the 31st day of January, 1801, he became chief justice of the United States, and has continued ever since that period to fill the office with increasing reputation and unsullied dignity.

Splendid, indeed, as has been the judicial career of this eminent man, it is scarcely possible that the extent of his labors, the vigor of his intellect, or the untiring accuracy of his learning, should be duly estimated, except by the profession of which he is so great an ornament.  Questions of law rarely assume a cast which introduces them to extensive public notice; and those, which require the highest faculties of mind to master and expound, are commonly so intricate and remote from the ordinary pursuits of life, that the generality of readers do not bring to the examination of them the knowledge necessary to comprehend them, or the curiosity which imparts a relish and flavor to them. For the most part, therefore, the reputation of judges is confined to the narrow limits which embrace the votaries of jurisprudence; and many of those exquisite judgments, which have cost days and nights, of the most elaborate study, and for power of thought, beauty of illustration, variety of learning, and elegant demonstration, are justly numbered among the highest reaches of the human mind, find no admiration beyond the ranks of lawyers, and live only in the dusty repositories of their oracles. The fame of the warrior is for ever embodied in the history of his country, and is colored with the warm lights reflected back by the praise of many a distant age. The orator and the statesman live not merely in the recollections of their powerful eloquence, or the deep impressions made by them on the character of the generation in which they lived, but are brought forth for public approbation in political debates, in splendid volumes, in collegiate declamations, in the works of rhetoricians, in the school-books of boys, and in the elegant extracts of maturer life.

This is not the place to enter upon a minute survey of the official labors of Mr. CHIEF Justice Marshall. However instructive or interesting such a course might be to the profession, the considerations already adverted to, sufficiently admonish us that it would not be very welcome to the mass of other readers. But there is one class of cases which ought not to be overlooked, because it comes home to the business and bosom of every citizen of this country, and is felt in every gradation of life, from the chief magistrate down to the inmate of the cottage. We allude to the grave discussions of constitutional law, which during hi& time have attracted so much of the talents of the bar in the supreme court, and sometimes agitated the whole nation. If all others of the Chief Justice's juridical arguments had perished, his luminous judgments on these occasions would have given an enviable immortality to his name.

There is in the discharge of this delicate and important duty, which is peculiar to our institutions, a moral grandeur and interest, which it is not easy to over-estimate either in a political or civil view. In no other country on earth are the acts of the legislature liable to be called in question, and even set aside, if they do not conform to the standard, of the constitution. Even in England, where the principles of civil liberty ate cherished with uncommon ardor, and private justice is administered with a pure and elevated independence, the acts of parliament are, by the very theory of the government, in a legal sense, omnipotent. They cannot be gainsaid or overruled.  They form the law of the land, which controls the prerogative and even the descent of the crown itself, and may take away the life and property of the subject without trial and without appeal. The only security is in the moderation of parliament itself and. representative responsibility. The case is far otherwise in America. The state and national constitutions form the supreme law of the land, and the judges are sworn to maintain these charters of liberty, or rathe1 these special delegations of power by the people, (who in our governments are alone the depositaries of supreme authority and sovereignty,) in their original vigor and true intendment. It matters not how popular a statute may be, or how commanding the majority by which it has been enacted; it must stand the test of the constitution, or it falls. The humblest citizen may question its constitutionality; and its final fate must be settled upon grave argument and debate by the judges of the land.

This topic is so copious, and of such everlasting consequence to the well-being of this republic, that it furnishes matter for volumes; but we must escape from it with the brief hints already suggested, and resume our previous subject.

Nor is this the mere theory of the constitution. It is a function which has been often performed; and not a few acts of state as well as of national legislation, have been brought to this severe scrutiny; and after the fullest consideration, some have been pronounced to be void, because they were unconstitutional. And these judgments have been acquiesced in, and obeyed, even when they were highly offensive to the pride and sovereignty of the state itself, or affected private and public interests to an incalculable extent. Such, in America, is the majesty of the law. Such is the homage of a free people to the institutions created by themselves.

It is impossible even to look forward to the period, when, according to the course of human events, the grave must close upon his labors, without 'a profound melancholy. Such men as he are not the ornaments of every and any age; they arise only at distant intervals to enlighten and elevate the human race. They are beings of a superior order, belonging only to centuries, and designed by the beneficence of Providence to work deeply and powerfully upon human affairs. As the American nation advances in its general population and wealth, the constitution is arriving at more and more critical periods of the trial of its principles. The warmest patriots begin to hesitate in their confidence whether a system of government so free, and so beneficent, so just to popular rights, and so true toward natural interests, can and will be enduring. The boldest and most sanguine admirers of republics are pausing, as upon the eve of new events, and new inquiries. They perceive, that it is more than possible, that prosperity may corrupt or enervate us, as it has done all former republics. That there are elements of change and perturbations, which have not hitherto been subjected to rigid calculation, which may endanger, nay, which may perhaps overthrow, the system of movements, so beautifully put together, and bring on a common ruin as fearful and as desolating, as any which the old world has exhibited. In the contemplation of such a state of things1 who would not lament the extinction of such a mind as that of the Chief Justice? Who would not earnestly implore the continuance of that influence, which has hitherto, through all the mutations of party, borne him along with the public favor, as at once the wisest of guides and the truest of friends. When can we expect to be permitted to behold again so much moderation united with so much firmness, so much sagacity with so much modesty, so much learning with so much experience, so much solid wisdom with so much purity, so much of everything to love and admire, with nothing, absolutely nothing, to regret? What, indeed, strikes us as the most remarkable in his whole character, even more than his splendid talents, is the entire consistency of his public life and principles. There is nothing in either which calls for apology or concealment. Ambition has never seduced him from his principles, nor popular clamor deterred him from the strict performance of duty. Amid the extravagances of party spirit, he has stood with a calm and steady inflexibility; neither bending to the pressure of adversity, nor bounding with the elasticity of success. He has lived as such a man should live, (and yet how few deserve the commendation,) by and with his principles. Whatever changes of opinion have occurred in the course of his long life, have been gradual and slow; the results of genius acting upon larger materials, and of judgment matured by the lessons of experience. If we were tempted to say in one word what it was in which he chiefly excelled other men, we should say in wisdom; in the union of that virtue, which has ripened under the hardy discipline of principles, with that knowledge, which has constantly sifted and refined its old treasures, and as constantly gathered new. The constitution, since its adoption, owes more to him than to any other single mind, for its true 'interpretation and vindication. Whether it lives or perishes, his exposition of its principles will be an enduring monument to his fame, as long as solid reasoning, profound analysis, and sober views of government, shall invite the leisure, or command the attention of statesmen and jurists.

But interesting as it is, to contemplate such a man in his public character and official functions, there are those who dwell with far more delight upon his private and domestic qualities. There are few great men to whom one is brought near, however dazzling may be their talents or actions, who are not thereby painfully diminished in the estimate of those who approach them. The mist of distance sometimes gives a looming size to their character; but more often conceals its defects. To be amiable, as well as great, to be kind, gentle, simple, modest, and social; and at the same time to possess the rarest endowments of mind, and the warmest affections, is a union of qualities which the fancy may fondly portray, but the sober realities of life rarely establish. Yet it may be affirmed by those who have had the privileges of intimacy with Mr. Chief Justice Marshall, that he rises, rather than falls, with the nearest surveys; and that in the domestic circle he is exactly what a wife, a child, a brother, and a friend would most desire. In that magical circle, admiration of his talents is forgotten in the indulgence of those affections and sensibilities, which are awakened only to be gratified. More might be said with truth, if we were not admonished that he is yet living, and his delicacy might be wounded by any attempt to fill up the outline of his more private life. Besides his judicial labors, the Chief Justice has contributed a valuable addition to the historical and biographical literature of the country. He is the author of the Life of Washington, and of the History of the American Colonies, originally prefixed to the former work; but in the second edition, with great propriety, detached from it. Each of these works has been so long and so favorably known to the public, that it is wholly unnecessary to enter upon a critical examination of them in this place. They have all the leading features which ought to distinguish historical compositions; fidelity, accuracy, impartiality, dignity of narrative, and simplicity and purity of style. The Life of Washington is indeed entitled to a very high rank, as it was prepared from a diligent perusal of the original papers of that great man, which were submitted to the liberal use of his biographer. Probably no person could have brought to so difficult a task more various and apt qualifications. The Chief Justice had served through a great part of the revolutionary war, and was familiar with most of the scenes of Washington's exploits. He had also long enjoyed his personal confidence and felt the strongest admiration of his talents and virtues. He was also an early actor in the great political controversies, which after the revolutionary war agitated the whole country, and ended in the establishment of the national constitution. He was a decided supporter of the administration of Washington, and a leader among his able advocates. The principles and the measures of that administration had his unqualified approbation; and he has at all times since maintained them in his public life with a sobriety and uniformity, which mark him out as the fittest example of the excellence of that school of patriots and statesmen. If to these circumstances are added his own peculiar cast of mind, his deep sagacity, his laborious diligence, his native candor, and lofty sense of duty, it could scarcely be doubted, that his Life of Washington would be invaluable for the truth of its facts and the accuracy and completeness of its narrative. And such has hitherto been, and such ought for ever to continue to be its reputation. It does not affect to deal with mere private and personal anecdotes, to amuse the idle or the vicious. Its object is to expound the character and public services of Washington, and to give a faithful outline of his principles and measures. To a statesman, in an especial manner, the concluding volume is of the highest importance. He may there find traced out with, a masterly hand, and with a sedulous impartiality, the origin and progress of the parties, which since the adoption of the constitution, have divided the United States. It will enable him to treasure up the fundamentals of constitutional law; and to purify himself from those generalities, which are so apt to render politics, as a science, impracticable, and government, as a system, unsteady and visionary. Every departure from the great principles and policy laid down by Washington, will be found to weaken the bonds of union, to jeopard the interests, and to shake the solid foundations of the liberties of the republic.

In concluding this sketch we may well apply to the Chief Justice what Cicero has so gracefully said of an ancient orator: "Nihil acute inveniri potuit in eis causis, quas scripsit, nihil (ut ita dicam,) subdole, nihil versute, quod ille non viderit; nihil subtiliter dici, nihil presse, nihil enucleate, quo fieri possit limatius."


MARSHALL, Thomas, Virginia, advocate of colonization.  Son of John Marshall.  Said that slavery is “ruinous to Whites—retards improvements—roots out industrious population…” 

(Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume IV, p. 225; Staudenraus, P. J. The African Colonization Movement, 1816-1865. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961, p. 181)


MARTIN, John Alexander (March 10, 1839-October 2, 1889), journalist, Union military officer, and governor of Kansas. Late in 1857 he went to Kansas and in February 1858, when he was not yet nineteen, he bought an Atchison newspaper, which he renamed Freedom's Champion.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 6, Pt. 2, pp. 341-342:

MARTIN, JOHN ALEXANDER (March 10, 1839-October 2, 1889), journalist, Union military officer, and governor of Kansas, the son of James Martin and Jane Crawford, was born at Brownsville, Pennsylvania. He received his education in the common schools and in the printing office. Late in 1857 he went to Kansas and in February 1858, when he was not yet nineteen, he bought an Atchison newspaper, which he renamed Freedom's Champion (subsequently the Champion and still later the Atchison Champion). Within three years he was recognized as one of the political leaders of the younger generation in Kansas Territory, serving, among other positions of honor, as secretary of the Wyandotte constitutional convention and as state senator in the first state legislature. He resigned political office to become, October 27, 1861, lieutenant-colonel of the 8th Volunteer Infantry. On November 1 he was promoted to the rank of colonel, serving as provost-marshal of Nashville, Tennessee, and later as brigade-commander during the Chattanooga campaigns. He was mustered out November 17, 1864, and returned to the editorship of his newspaper. Martin had three ruling passions; the Old Soldier interest, the Republican party, and Kansas. During the period 1865-84 he was an active leader in the editorial organization of the state, and in the management of the affairs of the Republican party, local, state, and national. He was chairman of the Atchison county central committee, 1859-84, except during the war, a member of the state committee, beginning in 1870, and of the national committee almost continuously, beginning in 1868. He was secretary of the national committee during the early eighties and sponsored a plan for reapportioning representation in the national convention in order to recognize partially the growing Republican vote in the West.

Martin's major political ambition was the governorship of Kansas. He was elected in 1884 and reelected in 1886. Among the chief issues of his administration was the enforcement of the prohibition law. He had been an opponent of prohibition at the time of the adoption of the constitutional amendment of 1880, but by 1883 he indorsed it and was nominated and elected on a platform containing a prohibition plank. He was convinced by the experience of the state and especially of his home town of Atchison that "the saloon-keepers, as a rule, were a lot of shameless ingrates, who were not only opposed to prohibition, but to any and all restraint on their dirty business" (Martin to Sol Miller, December 4, 1885: Correspondence of the Governors of Kansas, Letterpress Books, personal, Volume V, pp. 61-67). He felt that the only way to deal with them was to stand squarely on prohibition of the liquor traffic and thereby to eliminate its influence from politics. Prohibition under his administration became the settled policy of the Republican party in the state and of the state of Kansas. He advocated revision of legal procedure, the modification of the judicial system, both an enlargement and a reform in line with progressive practices adopted in some other states, and the codification of state law. He took great interest in penal reform, and was quite successful in dealing with railroad labor troubles, 1885-88. A state law providing for arbitration of labor disputes was enacted in 1886, and he urged the passage of a federal law in this field, as well as the federal licensing of locomotive engineers.

Martin's administration came in a period of unusual railroad building and of the settlement of the western part of the state. Local government units were induced by various means to issue excessive amounts of bonded indebtedness to finance railroad building. These practices were opposed by Martin, and he urged repeatedly, but without success, the adoption by both state and national governments of a program which might forestall the collapse of the boom in Kansas and elsewhere, and bring about a public control of big business. He advocated a comprehensive state corporation law designed to meet the abuses prevalent in the conduct of business, and attacked the monopoly question in its national aspect from the standpoint of the discriminative practices of the railroads: "They are monopolizing a dozen branches of business the coal trade, the grain trade, the elevator business, the express business, etc." (Martin to Senator John J. Ingalls, January 20, 1887: Correspondence of the Governors of Kansas, personal, Volume IX, pp. 290-92). After four strenuous years as governor, he retired again to the editorship of his newspaper. He had married, on June 1, 1871, Ida Challiss, the daughter of Dr. W. L. and Mary (Harres) Challiss. In 1869 he published a Military History of the Eighth Kansas Veteran Volunteer Infantry, and in 1888 he printed, for private distribution, a volume of Addresses.

[The Wisconsin Historical Society Library has the most complete file of the Atchison Champion for the period of Martin's editorship. This file includes the years 1865-89. The Kansas State Historical Society Library has a file of the paper for 1858-63 and for 1876-89, together with some broken files for the middle years. The same library has his correspondence as governor, both the official and the confidential or personal files. This correspondence contains, in addition to state matters, information on such national matters as Indian defense, control of livestock diseases, quarantine for protection of public health, railroad labor strikes 1885, 1886, and 1888, national Republican party politics, press-association problems, and the National Soldiers' Homes. Except for the Civil War letters (in process of printing for private distribution) in possession of the family, all of Martin's correspondence prior to the governorship has been lost. Other sources include: D. W. Wilder, The Annals of Kansas (revised ed., 1886); W. E. Connelley, A Standard History of Kansas and Kansans (1918), volume II; Trans. Kansas State Historical Society, volume IV (1890); the Evening Standard (Leavenworth), October 2, 1889; the Topeka Weekly Capital, October 3, 1889.)

J.C.M.


MARTIN, John Sella, 1832-1876, African American, former slave, clergyman, abolitionist, orator and lecturer against slavery.  Agent for newspaper, Provincial Freeman.  Wrote articles in the Liberator.  Endorsed African Civilization Society colonization plans.

(Gates, Henry Louis, Jr., & Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, eds. African American National Biography. Oxford University Press, 2013, Volume 7, p. 530)


MARTIN, Luther, c. 1748-1826, Maryland, founding father, lawyer, opponent of slavery.  First Attorney General in the State of Maryland, Member of the Continental Congress, and Member of the Federal Convention.  Said of slavery that it is “inconsistent with the principles of the Revolution and dishonorable to the American character.”  Nonetheless, Martin owned six slaves.

(Appletons’ Cyclopædia of American Biography, 1888,Volume IV, p. 233; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 6, Pt. 2, p. 343; Bruns, Roger, ed. Am I Not a Man and a Brother: The Antislavery Crusade of Revolutionary America, 1688-1788. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1977, p. 522; Locke, Mary Stoughton. Anti-Slavery in America from the Introduction of African Slaves to the Prohibition of the Slave Trade (1619-1808). Boston: Ginn & Co., 1901, p. 92; Mabee, Carleton. Black Freedom: The Nonviolent Abolitionists from 1830 Through the Civil War. London: Macmillan, 1970, p. 378; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 14, p. 605; Longacre, James B. & James Herring, National Portrait Gallery of Distinguished Americans.  Philadelphia: American Academy of Fine Arts, 1834-1839) 

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 6, Pt. 2, pp. 343-345:

MARTIN, LUTHER (c. 1748-July 10, 1826), first attorney-general of the State of Maryland, member of the Continental Congress, member of the Federal Convention, and an eminent lawyer, was born near New Brunswick, New Jersey. The date of his birth is generally given as February 9, and in some accounts is assigned to the year 1744. There is uncertainty also about the names of his parents, but it is probable that he was the third in a family of nine children of Benjamin Martin, a farmer, and his wife Hannah. His ancestors, who were of English stock, had been farmers in America for several generations. After attending the grammar school of the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University), he entered the college in 1762 and was graduated with honors in 1766. He went to Maryland to seek a position as teacher, and obtained a school at Queenstown, Queen Anne's County. Among his pupils were the children of Solomon Wright, a lawyer, in whose home he became a frequent visitor and whose library he was permitted to use. In 1769, after teaching nearly three years at Queenstown, Martin gave up his position and left for Somerset County, Maryland, to devote a year to the study of law with friends there. Shortly afterward, while making a brief visit in Queen Anne's County, he was served with five writs of attachment for debts; but Wright, acting as his attorney, succeeded in striking off the writs in the spring of 1770. In the summer of that year Martin left Somerset County to become superintendent of the grammar school at Onancock, Accomac County, Virginia. Here he served one year, continuing the study of law in the meantime. In 1771 he applied at Williamsburg for admission to the Virginia bar, was accepted, and in September qualified as an attorney in Accomac County. After practising a short time in Virginia, he decided to settle in Somerset County, Maryland, where his practice was lucrative until the outbreak of the Revolution.

In the fall of 1774 Martin was. named on the patriot committee of Somerset County, and in December was a delegate to the convention of the Province of Maryland at Annapolis. In 1777 he published a reply to the appeal issued from the British fleet by Lord Howe; and his address, To the Inhabitants of the Peninsula between the Delaware River and the Chesapeake to the Southward of the British Lines, was circulated in handbills. On February II, 1778, Martin was appointed by Governor Thomas Johnson, upon the recommendation of Samuel Chase, as attorney- general of Maryland; and qualifying on May 20 he took up his residence in Baltimore. During the remaining years of the war he prosecuted the Loyalists with great vigor. In 1785 he was a delegate to the Continental Congress. He was also a delegate to the Federal Convention at Philadelphia, where he opposed the plan of a strong central government. Before the convention was over, he walked out with John Francis Mercer [q.v.] and returned home without signing the Constitution. He assailed the proposed form of government before the Maryland House of Delegates in 1787 in a speech which attracted wide attention. In 1788, as a member of the Maryland convention, he made a futile effort to prevent the ratification of the federal Constitution.

On December 25, 1783, Martin married Maria (sometimes referred to as Mary) Cresap, eldest daughter of Captain Michael Cresap [q.v.], Maryland frontiersman. Cresap was charged with the murder of the family of the Indian chief, Logan; and Thomas Jefferson, in his Notes on the State of Virginia, quoted Logan's speech. To defend Cresap's character, Martin published letters (1797-98) in the Baltimore newspapers in reply to Jefferson (John J. Jacob, A Biographical Sketch of the Life of the Late Captain Michael Cresap, 1826). Jefferson refused to make any reply in the newspapers, holding that Martin's object was to gratify party passions (P. L. Ford, The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, volume VII, 1896, p. 137). Martin's domestic life was unhappy. His wife died young, leaving two daughters. He courted a wealthy client, the widow of Jonathan Hager, of Washington County, Maryland, but she married another man. (The letters of entreaty written by him to Mrs. Hager in 1800 and 1801 are in J. T. Scharf, History of Western Maryland, 1882, volume II, pp. 1013-15.) Martin's daughters married when very young, against his will, and both of the marriages ended tragically. Maria married Lawrence Keene, a naval officer, but soon separated from him and died insane. Eleonora eloped with Richard R. Keene (unrelated to Lawrence), son of a Queen Anne's County farmer, who had entered Martin's office in 1799 and became a member of the bar in 1801. Martin condemned Keene in a series of five pamphlets entitled Modern Gratitude, printed in 1801 and 1802. The son-in-law replied in a pamphlet of fifty printed pages, A Letter from Richard Raynal Keene to Luther Martin, Esq. (1802). Martin later became infatuated with the beautiful Theodosia Burr [q.v.], who was already married; his "idolatrous admiration" for her doubtless served to blind him to the faults of her father's character (W. H. Safford, The Blennerhassett Papers, 1861, p. 469).

Martin, now allied with the Federalist party because of his hatred of Jefferson, went to the aid of Justice Samuel Chase [q.v.] in the impeachment trial before the United States Senate in 1804. In 1805, after twenty-seven years of service, he resigned as attorney-general of Maryland. In 1807 he was one of the lawyers who came to the rescue of Aaron Burr at his trial for treason in Richmond, where he attacked the Administration with so much bitterness that President Jefferson in a letter dated June 19, 1807, wrote to George Hay, United States district attorney for Virginia: "Shall we move to commit L[uther] M[artin], as particeps criminis with Burr? Graybell will fix upon his misprision of treason at least And at any rate, his evidence will put down this unprincipled & impudent federal bull-dog, and add another proof that the most clamorous defenders of Burr are all his accomplices" (P. L. Ford, The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, volume IX, 1898, p. 58). After the trial, Burr, and Harman Blennerhassett were entertained by Martin in Baltimore; a mob threatened to do violence; but Martin's house was guarded by the police, and the mob spent the force of its indignation on the hanging of effigies (American Law Review, January 1867, p. 278). In 1813 Martin became chief judge of the court of oyer and terminer for the City and County of Baltimore and served in this office until the tribunal was abolished in 1816. In February 1818, forty years after the date of his first appointment, he was reappointed attorney-general of the state. His last important case was McCulloch vs: State of Maryland (4 Wheaton, 316), wherein as attorney-general of Maryland in 1819 he opposed Daniel Webster, William Pinkney, and William Wirt on the question of state rights, and Chief Justice Marshall held that a state tax on the Bank of the United States was unconstitutional. In 1820 Martin was incapacitated for active service by a stroke of paralysis, and although an assistant attorney-general was appointed he was obliged to resign in 1822. Always of a convivial disposition, he had become increasingly addicted to the use of intoxicants; his brilliant faculties had decayed and he now faced the world broken in health, worn out in mind, and financially destitute. His plight led the legislature to pass a resolution compelling every practitioner of law in the state to pay an annual license fee of five dollars to be turned over to trustees for the use of Martin (Acts of Maryland, December Session, 1821, Resolution No. 60). During the time the resolution was in effect only one protest was made against it; and it was repealed in 1823 before its constitutionality could be tested (Ibid., December Session, 1822, Resolution No. 16). Martin, wrecked by misfortunes, drunkenness, extravagance, and illness, was now welcomed into Burr's home in New York, where he was permitted to remain until the time of his death. He was buried in the Trinity Churchyard in New York.

Martin's chief faults were his intemperance and his improvidence in financial affairs. He was a stanch opponent of slavery, and was known for his generosity and his loyalty to his friends. While not a polished orator, he became a leader of the American bar because of his thoroughness and extraordinary memory. Blennerhassett, following Mercer, called him the "Thersites of the law." Chief Justice Taney said that Martin was "strong in his attachments, and ready to make any sacrifice for his friends" (Samuel Tyler, Memoir of Roger Brooke Taney, 1872, p. 68). He has been described as "the rollicking, witty, audacious Attorney-General of Maryland; drunken, generous, slovenly, grand; bull-dog of federalism, the notorious reprobate genius" (Henry Adams, John Randolph, 1882, p. 141). At the time of the Chase impeachment trial, Martin was "of medium height, broad-shouldered, near-sighted, absent-minded, shabbily attired, harsh 1of voice ... with a face crimsoned by the brandy which he continually imbibed" (A. J. Beveridge, The Life of John Marshall, volume III, 1919, p. 186).

[No definite biography of Luther Martin has been written. An autobiographical sketch of his early life is included in the last pamphlet of his Modern Gratitude (1802), in which he states that he was eighteen years old in 1766. On the other hand, an obituary in the New York Evening Post, July II, 1826, states that he died in his eighty-second year. An early sketch of his life, in The National Portrait Gallery of Distinguished Americans, volume IV (1839), pp. 167-74, was followed by a sketch in American Law Review, January 1867, pp. 273-81; an article in Biographical Cyclopedia of Representative Men of Maryland and D. C. (1879); "Luther Martin: The 'Federal Bull Dog,' " by H. P. Goddard, published by the Maryland Historical Society in Fund-Publication No. 24 (1887); and "Luther Martin," by E. L. Didier, in The Green Bag, April 1891. Later sketches include those by A. M. Gould, in W. D. Lewis, ed., Great American Lawyers, volume II (1907); H. H. Hagan, Eight Great American Lawyers (1923); T. C. Waters, in American Bar Assn. Journal, November, December 1928; and J. F. Essary, in Maryland in National Politics (1915), pp. 59- 78. An article, "The Influence of Luther Martin in the Making of the Constitution of the United States," by E. D. Obrecht, appeared in the Maryland Historical Magazine, September-December 1932.

Martin's address, The Genuine Information, Delivered to the  Legislature of the State of Maryland, Relative to the Proceedings of the General Convention, Lately Held at Philadelphia, published in 1788, is included in American Eloquence, edited by Frank Moore (1859), volume I, 373-400; and in Jonathan Elliot, The Debates on the Adoption of the Federal Constitution (2 ed., 1836); a different draft of the speech, from a MS. in the Library of Congress, appeared in the Maryland Historical Magazine, June 1910, pp. 139-50. Charles Warren, The Making of the Constitution (1928), p. 792, refers to newspaper letters of Martin. See also Max Farrand, The Records of the Federal Convention (3 volumes, 1911); E. S. Delaplaine, The Life of Thomas Johnson (1927).]

E.S.D.


MARTINEAU, Harriet, 1802-1876, Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society (BFASS), delegate of the (Garrisonian) Anti-Slavery Society, Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society

(Dumond, Dwight Lowell, Antislavery: The Crusade for Freedom in America, University of Michigan Press, 1961, p. 286; Mabee, Carleton. Black Freedom: The Nonviolent Abolitionists from 1830 Through the Civil War. London: Macmillan, 1970, p. 53; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 14, p. 613)


MARTYN, Grace, abolitionist, first director of the Ladies New York City Anti-Slavery Society (LNYCASS), founded New York City, 1835.

(Yellin, Jean Fagan and John C. Van Horne (Eds). The Abolitionist Sisterhood: Women’s Political Culture in Antebellum America. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994, p. 34)


MARTYN, Reverend J. H.

(Yellin, Jean Fagan and John C. Van Horne (Eds). The Abolitionist Sisterhood: Women’s Political Culture in Antebellum America. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994)


MARTYN, Sarah Towne Smith, 1805-1879, author, reformer, temperance activist, abolitionist.

(Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 6, Pt. 2, p. 352-353; American Reformers: An H.W. Wilson Biographical Dictionary, New York, 1985, pp. 579-580). 

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 6, Pt. 2, pp. 352-353:

MARTYN, SARAH TOWNE SMITH (August 15, 1805-November 22, 1879), author, was born in Hopkinton, New Hampshire, the daughter of the Reverend Ethan and Bathsheba (Sanford) Smith, both descendants of seventeenth-century settlers in New England. Her early education was directed by her father, a scholarly clergyman, who, as a youth, had served in the Revolution, and afterward graduated from Dartmouth College. Under his tutelage she studied Greek and Hebrew and learned to translate readily from modern languages. She spent a brief period at a school for young ladies in New York City, where her considerable talent for music received some training. As she grew older she shared with her father his ardent interest in the temperance and anti-slavery movements. She was warmly sympathetic with Oberlin College in its early efforts and was invited to act as one of the first principals of its "female department." This honor she declined, feeling that her work lay in another direction. She was active in the Female Moral Reform Society of New York after 1836 and assisted in editing its journal, the Advocate of Moral Reform, until 1845, when dissension with. in the society caused her to secede from it with the disaffected minority. In March 1841 she married her brother-in-law, Job H. Martyn, a clergyman in New York City. She lived in New York until 1868, with the exception of three years (1850-53) spent in Waukesha, Wisconsin, while her husband was in charge of a church in that place. Three sons and a daughter were born of this marriage, the eldest, William Carlos, becoming a well-known minister and writer.

After her marriage Mrs. Martyn continued her devotion to religious and reform movements. In 1842 she acted as editor for a few weeks of the Olive Plant and Ladies' Temperance Advocate. Following her separation from the Advocate of Moral Reform she was connected for a short time with a rival, the True Advocate. In April 1846 she began the publication of the White Banner, an undertaking that gave place the following month to the Ladies' Wreath, "a magazine devoted to literature, industry, and religion." This periodical she edited from 1846 to 1850, writing a large part of its decorous contents herself. In addition to these editorial ventures she wrote for the American Tract Society many unpretentious volumes designed for juvenile readers and a number of more ambitious works dealing with historical subjects. Among these are Margaret, the Pearl of Navarre (1867), The English Exile, or William Tyndale at Home and Abroad (1867), Daughters of the Cross (1868), and Women of the Bible (1868). She was known among the literati of New York as a gracious hostess in whose home well-known writers and reformers frequently assembled. After the death of her husband in 1868, she divided her time between New York and Connecticut, living with her children and sharing their interests. She died in New York City and was buried in Cheshire, Connecticut.

[New-England Historical and Genealogy Registry, April 1847; J. Q. Bittinger, History of Haverhill, New Hampshire (1888); files of the Ladies' Wreath and of the Advocate of Moral Reform; obituary notices and personal information in possession of family; John S. Hart, A Manual of American Literature (1874).]


MARVIN, Dudley (May 29, 1786-June 25, 1852), U.S. Congressman, supported the Free-Soil movement in the new territories. The controversy over slavery in the territory newly acquired from Mexico brought him once more into the sectional debate. "It will not be denied," he asserted, "that the introduction of slavery equally excludes from a participation in the enjoyment of these acquisitions the free laboring men of the North" (Congressional Globe, 30 Congress, I Session, App., p. 1211). The right of the federal government to exclude slavery from the territories he declared to be derived from the sovereign rights of the nation, the territories having been acquired in the first place "by the act of war-an act of sovereignty in which the respective sovereign States in the Union neither were nor could be known"

(Biographical Directory American Congress (1928).

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 6, Pt. 2, pp. 353-354:

MARVIN, DUDLEY (May 29, 1786-June 25, 1852), congressman, the son of Elisha and Elizabeth (Selden) Marvin, was born in Lyme, Connecticut, where his ancestor, Reinold Marvin who emigrated from Essex County, England, before 1638, finally settled and died. He attended the Colchester Academy in Connecticut and then followed the path of New England pioneers westward into New York and settled in Ontario County at Canandaigua. With a general education such as was afforded by a small New England academy of that time he studied law and was admitted to the bar, probably in 1811. At the outbreak of war with Great Britain the following year he took active military duty with the state militia and served as lieutenant. After peace had been declared he continued to take a prominent part in the militia, rising eventually to the rank of major-general. He was married on January 31, 1818, to Mary Jepson Whalley, the daughter of Joseph and Hannah (Saltonstall) Whalley of Canandaigua. They had one child.

Marvin practised law successfully and was recognized as one of the ablest barristers in the western counties of the state. In 1822 he was elected to Congress, as an Adams Democrat, and was reelected in 1824 and in 1826. He came under the influence of Henry Clay's leadership and espoused the Whig cause. In Congress he advocated with distinction the dominant interests of the rising industrial power of the North, a protective tariff and the limitation of slavery. During his first term he became a member of the committee on manufactures and was an ardent advocate of a protective tariff. In the debate over the celebrated tariff of 1824 he defended against Southern opposition the cause of the Northern manufacturing interests, then slowly developing. He maintained that the tax that falls in the first instance upon the cotton planters "is paid back again by all other States, in the various proportions in which they are consumers of cotton" (Annals of Congress, 18 Congress, 1 Session, col. 1527). The fact that two-thirds of the cotton crop was consumed abroad did not in his mind disturb the logic of the Northern position. After completing his third term in Congress, he went to Maryland and to Virginia for a time and then removed to New York City to practise law there and in Brooklyn. About 1843 he again removed to the outlying districts of the state and settled in Ripley, Chautauqua County. In 1847 he returned to Congress as a Whig and served for one term. The stirring controversy over slavery in the territory newly acquired from Mexico brought him once more into the sectional debate. "It will not be denied," he asserted, "that the introduction of slavery equally excludes from a participation in the enjoyment of these acquisitions the free laboring men of the North" (Congressional Globe, 30 Congress, I Session, App., p. 1211). The right of the federal government to exclude slavery from the territories he declared to be derived from the sovereign rights of the nation, the territories having been acquired in the first place "by the act of war-an act of sovereignty in which the respective sovereign States in the Union neither were nor could be known" (Ibid., p. 1209). The remainder of his life was spent in Ripley. He interested himself in community affairs, was active in the temperance movement, and in the Presbyterian Church.

[A. W. Young, History of Chautauqua County (1875); Biographical Directory American Congress (1928); G. F. and W. T. R. Marvin, Descendants of Reinold and Matthew Marvin (1904) as authority for dates of birth and death.]

G.L.R.


MARVIN, James M., Member of the U.S. House of Representatives, voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery.

(Biographical Dictionary of the U.S. Congress 1774-1927 (1928); Congressional Globe)



Sources:
Dictionary of American Biography, Volumes I-X, Edited by Dumas Malone, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1930.

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, Volumes I-VI, Edited by James Grant Wilson & John Fiske, New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1888-1889.