John Marshall

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John Marshall
JohnMarshallstatute.jpg
Fourth Chief Justice of the United States
In office
January 31, 1801–July 6, 1835
Preceded by Oliver Ellsworth
Succeeded by Roger Taney
Fourth United States Secretary of State
In office
June 13, 1800–March 4, 1801
Preceded by Timothy Pickering
Succeeded by James Madison
Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Virginia's 13th district
In office
March 4, 1799–June 7, 1800
Preceded by John Clopton
Succeeded by Littleton Waller Tazewell
Member of the Virginia House of Delegates
In office
1782–1789
1795–1796
Preceded by
Succeeded by
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Personal details
Born September 24, 1755
  Germantown, Virginia
Died July 6, 1835 (aged 79)
  Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Resting place
Residence(s)
Education
Alma mater College of William & Mary
Profession Judge
Lawyer
Politician
Spouse(s) Mary Willis Ambler
Relatives
Known for
Signature [[File:{{{signature}}}|left|200px]]

John Marshall (September 24, 1755 – July 6, 1835), Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, proponent of judicial review, and captain in the Third Virginia Regiment of the Continental Army, was born on the Virginia frontier.[1] His grandfather, John of the Forest, developed a small plot of land in Westmoreland County, amassing a small fortune of £730.[2] Marshall's father, Thomas, settled in what is now Fauquier County, scarcely 50 miles from what would become Washington D.C.[3] Marshall's mother was a descendant of the prominent Randolph family.[4]

Living on the frontier, the opportunities for education were limited, but Thomas Marshall taught his son an elementary education, relying on his own knowledge and that of his ever-expanding library.[5] He sent John to be formally educated at Cambelltown Academy, a small boarding school in Westmoreland County run by the Reverend Campbell.[6] After one year at the school, John returned home.[7] There, his father hired him a private tutor, a young Anglican priest named James Thomson who refined Marshall's already scholarly instincts.[8] After his year with Thomson, Marshall had "a solid mastery of Latin grammar" and an affection for the classics.[9]

Marshall joined the revolutionary cause in 1775 as part of the Culpeper Minutemen.[10] The following year, he joined the Continental Army as a lieutenant in the Third Virginia Regiment.[11] Marshall fought at Brandywine, Germantown, and Monmouth, and wintered at Valley Forge.[12] In 1780, Marshall began taking classes at the College of William & Mary, attending lectures by George Wythe based on Blackstone's Commentaries, Matthew Bacon's New Abridgment of the Law and the Acts of Assembly, Now in Force, in the Colony of Virginia.[13] Marshall's notebook indicates his keen interest in the law, with 175 carefully written and organized pages.[14] His notebook also reveals an interest in Mary Ambler, the girl he would eventually marry and for whom he abruptly terminated his formal legal studies.[15] In addition to his careful notes, her name appears throughout the notebook.[16] Scholars dispute the amount of time Marshall spent at William & Mary, but it was likely no more than a few months before he left for Richmond.

Portrait of John Marshall, by John Wesley Jarvis. Oil on canvas, 1825. Nicholas J. St. George Rare Book Room, Wolf Law Library, William & Mary Law School, Williamsburg, Virginia.

In 1780, Marshall was admitted to the bar, and his career quickly gathered momentum.[17] In 1782, he was elected to the state Assembly, and the following year he married Mary Ambler and started a solo practice.[18] Marshall promoted constitutional reform in the Virginia Assembly in 1787, being an active and highly vocal proponent of federalism.[19] The Federalists tried to engage Marshall in various political positions several times, and he became Secretary of State in 1800.[20] Marshall earlier turned down Washington's offer to make him attorney general in 1795, and Adam's 1798 nomination to make him a justice on the Supreme Court and his 1800 request for him to serve as Secretary of War.[21] Despite these rejections, Marshall remained a very active, but moderate federalist. He was elected to Congress in 1798, a position he ran for only on the insistence of George Washington, his mentor and about whom he wrote the biography The Life of George Washington.[22]

It is Marshall's work on the Supreme Court for which he is most remembered. In the words of President James Garfield, "Marshall found the Constitution paper and made it power. He found a skeleton and clothed it with flesh and blood."[23] As Chief Justice, Marshall molded the jurisprudence of the young nation; his "spider-like capacity" of "rapidly absorbing material suited to the immediate occasion and then spinning it out in his own silk" was greatly needed in a young nation with little precedent upon which to interpret its laws.[24] In Marshall's thirty-four years on the court, his most influential cases include Marbury v. Madison, McCulloch v. Maryland, Fletcher v. Peck, Cohens v. Virginia, and Gibbons v. Ogden.[25] Marshall served as Chief Justice until his death in 1835. He remains the longest serving Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.

See also

References

  1. ↑ Edward S. Corwin, "John Marshall" in vol. VI, part 2 of Dictionary of American Biography ed. Dumas Malone (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1961), 315.
  2. ↑ Leonard Baker, John Marshall: a Life in Law (New York: MacMillan Publishing Co., 1974), 6.
  3. ↑ Ibid.
  4. ↑ Jean Edward Smith, John Marshall: Definer of a Nation (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1996), 23.
  5. ↑ Baker, John Marshall: a Life in Law, 12.
  6. ↑ R. Kent Newmyer, John Marshall and the Heroic Age of the Supreme Court (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2001), 7.
  7. ↑ Ibid.
  8. ↑ Ibid.
  9. ↑ Ibid.
  10. ↑ Baker, John Marshall: a Life in Law, 26.
  11. ↑ Ibid., 39.
  12. ↑ Corwin, "John Marshall," 317.
  13. ↑ Smith, John Marshall: Definer of a Nation, 80.
  14. ↑ W. Edwin Hemphill, "George Wythe, America's First Law Professor and the teacher of Jefferson, Marshall, and Clay," master's thesis, Emory University, 1933, 73.
  15. ↑ Ibid., 74.
  16. ↑ Ibid.
  17. ↑ Corwin, "John Marshall," 315.
  18. ↑ Ibid.
  19. ↑ Corwin, "John Marshall," 318.
  20. ↑ Ibid., 319.
  21. ↑ Ibid.
  22. ↑ Ibid.
  23. ↑ Smith, John Marshall: Definer of a Nation, 280.
  24. ↑ Corwin, "John Marshall," 318.
  25. ↑ Ibid., 322.
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