A portrait of John Marshall (Image courtesy Virginia Museum of History & Culture)
In a corner of “John Marshall: Hidden Hero of the National Union,” a current exhibition at the Virginia Museum of History & Culture running through Sept. 29, an old book is opened to the frontispiece inscription: “Presented to the Virginian Historical and Philosophical Society with his professional respects by The Author.”
“This is one of our favorite pieces,” enthuses William S. Rasmussen, senior curator of exhibitions at the VMHC, the current iteration of the organization to which Marshall gave a copy of his five-volume, 3,200-page “Life of George Washington.”
The massive work, created while Marshall remained on the bench as chief justice of the United States Supreme Court, where he sat for 34 unparalleled years, is not alone a biography of Washington. Marshall wrote a history of the country until that time from the perspective of a man who’d experienced those formative events up close and personal. “He was our first president,” says Rasmussen, and smiles, continuing, “of the Virginia Historical Society.”
The exhibit, cosponsored by Preservation Virginia and the John Marshall Foundation, is tasked with turning the spotlight onto a national figure whose most important work came through working with institutions and organizations and, sometimes, through persuasion in taverns.
Radiating Influence
Kevin Walsh, co-curator of the exhibit and a University of Richmond law professor, reflects on Marshall’s vigorous and long public life: “He begins as a 19-year-old with the Culpeper Minutemen and 60 years later ends as the longest-serving chief justice of the United States Supreme Court.”
The visitor is first confronted by a quote from Marshall’s opinion exactly 200 years ago in the landmark McCulloch v. Maryland decision, which established the power of Congress and the federal government to limit the discretion of the individual states. “The government of the union … is, emphatically and truly, a government of the people. In form and in substance it emanates from them. Its powers are granted by them, and are to be exercised directly on them, and for their benefit.”
Walsh explains how Sen. Daniel Webster of Massachusetts, inspired by Marshall’s words, expanded upon them in his renowned 1830 “Second Reply” to South Carolina Sen. Robert Y. Hayne, who had made the states’ rights argument that federal laws could be “nullified.” “It is, sir, the people’s Constitution, the people’s government, made for the people, made by the people, and answerable to the people,” said Webster, whose language found its way into Abraham Lincoln’s 1863 Gettysburg Address.
“Marshall’s influence radiated outward,” Walsh says. “His vision of the Constitution became systematic.”
Wins and Losses
Marshall was a frontline lieutenant in the Revolution. A veteran of Valley Forge, he was an officer and then a friend for George Washington and the near last-minute choice by John Adams for the Supreme Court. Marshall established that body as the legitimate third branch of government. He’d served on the Richmond City Council and in the Virginia House of Delegates. He participated in the Constitution ratification of 1787-88. Oh, and he gave great parties. One observer remarked of his being “convivial to excess.” Marshall’s humanity is visible in his Law Commonplace Book that doubled as an accounts ledger. “He even kept track of his winnings and losses at cards,” Walsh notes.
Practicing law proved more profitable than federal appointments, until entanglement with Fauquier County property claims and the annual mortgage debt required a steady salary. Marshall joined the government at the behest of John Adams, and he was sent to Paris as one of three “envoys extraordinary,” with Charles Cotesworth Pinckney and Elbridge Gerry, to settle differences with the government of France.
Marshall’s greatest loves were the United States, the Constitution, and his family life with his wife, “Polly,” Mary Willis Ambler, with whom he had 10 children (though four died young). During Marshall’s unanticipated yearlong absence, Polly gave birth to their son John, and her father died. If she wrote him, the letters don’t survive, and the only one we have from Paris to her, with Marshall describing the city’s delights and dissipations, is strangely unsigned.
‘The Present Is Gloomy Enough’
Though he said he abhorred slavery and viewed its effects as pernicious, Marshall owned slaves — 18 alone at his Richmond residence, and perhaps as many as 200 at various properties. “This brings some light to bear on Marshall’s connection to slavery,” Rasmussen says, indicating an 1830 inventory of slaves on Marshall’s Charles City County plantation.
Marshall’s later years were marked by Polly’s death and his own robust health in decline. On exhibit are samples of his mortal being: a strand of hair, a collection of bladder stones removed from him in 1831 presented with an example of the unpleasant-looking lithotrite device used in the procedure.
Marshall’s anxiety came through an 1834 letter to his colleague Justice Joseph Story, which reads, “To men who think as you and I do, the present is gloomy enough; and the future presents no cheering prospect. In the South … those who support the Executive do not support the Government. They sustain the personal power of the President, but labor incessantly to impair the legitimate powers of the Government. Those who oppose the rash and violent measures of the Executive … are generally the bitter enemies of Constitutional Government. … What can we hope for in such circumstances?”
Tucked into one corner of the exhibit, next to a bust of the great chief justice, is the commission of Roger Taney to succeed Marshall on the court. Taney gave the majority opinion in the 1857 Dred Scott v. Standford decision, which declared that African-Americans, whether enslaved or not, were not full citizens, and Congress possessed no power to ban slavery in the territories.
“The Dred Scott case broke the court,” Walsh says. The decision would be overturned after a civil war and the 13th Amendment to the Constitution.
In August 2017, the 1872 statue of Taney at the Maryland statehouse in Annapolis was removed overnight.
Marshall’s monument is not statuary. His legacy is instead engrained through statutes and precedents that serve as a reminder of his enduring vitality.
