Burr, nor the purchase of Louisiana, important as these were, which
gives chief interest to the eight years of Jefferson's administration,
and made it a political epoch. It was the firm growth and establishment
of the Democratic party, of which Jefferson was the father and leader,
as Hamilton was the great chieftain of the Federalist. With the
accession of Jefferson to power, a new policy was inaugurated, which
from his day has been the policy of the government, except in great
financial emergencies when men of brain have had the direction of public
affairs. Democratic leaders like Jackson and Van Buren, representing the
passions or interests or prejudices of the masses, it would seem, have
been generally unfortunate enough to lead the country into financial
difficulties, because they have conformed to the unenlightened instincts
of the people rather than to the opinions of the enlightened few,--great
merchants, capitalists, and statesmen, that is, men of experience and
ability. And when these men of brain have extricated the country from
the financial distress which men inexperienced in finance and ignorant
of the principles of political economy have brought about, the
democratic leaders have regained their political ascendency, since they
appealed, more than their antagonists, to those watchwords so dear to
the American heart, the abolition of monopolies, unequal taxation, the
exaltation of the laboring classes,--whatever promises to aggrandize the
nation in a material point of view, or professes to bring about the
reign of "liberty, fraternity, and equality," and the abolition of
social distinctions.
It cannot be doubted that the policy of Jefferson, while it appealed to
the rights and interests of "working-men," of men who labor with their
hands rather than by their brains, has favored the reign of
demagogues,--the great curse of American institutions. Who now rule the
cities of New York, Philadelphia, Boston, Cincinnati, and Chicago? Is it
not those who, in cities at least, have made self-government--the great
principle for which Jefferson contended--almost an impossibility? This
great statesman was sufficiently astute to predict the rule of the
majority for generations to come, but I doubt if he anticipated the
character of the men to whom the majority would delegate their power.
Here he was not so sagacious as his great political rivals. I believe
that if he could have foreseen what a miserable set the politicians
would generally turn out to be,--with their venality, their
unscrupulousness, their vile flatteries of the people, their system of
spoils, their indifference to the higher interests of the nation,--his
faith in democracy as a form of government would have been essentially
shaken. He himself was no demagogue. His error was in not foreseeing the
logical sequence of those abstract theories which made up his political
religion,--the religion of humanity, such as the French philosophers had
taught him. But his theories pleased the people, and he himself was
personally popular,--the most so of all our statesmen, not excepting
Henry Clay, who made many enemies.
Jefferson's manners were simple, his dress was plain, he was accessible
to everybody, he was boundless in his hospitalities, he cared little for
money, his opinions were liberal and progressive, he avoided quarrels,
he had but few prejudices, he was kind and generous to the poor and
unfortunate, he exalted agricultural life, he hated artificial splendor,
and all shams and lies. In his morals he was irreproachable, unlike
Hamilton and Burr; he never made himself ridiculous, like John Adams, by
egotism, vanity, and jealousy; he was the most domestic of men,
worshipped by his family and admired by his guests; always ready to
communicate knowledge, strong in his convictions, perpetually writing
his sincere sentiments and beliefs in letters to his friends,--as
upright and honest a man as ever filled a public station, and finally
retiring to private life with the respect of the whole nation, over
which he continued to exercise influence after he had parted with power.
And when he found himself poor and embarrassed in consequence of his
unwise hospitality, he sold his library, the best in the country, to pay
his debts, as well as the most valuable part of his estate, yet keeping
up his cheerfulness and serenity of temper, and rejoicing in the general
prosperity,--which was produced by the ever-expanding energies and
resources of a great country, rather than by the political theories
which he advocated with so much ability.
On his final retirement to Monticello, in 1809, after forty-four years
of continuous public service, Jefferson devoted himself chiefly to the
care of his estate, which had been much neglected during his
presidential career. To his surprise he found himself in debt, having
lived beyond his income while president. But he did not essentially
change his manner of living, which was generous, though neither
luxurious nor ostentatious. He had stalls for thirty-six horses, and
sometimes as many as fifty guests at dinner. There was no tavern near
him which had so much company. He complains that an ox would all be
eaten in two days, while a load of hay would disappear in a night, Fond
as he was of company, he would not allow his guests to rob him of the
hours he devoted to work, either in his library or on his grounds. His
correspondence was enormous,--he received sixteen hundred and seven
letters in one year, and answered most of them. After his death there
were copies of sixteen thousand letters which he had written. His
industry was marvellous; even in retirement he was always writing or
reading or doing something. He was, perhaps, excessively fond of his
garden, of his flowers, of his groves, and his walks. Music was, as he
himself said, "the favorite passion of his soul." His house was the
largest in Virginia, and this was filled with works of art, and the
presents he had received. But his financial difficulties increased from
year to year. He was too fond of experiments and fancy improvements to
be practically successful as a farmer.
One of his granddaughters thus writes of him: "I cannot describe the
feelings of veneration, admiration, and love that existed in my heart
for him. I looked upon him as a being too great and good for my
comprehension. I never heard him utter a harsh word to any one of us. On
winter evenings, as we all sat round the fire, he taught us games, and
would play them with us. He reproved without wounding us, and commended
without making us vain. His nature was so eminently sympathetic that
with those he loved he could enter into their feelings, anticipate
their wishes, gratify their tastes, and surround them with an atmosphere
of affection."
Thus did he live in his plain but beautiful house, in sight of the Blue
Ridge, with Charlottesville and the university at his feet. He rode
daily for ten miles until he was eighty-two. He died July 4, 1826, full
of honors, and everywhere funeral orations were delivered to his memory,
the best of which was by Daniel Webster in Boston.
Among his papers was found the inscription which he wished to have
engraved on his tomb: "Here was buried Thomas Jefferson, Author of the
Declaration of American Independence, of the Statute of Virginia for
Religious Freedom, and Father of the University of Virginia." He does
not allude to his honors or his offices,--not a word about his
diplomatic career, or of his stations as governor of Virginia, Secretary
of State, or President of the United States. But the three things he
does name enshrine the best convictions of his life and the substance of
his labors in behalf of his country,--political independence, religious
freedom, and popular education.
The fame of Jefferson as author of the Declaration of Independence is
more than supported by his writings at different times which bear on
American freedom and the rights of man. It is as a writer on political
liberty that he is most distinguished. He was not an orator or
speech-maker. He worked in his library among his books, meditating on
the great principles which he enforced with so much lucidity and power.
It was for his skill with the pen that he was selected to draft the
immortal charter of American freedom, which endeared him to the hearts
of the people, and which no doubt contributed largely to cement the
States together in their resistance to Great Britain.
His reference to the statute of Virginia in favor of religious freedom
illustrates another of his leading sentiments, to which he clung with
undeviating tenacity during his whole career. He may have been a
freethinker like Franklin, but he did not make war on the religious
beliefs of mankind; he only desired that everybody should be free to
adopt such religious principles as were dear to him, without hindrance
or molestation. He was before his age in liberality of mind, and he
ought not to be stigmatized as an infidel for his wise toleration.
Although his views were far from orthodox, they did not, after all,
greatly differ from those of John Adams himself and the men of that day
who were enamoured with the ideas of Voltaire and Rousseau. At that time
even the most influential of the clergy, especially in New England, were
Arminians in their religious creed. The eighteenth century was not a
profound or religious epoch. It was an age of war and political
agitations,--a drinking, swearing, licentious, godless age among the
leaders of society, and of ignorance, prejudice, and pharisaic
formalities among the people. Jefferson's own purity and uprightness of
life amid the laxity of the times is an unquestionable evidence of the
elevation of his character and the sincerity of his moral and
religious beliefs.
The third great object of Jefferson's life was to promote popular
education as an essential condition to the safety of the republic. While
he advocated unbounded liberty, he knew well enough that it would
degenerate into license unless the people were well-informed. But what
interested him the most was the University of Virginia, in whose behalf
he spent the best part of his declining years. He gave money freely
himself, and induced the legislature to endow it liberally. He
superintended the construction of the buildings, which alone cost
$300,000; he selected the professors, prescribed the course of study,
was chairman of the board of trustees, and looked after the interests of
the institution. He thought more of those branches of knowledge which
tended to liberalize the mind than of Latin and Greek. He gave a
practical direction to the studies of the young men, allowing them to
select such branches as were congenial to them and would fit them for a
useful life. He would have no president, but gave the management of all
details to the professors, who were equal in rank. He appealed to the
highest motives among the students, and recognized them as gentlemen
rather than boys, allowing no espionage. He was rigorous in the
examinations of the students, and no one could obtain a degree unless it
were deserved. While he did not exclude religion from the college,
morning prayers being held every day, attendance upon religious services
was not obligatory. Every Sunday some clergyman from the town or
neighborhood preached a sermon, which was generally well attended. Few
colleges in this country have been more successful or more ably
conducted, and the excellence of instruction drew students from every
quarter of the South. Before the war there were nearly seven hundred
students, and I never saw a more enthusiastic set of young men, or a set
who desired knowledge for the sake of knowledge more enthusiastically
than did those in the University of Virginia.
Although it is universally admitted that Jefferson had a broad,
original, and powerful intellect, that he stamped his mind on the
institutions of his country, that to no one except Washington is the
country more indebted, yet I fail to see that he was transcendently
great in anything. He was a good lawyer, a wise legislator, an able
diplomatist, a clear writer, and an excellent president; but in none of
the spheres he occupied did he reach the most exalted height. As a
lawyer he was surpassed by Adams, Burr, and Marshall; as an orator he
was nothing at all; as a writer he was not equal to Hamilton and Madison
in profundity and power; as a diplomatist he was far below Franklin and
even Jay in tact, in patience, and in skill; as a governor he was timid
and vacillating; while as a president he is not to be compared with
Washington for dignity, for wisdom, for consistency, or executive
ability. Yet, on the whole, he has left a great name for giving shape to
the institutions of his country, and for intense patriotism. Pre-eminent
in no single direction, he was in the main the greatest political genius
that has been elevated to the presidential chair; but perhaps greater as
a politician than as a statesman in the sense that Pitt, Canning, and
Peel were statesmen. He was not made for active life; he was rather a
philosopher, wielding power by his pen, casting his searching glance
into everything, and leading men by his amiability, his sympathetic
nature, his force of character, and his enlightened mind. The question
might arise whether Jefferson's greatness was owing to force of
circumstances, or to an original, creative intellect, like that of
Franklin or Alexander Hamilton. But for the Revolution he might never
have been heard of outside his native State. This, however, might be
said of most of the men who have figured in American history,--possibly
of Washington himself. The great rulers of the world seem to be raised
up by Almighty Power, through peculiar training, to a peculiar fitness
for the accomplishment of certain ends which they themselves did not
foresee,--men like Abraham Lincoln, who was not that sort of man whom
Henry Clay or Daniel Webster would probably have selected for the
guidance of this mighty nation in the greatest crisis of its history.
AUTHORITIES.
The Life of Jefferson by Parton is the most interesting that I have read
and the fullest, but not artistic. He introduces much superfluous matter
that had better be left out. As for the other Lives of Jefferson, that
by Morse is the best; that of Schouler is of especial interest as to
Jefferson's attitude toward slavery and popular education. Randall has
written an interesting sketch. For the rest, I would recommend the same
authorities as on John Adams in the previous chapter.
JOHN MARSHALL
1755-1835
THE UNITED STATES SUPREME COURT
BY JOHN BASSETT MOORE, LL.D
While the Revolution had severed the tie which bound the colonies to the
mother country and had established the independence of the United
States, the task of organizing and consolidating the new nation yet
remained to be performed. The Articles of Confederation, though designed
to form a "perpetual union between the States," constituted in reality
but a loose association under which the various commonwealths retained
for the most part the powers of independent governments. In the treaty
of peace with Great Britain of 1782-83, strong national ground was
taken; but the general government was unable to secure the execution of
its stipulations. The public debts remained unpaid, for want of power to
levy taxes. Commerce between the States as well as with foreign nations
was discouraged and rendered precarious by variant and obstructive local
regulations. Nor did there exist any judicial authority to which an
appeal could be taken for the enforcement of national rights and
obligations as against inconsistent State laws and adjudications. These
defects were sought to be remedied by the Constitution of the United
States. But, as in the case of all other written instruments, the
provisions of this document were open to construction. Statesmen and
lawyers divided in their interpretation of it, according to their
prepossessions for or against the creation and exercise of a strong
central authority.
Among the organs of government created by the Constitution was "one
Supreme Court," in which, together with such inferior courts as Congress
might from time to time establish, was vested "the judicial power of the
United States." This power was declared to extend to all cases, in law
and equity, arising under the Constitution itself, the laws of the
United States, and treaties made under their authority; to all cases
affecting ambassadors, other public ministers and consuls; to all cases
of admiralty and maritime jurisdiction; to controversies to which the
United States should be a party; to controversies between two or more
States, between a State and citizens of another State, and between
citizens of different States, as well as between citizens of the same
State claiming lands under grants of different States, and between a
State, or the citizens thereof, and foreign States, citizens, or
subjects. In all cases affecting ambassadors, other public ministers and
consuls, and those in which a State should be a party, the Supreme Court
was vested with original jurisdiction, while in all the other
enumerated cases its jurisdiction was to be appellate. With the
exceptions of suits against a State by individuals, which were excluded
by the Eleventh Amendment, the judicial power of the United States
remains to-day as it was originally created.
But at the time when the Constitution was made, the importance to which
the judicial power would attain in the political system of the United
States could not be foreseen. The form was devised, but, like the nation
itself, its full proportions remained to be developed. In that
development, so far as it has been made by the judiciary, one man was
destined to play a pre-eminent part. This man was John Marshall, under
whose hand, as James Bryce has happily said, the Constitution "seemed
not so much to rise ... to its full stature, as to be gradually unveiled
by him, till it stood revealed in the harmonious perfection of the form
which its framers had designed." For this unrivalled achievement there
has been conceded to Marshall by universal consent the title of
Expounder of the Constitution of the United States; and the general
approval with which his work is now surveyed is attested by the tribute
lately paid to his memory. The observance on the 4th of February, 1901,
by a celebration spontaneously national, of the one hundredth
anniversary of his assumption of the office of Chief Justice of the
United States, is without example in judicial annals. It is therefore a
matter of interest not only to every student of American history, but
also to every American patriot, to study his career and to acquaint
himself with that combination of traits and accidents by which his
character and course in life were determined.
John Marshall was born Sept. 24, 1755, in Fauquier County, Virginia, at
a small village then called Germantown, but now known as Midland, a
station on the Southern Railway not far south of Manassas. His
grandfather, John Marshall, the first of the family of whom there
appears to be any record, was an emigrant from Wales. He left four sons,
the eldest of whom was Thomas Marshall, the father of the Chief Justice.
Thomas Marshall, though a man of meagre early education, possessed great
natural gifts, and rendered honorable and useful public service both as
a member of the Virginia Legislature, and as a soldier in the
Revolutionary War, in which he rose to the rank of colonel. His son,
John Marshall, was the eldest of fifteen children. Of his mother, whose
maiden name was Keith, little is known, but it has been well observed by
one of Marshall's biographers, that, as she reared her fifteen
children--seven sons and eight daughters--all to mature years, she could
have had little opportunity to make any other record for herself, and
could hardly have made a better one.
Subsequently to his birth, Marshall's parents removed to an estate
called Oak Hill, in the western part of Fauquier County. It was here
that in 1775, when nineteen years of age, he heard the call of his
country and entered the patriot army as a lieutenant. We have of him at
this time the first personal description, written by a kinsman who was
an eye-witness of the scene, and preserved in the eulogy delivered by
Mr. Binney before the Select and Common Councils of Philadelphia on
Sept. 24, 1835. "His figure," says the writer, "I have now before me. He
was about six feet high, straight and rather slender, of dark
complexion, showing little if any rosy red, yet good health, the outline
of the face nearly a circle, and within that, eyes dark to blackness,
strong and penetrating, beaming with intelligence and good nature; an
upright forehead, rather low, was terminated in a horizontal line by a
mass of raven-black hair of unusual thickness and strength; the features
of the face were in harmony with this outline, and the temples fully
developed. The result of this combination was interesting and very
agreeable. The body and limbs indicated agility rather than strength, in
which, however, he was by no means deficient. He wore a purple or
pale-blue hunting shirt, and trousers of the same material fringed with
white. A round black hat, mounted with the buck's tail for a cockade,
crowned the figure and the man. He went through the manual exercise by
word and motion deliberately pronounced and performed, in the presence
of the company, before he required the men to imitate him, and then
proceeded to exercise them, with the most perfect temper.... After a few
lessons the company were dismissed, and informed that if they wished to
hear more about the war, and would form a circle around him, he would
tell them what he understood about it.... He addressed the company for
something like an hour.... He spoke at the close of his speech of the
Minute Battalion about to be raised, and said he was going into it and
expected to be joined by many of his hearers. He then challenged an
acquaintance to a game of quoits, and they closed the day with
foot-races and other athletic exercises, at which there was no betting.
He had walked ten miles to the muster field, and returned the same
distance on foot to his father's house at Oak Hill, where he arrived a
little after sunset."
The patriot forces in which Marshall was enrolled were described as
minute-men, of whom it was said by John Randolph that they "were raised
in a minute, armed in a minute, marched in a minute, fought in a minute,
and vanquished in a minute." Their uniform consisted of homespun hunting
shirts, bearing the words "Liberty or Death" in large white letters on
the breast, while they wore bucks' tails in their hats and tomahawks and
scalping-knives in their belts. We are told, and may readily believe,
that their appearance inspired in the enemy not a little apprehension;
but we are also assured, and may as readily believe, that this feeling
never was justified by any act of cruelty. Their first active service
was seen in the autumn of 1775, when they marched for Norfolk, where
Lord Dunmore had established his headquarters. They saw their first
fighting at Great Bridge, where the British troops were defeated with
heavy loss. Subsequently, the Virginia forces to which Marshall belonged
joined the army of Washington in New Jersey, and he saw service not only
in that State, but also in Pennsylvania and New York, and, later in the
war, again in Virginia. In May, 1777, he was appointed a captain. He
took part in the battles of Iron Hill and Brandywine. He was also
present at Monmouth, at Paulus (or Powles) Hook, and at the capture of
Stony Point. He endured the winter's sufferings at Valley Forge, where
because of his patience, firmness, and good humor, he won the special
regard of the soldiers and his brother-officers. In the course of his
military service he often acted as judge-advocate; and he made the
acquaintance of Washington and Hamilton, with both of whom he contracted
a lasting friendship.