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

If I shall be in the minority, I shall have those painful sensations which arise from a conviction of _being overpowered in a good cause_. Yet I will be a peaceable citizen. (He...

It was upon a night of gentle gayety in the late winter or early spring of 1779-80 that Captain John Marshall first met Mary Ambler. When he went back to Virginia to take charge...

In 1783, a small wooden building stood among the two or three hundred little frame houses[614] which, scattered irregularly from the river to the top of the hill, made up the to...

More, much more, went forward in the Virginia struggle than appeared upon the surface. Noble as was the epochal debate in Virginia's Constitutional Convention, it was not so inf...

Now appeared the practical political managers from other States. From Saturday afternoon until Monday morning there was great activity in both camps. The politicians of each sid...

Gaunt and bitter swept down the winter of 1777. But the season brought no lean months to the soldiers of King George, no aloes to the Royal officers in fat and snug Philadelphia...

The fighting men of the up counties lost not a minute's time. Blood had been shed in New England; blood, they knew, must soon flow in Virginia. At once Culpeper, Orange, and Fau...

"Lean to the right," shouted the driver of a lumbering coach to his passengers; and all the jostled and bethumped travelers crowded to that side of the clumsy vehicle. "Left," r...

On Sunday, June 1, 1788, the dust lay deep in the streets of the little town of Richmond. Multitudes of horses were tethered here and there or stabled as best the Virginia Capit...

John Marshall was never out of the simple, crude environment of the near frontier for longer than one brief space of a few months until his twentieth year, when, as lieutenant o...

"The British are beaten! The British are beaten!" From cabin to cabin, from settlement to settlement crept, through the slow distances, this report of terror. The astounding new...

There are subjects to which the capacities of the bulk of mankind are unequal and on which they must and will be governed by those with whom they happen to have acquaintance and...

The work of John Marshall has been of supreme importance in the development of the American Nation, and its influence grows as time passes. Less is known of Marshall, however, t...

[477] This prevalent idea is well stated in one of Mrs. Carrington's unpublished letters. "What sacrifice would not an American, or Virginian (even) at the earliest age have mad...