The Life of John Marshall Volume I Part 16

On December 30, 1780, Jefferson received positive news of Arnold's invasion.[469] He had been warned by Was.h.i.+ngton that just this event was likely to occur;[470] but he had not summoned to the colors a single man of the militia, probably fifty thousand of whom were available,[471] nor taken any measures to prepare for it. Not until the hostile vessels entered Virginia waters to disembark the invading force was General Nelson sent to watch the enemy and call out the local militia of the adjacent vicinity; and not until news came that the British were on their way up the James River did the Governor summon the militia of the neighboring counties. The Royal soldiers reached Richmond on January 4, 1781, without opposition; there Arnold burned some military factories and munitions, and returned down the river. John Marshall hastened to the point of danger, and was one of the small American force that ambushed the British some distance below Westover, but that scattered in panic at the first fire of the invaders.[472]

Jefferson's conduct at this time and especially during the subsequent invasion of the State has given an unhappy and undeserved coloring to his personal character.[473] It all but led to his impeachment by the Virginia Legislature;[474] and to this day his biographers are needlessly explanatory and apologetic in regard to this phase of his career. These incidents confirmed the unfortunate impressions of Jefferson which Marshall and nearly all the Virginia officers and soldiers had formed at Valley Forge. Very few of them afterward changed their unfavorable opinion.[475]

It was his experience, then, on the march, in camp, and on the battlefield, that taught John Marshall the primary lesson of the necessity of efficient government. Also his military life developed his real temperament, which was essentially conservative. He had gone into the army, as he himself declared, with "wild and enthusiastic notions,"[476] unlike those of the true Marshall. It did not occur to this fighting Virginia youth when, responding to Patrick Henry's call, he marched southward under the coiled-rattlesnake flag inscribed "Don't tread on me," that anything was needed except to drive the oppressor into the sea. A glorious, vague "liberty" would do the rest, thought the stripling backwoods "s.h.i.+rtman," as indeed almost all of those who favored the patriot cause seemed to think.[477]

And when in blue and buff, as an officer of the Continental army, he joined Was.h.i.+ngton, the boyish Virginia lieutenant was still a frontier individualist, though of the moderate type. But four years of fighting and suffering showed him that, without a strong and practical government, democracy cannot solve its giant problems and orderly liberty cannot live. The ramshackle Revolutionary establishment was, he found, no government at all. Hundreds of instances of its incredible dissensions and criminal inefficiency faced him throughout these four terrible years; and Marshall has recorded many of them.

Not only did each State do as it pleased, as we have seen, but these pompous sovereignties actually interfered in direct and fatal fas.h.i.+on with the Continental army itself. For example, when the soldiers of the line from one State happened to be in another State, the civil power of the latter often "attempted to interfere and to discharge them, notwithstanding the fact that they were not even citizens of that State."[478] The mutiny of underfed, poorly clothed, unpaid troops, even in the State lines; the yielding of Congress to their demands, which, though just in themselves, it was perilous to grant on compulsion;[479]

the discontent of the people caused by the forcible State seizure of supplies,--a seizure which a strong National Government could not have surpa.s.sed in harshness,[480]--were still other ill.u.s.trations of the absolute need of an efficient central power. A few "judicious patriots"

did urge the strengthening of National authority, but, writes Marshall, they were helpless to "correct that fatal disposition of power [by States and Congress] which had been made by enthusiasm uninstructed by experience."[481] Time and again Marshall describes the utter absence of civil and military correlations and the fearful results he had felt and witnessed while a Revolutionary officer.

Thus it is that, in his service as a soldier in the War for our Independence, we find the fountain-head of John Marshall's National thinking. And every succeeding circ.u.mstance of his swift-moving and dramatic life made plainer and clearer the lesson taught him on red battlefield and in fetid camp. No one can really understand Marshall's part in the building of the American Nation without going back to these sources. For, like all living things, Marshall's constructive opinions were not made; they grew. They were not the exclusive result of reasoning; they were the fruit of an intense and vivid human experience working upon a mind and character naturally cautious, constructive, and inclined to order and authority.

FOOTNOTES:

[355] It appears that, throughout the Revolution, Pennsylvania's metropolis was noted for its luxury. An American soldier wrote in 1779: "Philada. may answer very well for a man with his pockets well lined, whose pursuit is idleness and dissipation. But to us who are not in the first predicament, and who are not upon the latter errand, it is intolerable.... A morning visit, a dinner at 5 o'clock--Tea at 8 or 9--supper and up all night is the round _die in diem_.... We have advanced as far in luxury in the third year of our Indepeny. as the old musty Republics of Greece and Rome did in twice as many hundreds."

(Tilghman to McHenry, Jan. 25, 1799; Steiner, 25.)

[356] Trevelyan, iv, 279.

[357] _Ib._, 280.

[358] _Ib._

[359] The influence of Margaret s.h.i.+ppen in causing Arnold's treason is now questioned by some. (See Avery, vi, 243-49.)

[360] Trevelyan, iv, 281-82.

[361] _Ib._, 278-80.

[362] _Ib._, 268-69; also Marshall, i, 215. The German countrymen, however, were loyal to the patriot cause. The Moravians at Bethlehem, though their religion forbade them from bearing arms, in another way served as effectually as Was.h.i.+ngton's soldiers. (See Trevelyan, iv, 298-99.)

[363] Trevelyan, iv, 290.

[364] The huts were fourteen by sixteen feet, and twelve soldiers occupied each hut. (Sparks, 245.)

[365] "The men were literally naked [Feb. 1] some of them in the fullest extent of the word." (Von Steuben, as quoted in Kapp, 118.)

[366] _Hist. Mag._, v, 170.

[367] Was.h.i.+ngton to President of Congress, Dec. 23, 1777; _Writings_: Ford, vi, 260.

[368] Marshall, i, 213.

[369] _Ib._, 215.

[370] Was.h.i.+ngton to President of Congress, Dec. 23, 1777; _Writings_: Ford, vi, 258.

[371] "The poor soldiers were half naked, and had been half starved, having been compelled, for weeks, to subsist on simple flour alone and this too in a land almost literally flowing with milk and honey."

(Watson's description after visiting the camp, Watson, 63.)

[372] Marshall (1st ed.), iii, 341.

[373] _Hist. Mag._, v, 131.

[374] _Ib._

[375] _Ib._, 132.

[376] _Hist. Mag._, v, 132-33.

[377] _Hist. Mag._, v, 131-32.

[378] Trevelyan, iv, 297.

[379] _Ib._ For putrid condition of the camp in March and April, 1778, see Weedon, 254-55 and 288-89.

[380] Trevelyan, iv, 298.

[381] _Ib._

[382] Personal narrative; Shreve, _Mag. Amer. Hist._, Sept., 1897, 568.

[383] Trevelyan, iv, 298.

[384] Was.h.i.+ngton to President of Congress, Dec. 22, 1777; _Writings_: Ford, vi, 253.

[385] Was.h.i.+ngton to President of Congress, Dec. 23, 1777; _ib._, 257.

[386] General Varnum to General Greene, Feb. 12, 1778, Was.h.i.+ngton MSS., Lib. Cong., no. 21. No wonder the desertions were so great. It was not only starvation and death but the hunger-crazed soldiers "had daily temptations thrown out to them of the most alluring nature," by the British and Loyalists. (Chastellux, translator's note to 51.)

[387] Marshall, i, 227.

[388] _Ib._

[389] _Hist. Mag._, v, 132. This is, probably, an exaggeration. The British were extremely harsh, however, as is proved by the undenied testimony of eye-witnesses and admittedly authentic doc.u.mentary evidence. For their treatment of American prisoners see Dandridge: _American Prisoners of the Revolution_, a trustworthy compilation of sources. For other outrages see Clark's Diary, _Proc._, N.J. Hist. Soc., vii, 96; Moore's _Diary_, ii, 183. For the Griswold affair see Niles: _Principles and Acts of the Revolution_, 143-44. For transportation of captured Americans to Africa and Asia see Franklin's letter to Lord Stormont, April 2, 1777; Franklin's _Writings_: Smyth, vii, 36-38; also Moore's _Diary_, i, 476. For the murder of Jenny M'Crea see Marshall, i, 200, note 9, Appendix, 25; and Moore's _Diary_, i, 476; see also Miner: _History of Wyoming_, 222-36; and British officer's letter to Countess of Ossory, Sept. 1, 1777; _Pa. Mag. Hist. and Biog._, i, footnote to 289; and Jefferson to Governor of Detroit, July 22, 1779; _Cal. Va. St.

Prs._, i, 321. For general statement see Marshall (1st ed.), iii, 59.

These are but a few of the many similar sources that might be cited.

[390] Trevelyan, iv, 299.

[391] Marshall, i, 227.

[392] John Marshall's father was also at Valley Forge during the first weeks of the encampment and was often Field Officer of the Day.

(Weedon.) About the middle of January he left for Virginia to take command of the newly raised State Artillery Regiment. (Memorial of Thomas Marshall; _supra._) John Marshall's oldest brother, Thomas Marshall, Jr., seventeen years of age, was commissioned captain in a Virginia State Regiment at this time. (Heitman, 285.) Thus all the male members of the Marshall family, old enough to bear arms, were officers in the War of the Revolution. This important fact demonstrates the careful military training given his sons by Thomas Marshall before 1775--a period when comparatively few believed that war was probable.

[393] This was the common lot; Was.h.i.+ngton told Congress that, of the thousands of his men at Valley Forge, "few men have more than one s.h.i.+rt, many only the moiety of one and some none at all." (Was.h.i.+ngton to President of Congress, Dec. 23, 1777; _Writings_: Ford, vi, 260.)