The Life of John Marshall Volume I Part 30

[726] Journal, H.D., 52.

[727] In order to group subjects such as British debts, extradition, and so forth, it is, unfortunately, essential to bring widely separated dates under one head.

[728] Journal, H.D. (1st Sess., 1784), 11-12.

[729] Journal, H.D. (1st Sess., 1784), 37.

[730] _Ib._, 81; also, Hening, xi, 388.

[731] "The white people who inhabited the frontier, from the constant state of warfare in which they lived with the Indians, had imbibed much of their character; and learned to delight so highly in scenes of crafty, b.l.o.o.d.y, and desperate conflict, that they as often gave as they received the provocation to hostilities. Hunting, which was their occupation, became dull and tiresome, unless diversified occasionally by the more animated and piquant amus.e.m.e.nt of an Indian skirmish." (Wirt, 257.)

[732] Madison to Jefferson, Jan. 9, 1785; _Writings_: Hunt, ii, 110-11.

[733] Jay to Jefferson, Dec. 14, 1786; _Jay_: Johnston, iii, 224.

[734] Hening, xi, 471; and Henry, ii, 217.

[735] Madison to Jefferson, Jan. 9, 1785; _Writings_: Hunt, ii. 111.

[736] Article VIII, Const.i.tution of Virginia, 1776.

[737] Madison to Jefferson, Jan. 9, 1785; _Writings_: Hunt, ii, 111.

[738] _Ib._

[739] Journal, H.D. (2d Sess., 1784), 34-41.

[740] "The measure was warmly patronized by Mr. Henry." (Madison to Jefferson, Jan. 9, 1785; _Writings_: Hunt, ii, 111.) The reason of Henry's support of this extradition bill was not its Nationalist spirit, but his friends.h.i.+p for the Indians and his pet plan to insure peace between the white man and the red and to produce a better race of human beings; all of which Henry thought could be done by intermarriages between the whites and the Indians. He presented this scheme to the House at this same session and actually carried it by the "irresistible earnestness and eloquence" with which he supported it. (Wirt, 258.)

The bill provided that every white man who married an Indian woman should be paid ten pounds and five pounds more for each child born of such marriage; and that if any white woman marry an Indian they should be ent.i.tled to ten pounds with which the County Court should buy live stock for them; that once each year the Indian husband to this white woman should be ent.i.tled to three pounds with which the County Court should buy clothes for him; that every child born of this Indian man and white woman should be educated by the State between the age of ten and twenty-one years, etc., etc. (_Ib._)

This amazing bill actually pa.s.sed the House on its first and second reading and there seems to be no doubt that it would have become a law had not Henry at that time been elected Governor, which took him "_out of the way_," to use Madison's curt phrase. John Marshall favored this bill.

[741] Journal, H.D. (2d Sess., 1784), 41.

[742] _Ib._

[743] See note 5, p. 239, _ante_.

[744] Marshall to Monroe, Dec., 1784; MS. Monroe Papers, Lib. Cong.; also partly quoted in Henry, ii, 219.

[745] See _infra_, chap. IX.

[746] One of the curious popular errors concerning our public men is that which pictures Was.h.i.+ngton as a calm person. On the contrary, he was hot-tempered and, at times, violent in speech and action. It was with the greatest difficulty that he trained himself to an appearance of calmness and reserve.

[747] Story, in Dillon, iii, 338, 343.

[748] Journal, H.D. (Oct. Sess., 1787), 7.

[749] _Ib._, 11, 15.

[750] _Pennsylvania Packet_, Nov. 10, 1787: Pa. Hist. Soc.

[751] _Infra_, chaps. XI and XII.

[752] _Pennsylvania Packet_, Nov. 10, 1787; also see in Rowland, ii, 176.

[753] _Infra_, chaps. IX, XII; and also Was.h.i.+ngton to Lafayette, Feb. 7, 1788; _Writings_: Ford, xi, 220.

[754] _Pennsylvania Packet_, Nov. 10, 1787; Pa. Hist. Soc.

[755] Journal, H.D. (Oct. Sess., 1787), 15.

[756] _Ib._

[757] _Ib._, 95.

[758] _Ib._ (Dec., 1787), 143, 177.

[759] Hening, xii, 462-63.

CHAPTER VII

LIFE OF THE PEOPLE: COMMUNITY ISOLATION

An infant people, spreading themselves through a wilderness occupied only by savages and wild beasts. (Marshall.)

Of the affairs of Georgia, I know as little as of those of Kamskatska. (James Madison, 1786.)

"Lean to the right," shouted the driver of a lumbering coach to his pa.s.sengers; and all the jostled and bethumped travelers crowded to that side of the clumsy vehicle. "Left," roared the coachman a little later, and his fares threw themselves to the opposite side. The ruts and gullies, now on one side and now on the other, of the highway were so deep that only by acting as a s.h.i.+fting ballast could the voyagers maintain the stage's center of gravity and keep it from an upset.[760]

This pa.s.sageway through the forest, called a "road," was the thoroughfare between Philadelphia and Baltimore and a part of the trunk line of communication which connected the little cities of that period.

If the "road" became so bad that the coach could not be pulled through the sloughs of mud, a new way was opened in the forest; so that, in some places, there were a dozen of such cuttings all leading to the same spot and all full of stumps, rocks, and trees.[761]

The pa.s.sengers often had to abandon this four-wheeled contraption altogether and walk in the mud; and were now and again called upon to put their shoulders to the wheels of the stage when the horses, unaided, were unable to rescue it.[762] Sometimes the combined efforts of horses and men could not bring the conveyance out of the mire and it would have to be left all night in the bog until more help could be secured.[763]

Such was a main traveled road at the close of the Revolutionary War and for a long time after the Const.i.tution was adopted.

The difficulty and danger of communication thus ill.u.s.trated had a direct and vital bearing upon the politics and statesmans.h.i.+p of the times. The conditions of travel were an index to the state of the country which we are now to examine. Without such a survey we shall find ourselves floating aimlessly among the clouds of fancy instead of treading, with sure foothold, the solid ground of fact. At this point, more perhaps than at any other of our history, a definite, accurate, and comprehensive inventory of conditions is essential. For not only is this phase of American development more obscure than any other, but the want of light upon it has led to vague consideration and sometimes to erroneous conclusions.

We are about to witness the fierce and dramatic struggle from which emerged the feeble beginnings of a Nation that, even to-day, is still in the making; to behold the welter of plan and counterplot, of scheming and violence, of deal and trade, which finally resulted in the formal acceptance of the Const.i.tution with a certainty that it would be modified, and, to some extent, mutilated, by later amendments. We are to listen to those "debates" which, alone, are supposed to have secured ratification, but which had no more, and indeed perhaps less effect than the familiar devices of "practical politics" in bringing about the adoption of our fundamental law.

Since the victory at Yorktown a serious alteration had taken place in the views of many who had fought hardest for Independence and popular government. These men were as strong as ever for the building of a separate and distinct National ent.i.ty; but they no longer believed in the wisdom or virtue of democracy without extensive restrictions. They had come to think that, at the very best, the crude ore of popular judgment could be made to enrich sound counsels only when pa.s.sed through many screens that would rid it of the crudities of pa.s.sion, whimsicality, interest, ignorance, and dishonesty which, they believed, inhered in it. Such men esteemed less and less a people's government and valued more and more a good government. And the idea grew that this meant a government the princ.i.p.al purpose of which was to enforce order, facilitate business, and safeguard property.

During his early years in the Legislature, as has appeared, Marshall's opinions were changing. Was.h.i.+ngton, as we shall see, soon after peace was declared, lost much of his faith in the people; Madison arrived at the opinion that the majority were unequal to the weightier tasks of popular rule; and Marshall also finally came to entertain the melancholy fear that the people were not capable of self-government. Indeed, almost all of the foremost men of the period now under review were brought to doubt the good sense or sound heart of the mult.i.tude. The fires of Jefferson's faith still burned, and, indeed, burned more brightly; for that great reformer was in France and neither experienced nor witnessed any of those popular phenomena which fell like a drenching rain upon the enthusiasm of American statesmen at home for democratic government.