The Life of John Marshall Volume I Part 7

[122] See Mrs. Carrington to her sister Nancy, _infra_, chap. V.

[123] John Marshall, when at the height of his career, liked to talk of these times. "He ever recurred with fondness to that primitive mode of life, when he partook with a keen relish of balm tea and mush; and when the females used thorns for pins." (Howe, 263, and see _Hist. Mag._, iii, 166.)

Most of the settlers on the frontier and near frontier did not use forks or tablecloths. Was.h.i.+ngton found this condition in the house of a Justice of the Peace. "When we came to supper there was neither a Cloth upon ye Table nor a knife to eat with; but as good luck would have it, we had knives of our [own]." (_Writings_: Ford, i, 4.)

Chastellux testifies that, thirty years later, the frontier settlers were forced to make almost everything they used. Thus, as population increased, necessity developed men of many trades and the little communities became self-supporting. (Chastellux, 226-27.)

[124] More than a generation after Thomas Marshall moved to "The Hollow"

in the Blue Ridge large quant.i.ties of bear and beaver skins were brought from the Valley into Staunton, not many miles away, just over the Ridge.

(La Rochefoucauld, iii, 179-80.) The product of the Blue Ridge itself was sent to Fredericksburg and Alexandria. (See Crevecoeur, 63-65.) Thirty years earlier (1733) Colonel Byrd records that "Bears, Wolves, and Panthers" roamed about the site of Richmond; that deer were plentiful and rattlesnakes considered a delicacy. (Byrd's _Writings_: Ba.s.sett, 293, 318-19.)

[125] See _infra_, chap. VII.

[126] Even forty years later, all "store" merchandise could be had in this region only by hauling it from Richmond, Fredericksburg, or Alexandria. Transportation from the latter place to Winchester cost two dollars and a half per hundredweight. In 1797, "store" goods of all kinds cost, in the Blue Ridge, thirty per cent more than in Philadelphia. (La Rochefoucauld, iii, 203.) From Philadelphia the cost was four to five dollars per hundredweight. While there appear to have been country stores at Staunton and Winchester, over the mountains (Chalkley's _Augusta County (Va.) Records_), the cost of freight to those places was prohibitive of anything but the most absolute necessities even ten years after the Const.i.tution was adopted.

[127] _Hist. Mag._, iii, 166; Howe, 263; also, Story, in Dillon, iii, 334.

[128] Story, in Dillon, iii, 331-32.

[129] _Ib._

[130] See Binney, in Dillon, iii, 285.

[131] "Fauquier was then a frontier county ... far in advance of the ordinary reach of compact population." (Story, in Dillon, iii, 331; also see _New York Review_ (1838), iii, 333.) Even a generation later (1797), La Rochefoucauld, writing from personal investigation, says (iii, 227-28): "There is no state so entirely dest.i.tute of all means of public education as Virginia."

[132] See Binney, in Dillon, iii, 285.

[133] Story, in Dillon, iii, 330.

[134] Marshall to Story, July 31, 1833; Story, ii, 150.

[135] See _infra_, chaps. VII and VIII.

[136] "A taste for reading is more prevalent [in Virginia] among the gentlemen of the first cla.s.s than in any other part of America; but the common people are, perhaps, more ignorant than elsewhere." (La Rochefoucauld, iii, 232.) Other earlier and later travelers confirm this statement of this careful French observer.

[137] Story thinks that Thomas Marshall, at this time, owned Milton, Shakespeare, and Dryden. (Dillon, iii, 331.) This is possible. Twenty years later, Chastellux found Milton, Addison, and Richardson in the parlor of a New Jersey inn; but this was in the comparatively thickly settled country adjacent to Philadelphia. (Chastellux, 159.)

[138] Story, in Dillon, iii, 331, and Binney, in _ib._, 283; _Hist.

Mag._, iii, 166.

[139] Lang: _History of English Literature_, 384; and see Gosse: _History of Eighteenth Century Literature_, 131; also, Traill: _Social England_, V, 72; Stephen: _Alexander Pope_, 62; and see Cabot to Hamilton, Nov. 29, 1800; _Cabot_: Lodge, 299.

[140] Binney, in Dillon, iii, 283-84; Was.h.i.+ngton's _Diary_; MS., Lib.

Cong.

[141] Irving, i, 45; and Lodge: _Was.h.i.+ngton_, i, 59. Many years later when he became rich, Was.h.i.+ngton acquired a good library, part of which is now in the Boston Athenaeum. But as a young and moneyless surveyor he had no books of his own and his "book" education was limited and shallow.

[142] Binney, in Dillion, iii, 281-84.

[143] Irving, i, 37, 45; and Sparks, 10.

[144] Irving, i, 27.

[145] Irving, i, 46.

[146] As will appear, the Fairfax estate is closely interwoven into John Marshall's career. (See vol. II of this work.)

[147] For description of Greenway Court see Pecquet du Bellet, ii, 175.

[148] Was.h.i.+ngton's _Writings_: Ford, i, footnote to 329.

[149] For a clear but laudatory account of Lord Fairfax see Appendix No.

4 to Burnaby, 197-213. But Fairfax could be hard enough on those who opposed him, as witness his treatment of Joist Hite. (See _infra_, chap.

V.)

[150] When the Revolution came, however, Fairfax was heartily British.

The objection which the colony made to the t.i.tle to his estate doubtless influenced him.

[151] Fairfax was a fair example of the moderate, as distinguished from the radical or the reactionary. He was against both irresponsible autocracy and unrestrained democracy. In short, he was what would now be termed a liberal conservative (although, of course, such a phrase, descriptive of that demarcation, did not then exist). Much attention should be given to this unique man in tracing to their ultimate sources the origins of John Marshall's economic, political, and social convictions.

[152] Sparks, 11; and Irving, i, 33.

[153] For Fairfax's influence on Was.h.i.+ngton see Irving, i, 45; and in general, for fair secondary accounts of Fairfax, see _ib._, 31-46; and Sparks, 10-11.

[154] Senator Humphrey Marshall says that Thomas Marshall "emulated"

Was.h.i.+ngton. (Humphrey Marshall, i, 345.)

[155] See _infra_.

[156] Bond of Thomas Marshall as Sheriff, Oct. 26, 1767; Records of Fauquier County (Va.), Deed Book, iii, 70. Approval of bond by County Court; Minute Book (from 1764 to 1768), 322. Marshall's bond was "to his Majesty, George III," to secure payment to the British revenue officers of all money collected by Marshall for the Crown. (Records of Fauquier County (Va.), Deed Book, iii, 71.)

[157] Bruce: _Inst._, i, 597, 600; also, ii, 408, 570-74.

[158] Records of Fauquier County (Va.), Deed Book, ii, 42. There is a curious record of a lease from Lord Fairfax in 1768 to John Marshall for his life and "the natural lives of Mary his wife and Thomas Marshall his son and every of them longest living." (Records of Fauquier County (Va.), Deed Book, iii, 230.) John Marshall was then only thirteen years old. The lease probably was to Thomas Marshall, the clerk of Lord Fairfax having confused the names of father and son.

[159] Meade, ii, 218.

[160] In 1773 three deeds for an aggregate of two hundred and twenty acres "for a glebe" were recorded in Fauquier County to "Thos. Marshall & Others, Gentlemen, & Vestrymen of Leeds Parish." (Records of Fauquier County (Va.), Deed Book, V, 401, 403, 422.)

[161] The vestrymen were "the foremost men ... in the parish ... whether from the point of view of intelligence, wealth or social position."

(Bruce: _Inst._, i, 62; and see Meade, i, 191.)

[162] Bruce: _Inst._, i, 62-93; and see Eckenrode: _S.C. & S._, 13.

[163] Bruce: _Inst._, i, 131 _et seq._

[164] Meade, ii, 219. Bishop Meade here makes a slight error. He says that Mr. Thompson "lived at first in the family of Colonel Thomas Marshall, of Oak Hill." Thomas Marshall did not become a colonel until ten years afterward. (Heitman, 285.) And he did not move to Oak Hill until 1773, six years later. (Paxton, 20.)