Volume I Part 5 (1/2)
John Marshall was never out of the simple, crude environment of the near frontier for longer than one brief s.p.a.ce of a few months until his twentieth year, when, as lieutenant of the famous Culpeper Minute Men, he marched away to battle. The life he had led during this period strengthened that powerful physical equipment which no strain of his later years seemed to impair; and helped to establish that extraordinary nervous equilibrium which no excitement or contest ever was able to unbalance.[104] This foundation part of his life was even more influential on the forming mind and spiritual outlook of the growing youth.
Thomas Marshall left the little farm of poor land in Westmoreland County not long after the death of his father, John Marshall ”of the forest.”
This ancestral ”estate” had no attractions for the enterprising young man. Indeed, there is reason for thinking that he abandoned it.[105] He lifted his first rooftree in what then were still the wilds of Prince William County.[106] There we find him with his young wife, and there in the red year of British disaster his eldest son was born. The cabin has long since disappeared, and only a rude monument of native stone, erected by college students in recent years, now marks the supposed site of this historic birthplace.
The spot is a placid, slumberous countryside. A small stream runs hard by. In the near distance still stands one of the original cabins of Spotswood's Germans.[107] But the soil is not generous. When Thomas Marshall settled there the little watercourse at the foot of the gentle slope on which his cabin stood doubtless ran bank-full; for in 1754 the forests remained thick and unviolated about his cabin,[108] and fed the waters from the heavy rains in restrained and steady flow to creek and river channels. Amidst these surroundings four children of Thomas Marshall and Mary Keith were born.[109]
The st.u.r.dy young pioneer was not content to remain permanently at Germantown. A few years later found him building another home about thirty miles farther westward, in a valley in the Blue Ridge Mountains.[110] Here the elder son spent the critical s.p.a.ce of life from childhood to his eighteenth year. This little building still stands, occupied by negroes employed on the estate of which it forms a part. The view from it even now is attractive; and in the days of John Marshall's youth must have been very beautiful.
The house is placed on a slight rise of ground on the eastern edge of the valley. Near by, to the south and closer still to the west, two rapid mountain streams sing their quieting, restful song. On all sides the Blue Ridge lifts the modest heights of its purple hills. This valley at that time was called ”The Hollow,” and justly so; for it is but a cup in the lazy and unambitious mountains. When the eldest son first saw this frontier home, great trees thickly covered mountain, hill, and glade, and surrounded the meadow, which the Marshall dwelling overlooked, with a wall of inviting green.[111]
Two days by the very lowest reckoning it must have taken Thomas Marshall to remove his family to this new abode. It is more likely that three or four days were consumed in the toilsome task. The very careful maps of the British survey at that time show only three roads in all immense Prince William County.[112] On one of these the Marshalls might have made their way northward, and on another, which it probably joined, they could have traveled westward. But these trails were primitive and extremely difficult for any kind of vehicle.[113]
Some time before 1765, then, rational imagination can picture a strong, rude wagon drawn by two horses crawling along the stumpy, rock-roughened, and mud-mired road through the dense woods that led in the direction of ”The Hollow.” In the wagon sat a young woman.[114] By her side a st.u.r.dy, red-cheeked boy looked out with alert but quiet interest showing from his brilliant black eyes; and three other children cried their delight or vexation as the hours wore on. In this wagon, too, were piled the little family's household goods; nor did this make a heavy load, for all the Lares and Penates of a frontier settler's family in 1760 would not fill a single room of a moderately furnished household in the present day.
[Ill.u.s.tration: _”The Hollow,” Markham, Virginia_
_John Marshall's boyhood home._]
By the side of the wagon strode a young man dressed in the costume of the frontier. Tall, broad-shouldered, lithe-hipped, erect, he was a very oak of a man. His splendid head was carried with a peculiar dignity; and the grave but kindly command that shone from his face, together with the brooding thoughtfulness and fearless light of his striking eyes, would have singled him out in any a.s.semblage as a man to be respected and trusted. A negro drove the team, and a negro girl walked behind.[115]
So went the Marshalls to their Blue Ridge home. It was a commodious one for those days. Two rooms downstairs, one fifteen feet by sixteen, the other twelve by fourteen, and above two half-story lofts of the same dimensions, const.i.tuted this domestic castle. At one end of the larger downstairs room is a broad and deep stone fireplace, and from this rises a big chimney of the same material, supporting the house on the outside.[116]
Thomas and Mary Marshall's pride and aspiration, as well as their social importance among the settlers, are strongly shown by this frontier dwelling. Unlike those of most of the other backwoodsmen, it was not a log cabin, but a frame house built of whip-sawed uprights and boards.[117] It was perhaps easier to construct a one and a half story house with such materials; for to lift heavy timbers to such a height required great effort.[118] But Thomas Marshall's social, religious, and political status[119] in the newly organized County of Fauquier were the leading influences that induced him to build a house which, for the time and place, was so pretentious. A small stone ”meat house,” a one-room log cabin for his two negroes, and a log stable, completed the establishment.
In such an abode, and amidst such surroundings, the fast-growing family[120] of Thomas Marshall lived for more than twelve years. At first neighbors were few and distant. The nearest settlements were at Warrenton, some twenty-three miles to the eastward, and Winchester, a little farther over the mountains to the west.[121] But, with the horror of Braddock's defeat subdued by the widespread and decisive counter victories, settlers began to come into the country on both sides of the Blue Ridge. These were comparatively small farmers, who, later on, became raisers of wheat, corn, and other cereals, rather than tobacco.
Not until John Marshall had pa.s.sed his early boyhood, however, did these settlers become sufficiently numerous to form even a scattered community, and his early years were enlivened with no child companions.h.i.+p except that of his younger brothers and sisters. For the most part his days were spent, rifle in hand, in the surrounding mountains, and by the pleasant waters that flowed through the valley of his forest home. He helped his mother, of course, with her many labors, did the innumerable ch.o.r.es which the day's work required, and looked after the younger children, as the eldest child always must do. To his brothers and sisters as well as to his parents, he was devoted with a tenderness peculiar to his uncommonly affectionate nature and they, in turn, ”fairly idolized” him.[122]
There were few of those minor conveniences which we to-day consider the most indispensable of the simplest necessities. John Marshall's mother, like most other women of that region and period, seldom had such things as pins; in place of them use was made of thorns plucked from the bushes in the woods.[123] The fare, naturally, was simple and primitive. Game from the forest and fish from the stream were the princ.i.p.al articles of diet. Bear meat was plentiful.[124] Even at that early period, salt pork and salt fish probably formed a part of the family's food, though not to the extent to which such cured provisions were used by those of the back country in later years, when these articles became the staple of the border.[125]
Corn meal was the basis of the family's bread supply. Even this was not always at hand, and corn meal mush was welcomed with a shout by the clamorous brood with which the little cabin soon fairly swarmed. It could not have been possible for the Marshall family in their house on Goose Creek to have the luxury of bread made from wheat flour. The clothing of the family was mostly homespun. ”Store goods,” whether food, fabric, or utensil, could be got to Thomas Marshall's backwoods dwelling only with great difficulty and at prohibitive expense.[126]
But young John Marshall did not know that he was missing anything. On the contrary, he was conscious of a certain wealth not found in cities or among the currents of motion. For ever his eye looked out upon n.o.ble yet quieting, poetic yet placid, surroundings. Always he could have the inspiring views from the neighboring heights, the majestic stillness of the woods, the soothing music of meadow and stream. So uplifted was the boy by the glory of the mountains at daybreak that he always rose while the eastern sky was yet gray.[127] He was thrilled by the splendor of sunset and never tired of watching it until night fell upon the vast and somber forests. For the boy was charged with poetic enthusiasm, it appears, and the reading of poetry became his chief delight in youth and continued to be his solace and comfort throughout his long life;[128]
indeed, Marshall liked to make verses himself, and never outgrew the habit.
There was in him a rich vein of romance; and, later on, this manifested itself by his pa.s.sion for the great creations of fiction. Throughout his days he would turn to the works of favorite novelists for relaxation and renewal.[129]
The mental and spiritual effects of his surroundings on the forming mind and unfolding soul of this young American must have been as lasting and profound as were the physical effects on his body.[130] His environment and his normal, wholesome daily activities could not have failed to do its work in building the character of the growing boy. These and his sound, steady, and uncommonly strong parentage must, perforce, have helped to give him that courage for action, that balanced vision for judgment, and that serene outlook on life and its problems, which were so notable and distinguished in his mature and rugged manhood.
Lucky for John Marshall and this country that he was not city born and bred; lucky that not even the small social activities of a country town drained away a single ohm of his nervous energy or obscured with lesser pictures the large panorama which accustomed his developing intelligence to look upon big and simple things in a big and simple way.
There were then no public schools in that frontier[131] region, and young Marshall went untaught save for the instruction his parents gave him. For this task his father was unusually well equipped, though not by any formal schooling. All accounts agree that Thomas Marshall, while not a man of any learning, had contrived to acquire a useful though limited education, which went much further with a man of his well-ordered mind and determined will than a university training could go with a man of looser fiber and cast in smaller mould. The father was careful, painstaking, and persistent in imparting to his children and particularly to John all the education he himself could acquire.
Between Thomas Marshall and his eldest son a mutual sympathy, respect, and admiration existed, as uncommon as it was wholesome and beneficial.
”My father,” often said John Marshall, ”was a far abler man than any of his sons.”[132] In ”his private and familiar conversations with me,”
says Justice Story, ”when there was no other listener ... he never named his father ... without dwelling on his character with a fond and winning enthusiasm ... he broke out with a spontaneous eloquence ... upon his virtues and talents.”[133] Justice Story wrote a sketch of Marshall for the ”National Portrait Gallery,” in which Thomas Marshall is highly praised. In acknowledging the receipt of the magazine, Marshall wrote: ”I am particularly gratified by the terms in which you speak of my father. If any contemporary, who knew him in the prime of manhood, survived, he would confirm all you say.”[134]
So whether at home with his mother or on surveying trips with his father, the boy continually was under the influence and direction of hardy, clear-minded, unusual parents. Their lofty and simple ideals, their rational thinking, their unbending uprightness, their religious convictions--these were the intellectual companions of John Marshall's childhood and youth. While too much credit has not been given Thomas Marshall for the training of the eldest son, far too little has been bestowed on Mary Randolph Keith, who was, in all things, the equal of her husband.
Although, as we have seen, many books were brought into eastern Virginia by the rich planters, it was difficult for the dwellers on the frontier to secure any reading material. Most books had to be imported, were very expensive, and, in the back country, there were no local sources of supply where they could be purchased. Also, the frontier settlers had neither the leisure nor, it appears, the desire for reading[135] that distinguished the wealthy landlords of the older parts of the colony.[136] Thomas Marshall, however, was an exception to his cla.s.s in his eagerness for the knowledge to be gathered from books and in his determination that his children should have those advantages which reading gives.