Volume I Part 9 (1/2)

[211] Henry, i, 255-61; Wirt, 117-19. Except Henry's speech itself, Wirt's summary of the arguments of the conservatives is much the best account of the opposition to Henry's fateful resolutions.

[212] Wirt, 142; Henry, i, 261-66.

[213] _Ib._, 271; and Wirt, 143.

[214] In the absence of the positive proof afforded by a record of the ”ayes” and ”noes,” Jefferson's testimony, Was.h.i.+ngton's vote, Thomas Marshall's tribute to Henry, and above all, the sentiment of the frontier county he represented, are conclusive testimony as to Thomas Marshall's stand in this all-important legislative battle which was the precursor of the iron conflict soon to come in which he bore so heroic a part. (See Humphrey Marshall, i, 344.)

[215] Was.h.i.+ngton was appointed a member of the committee provided for in Henry's second resolution. (Henry, i, 271.)

[216] Thomas Marshall had been ensign, lieutenant, and captain in the militia, had taken part in the Indian wars, and was a trained soldier.

(Crozier: _Virginia Colonial Militia_, 96.)

Chapter III

A SOLDIER OF THE REVOLUTION

Our liberties are at stake. It is time to brighten our fire-arms and learn to use them in the field. (Marshall to Culpeper Minute Men, 1775.)

Our sick naked, and well naked, our unfortunate men in captivity naked. (Was.h.i.+ngton, 1777.)

I have seen a regiment consisting of _thirty men_ and a company of _one corporal_. (Von Steuben, 1778.)

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 Fauquier Counties arranged to raise a regiment of minute men with Lawrence Taliaferro of Orange as colonel, Edward Stevens of Culpeper as lieutenant, Thomas Marshall of Fauquier as major.[217] Out over the countryside went the word; and from mountain cabins and huts in forest clearings, from log abodes in secluded valleys and on primitive farms, the fighting yeomanry of northern Virginia came forth in answer.

In the years between Patrick Henry's two epochal appeals in 1765 and 1775, all Virginia, but particularly the back country, had been getting ready to make answer in terms of rifle and lead. ”No man should scruple, or hesitate a moment, to use arms,” wrote Was.h.i.+ngton in 1769.[218]

Thomas Marshall's minister, Mr. Thompson, preached militant preparation; Parliament had deprived the colonists of ”their just and legal rights” by acts which were ”destructive of their liberties,”

thundered the parson; it had ”overawed the inhabitants by British troops,” loaded ”great hards.h.i.+ps” upon the people, and ”reduced the poor to great want.” The preacher exhorted his flock ”as men and Christians”

to help ”supply the country with arms and ammunition,” and referred his hearers, for specific information, to ”the committee of this county,”[219] whose head undoubtedly was their Burgess and leading vestryman of the parish, Thomas Marshall.

When news of Concord and Lexington finally trickled through to upper Virginia, it found the men of her hills and mountains in grim readiness; and when, soon after, Henry's flaming words came to them, they were ready and eager to make those words good with their lives. John Marshall, of course, was one of the band of youths who had agreed to make up a company if trouble came. In May, 1775, these young frontiersmen were called together. Their captain did not come, and Marshall was appointed lieutenant, ”instead of a better,” as he modestly told his comrades. But, for his years, ”a better” could not have been found; since 1773 John Marshall had received careful military instruction from his father.[220] Indeed, during the two years before his company took the field in actual warfare, the youth had devoted most of his time to preparing himself, by study and practice, for military service.[221] So these embryo warriors gathered about their leader to be told what to do.[222]

Here we get the first glimpse of John Marshall's power over men. ”He had come,” the young officer informed his comrades of the backwoods, ”to meet them as fellow soldiers, who were likely to be called on to defend their country.” Their own ”rights and liberties” were at stake. Their brothers in New England had fought and beaten the British; now ”it is time to brighten our fire-arms and learn to use them in the field.” He would show them how to do this. So the boys fell into line, and John Marshall, bringing his own gun to his shoulder, instructed them in the manual of arms. He first gave the words of command slowly and distinctly and then ill.u.s.trated the movements with his own rifle so that every man of the company might clearly understand what each order meant and how to execute it. He then put the company through the drill.[223]

On this muster field we learn how John Marshall looked in his nineteenth year. He was very tall, six feet at least, slender and erect. His complexion was dark, with a faint tinge of red. His face was round--”nearly a circle.” His forehead was straight and low, and thick, strong, ”raven black” hair covered his head. Intense eyes ”dark to blackness,”[224] of compelling power, pierced the beholder while they rea.s.sured him by the good nature which shone from them. ”He wore a purple or pale blue hunting-s.h.i.+rt, and trousers of the same material fringed with white.”[225]

At this point, too, we first learn of his bent for oratory. What his father told him about the debates in the House of Burgesses, the speeches of Wythe and Lee and Randolph, and above all, Patrick Henry; what he had dreamed and perhaps practiced in the silent forests and vacant fields, here now bore public fruit. When he thought that he had drilled his company enough for the time being, Marshall told them to fall out, and, if they wished to hear more about the war, to gather around him and he would make them a speech.[226] And make them a speech he did. Before his men the youthful lieutenant stood, in his hand his ”round black hat mounted with a buck's tail for a c.o.c.kade,” and spoke to that company of country boys of the justice of their cause and of those larger things in life for which all true men are glad to die.

”For something like an hour” he spoke, his round face glowing, the dormant lightning of his eye for the time unloosed. Lively words they were, we may be sure; for John Marshall was as ardent a patriot as the colonies could produce. He had learned the elementary truths of liberty in the school of the frontier; his soul was on fire with the burning words of Henry; and he poured forth his immature eloquence not to a company of peaceful theorists, but to a group of youths ready for the field. Its premises were freedom and independence; its conclusion was action. It was a battle speech.[227] This fact is very important to an understanding of John Marshall's character, and indeed of the blood that flowed in his veins. For, as we shall find, he was always on the firing line; the Marshall blood was fighting blood.[228]

But it was not all labor of drill and toil of discipline, heroics of patriotic speech, or solemn preachments about duty, for the youths of John Marshall's company. If he was the most earnest, he was also, it seems, the jolliest person in the whole band; and this deserves especial note, for his humor was a quality which served not only the young soldier himself, but the cause for which he fought almost as well as his valor itself, in the martial years into which he was entering. Indeed this capacity for leavening the dough of serious purpose with the yeast of humor and diversion made John Marshall's entire personal life wholesome and nutritious. Jokes and fun were a part of him, as we shall see, whether in the army, at the bar, or on the bench.

So when, the business of the day disposed of, Lieutenant Marshall challenged his sure-eyed, strong-limbed, swift-footed companions to a game of quoits, or to run a race, or to jump a pole, we find him practicing that sport and comrades.h.i.+p which, luckily for himself and his country, he never outgrew. Pitch quoits, then, these would-be soldiers did, and coursed their races, and vaulted high in their running jumps.[229] Faster than any of them could their commander run, with his long legs out-going and his powerful lungs out-winding the best of them.

He could jump higher, too, than anybody else; and from this accomplishment he got his soldier nickname ”Silver Heels” in Was.h.i.+ngton's army a year later.[230]

The final muster of the Culpeper Minute Men was in ”Major Clayton's old field” hard by the county seat[231] on September 1, 1775.[232] They were clad in the uniform of the frontier, which indeed was little different from their daily apparel. Fringed trousers often of deerskins, ”strong brown linen hunting-s.h.i.+rts dyed with leaves, ... buck-tails in each hat, and a leather belt about the shoulders, with tomahawk and scalping-knife” made up their warlike costume.[233] By some preconcert,--an order perhaps from one of the three superior officers who had poetic as well as fighting blood in him,--the mothers and wives of this wilderness soldiery had worked on the breast of each hunting-s.h.i.+rt in large white letters the words ”Liberty or Death,”[234]

with which Patrick Henry had trumpeted the purpose of hitherto inarticulate America.