Volume II Part 59 (2/2)
Who should be Secretary of State for the remaining fateful four weeks?
Adams could think of no one but Marshall, who still held that office although he had been appointed, confirmed, and commissioned as Chief Justice. Therefore, wrote Adams, ”the circ.u.mstances of the times ...
render it necessary that I should request and authorize you, as I do by this letter, to continue to discharge all the duties of Secretary of State until ulterior arrangements can be made.”[1327]
Thus Marshall was at the same time Chief Justice of the Supreme Court and Secretary of State. Thus for the second time these two highest appointive offices of the National Government were held simultaneously by the same man.[1328] He drew but one salary, of course, during this period, that of Chief Justice,[1329] the salary of Secretary of State remaining unpaid.
The President rapidly filled the newly created places on the Federal Bench. Marshall, it appears, was influential in deciding these appointments. ”I wrote for you to Dexter, requesting him to show it to Marshall,”[1330] was Ames's rea.s.suring message to an aspirant to the Federal Bench. With astounding magnanimity or blindness, Adams bestowed one of these judicial positions upon Wolcott, and Marshall ”transmits ... the commission ... with peculiar pleasure. Permit me,” he adds, ”to express my sincere wish that it may be acceptable to you.” His anxiety to make peace between Adams and Wolcott suggests that he induced the President to make this appointment. For, says Marshall, ”I will allow myself the hope that this high and public evidence, given by the President, of his respect for your services and character, will efface every unpleasant sensation respecting the past, and smooth the way to a perfect reconciliation.”[1331]
Wolcott ”cordially thanks” Marshall for ”the obliging expressions of”
his ”friends.h.i.+p.” He accepts the office ”with sentiments of grat.i.tude and good will,” and agrees to Marshall's wish for reconciliation with Adams, ”not only without reluctance or reserve but with the highest satisfaction.”[1332] Thus did Marshall end one of the feuds which so embarra.s.sed the Administration of John Adams.[1333]
Until nine o'clock[1334] of the night before Jefferson's inauguration, Adams continued to nominate officers, including judges, and the Senate to confirm them. Marshall, as Secretary of State, signed and sealed the commissions. Although Adams was legally within his rights, the only moral excuse for his conduct was that, if it was delayed, Jefferson would make the appointments, control the National Judiciary, and through it carry out his States' Rights doctrine which the Federalists believed would dissolve the Union; if Adams acted, the most the Republicans could do would be to oust his appointees by repealing the law.[1335]
The angry but victorious Republicans denounced Adams's appointees as ”midnight judges.” It was a catchy and clever phrase. It flew from tongue to tongue, and, as it traveled, it gathered force and volume.
Soon a story grew up around the expression. Levi Lincoln, the incoming Attorney-General, it was said, went, Jefferson's watch in his hand, to Marshall's room at midnight and found him signing and sealing commissions. Pointing to the timepiece, Lincoln told Marshall that, by the President's watch, the 4th of March had come, and bade him instantly lay down his nefarious pen; covered with humiliation, Marshall rose from his desk and departed.[1336]
This tale is, probably, a myth. Jefferson never spared an enemy, and Marshall was his especial aversion. Yet in his letters denouncing these appointments, while he savagely a.s.sails Adams, he does not mention Marshall.[1337] Jefferson's ”Anas,” inspired by Marshall's ”Life of Was.h.i.+ngton,” omits no circ.u.mstance, no rumor, no second, third, or fourth hand tale that could reflect upon an enemy. Yet he never once refers to the imaginary part played by Marshall in the ”midnight judges”
legend.[1338]
Jefferson asked Marshall to administer to him the presidential oath of office on the following day. Considering his curiously vindictive nature, it is unthinkable that Jefferson would have done this had he sent his newly appointed Attorney-General, at the hour of midnight, to stop Marshall's consummation of Adams's ”indecent”[1339] plot.
Indeed, in the flush of victory and the mult.i.tude of practical and weighty matters that immediately claimed his entire attention, it is probable that Jefferson never imagined that Marshall would prove to be anything more than the learned but gentle Jay or the able but innocuous Ellsworth had been. Also, as yet, the Supreme Court was, comparatively, powerless, and the Republican President had little cause to fear from it that stern and effective resistance to his anti-national principles, which he was so soon to experience. Nor did the Federalists themselves suspect that the Virginia lawyer and politician would reveal on the Supreme Bench the determination, courage, and constructive genius which was presently to endow that great tribunal with life and strength and give to it the place it deserved in our scheme of government.
In the opinions of those who thought they knew him, both friend and foe, Marshall's character was well understood. All were agreed as to his extraordinary ability. No respectable person, even among his enemies, questioned his uprightness. The charm of his personality was admitted by everybody. But no one had, as yet, been impressed by the fact that commanding will and unyielding purpose were Marshall's chief characteristics. His agreeable qualities tended to conceal his masterfulness. Who could discern in this kindly person, with ”lax, lounging manners,” indolent, and fond of jokes, the heart that dared all things? And all overlooked the influence of Marshall's youth, his determinative army life, his experience during the disintegrating years after Independence was achieved and before the Const.i.tution was adopted, the effect of the French Revolution on his naturally orderly mind, and the part he had taken and the ineffaceable impressions necessarily made upon him by the tremendous events of the first three Administrations of the National Government.
Thus it was that, un.o.btrusively and in modest guise, Marshall took that station which, as long as he lived, he was to make the chief of all among the high places in the Government of the American Nation.
FOOTNOTES:
[1093] Adams to McHenry, May 5, 1800; Steiner, 453.
[1094] McHenry to John McHenry, May 20, 1800; Gibbs, ii, 348.
[1095] According to McHenry, Adams's complaints were that the Secretary of War had opposed the sending of the second mission to France, had not appointed as captain a North Carolina elector who had voted for Adams, had ”EULOGIZED GENERAL WAs.h.i.+NGTON ... attempted to praise Hamilton,”
etc. (McHenry to John McHenry, May 20, 1800; Gibbs, ii, 348; and see Hamilton's ”Public Conduct, etc., of John Adams”; Hamilton: _Works_: Lodge, vii, 347-49.)
[1096] Gore to King, May 14, 1800; King, iii, 242-43; also Sedgwick to Hamilton, May 7, 1800; _Works_: Hamilton, vi, 437-38.
[1097] Adams to Pickering, May 10, 1800; _Works_: Adams, ix, 53.
[1098] Pickering to Adams, May 11, 1800; _ib._, 54.
[1099] Pickering to Hamilton, May 15, 1800; _Works_: Hamilton, vi, 443.
[1100] Adams to Pickering, May 12, 1800; _Works_: Adams, ix, 55.
[1101] Sedgwick to Hamilton, May 13, 1800; _Works_: Hamilton, vi, 442.
[1102] Adams to Rush, March 4, 1809; _Old Family Letters_, 219.
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