Volume IV Part 3 (1/2)

The migration to the West, which had been increasing for years, now became almost a folk movement. The Eastern States were drained of their young men and women. Some towns were almost depopulated.[155] And these hosts of settlers carried into wilderness and prairie a spirit and pride that had not been seen or felt in America since the time of the Revolution. But their high hopes were to be quickly turned into despair, their pride into ashes; for a condition was speedily to develop that would engulf them in disaster. It was this situation which was to call forth some of the greatest of Marshall's Const.i.tutional opinions. This forbidding future, however, was foreseen by none of that vast throng of home-seekers crowding every route to the ”Western Country,” in the year of 1815. Only the rosiest dreams were theirs and the spirited consciousness that they were Americans, able to accomplish all things, even the impossible.

It was then a new world in which John Marshall found himself, when, in his sixtieth year, the war which he so abhorred came to an end. A state of things surrounded him little to his liking and yet soon to force from him the exercise of the n.o.blest judicial statesmans.h.i.+p in American history. From the extreme independence of this new period, the intense and sudden Nationalism of the war, the ideas of local sovereignty rekindled by the New England Federalists at the dying fires that Jefferson and the Republicans had lighted in 1798, and from the play of conflicting interests came a reaction against Nationalism which it was Marshall's high mission to check and to turn into channels of National power, National safety, and National well-being.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] ”The navy of Britain is our s.h.i.+eld.” (Pickering: _Open Letter_ [Feb.

16, 1808] _to Governor James Sullivan_, 8; _infra_, 5, 9-10, 25-26, 45-46.)

[2] _Diary and Letters of Gouverneur Morris_: Morris, II, 548.

[3] Jefferson to D'Ivernois, Feb. 6, 1795, _Works of Thomas Jefferson_: Ford, VIII, 165.

[4] Jefferson to Short, Jan. 3, 1793, _ib._ VII, 203; same to Mason, Feb. 4, 1791, _ib._ VI, 185.

[5] See vol. II, 354, of this work.

[6] _Ib._ 133-39.

[7] The Fairfax transaction.

[8] The phrase used by the Federalists to designate the opponents of democracy.

[9] See vol. II, 24-27, 92-96, 106-07, 126-28, of this work.

[10] Ames to Dwight, Oct. 31, 1803, _Works of Fisher Ames_: Ames, I, 330; and see Ames to Gore, Nov. 16, 1803, _ib._ 332; also Ames to Quincy, Feb. 12, 1806, _ib._ 360.

[11] Rutledge to Otis, July 29, 1806, Morison: _Life and Letters of Harrison Gray Otis_, I, 282.

[12] The student should examine the letters of Federalists collected in Henry Adams's _New-England Federalism_; those in the _Life and Correspondence of Rufus King_; in Lodge's _Life and Letters of George Cabot_; in the _Works of Fisher Ames_ and in Morison's _Otis_.

[13] See Adams: _History of the United States_, IV, 29.

[14] Once in a long while an impartial view was expressed: ”I think myself sometimes in an Hospital of Lunaticks, when I hear some of our Politicians eulogizing Bonaparte because he humbles the English; & others wors.h.i.+pping the latter, under an Idea that they will shelter us, & take us under the Shadow of their Wings. They would join, rather, to deal us away like Cattle.” (Peters to Pickering, Feb. 4, 1807, Pickering MSS. Ma.s.s. Hist. Soc.)

[15] See Harrowby's Circular, Aug. 9, 1804, _American State Papers, Foreign Relations_, III, 266.

[16] See Hawkesbury's Instructions, Aug. 17, 1805, _ib._

[17] Fox to Monroe, April 8 and May 16, 1806, _ib._ 267.

[18] The Berlin Decree, Nov. 21, 1806, _ib._ 290-91.

[19] Orders in Council, Jan. 7 and Nov. 11, 1807, _Am. State Papers, For. Rel._ III, 267-73; and see Channing: _Jeffersonian System_, 199.

[20] Dec. 17, 1807, _Am. State Papers, For. Rel._ III, 290.

[21] Adams: _U.S._ V, 31.

[22] ”England's naval power stood at a height never reached before or since by that of any other nation. On every sea her navies rode, not only triumphant, but with none to dispute their sway.” (Roosevelt: _Naval War of 1812_, 22.)