Albert Beveridge - The Life of John Marshall, Volume 3 - Conflict and construction, 1800-1815

"Mr. Wright said he eat cake – he had a just right to do so – he was faint – but he disturbed nobody – He never would submit to be schooled & catechised in this manner.

"At this instance a motion was made by Bradley, who also had eaten cake, for an adjournment. Burr told Wright he was not in order – sit down. The Senate adjourned – & I left Burr and Wright scolding.

"Really, Master Burr , you need a ferule, or birch to enforce your lectures on polite behavior!" ( Ib. Feb. 12, 1805; also ib. Jan. 2, 1805.) Burr was sharply criticized by the Washington Federalist , January 8, for his rude conduct at the beginning of the trial.

Plumer to Sheafe, Jan. 1805, Plumer, 330-31.

Annals , 8th Cong. 2d Sess. 92; Chase Trial , 4.

Dwight: Signers of the Declaration of Independence , 245-52.

Hudson: Journalism in the United States, 1690-1872 , 214; and see Story to Bramble, June 10, 1807, Story, i, 154.

"In person, in manners, in unwieldy strength, in severity of reproof, in real tenderness of heart; and above all in intellect," he was "the living, I had almost said the exact, image of Samuel Johnson." (Story to Fay, Feb. 25, 1808, Story, i, 168.)

Chase's career had been stirring and important. Carefully educated by his father, an Episcopal clergyman, and thoroughly grounded in the law, he became eminent at the Maryland bar at a very early age. From the first his aggressive character asserted itself. He was rudely independent and, as a member of the Maryland House of Burgesses, treated the royal governor and his Tory partisans with contemptuous defiance. When the British attempted to enforce the Stamp Act, he joined a band of high-spirited young patriots who called themselves "The Sons of Liberty," and led them in their raids upon public offices, which they broke open, seizing and destroying the stamps and burning in effigy the stamp distributor.

His violent and fearless opposition to British rule and officials made young Chase so popular that he was elected as one of the five Maryland delegates to the first Continental Congress that assembled during the winter of 1774. He was reëlected the following year, and was foremost in urging the measures of armed defense that ended in the appointment of Washington as Commander-in-Chief of the American forces. Disregarding the instructions of his State, Chase hotly championed the adoption of the Declaration of Independence, and was one of the signers of that document.

On the floor of Congress he denounced a member as a traitor – one Zubly, a Georgia parson – who in terror fled the country. Chase continued in the Continental Congress until 1778 and was appointed a member of almost every important committee of that body. He became the leader of his profession in Maryland, was appointed Chief Justice of the Criminal Court of Baltimore, and elected a member of the Maryland Convention, called to ratify the National Constitution. Thereafter, he was made Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the State. In 1796, President Washington appointed Chase as Associate Justice of the National Supreme Court of which he was conceded to be one of the ablest members. (Dwight, 245-52.)

See Plumer to his brother, Feb. 25, 1805, Plumer MSS. Lib. Cong.

Maryland Historical Society Fund-Publication No. 24 , p. 20. Burr told Key that "he must not appear as counsel with his loose coat on." (Plumer, Feb. 11, 1805, "Diary," Plumer MSS. Lib. Cong.)

Adams: U.S. ii, 227-28. Bayard strongly urged Chase to have no counsel, but to defend himself. (Bayard to Harper, Jan. 30, 1804, Bayard Papers : Donnan, 159-60.)

See Story's description of Martin three years later, Story to Fay, Feb. 16, 1808, Story, i, 163-64.

Luther Martin well illustrates the fleeting nature of the fame of even the greatest lawyers. For two generations he was "an acknowledged leader of the American bar," and his preëminence in that noble profession was brightened by fine public service. Yet within a few years after his death, he was totally forgotten, and to-day few except historical students know that such a man ever lived.

Martin began his practice of the law when twenty-three years of age and his success was immediate and tremendous. His legal learning was prodigious – his memory phenomenal.

Apparently, Martin was the heaviest drinker of that period of heavy drinking men. The inexplicable feature of his continuous excesses was that his mighty drinking seldom appeared to affect his professional efficiency. Only once in his long and active career did intoxication interfere with his work in court. (See infra , 586.)

Passionate in his loves and hates, he abhorred Jefferson with all the ardor of his violent nature; and his favorite denunciation of any bad man was, "Sir! he is as great a scoundrel as Thomas Jefferson."

For thirty years Martin was the Attorney-General of Maryland. He was the most powerful member of his State in the Convention that framed the National Constitution which he refused to sign, opposing the ratification of it in arguments of such signal ability that forty years afterward John C. Calhoun quarried from them the material for his famous Nullification speeches.

When, however, the Constitution was ratified and became the supreme law of the land, Martin, with characteristic wholeheartedness, supported it loyally and championed the Administrations of Washington and Adams.

He was the lifelong friend of the impeached justice, to whom he owed his first appointment as Attorney-General of Maryland as well as great assistance and encouragement in the beginning of his career. Chase and he were also boon companions, each filled with admiration for the talents and attainments of the other, and strikingly similar in their courage and fidelity to friends and principles. So the lawyer threw himself into the fight for the persecuted judge with all his astonishing strength.

When, in his old age, he was stricken with paralysis, the Maryland Legislature placed a tax of five dollars annually on all lawyers for his support. After Martin's death the bench and bar of Baltimore passed a resolution that "we will wear mourning for the space of thirty days." ( American Law Review , i, 279.)

No biography of Martin has ever been written; but there are two excellent sketches of his life, one by Ashley M. Gould in Great American Lawyers : Lewis, ii, 3-46; and the other by Henry P. Goddard in the Md. Hist. Soc. Fund. Pub. No. 24.

Annals , 8th Cong. 2d Sess. 160-61. The case to which Randolph refers was that of the United States vs. Thomas Logwood, indicted in April, 1801, for counterfeiting. Logwood was tried in the United States Circuit Court at Richmond during June, 1804. Marshall, sitting with District Judge Cyrus Griffin, presided. Notwithstanding Marshall's liberality, Logwood was convicted and Marshall sentenced him to ten years' imprisonment at hard labor. (Order Book No. 4, 464, Records, U.S. Circuit Court, Richmond.)

Annals , 8th Cong. 2d Sess. 163-65; Chase Trial , 18. Randolph disgusted the Federalists. "This speech is the most feeble – the most incorrect that I ever heard him make." (Plumer, Feb. 9, 1805, "Diary," Plumer MSS. Lib. Cong.)

Two witnesses to the Baltimore incident, George Reed and John Montgomery, committed their testimony to memory as much "as ever a Presbyterian clergyman did his sermon – or an Episcopalian his prayer." (Plumer, Feb. 14, 1805, "Diary," Plumer MSS. Lib. Cong.)