The Theory of Social Revolutions by Brooks Adams
page 40 of 144 (27%)
page 40 of 144 (27%)
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Nor were they without some justification, for Jefferson certainly
represented the party of disintegration. "Nullification" would have been tantamount to a return to the condition of the Confederation. Besides, Jefferson not so many years before had written, in defence of Shays's rebellion, that the tree of Liberty could never flourish unless refreshed occasionally with the blood of patriots and tyrants. To most Federalists Jefferson seemed a bloodthirsty demagogue. In 1796 Oliver Ellsworth had been appointed Chief Justice by General Washington in the place of Jay, who resigned, and in 1799 John Adams sent Ellsworth as an envoy to France to try to negotiate a treaty which should reëstablish peace between the two countries. Ellsworth succeeded in his mission, but the hardships of his journey injured his health, and he, in turn, resigned in the autumn of 1800. Then Adams offered the Chief Justiceship to Jay, but Jay would not return to office, and after this the President selected his Secretary of State, John Marshall, one of the greatest of the great Virginians, but one of Jefferson's most irreconcilable enemies. Perhaps at no moment in his life did John Adams demonstrate his legal genius more convincingly than in this remarkable nomination. Yet it must be conceded that, in making John Marshall Chief Justice, John Adams deliberately chose the man whom, of all his countrymen, he thought to be the most formidable champion of those views which he himself entertained, and which he conceived that he had been elected President to advance. Nor was John Adams deceived. For thirty-four years John Marshall labored ceaselessly to counteract Jefferson's constitutional principles, while Jefferson always denounced the political partiality of the federal courts, and above all the "rancorous hatred which Marshall bears to the government of his country, and ... the cunning and sophistry within which he is able to enshroud himself."[11] No one, at this day, would be disposed to dispute that the Constitution, |
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