as a device to postpone war among the states, at least for a period, was
successful, and that, as I have already pointed out, during the
tentative interval which extended until Appomattox, the Supreme Court
served perhaps as well, in ordinary times, as an arbiter between the
states and the general government, as any which could have been
suggested. So much may be conceded, and yet it remains true, as the
record will show, that when it passed this point and entered into
factional strife, the Supreme Court somewhat lamentably failed, probably
injuring itself and popular respect for law, far more by its errors,
than it aided the Union by its political adjudications.

Although John Marshall, by common consent, ranks as one of the greatest
and purest of Americans, yet even Marshall had human weaknesses, one of
which was a really unreasonable antipathy to Thomas Jefferson; an
antipathy which, I surmise, must, when Jefferson was inaugurated, have
verged upon contempt. At least Marshall did what cautious men seldom do
when they respect an adversary, he took the first opportunity to pick a
quarrel with a man who had the advantage of him in position.

In the last days of his presidency John Adams appointed one William
Marbury a justice of the peace for the District of Columbia. The Senate
confirmed the appointment, and the President signed, and John Marshall,
as Secretary of State, sealed Marbury's commission; but in the hurry of
surrendering office the commission was not delivered, and Jefferson
found it in the State Department when he took possession. Resenting
violently these "midnight" appointments, as he called them, Jefferson
directed Mr. Madison, his Secretary of State, to withhold the
commission; and, at the next December term of the Supreme Court, Marbury
moved for a rule to Madison to show cause why he should not be commanded
to deliver to the plaintiff the property to which Marbury pretended to