intellectual bent, and he now began reading Blackstone. The great
British orators, however, whose eloquence had so much to do, for
instance, with shaping Webster's genius, came too late to
influence him greatly.

The part which the War of Independence had in shaping the ideas
and the destiny of John Marshall was most important. As the news
of Lexington and Bunker Hill passed the Potomac, he was among the
first to spring to arms. His services at the siege of Norfolk,
the battles of Brandywine, Germantown, and Monmouth, and his
share in the rigors of Valley Forge and in the capture of Stony
Point, made him an American before he had ever had time to become
a Virginian. As he himself wrote long afterwards: "I had grown up
at a time when the love of the Union and the resistance to Great
Britain were the inseparable inmates of the same bosom; ...when
the maxim 'United we stand, divided we fall' was the maxim of
every orthodox American. And I had imbibed these sentiments so
thoroughly that they constituted a part of my being. I carried
them with me into the army, where I found myself associated with
brave men from different States, who were risking life and
everything valuable in a common cause believed by all to be most
precious, and where I was confirmed in the habit of considering
America as my country and Congress as my government."

Love of country, however, was not the only quality which
soldiering developed in Marshall. The cheerfulness and courage
which illuminated his patriotism brought him popularity among
men. Though but a lieutenant, he was presently made a deputy
judge advocate. In this position he displayed notable talent in
adjusting differences between officers and men and also became