acquainted with Washington's brilliant young secretary, Alexander
Hamilton.

While still in active service in 1780, Marshall attended a course
of law lectures given by George Wythe at William and Mary
College. He owed this opportunity to Jefferson, who was then
Governor of the State and who had obtained the abolition of the
chair of divinity at the college and the introduction of a course
in law and another in medicine. Whether the future Chief Justice
was prepared to take full advantage of the opportunity thus
offered is, however, a question. He had just fallen heels over
head in love with Mary Ambler, whom three years later he married,
and his notebook seems to show us that his thoughts were quite as
much upon his sweetheart as upon the lecturer's wisdom.

None the less, as soon as the Courts of Virginia reopened, upon
the capitulation of Cornwallis, Marshall hung out his shingle at
Richmond and began the practice of his profession. The new
capital was still hardly more than an outpost on the frontier,
and conditions of living were rude in the extreme. "The Capitol
itself," we are told, "was an ugly structure--'a mere wooden
barn'--on an unlovely site at the foot of a hill. The private
dwellings scattered about were poor, mean, little wooden houses."
"Main Street was still unpaved, deep with dust when dry and so
muddy during a rainy season that wagons sank up to the axles." It
ended in gullies and swamps. Trade, which was still in the hands
of the British merchants, involved for the most part transactions
in skins, furs, ginseng, snakeroot, and "dried rattlesnakes--used
to make a viper broth for consumptive patients." "There was but
one church building and attendance was scanty and infrequent."