John Marshall was born and in which his youth was passed was the inevitable consequence of the memories which the colonists had brought with them from the old world to the new, and of the elevating experiences of the life of adventure, of courage, of intellectual and religious fervor which they had lived. "Not many noble, not many mighty," were enrolled in their ranks. They were people of the middle class, such as we all have continued to be, and, however reluctant some of us may be to admit it, we all are likely to remain. They did not primarily seek wealth, but they avoided poverty and acquired property by hard and honest toil. They came indeed "out of great tribulation," but often also out of great joy and buoyancy of spirit; and the fruits of their experiences were visible in their daily lives, illuminated as those lives were by that sublime spirit of sacrifice for conscience sake, which in so many of their old homes had "wrought righteousness" for them and "out of weakness had made them strong."

The men who came from Sweden, from Holland, from England, from France, and from Germany, differing in many respects—in language, in habits, in dress, in manners, were agreed, as if of one blood and one creed, in the underlying principles of the Reformation, for which they and their fathers had suffered unspeakable afflictions; and they were agreed also in their common hatred of all tyranny, whether of church or king. They were an advance guard of a political Renaissance sent to take possession of the new world and to plant here that tree of liberty whose leaves should be "for the healing of the nations."

And as these different nationalities were commingled and were rapidly being fused into one people, the pro

fessors of all the different religious creeds gathered here were united in their devotion to the land which gave to each of them the right to freedom of religious worship; and when John Marshall was born the American colonists, thinly scattered along the Atlantic coast from Massachusetts Bay to Georgia, were as one people slowly marching inland to take possession of the continent, and to establish a great nation resting upon the sublime truth — true yesterday, true to-day, and true forever — that "all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, and that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."

What followed was as inevitable as a decree of fate, although to the courtiers of the old world, its nobles and its kings, the revolt of the new world seemed like a dislocation of the order of nature. To them, in their blindness, "the world was all so suddenly changed, so much that was vigorous was sunk decrepit, so much that was not was beginning to be. Borne over the Atlantic to the closing ear of Louis, king by the grace of God, what sounds were these, new in our centuries? Boston harbor was black with unexpected tea. Behold a Pennsylvanian congress gather; and ere long on Bunker Hill democracy, announcing in rifle volleys, death-winged, under her star banner, that she was born, and would envelop the whole world." In truth, nothing in the evolution of the material world is more orderly than the evolution in history of the American Revolution and the American. Union. They were the natural and inevitable results of the memories, the sufferings, the faith, and the aspira tions of the early settlers. The British Crown lost its American colonies not because of the stamp act, or the

tax on tea, not because of the cynical statesmanship of Lord North or the immeasurable stupidity and stubbornness of the King. The future of the colonies was determined beyond recall when Luther defied the papal tyranny at Worms; when Egmont and Horn were beheaded at Brussels; when Hampden was mortally wounded on Chalgrove Field; when the Huguenots were massacred because they would not renounce their faith; when Lord Baltimore was persecuted for being a Catholic, and William Penn was persecuted for being a Quaker. The American colonists had been consecrated, in the eternal counsels, to the old, undying struggle for civil and religious freedom and were now giving the breath of life and the spirit of liberty to the new nation which was growing, day by day, into shape and strength under the imposition of their hands. As early as the year 1765, when John Marshall was only ten years old, the citizens of the county of Westmoreland, where his father had been born, wrote and signed a declaration setting forth the rights of the colonies. Before he was ten years older he had assisted in forming a company of volunteers to defend those rights by arms, of which company he was appointed a lieutenant; and then began the first labors of his life, labors which were destined to fill in fullest measure every obligation of a patriotic citizen, first as soldier, then as statesman, and last, and crowning all with illustrious and unfading renown, as jurist.

His career as a soldier, like all the other actions of his life, was of the most creditable character. It is quite true, as Gibbon says, that "mere physical courage, because it is such a universal possession, is not a badge of excellence, but he who does not possess it is sure to encounter the just contempt of his fellows." In the year

1775, when he was not twenty years old, he walked ten miles from his father's house to an appointed muster field. "He was about six feet in height, straight and rather slender, with eyes dark to blackness, beaming with intelligence and good nature. He wore a plain blue hunting shirt and trousers of the same material, fringed with white, and a round black hat with a bucktail for a cockade." When the company had assembled he told them he had come "to meet them as fellow-soldiers who were likely to be called on to defend their country and their rights and liberties invaded by the British Crown; that soldiers were called for, and that it was time to brighten up their fire-arms and learn to use them in the field." It was thus early, in the first flush of his youthful vigor, with hope on his brow and love of country and of liberty in his heart, that he stepped across the threshold which divides youth from manhood, and began that almost unexampled career of public service which continued, with ever-increasing lustre, for sixty years, and ended only with his life.

Active military duty was soon offered him, and he doubtless accepted it with that joy of expected battle which is the common heritage of all the fighting races, and which only needs a just cause, like our Revolutionary struggle, to justify and sanctify it; but for its justification and sanctity such a cause it always, and in all quarters of the world, imperatively needs. Lieutenant Marshall was soon promoted to a captaincy, and it was on the field of Brandywine, a pastoral scene then and now as beautiful as the eye ever rested on, where Lafayette first shed his blood and Wayne won his first laurels, that John Marshall fought his first battle. He also bore an honorable part at Germantown; but it was only when

the army retired to winter quarters in December, 1777, and he was appointed to act as deputy judge advocate that he came into personal relations with Washington, and began to secure that large measure of confidence and regard which thereafter steadily increased to the close of Washington's life.

The winter of 1777-1778 was one of the decisive epochs in the history of mankind. Washington commanded but a small army, often in need of food, always in need of clothing, never with adequate shelter against the bitter cold, never properly armed; but those soldiers found food and clothing and shelter and arms in the sacred fire of liberty, which burned brightly in all breasts. Their awful and appalling sufferings and sacrifices were irradiated with

"A light which never was on sea or land,"

enabling them to forecast the future and to behold, as in prophetic vision, their country taking her place among the independent nations of the earth as the result of their courage and fidelity. The words of Aristotle, which come to us across the centuries, are true of every soldier there from the commander-in-chief to the private in the ranks: "Beauty of character shines thoroughly when one is seen bearing with patience a load of calamity, not through insensibility, but through nobleness and greatness of heart."

That was indeed a time which "tried men's souls" and tried, almost to the point of breaking, the great heart of him who bore alone the responsibility, which he could not share with any other, for the success of the war, and the maintaining of that independence which had been so bravely proclaimed. We now know something of the fortitude Washington displayed in that long and trying