Vol. 10 No. 7 (July 2000) pp. 413-415.

A CHIEF JUSTICE'S PROGRESS: JOHN MARSHALL FROM REVOLUTIONARY VIRGINIA TO THE SUPREME COURT by David Robarge. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2000. 400 pp. Cloth $65.00.

Reviewed by Thomas C. Shevory, Department of Politics, Ithaca College.

As David Robarge points out in the prologue to A CHIEF JUSTICE'S PROGRESS, a 1955 bibliography of works on John Marshall turned up 734 titles. Since then, the number has grown substantially. In other words, "An army of scholars, jurists, biographers, and popularizers has produced a small library about Marshall." Given this undisputable fact, one has to wonder with each new work, whether some important contribution has been made to our intellectual lives by it. Could anything else significant be said about this undeniably important figure?

If writing history involved nothing more than unearthing discrete sets of facts and connecting them together in a paint by number format, then of course, there would be very little need for new historical works on those like Justice Marshall, about whom so much as been written. There are numerous biographies, from Albert Beveridge's LIFE OF JOHN MARSHALL (1916-1919), a classic against which all subsequent works have to be measured, to Jean Smith's more recent JOHN MARSHALL: DEFINER OF A NATION, a work which Robarge is correct to characterize as "an engagingly written life-and-times narrative in the 'great man' genre" (p. xviii).

Of course, the writing of history involves much more than simply laying down some facts, and writers engaged in the same subjects often provide unique perspectives on the subjects to which they attend. The great strength of Beveridge's works was both its detail and its sweep. It was very much the product of its time, and Beveridge drew upon Marshall to reinforce the nationalist impulses that were central to the Progressive politics to which he, Beveridge, was devoted. Popularized works such as Leonard Baker's JOHN MARSHALL: A LIFE IN LAW (1974), provide useful overviews, especially for the uninitiated. There are also, of course, innumerable works devoted to analysis of Marshall's legal thought and jurisprudence. These more political efforts often attempt to bring Marshall's thinking in line with specific legal traditions, and as such they engage theoretical issues that are unlikely to be to settled in any one or even several works. Exemplary here is Robert Faulkner's excellent THE JURISPRUDENCE OF JOHN MARSHALL (1968).

In fact, the subject of John Marshall involves nothing less than the entire sweep of the history of the early American Republic, from the Revolution until the initial rumblings of anti-constitutional dissent that would eventually explode into the civil war. American social and political history is, for better or worse, knitted into the fabric of its constitutional and legal

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history. Marshall, because of the role he played as the central figure in constitutional change at the 19th century's start, is rightfully considered as one of the most crucial figures in America history. This being the case, it seems unlikely, that in the hands of a reasonably skilled analyst, another examination of Marshall's life and work would yield something lacking significance or usefulness.

Fortunately, David Robarge, who has worked as an historian for the CIA, is a highly skilled historian, and he has given us a work that does indeed make a significant contribution to understanding the historical period that Marshall lived and the role that he played in shaping it. Robarge's book focuses on Marshall's life during the period leading up to his appointment as Chief Justice. This is, of course, not the first time that this particular period of Marshall's life has been examined. In fact, the first two volumes of Beveridge's four-volume work focused on this particular period of Marshall's life. However, there are several aspects of Robarge's treatment that mark a clear advance over Beveridge's initial treatment. For one thing, primary source materials, many of which have been collected into THE PAPERS OF JOHN MARSHALL (Marshall 1974-), are much more accessible now. Robarge makes good use of them to reconstruct aspects of Marshall's early career. Particularly noteworthy here is Robarge's excavation of materials related to various aspects of Marshall's legal practice. These are considered in a more balanced and exhaustive fashion has been done previously.

Robarge also does a fine job of relating Marshall's attempts to improve his own financial circumstances through investments in land. He traces the involvement of the Marshall family in the Fairfax estate dealings in a more detailed and careful way than has been done in past efforts, and he shows, in an even-handed manner, how Marshall's diplomatic dealings were often intricately connected to his personal financial well-being.

I was also much impressed by Robarge's treatment of Marshall as a political party figure. Beveridge was a great one for relating the dramas of political conflict as they played themselves out against the backdrop of the post revolutionary era, and he colorfully revealed Marshall's conflicts with various anti-federalists and Republicans (Jefferson in particular). Robarge's approach to party conflicts is more analytical. And he effectively argues that Marshall played a very central role within his own party, trying to keep the various factions of the Federalists from spinning out of control towards the end of Washington's Presidency and especially into the Adams' administration.

Federalists were riven by both regional and ideological disputes as the election of 1800 approached. Robarge portrays Marshall as perhaps the key figure in the party who was attempting to keep some sanity amidst the party's crumbling in the face of Jeffersonian challenges. In doing this, Robarge shows important interconnections between Marshall's legal thinking and his political party politics. In previous works, such as Beveridge's, one is taken somewhat by surprise that Marshall, who is often portrayed as a significant political outsider, was elevated to the highest court. Beveridge suggests it as an afterthought or perhaps an act of desperation on Adam's part. (See Beveridge 1919: 3: 553.) But in Robarge's accounting, Marshall's elevation to the high court makes perfect sense, given the closeness of his and

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Adam's alliance within the party. If there was one person in the country that embodied Adams' more moderate approach to Federalism, according to Robarge, it was probably John Marshall. Adams may have seen Marshall as not only the country's best hope of surviving Republicanism, but of keeping the principles of Federalism intact within the party itself.

I found two chapters of the book to be less helpful than the others. Chapter six on the XYZ affair seems somewhat derivative of previous work in the field. So much has been written about it, that it may not be possible to find room for interesting re-interpretation or evaluation. Also, the final chapter on Marshall as Chief Justice does both too much and too little in that it attempts to squeeze a summary of Marshall's impact in that position into several dozen pages. The result is a bit rushed, and somewhat unnecessary, given the main subject matter of the book. The chapter is not without merit in that it provides a short useful survey of a large amount of material. However, the level of systematic analysis is not as high here as with previous parts of the book. Understandably, a work in which the subject is an early phase of someone's life, needs some kind of closure. Perhaps what is really needed, however, is a second volume dealing with latter aspects of Marshall's career. Given Robarge's penchant for connecting the political to the constitutional and legal, it is a work that I would much look forward to reading.

In the meantime, I would suggest that any serious student of the post-revolutionary period take a look at this book. It is meticulously researched, clearly-written, well-argued and engaging; definitive evidence, if any were needed, that John Marshall's life and work continues to be an important an potentially interesting subject for historical analysis.

REFERENCES:

Baker, Leonard. 1974. JOHN MARSHALL: A LIFE IN LAW New York, Macmillan.

Beveridge, Albert J. 1916-19. THE LIFE OF JOHN MARSHALL. Boston: Houghton

Mifflin Company.

Faulkner, Robert K. 1968. THE JURISPRUDENCE OF JOHN MARSHALL. Princeton:

Princeton University Press.

Smith, Jean Edward. 1996. JOHN MARSHALL: DEFINER OF A NATION. New York :

Henry Holt and Co.

Marshall, John. 1974-. THE PAPERS OF JOHN MARSHALL. Herbert Alan Johnson,

Charles T. Cullen et al., ed. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina

Press.

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