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The Papers of John Marshall: Volume VI

Correspondence, Papers, and Selected Judicial Opinions November 1800 — March 1807

Charles F. Hobson, Editor
Fredrika J. Teute, Associate Editor
Laura S. Gwilliam, Assistant Editor

Published in 1990 by the University of North Carolina Press ISBN 0-8078-1903-4

Volume VI is the first of approximately six volumes that will present a documentary record of John Marshall's years as chief justice of the United States. This volume resumes the chronological format of the first four volumes. It begins where Volume IV ended, in November 1800, with Marshall in the midst of a brief term as secretary of state in the administration of John Adams. While the electoral defeat of the Federalists in the fall of 1800 cut short his career as the president's principal officer, that event conspired with other circumstances to place Marshall within a few months at the head of the judicial branch. Commissioned as chief justice on 31 January 1801, he retained that office until his death on 6 July 1835.

The repeal of the Judiciary Act of 1801 was but one of a series of political tempests that swirled about the judiciary during the early years of Marshall's leadership of the Supreme Court. Before the repeal occurred, the court, in December 1801, had received an application from William Marbury for a writ of mandamus commanding the secretary of state to deliver Marbury's commission as justice of the peace for the District of Columbia. The outcome of this application was the decision in Marbury v. Madison at the February 1803 term, in which the chief justice set fort his view that delivery of this commission was a legal duty, not a matter of political discretion.

Those most extensively documented of his activities from 1801 to 1807 was in fact his primary preoccupation. This was the writing of The Life of George Washington, a massive life and times of the late general. The story of the publication of the Life, as it unfolds in the author's letters to his publisher, occupies center stage throughout this volume.