John Marshall Research Paper

Bibliographical Review#2 John Marshall was born on September 24, 1755. He was an American jurist and statesman who shaped American constitutional law and made the Supreme Court a center of power. John Marshall was born in a log cabin near Germantown, a rural community on the Virginia frontier, in what is now Fauquier County near Midland, Virginia to Thomas Marshall and Mary Randolph Keith. The oldest of fifteen, John had eight sisters and six brothers. Also, several cousins were raised with the family. From a young age, he was noted for his good humor and black eyes, which were "strong and penetrating, beaming with intelligence and good nature. Thomas Marshall was employed by Lord Fairfax. Known as "the Proprietor", Fairfax provided
Thomas Marshall with a substantial income as his lordship’s agent in Fauquier County. Marshall’s job was to survey the tract, assist in finding people to settle and collect rents.

In the early 1760s, the Marshall family left Germantown and moved thirty miles to Leeds Manor on the eastern slope of the Blue Ridge.
Marshall's early education was superintended by his father who gave him an early taste for history and poetry. Thomas Marshall's employer, Lord Fairfax, allowed access to his home at Greenway Court, which was an exceptional center of learning and culture. Marshall took advantage of the resources at Greenway Court and borrowed freely from the extensive collection of classical and contemporary literature. There were no schools in the region at the time, so home schooling was pursued. Although books were a rarity for most in the territory, Thomas Marshall's library was exceptional. His collection of literature, some of which was borrowed from Lord Fairfax, was relatively substantial and included works by Livy, Horace, Pope, Dryden, Milton, and Shakespeare. All of the Marshall children were accomplished, literate, and self-educated under their parents' supervision. At the age of twelve John had transcribed Alexander Pope's An Essay on Man and some of his moral essays. There being no formal school in Fauquier County at the time, John was sent, at age fourteen, about one hundred miles from home to the Academy of Reverend in Washington
parish.

Marshall served in the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War and was friends with George Washington. He served first as a Lieutenant in the Culpeper Minute Men from 1775 to 1776, then as a Lieutenant in the Eleventh Virginia Continental Regiment from 1776 to 1780. In 1782, Marshall won a seat in the Virginia House of Delegates, in which he served until 1789 and again from 1795 to 1796. The Virginia General Assembly elected him to serve on the Council of State later in the same year. In 1785, Marshall took up the additional office of Recorder of the Richmond City Hustings Court. In 1788, Marshall was selected as a delegate to the Virginia convention responsible for ratifying or rejecting the United States Constitution, which had been proposed by the Philadelphia Convention a year earlier. Together with James Madison and Edmund Randolph, Marshall led the fight for ratification. He was especially active in defense of Article III, which provides for the Federal judiciary. His most prominent opponent at the ratification convention was Anti-Federalist leader Patrick Henry. Ultimately, the convention approved the Constitution by a vote of 89-79. Marshall identified with the new Federalist which supported a strong national government and commercial interests rather than Jefferson's Democratic-Republican Party. Marshall's home in Richmond, Virginia, has been preserved by APVA Preservation Virginia. It is considered to be an important landmark and museum, essential to an understanding of the Chief Justice's life and work. The United States Bar Association commissioned sculptor William Wetmore Story to execute the statue of Marshall that now stands inside the Supreme Court on the ground floor.