conspicuous activity for Marshall, they paved the way in more than one
direction for his later achievement. Jefferson's retirement from the
Presidency at last relieved the Chief Justice from the warping influence
of a hateful personal contest and from anxiety for his official
security. Jefferson's successors were men more willing to identify
the cause of the Federal Judiciary with that of national unity. Better
still, the War of 1812 brought about the demise of the Federalist
party and thus cleared the Court of every suspicion of partisan bias.
Henceforth the great political issue was the general one of the nature
of the Union and the Constitution, a field in which Marshall's talent
for debate made him master. In the meantime the Court was acquiring that
personnel which it was to retain almost intact for nearly twenty years;
and, although the new recruits came from the ranks of his former party
foes, Marshall had little trouble in bringing their views into general
conformity with his own constitutional creed. Nor was his triumph an
exclusively personal one. He was aided in very large measure by the fact
that the war had brought particularism temporarily into discredit in
all sections of the country. Of Marshall's associates in 1812, Justice
Washington alone had come to the bench earlier, yet he was content
to speak through the mouth of his illustrious colleague, save on the
notable occasion when he led the only revolt of a majority of the Court
from the Chief Justice's leadership in the field of Constitutional
Law. * Johnson of South Carolina, a man of no little personal vanity,
affected a greater independence, for which he was on one occasion warmly
congratulated by Jefferson; yet even his separate opinions, though they
sometimes challenge Marshall's more sweeping premises and bolder method
of reasoning, are after all mostly concurring ones. Marshall's really
invaluable aid among his associates was Joseph Story, who in 1811,
at the age of thirty-two, was appointed by Madison in succession to
Cushing. Still immature, enthusiastically willing to learn, warmly
affectionate, and with his views on constitutional issues as yet
unformed, Story fell at once under the spell of Marshall's equally
gentle but vastly more resolute personality; and the result was one
of the most fruitful friendships of our history. Marshall's "original
bias," to quote Story's own words, "as well as the choice of his mind,
was to general principles and