Thursday, the 12th of March. The next
morning the Chief Justice announced that the Court had conferred, that
there were different opinions, that some of the judges had not arrived
at a conclusion, and that consequently the cause must be continued.
Webster, however, who was apt to be much in "the know" of such matters,
ventured to place the different judges thus: "The Chief and Washington,"
he wrote his former colleague Smith, "I have no doubt, are with us.
Duvall and Todd perhaps against us; the other three holding up--I cannot
much doubt but that Story will be with us in the end, and I think we
have much more than an even chance for one of the others."

The friends of the College set promptly to work to bring over the
wavering judges. To their dismay they learned that Chancellor James Kent
of New York, whose views were known to have great weight with Justices
Johnson and Livingston, had expressed himself as convinced by Chief
Justice Richardson's opinion that Dartmouth College was a public
corporation. Fortunately, however, a little ransacking of the records
brought to light an opinion which Kent and Livingston had both signed
as early as 1803, when they were members of the New York Council of
Revision, and which took the ground that a then pending measure in the
New York Legislature for altering the Charter of New York City violated
"due process of law." At the same time, Charles Marsh, a friend of
both Kent and Webster, brought to the attention of the former Webster's
argument before Marshall at Washington in March, 1818. Then came a
series of conferences at Albany in which Chancellor Kent, Justice
Johnson, President Brown of Dartmouth College, Governor Clinton, and
others participated. As a result, the Chancellor owned himself converted
to the idea that the College was a private institution.

The new term of court opened on Monday, February 1, 1819. William
Pinkney, who in vacation had accepted a retainer from the backers of
Woodward, that is, of the State, took his stand on the second day
near the Chief Justice, expecting to move for a reargument. Marshall,
"turning his blind eye" to the distinguished Marylander, announced that
the Court had reached a decision, plucked from his sleeve an eighteen
folio manuscript opinion, and began reading it. He held that the College
was a "private eleemosynary institution"; that its charter was the
outgrowth of a contract between the original donors and the Crown, that
the trust