national disorder as a result of strong
party feeling at the time of presidential elections were thoroughly
realized in 1860 when Lincoln's election led to secession and civil
war, and that sixteen years later, in the Hayes-Tilden contest, a second
dangerous crisis was narrowly averted.

In the campaign of 1832 Marshall espoused privately the cause of Clay
and the United States Bank, and could not see why Virginia should not
be of the same opinion. Writing to Story in the midst of the campaign
he said: "We are up to the chin in politics. Virginia was always insane
enough to be opposed to the Bank of the United States, and therefore
hurrahs for the veto. But we are a little doubtful how it may work in
Pennsylvania. It is not difficult to account for the part New York may
take. She has sagacity enough to see her interests in putting down the
present Bank. Her mercantile position gives her a control, a commanding
control, over the currency and the exchanges of the country, if there
be no Bank of the United States. Going for herself she may approve this
policy; but Virginia ought not to drudge for her." To the end of his
days Marshall seems to have refused to recognize that the South had a
sectional interest to protect, or at least that Virginia's interests
were sectional; her attachment to State Rights he assigned to the
baneful influence of Jeffersonianism.

The year 1831 dealt Marshall two severe blows. In that year his robust
constitution manifested the first signs of impairment, and he was forced
to undergo an operation for stone. In the days before anaesthetics, such
an operation, especially in the case of a person of his advanced years,
was attended with great peril. He faced the ordeal with the utmost
composure. His physician tells of visiting Marshall the morning he was
to submit to the knife and of finding him at breakfast:

"He received me with a pleasant smile... and said, 'Well, Doctor, you
find me taking breakfast, and I assure you I have had a good one.
I thought it very probable that this might be my last chance, and
therefore I was determined to enjoy it and eat heartily.'... He said
that he had not the slightest desire to live, laboring under the
sufferings to which he was subjected, and that he was perfectly ready
to take all the chances of an operation, and he knew there were many
against him.... After he had finished his breakfast, I administered
him some medicine; he then inquired at what hour the op