answerable.

In May, 1800, on the reorganization of President Adams's Cabinet,
Marshall unexpectedly received the appointment of Secretary of War. He
declined it; but the office of Secretary of State also having become
vacant, he accepted that position, which he held till the fourth of the
following March. Of his term as Secretary of State, which lasted less
than ten months, little has been said; nor was it distinguished by any
event of unusual importance, save the conclusion of the convention with
France of Sept. 30, 1800, the negotiation of which, at Paris, was
already in progress, under instructions given by his predecessor, when
he entered the Department of State. The war between France and Great
Britain, growing out of the French Revolution, was still going on. The
questions with which he was required to deal were not new; and while he
exhibited in the discussion of them his usual strength and lucidity of
argument, he had little opportunity to display a capacity for
negotiation. Only a few of his State papers have been printed, nor are
those that have been published of special importance. He gave
instructions to our minister to Great Britain, in relation to
commercial restrictions, impressments, and orders in council violative
of the law of nations; to our minister to France, in regard to the
violations of neutral rights perpetrated by that government; and to our
minister to Spain, concerning infractions of international law
committed, chiefly by French authorities, within the Spanish
jurisdiction. Of these various State papers the most notable was that
which he addressed on Sept. 20, 1800, to Rufus King, then United States
Minister at London. Reviewing in this instruction the policy which his
government had pursued, and to which it still adhered, in the conflict
between the European powers, he said:--

"The United States do not hold themselves in any degree responsible to
France or to Britain for their negotiations with the one or the other of
these powers; but they are ready to make amicable and reasonable
explanations with either.... It has been the object of the American
government, from the commencement of the present war, to preserve
between the belligerent powers an exact neutrality.... The aggressions,
sometimes of one and sometimes of another belligerent power, have forced
us to contemplate and prepare for war as a probable event. We have
repelled, and we will continue to repel, injuries not doubtful in t