Thanks to the loving labors of two eminent modern historians, John Adams is finally getting his place in the sun -- a monument on the Washington Mall. There have been two Pulitzer Prize-winning histories -- Joseph Ellis' adulatory Founding Brothers (Knopf, 288 pages, $26) and David McCullough's hugely successful biography of the second president. They were enough to convince Congress that "Old No. 2" deserves a niche between George Washington, whom he succeeded, and Thomas Jefferson, who defeated him after only one term.
The three titans earned that permanent place on the landscape of history, because they represent the most enduring debate in the nation's fabric -- the proper distribution of power between the states and the federal government. It is an argument that began almost as soon as the new nation drew its first breath. It reverberates every time the Supreme Court renders yet another 5-4 decision delineating the power.
But there is another man, one who was neither a signer of the Declaration of Independence nor a drafter of the Constitution, who stands as an equal among the giants. Indeed, if John Adams' monument were to enumerate his single most significant legacy, it would have to read: "He appointed John Marshall chief justice of the United States." Adams may have lost the bitter election of 1800 to Jefferson, but in the end, Adams largely prevailed in the ideological struggle through the work of a chief justice who would outlive the two presidential adversaries by nearly a decade and would serve for 34 years under five presidents.
It is a little puzzling that a figure who looms so large in American history would loom so small in the nation's historical consciousness. Even those who recognize John Marshall's name at all would probably identify him as the first chief justice, which is not the case.
In fact, three men preceded him, but the court held such low status in that first decade that one resigned to become a state governor, and another was denied confirmation on the ground that he was mentally unbalanced. The early justices were so indifferent to their humble role that they often could not even gather a quorum to hold court. Marshall himself had already turned down an earlier nomination to a seat on the court.
But in 1801, desperation ruled. Jefferson had humiliated Adams in the first really competitive election, and the Republicans -- those who favored state supremacy -- were certain to win control of Congress. In his waning days in office, the frantic Adams appointed Marshall to carry the frayed banner of the Federalists -- those who favored a strong central government -- as best he could from the vantage point of "the least dangerous branch" of the new government. Marshall was the last best hope to protect the infant nation from ruination by Thomas Jefferson.
In reality, just about all recent historical studies agree that neither Jefferson nor Adams was as dangerous as each attempted to portray the other. Adams endured vicious scorn by the "High Federalists" like Hamilton who wanted America to evolve into simply the westernmost European nation, possibly even with a monarch; Jefferson, likewise, faced relentless attack from his own party extremists who would have been quite satisfied with a confederation of squabbling states.
The most popular recent works -- including McCullough's masterful John Adams (Simon and Schuster, 736 pages, $35) and Ellis' two earlier works, Founding Brothers and American Sphinx (Knopf, 365 pages, $29.95) -- all reinforce this view. These authors mention Marshall as a somewhat marginal figure.
But other equally compelling but lesser noticed works of the past six years which focus affectionately on Marshall's role in resolving the federal-state argument through application of sheer superior intellect and winsome personality. Chief among these are Jean Edward Smith's masterful biography John Marshall: Definer of a Nation (Henry Holt, 752 pages, $22) and James F. Simon's more recent What Kind of Nation: Thomas Jefferson, John Marshall, and the Epic Struggle to Create a United States (Simon & Schuster, 348 pages, $27.50).
Along with a new crop of other traditional scholarly works, these books relate the dramatic story of how, under Marshall's 34 years as chief justice, the Supreme Court asserted its authority to declare acts of Congress and the states unconstitutional and, perhaps most important, firmly established the principle of federal supremacy. And without exception, Marshall accomplished his purpose in ways that left Jefferson and the other Republican presidents no way to defy or ignore the court, which some almost certainly would have done if given the opportunity. No justice today -- not even a conservative like Antonin Scalia -- would dream of challenging the fundamental structure of constitutional adjudication that is John Marshall's legacy.
One would think Marshall and Jefferson would have shared political philosophy. After all, they were born about the same time, in Virginia, and were even related through the ubiquitous Randolphs. But there were significant differences.
Where Jefferson was born to privilege, Marshall came from the rough frontier of Virginia, the eldest of 15 children. It was his -- and the nation's -- great fortune that his father valued education sufficiently to entrust John and his siblings to a live-in English tutor whose small collection of books just happened to include the seminal legal treatise, Blackstone's Commentaries.
Marshall had barely turned 21 when he answered the call to arms in the Revolutionary War, in which he served with valor -- at a time when Jefferson's absence was duly noted and questioned. As a young officer, Marshall formed an almost father-son relationship to that foremost federalist, George Washington, whom he came to regard as the greatest man in the world and of whom he would write a five-volume biography while he was serving as chief justice.
The aging former presidents, Jefferson and Adams, made their peace before their almost providential simultaneous deaths on July 4, 1826 -- 50 years to the day after the signing of the Declaration of Independence. But the unalloyed rancor between Jefferson and Marshall would endure to the very end.
Marshall never abandoned his view of Jefferson as a dangerous radical and shameless egotist, ever ready to bet the nation on his cockeyed political theories, and Jefferson would always regard Marshall as a kind of Svengali who mesmerized everyone who crossed his path.
Among the more revealing and amusing utterances of a flabbergasted Jefferson (quoted by Ellis) was a confession of abject intimidation when confronting Marshall: "I never admit anything. So sure as you admit any position to be good, no matter how remote from the conclusion he seeks to establish, you are gone. So great is his sophistry you must never give him an affirmative answer or you would be forced to grant his conclusion. Why, if he were to ask me if it were daylight or not, I'd reply, 'Sir, I don't know. I can't tell.' "
Marshall is not without his monuments, literary and otherwise. A century ago, Albert J. Beveridge gave up a seat in the Senate in order to devote his full time writing an adulatory five-volume biography of Marshall. And as any visitor to the Supreme Court building knows, Marshall's rumpled likeness reposes in bronze at the end of the great entrance hall, looking a little like an impish Zeus about to hurl yet another thunderbolt of law.
But Marshall's innate modesty was such that he would be a little embarrassed at too much attention. His burial place in Richmond is difficult to find, and the gravestone's inscription -- composed by Marshall himself -- contains only the dates of his birth and death, and the names of his parents and his beloved wife, Polly. A visitor who did not recognize the name would have no inkling of the great achievements of the man in the tomb.
It is always idle to speculate on the ifs of history, but it seems indisputable that if old John Adams had chosen a lesser man than John Marshall to be chief justice two centuries ago, we would be living in a much different nation today. None of his contemporaries did more to fulfill the promise of the U. S. Constitution "to form a more perfect union." Little wonder that the Liberty Bell, as it tolled to mourn his death on July 6, 1835, cracked, and has remained respectfully silent ever since.
Ray Jenkins, as a reporter for the Columbus (Ga.) Ledger, won the 1955 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for his coverage, with another reporter, of the 1954 Phenix City, Ala., upheaval. He has worked for the Montgomery (Ala.) Advertiser-Journal, The New York Times, the Clearwater (Fla.) Sun and was editorial page editor of The Evening Sun. His book, Blind Vengeance, was published in 1997 by the University of Georgia Press.