Without Precedent

by Joel Richard Paul

  23Robert E. Wright, “Rise of the Corporate Nation,” in Douglas A. Irwin & Richard Sylla, eds., Founding Choices: American Economic Policy in the 1790s (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011), 218–220.

  24White, Marshall Court, 629–630.

  25Sturges v. Crowninshield, 17 U.S. 122 (1819), 122–128, 131–132; Gerald T. Dunne, Justice Joseph Story and the Rise of the Supreme Court (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1970), 18, 158.

  26R. Kent Newmyer, Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story: Statesman of the Old Republic (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1985), 48–51.

  27Newmyer, Story, 210–211; White, Marshall Court, 2:634.

  28White, Marshall Court, 633–634.

  29White, Marshall Court, 632.

  30Marshall, Life of George Washington, 2:120–121.

  31White, History of the Supreme Court, 2:633–636.

  32Sturges v. Crowninshield, 17 U.S. 122 (1819), 193.

  33Sturges v. Crowninshield, 17 U.S. 122 (1819), 195–196.

  34Sturges v. Crowninshield, 17 U.S. 122 (1819), 204.

  35Ogden v. Saunders, 25 U.S. 213 (1827).

  36The case was first argued in 1824, but the Court was split, and Justice Todd missed the entire session. The case was held over for reconsideration when Todd returned, but he never did.

  37Ogden v. Saunders, 25 U.S. 213, 332, 346.

  CHAPTER 30. RIGHT REMAINS WITH THE STRONGEST

  1To Mary Marshall, Mar. 12, 1826, MP, 10:276.

  2Smith, Marshall, 492.

  3Marshall to Joseph Story, Oct. 29, 1828, MP, 11:179.

  4Marshall to Edward Everett, Aug. 2, 1826, MP, 10:299.

  5Marshall to Joseph Story, May 1, 1828, MP, 11:94.

  6Marshall to James Hillhouse, May 26, 1830, MP, 11:377.

  7Marshall to Joseph Story, Dec. 30, 1827, MP, 11:65.

  8Marshall to John H. Pleasants, Mar. 29, 1828, MP, 11:92. Though it may seem remarkable that Marshall did not vote in presidential elections, in fact, only about one-quarter of eligible white males voted in presidential elections. Michael F. Holt, The Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party: Jacksonian Politics and the Onset of the Civil War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 8.

  9From Clay, Apr. 8, 1828, MP, 11:92.

  10Marshall to Joseph Hopkinson, Mar. 18, 1829, MP, 11:225.

  11To Mary Marshall, Feb. 1, 1829, MP, 11:199.

  12To Mary Marshall, Feb. 28, 1829, MP, 11:205.

  13Poem, Feb. 1829, MP, 11:206.

  14To Mary Marshall, Feb. 19, 1829, MP, 11:203–204; To Mary Marshall, Mar. 5, 1829, MP, 11:207; Jon Meacham, American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House (New York: Random House, 2008), 57–62.

  15Newmyer, Marshall, 406.

  16Smith, Marshall, 503.

  17Wood, Empire, 366.

  18Foster & Elam v. Neilson, 27 U.S. 253, 305 (1829). After the transaction was concluded, the wily Talleyrand advised the Americans with a sly wink that while he could not sell them West Florida, “you have made a noble bargain for yourselves and I suppose you will make the most of it.” Livingston to James Madison, May 20, 1803, Papers of Madison: 5:19, as quoted in Wood, Empire, 374.

  19Jon Kukla, A Wilderness So Immense: The Louisiana Purchase and the Destiny of America (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2003), 289.

  20Meacham, American Lion, 35–36.

  21Herring, From Colony to Superpower, 109–111.

  22Foster & Elam v. Neilson, 27 U.S. 253, 255.

  23Foster & Elam v. Neilson, 27 U.S. 253, 256.

  24Foster & Elam v. Neilson, 27 U.S. 253, 293–299.

  25Foster & Elam v. Neilson, 27 U.S. 253, 274.

  26Foster & Elam v. Neilson, 27 U.S. 253, 274–277.

  27Foster & Elam v. Neilson, 27 U.S. 253, 306.

  28Foster & Elam v. Neilson, 27 U.S. 253, 307.

  29Foster & Elam v. Neilson, 27 U.S. 253, 307.

  30Foster & Elam v. Neilson, 27 U.S. 253, 309.

  31Foster & Elam v. Neilson, 27 U.S. 253, 313.

  32Foster & Elam v. Neilson, 27 U.S. 253, 314.

  33Foster & Elam v. Neilson, 27 U.S. 253, 314–315.

  34Foster & Elam v. Neilson, 27 U.S. 253, 314–315.

  35Spain granted Percheman two thousand acres of land on the banks of the St. Johns River in Ocklawaha, East Florida. After Spain ceded Florida to the United States, the East Florida commission appointed to register land titles rejected Percheman’s title to the property. Percheman sued under an 1830 federal statute adopted to provide for the settlement of Florida land claims.

  36U.S. v. Percheman, 32 US 51, 86–87 (1832).

  37U.S. v. Percheman, 32 US 51, 88–89 (1832).

  CHAPTER 31. AN EXTRAVAGANT PRETENSE

  1H. W. Brands, Andrew Jackson: His Life and Times (New York: Doubleday, 2005), 175.

  2Ronald N. Satz, American Indian Policy in the Jacksonian Era (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1975), 10.

  3Jackson Inaugural, Mar., 1829, as quoted in Satz, American Indian Policy, 12.

  4Satz, American Indian Policy, 10–11, 19.

  5Jackson, State of the Union, Dec. 8, 1829; Satz, American Indian Policy, 12–13, 18–21.

  6Debates in Congress, 1st Cong., 1st sess., 309–312, as quoted in Satz, American Indian Policy, 22.

  7Debates in Congress, 1st Cong., 1st sess., 326–328, as quoted in Satz, American Indian Policy, 24.

  8Lindsay G. Robertson, Conquest by Law: How the Discovery of America Dispossessed Indigenous Peoples of Their Lands (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 87.

  9Johnson v. McIntosh, Note, MP 9:280–281.

  10Eric Kades, “History and Interpretation of the Great Case of Johnson v. M’Intosh.” Law and History Review 19, no. 1 (Spring 2001): 92.

  11From Indiana Gazette, Aug. 27, 1804, as quoted in Robertson, Conquest, 52.

  12Robertson, Conquest, 51–53.

  13Eric Kades, “The Dark Side of Efficiency: Johnson v. M’Intosh and the Expropriation of American Indian Lands,” University of Pennsylvania Law Review 148 (April 2000): 1091–1093.

  14Kades, “History and Interpretation of the Great Case,” 94–95; Robertson, Conquest, 53–56.

  15Smith and Lloyd, Trial of Samuel Chase, 1:293–295. Harper had also called Winder as a witness in his defense of Justice Chase.

  16Johnson v. M’Intosh, 21 U.S. 543, 568–570 (1823).

  17Kenneth H. Bobroff, “Retelling Allotment: Indian Property Rights and the Myth of Common Ownership,” Vanderbilt Law Review 54 (2001): 1559, 1571–1592.

  18The new edition was republished in 1824 and retitled as A History of the Colonies Planted by the English on the Continent of North America. (Philadelphia: Abraham Small, 1824).

  19Johnson v. M’Intosh, 21 U.S. 543, 574 (1823).

  20Nell Jessup Newton, “Federal Power over Indians: Its Sources, Scope, and Limitations,” University of Pennsylvania Law Review 132 (January 1984): 207–208; David E. Wilkins, American Indian Sovereignty and the U.S. Supreme Court: The Masking of Justice (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1997), 31–34.

  21Johnson v. M’Intosh, 21 U.S. 543, 590.

  22Johnson v. M’Intosh, 21 U.S. 543, 573 (1823).

  23Johnson v. M’Intosh, 21 U.S. 543, 590–591.

  24Francesco de Vitoria, Hugo Grotius, Samuel von Pufendorf, Samuel Wharton, and Emerich de Vattel all rejected the principle of discovery as the basis for European colonization of the Americas. Vattel conceded that if discovery were followed by genuine occupation of the land, it could serve a basis for ownership. However, Vattel cautioned that a sovereign could not claim more land by discovery than it could reasonably cultivate. Andrew Fitzmaurice, “Discovery, Conquest, and Occupation of Territory,” in Bardo Fassbender and Anne Peters, Oxford Handbook of the History of International Law (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2012), 842�
��844.

  25Gregory Ablavsky, “Beyond the Indian Commerce Clause,” Yale Law Journal 124 (2015): 1012, 1071; Sarah H. Cleveland, “Powers Inherent in Sovereignty: Indians, Aliens, Territories, and the Nineteenth Century Origin of Plenary Power over Foreign Affairs,” Texas Law Review 81, no. 1 (November 2002): 33. Marshall was well aware that for three centuries the leading international legal scholars had rejected the idea that mere discovery alone vested title in a European sovereign.

  26Vattel, The Law of Nations, 1:208–209, 215–217.

  27Johnson v. M’Intosh, 21 U.S. 543, 591. The term “extravagant pretense” was a familiar idiom in nineteenth-century America. The Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Cranmer, one of the leaders of the English Reformation in the sixteenth century, disparaged the doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church as an “extravagant pretense.” By the eighteenth century, the term was in common usage in America and Britain to describe any false idea worthy of debunking.

  28Robertson, Conquest, 76–80,

  29Beveridge, Marshall, 1:237–241.

  30Johnson v. M’Intosh, 21 U.S. 543, 588.

  31White, Marshall Court, 710–711.

  32White, Marshall Court, 703–710.

  33Stuart Banner, How the Indians Lost Their Land: Law and Power on the Frontier (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press, 2005), 186.

  34Johnson v. M’Intosh, 21 U.S. 543, 588–589.

  35Cohen, Original Indian Title, 32 Minn. L. Rev. 28, 48–50 (1947); Newton, “Federal Power over Indians,” 132 U. PA. L. Rev. 195, 207–211.

  36Note, MP, 9:282–283.

  37Kades, “History and Interpretation of the Great Case,” 113–114.

  38Story, ed., The Miscellaneous Writings of Joseph Story, 408–474, as quoted in MP, 11:179.

  39Marshall to Joseph Story, Oct. 29, 1828, MP, 11:178.

  CHAPTER 32. IN THE CONQUEROR’S COURT

  1Note 1, MP, 11:227.

  2Note 1, MP, 11:227.

  3Marshall to Barbara O’Sullivan, Mar. 18, 1829, MP, 1:226–228.

  4Mason, My Dearest Polly, 322.

  5Marshall to Joseph Story, Jun. 26, 1831, MP, 12:94.

  6To James Marshall, Dec. 21, 1828, MP, 11:185.

  7Marshall to Joseph Story, Jun. 11, 1829, MP, 11:260.

  8To Mary Marshall, Jan. 31, 1830, MP, 11:343.

  9To Mary Marshall, Jan. 31, 1830, MP, 11:343.

  10Joseph to Samuel Fay, Feb. 25, 1808, as quoted in William W. Story, ed., The Life and Letters of Joseph Story (London: John Chapman, 1851), 1:167.

  11Marshall to Joseph Story, Jan. 8, 1830, MP, 11:332.

  12Editorial note, MP, 12:42.

  13Newmyer, Marshall, 447.

  14Register of Debates, VI, 333–334, Apr. 15, 1830, as quoted in Editorial Note, MP, 12:49.

  15Jackson annual message, Dec. 6, 1830, Compilation of Messages and Papers, 3:1082–1086, as quoted in Brands, Andrew Jackson, 491–492.

  16Marshall in Philadelphia, Sep. 28, 1831, editorial note, MP, 12:105.

  17As quoted in Niles Register, Mar. 26, 1831, 67–68.

  18Cherokee Nation v. Georgia, 30 U.S. 1, 15.

  19Cherokee Nation v. Georgia, 30 U.S. 1, 16.

  20Cherokee Nation v. Georgia, 30 U.S. 1, 19 (1831).

  21Cherokee Nation v. Georgia, 30 U.S. 1, 17–18.

  22Cherokee Nation v. Georgia, 30 U.S. 1, 21.

  23Cherokee Nation v. Georgia, 30 U.S. 1, 27.

  24Cherokee Nation v. Georgia, 30 U.S. 1, 20.

  25White, Marshall Court, 730.

  26Cherokee Nation v. Georgia, 30 U.S. 1, 50–60.

  27Marshall to Richard Peters, May 19, 1831, MP, 12:66–67.

  28Revoked Will and Codicils, Sep. 24, 1831, MP, 12:102.

  29Marshall in Philadelphia, Sep. 28, 1831, MP, 12:105.

  30Andrew Oliver, The Portraits of John Marshall (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1977), 135.

  31Marshall in Philadelphia, Sep. 28, 1831, MP, 12:105–109; To Mary Marshall, Nov. 8, 1831, MP, 12:121.

  32Smith, Marshall, 514; Mason, My Dearest Polly, 343.

  33Eulogy for Mary W. Marshall, Dec. 25, 1832, MP, 12:251–252.

  34Marshall to Joseph Story, Oct. 12, 1831, MP, 12:119–120.

  35Worcester v. Georgia, editorial note, Mar. 3, 1832, MP, 12:150–151.

  36Worcester v. Georgia, editorial note, Mar. 3, 1832, MP, 12:151.

  37Worcester v. Georgia, editorial note, Mar. 3, 1832, MP, 12:151.

  38Worcester v. Georgia, editorial note, Mar. 3, 1832, MP, 12:152.

  39Worcester v. Georgia, editorial note, Mar. 3, 1832, MP, 12:153.

  40Mason, My Dearest Polly, 330.

  41Marshall to Henry Clay and Philemon Thomas, Feb. 10, 1832, MP, 12:146; To Edward C. Marshall, Feb. 15, 1832, MP, 12:147.

  42Worcester v. Georgia, 31 U.S. 515, 535 (1831).

  43Story to Mrs. Story, Feb. 26, 1832, Story, Life and Letters, 2:84–85, as quoted in Worcester v. Georgia, editorial note, Mar. 3, 1832, MP, 12:153.

  44Worcester v. Georgia, editorial note, Mar. 3, 1832, MP, 12:153.

  45Worcester v. Georgia, 31 U.S. 515, 543.

  46Worcester v. Georgia, 31 U.S. 515, 544–545.

  47Worcester v. Georgia, 31 U.S. 515, 547.

  48Worcester v. Georgia, 31 U.S. 515, 549.

  49Worcester v. Georgia, 31 U.S. 515, 552.

  50Worcester v. Georgia, 31 U.S. 515, 556. Similarly, the Treaty of Holston in 1791 recognized the “national character of the Cherokees, and their right of self government; thus guarantying their lands; assuming the duty of protection, and of course pledging the faith of the United States for that protection.”

  51Worcester v. Georgia, 31 U.S. 515, 557.

  52Worcester v. Georgia, 31 U.S. 515, 559.

  53Worcester v. Georgia, 31 U.S. 515, 561.

  54Worcester v. Georgia, 31 U.S. 515, 561.

  55Worcester v. Georgia, editorial note, Mar. 3, 1832, MP, 12:153.

  56White, Marshall Court, 736.

  57Meacham, American Lion, 204.

  58Satz, American Indian Policy, 49.

  59Andrew Jackson, Annual Message to Congress, Dec. 4, 1832.

  60Worcester v. Georgia, editorial note, Mar. 3, 1832, MP, 12:156.

  61White, Marshall Court, 737–738; Joseph C. Burke, “The Cherokee Cases: A Study in Law, Politics, and Morality,” Stanford Law Review 21 (February 1969): 530.

  CHAPTER 33. A UNION PROLONGED BY MIRACLES

  1Marshall to Joseph Story, Aug. 2, 1832, MP, 12:226–227.

  2Marshall to Joseph Story, Sep. 22, 1832, MP, 12:238.

  3Marshall to William Gaston, Dec. 20, 1832, MP, 12:246.

  4To James Marshall, Sep. 15, 1832, MP, 12:236, n2.

  5Marshall to Joseph Story, Dec. 25, 1832, MP, 12:248–249.

  6Marshall to S. W. Story, Jan. 20, 1833, as quoted in White, Marshall Court, 739.

  7To Jaquelin Marshall, Feb. 13, 1834, MP, 12:349.

  8Smith, Marshall, 424–425.

  9Warren, Supreme Court, 798–800.

  10From Story, Jan. 1833, MP, 12:257.

  11Marshall to Joseph Story, Oct. 6, 1834, MP, 12:421–422.

  12Interview with John Frazee, May 22, 1834, MP, 12:413.

  13Meeting with Harriet Martineau, Feb. 1, 1835, MP, 12:453.

  14To James Marshall, Oct. 14, 1833, MP, 12:304.

  15To James Marshall, Apr. 13, 1835, MP, 12:483; To James Marshall, May 22, 1835, MP, 12:487–488.

  16To John Marshall Jr., Mar. 11, 1835, MP, 12:474. The quote is from Virgil.

  17See e.g., Marshall to James Garnett, Dec. 17, 1833, MP, 12:313.

  18To John Marshall Jr., Mar. 11, 1835, MP, 12:474.

  19Marshall to J. Y. Campbell, Apr. 4, 1835, MP, 12:480.

  20To James Marshall, Apr. 13, 1835, MP,
12:483.

  21Interview with James Kent, May 16, 1835, MP, 12:486.

  22Marshall to Richard Peters, Apr. 30, 1835, MP, 12:485–486.

  23Nathaniel Chapman to John Brockenbrough, Jul. 6, 1835, MP, 12:492, n1.

  24Marshall’s Final Illness, Jun. 11, 1835, MP, 12:489–490.

  25“Funeral Honors to the Late Chief Justice Marshall,” Paul Pry (Washington, D.C.), Jul. 18, 1835, vol. 4, no. 32, p. 4.

  26National Intelligencer, July 9, 1835, as quoted in White, Marshall Court, 775.

  27National Gazette, Jul. 25, 1835, as quoted in Warren, Supreme Court, 1:806.

  28Richmond Enquirer, Jul. 10, 1835, as quoted in Smith, Marshall, 524.

  29As quoted in Warren, Supreme Court, 1:796, 813.

  30Jackson to Horace Binney, Sep 18, 1835, Jackson papers, Library of Congress, as quoted in Smith, Marshall, 524.

  31Jeremiah Mason to Joseph Story, Feb. 16, 1828, as quoted in Warren, Supreme Court, 1:807.

  32New-York Evening Post, July 8, 1835, as quoted in White, Marshall Court, 774–775.

  33New-York Evening Post, July 29, 1835, as quoted in White, Marshall Court, 776.

  34Dred Scott v. Sandford, 60 U.S. 393 (1857).

  35Jackson to the Cherokee Tribe, Mar. 16, 1835, as quoted in John Ehle, Trail of Tears: The Rise and Fall of the Cherokee Nation (New York: Anchor Books, 1989), 278.

  36Ehle, Trail of Tears, 390–391.

  SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

  PRIMARY SOURCES

  Abbot, W. W., Dorothy Twohig, Philander D. Chase, et al., eds. The Papers of George Washington: Presidential Series. 19 vols. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1987–.

  Adams, Charles Francis, ed. Letters of John Adams to His Wife. Boston: Charles C. Little and James Brown, 1841.

  Bailyn, Bernard, ed. The Debate on the Constitution: Federalist and Antifederalist Speeches, Articles, and Letters During the Struggle over Ratification. 2 vols. New York: Library of America, 1993.

  Boyd, Julian, Charles Cullen, et al., eds. The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, 42 vols. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1950–.

  Brockenbrough, John W., ed. Reports of Cases Decided by the Honourable John Marshall in the Circuit Court of the United States. 2 vols. Philadelphia: James Kay & Brother, 1837.