“ what is to become of our Post-revolutionary history? of the antidotes of truth to the misrepresentations of Marshal? this example proves the wisdom of the maxim never to put off to tomorrow what can be done to-day . . . ”

Criticisms of Marshall’s book occur at times in Jefferson’s correspondence. A letter to William Wirt, for instance, written on August 14, 1814, contains remarks on Judge Marshall’s story of the resolutions of 1765.

In a signed paper dated February 4, 1818, now known as the “Anas”, Jefferson wrote: . . . had Gen ^l. Washington himself written from these materials a history of the period they embrace, it would have been a conspicuous monument of the integrity of his mind, the soundness of his judgment, and it’s powers of discernment between truth & falshood, principles & pretensions. but the party feelings of his biographer, to whom after his death the collection was confided, have culled from it a composition, as different from what Gen ^l. Washington would have offered, as was the candor of the two characters, during the period of the war, the partiality of this pen is displayed in lavishments of praise on certain military characters, who had done nothing military, but who afterwards, & before he wrote, had become heroes in party, altho’ not in war; and in his reserve on the merits of others, who rendered signal services indeed, but did not earn his praise by apostatising in peace from the republican principles for which they had fought in war. it shews itself too in the cold indifference with which a struggle for the most animating of human objects is narrated. no act of heroism ever kindles in the mind of this writer a single aspiration in favor of the holy cause which inspired the bosom, & nerved the arm of the patriot warrior. no gloom of events, no lowering of prospects ever excites a fear for the issue of a contest which was to change the condition of man over the civilized globe. the sufferings inflicted on endeavors to vindicate the rights of humanity are related with all the frigid insensibility with which a monk would have contemplated the victims of an Auto da fé. let no man believe that Gen ^l. Washington ever intended that his papers should be used for the suicide of the cause, for which he had lived, and for which there never was a moment in which he would not have died. the abuse of these materials is chiefly however manifested in the history of the period immediately following the establishment of the present constitution; and nearly with that my memorandums begin. were a reader of this period to form his idea of it from this history alone, he would suppose the republican party (who were in truth endeavoring to keep the government within the line of the constitution, and prevent it’s being monarchised in practice) were a mere set of grumblers, and disorganisers, satisfied with no government, without fixed principles of any, and, like a British parliamentary opposition, gaping after loaves and fishes, and ready to change principles, as well as position, at any time, with their adversaries . . .

For Jefferson’s comparison of this book with Botta’s history see no. 509.

Jefferson bought another copy of this book from William F. Gray of Fredericksburg, through Milligan on May 6, 1815, price $17.50. This may have been a replacement copy and delivered to Congress, or may have been for his own use.

John Marshall, 1755-1835, a Virginian, Chief Justice of the United States, was the principal founder of the American system of constitutional law. He married Mary Ambler, whose mother Rebecca Burwell had preferred Jacquelin Ambler to Thomas Jefferson. (See the note to Coke, chapter 18.)