Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Abraham Lincoln's 1st Inaugural Address

The national upheaval of secession was a grim reality at Abraham Lincoln's inauguration. Jefferson Davis had been inaugurated as the President of the Confederacy two weeks earlier. The former Illinois Congressman had arrived in Washington by a secret route to avoid danger, and his movements were guarded by General Winfield Scott's soldiers. Ignoring advice to the contrary, the President-elect rode with President Buchanan in an open carriage to the Capitol, where he took the oath of office on the East Portico. Chief Justice Roger Taney administered the executive oath for the seventh time. The Capitol itself was sheathed in scaffolding because the copper and wood "Bulfinch" dome was being replaced with a cast iron dome designed by Thomas U. Walter.




Fellow-Citizens of the United States:

IN compliance with a custom as old as the Government itself, I appear before you to address you briefly and to take in your presence the oath prescribed by the Constitution of the United States to be taken by the President "before he enters on the execution of this office." 1
I do not consider it necessary at present for me to discuss those matters of administration about which there is no special anxiety or excitement. 2
Apprehension seems to exist among the people of the Southern States that by the accession of a Republican Administration their property and their peace and personal security are to be endangered. There has never been any reasonable cause for such apprehension. Indeed, the most ample evidence to the contrary has all the while existed and been open to their inspection. It is found in nearly all the published speeches of him who now addresses you. I do but quote from one of those speeches when I declare that—

I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so.

3
Those who nominated and elected me did so with full knowledge that I had made this and many similar declarations and had never recanted them; and more than this, they placed in the platform for my acceptance, and as a law to themselves and to me, the clear and emphatic resolution which I now read:

Resolved, That the maintenance inviolate of the rights of the States, and especially the right of each State to order and control its own domestic institutions according to its own judgment exclusively, is essential to that balance of power on which the perfection and endurance of our political fabric depend; and we denounce the lawless invasion by armed force of the soil of any State or Territory, no matter what pretext, as among the gravest of crimes.

4
I now reiterate these sentiments, and in doing so I only press upon the public attention the most conclusive evidence of which the case is susceptible that the property, peace, and security of no section are to be in any wise endangered by the now incoming Administration. I add, too, that all the protection which, consistently with the Constitution and the laws, can be given will be cheerfully given to all the States when lawfully demanded, for whatever cause—as cheerfully to one section as to another. 5
There is much controversy about the delivering up of fugitives from service or labor. The clause I now read is as plainly written in the Constitution as any other of its provisions:

No person held to service or labor in one State, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall in consequence of any law or regulation therein be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due.

6
It is scarcely questioned that this provision was intended by those who made it for the reclaiming of what we call fugitive slaves; and the intention of the lawgiver is the law. All members of Congress swear their support to the whole Constitution—to this provision as much as to any other. To the proposition, then, that slaves whose cases come within the terms of this clause "shall be delivered up" their oaths are unanimous. Now, if they would make the effort in good temper, could they not with nearly equal unanimity frame and pass a law by means of which to keep good that unanimous oath? 7
There is some difference of opinion whether this clause should be enforced by national or by State authority, but surely that difference is not a very material one. If the slave is to be surrendered, it can be of but little consequence to him or to others by which authority it is done. And should anyone in any case be content that his oath shall go unkept on a merely unsubstantial controversy as to how it shall be kept? 8
Again: In any law upon this subject ought not all the safeguards of liberty known in civilized and humane jurisprudence to be introduced, so that a free man be not in any case surrendered as a slave? And might it not be well at the same time to provide by law for the enforcement of that clause in the Constitution which guarantees that "the citizens of each State shall be entitled to all privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States"? 9
I take the official oath to-day with no mental reservations and with no purpose to construe the Constitution or laws by any hypercritical rules; and while I do not choose now to specify particular acts of Congress as proper to be enforced, I do suggest that it will be much safer for all, both in official and private stations, to conform to and abide by all those acts which stand unrepealed than to violate any of them trusting to find impunity in having them held to be unconstitutional. 10
It is seventy-two years since the first inauguration of a President under our National Constitution. During that period fifteen different and greatly distinguished citizens have in succession administered the executive branch of the Government. They have conducted it through many perils, and generally with great success. Yet, with all this scope of precedent, I now enter upon the same task for the brief constitutional term of four years under great and peculiar difficulty. A disruption of the Federal Union, heretofore only menaced, is now formidably attempted. 11
I hold that in contemplation of universal law and of the Constitution the Union of these States is perpetual. Perpetuity is implied, if not expressed, in the fundamental law of all national governments. It is safe to assert that no government proper ever had a provision in its organic law for its own termination. Continue to execute all the express provisions of our National Constitution, and the Union will endure forever, it being impossible to destroy it except by some action not provided for in the instrument itself. 12
Again: If the United States be not a government proper, but an association of States in the nature of contract merely, can it, as a contract, be peaceably unmade by less than all the parties who made it? One party to a contract may violate it—break it, so to speak—but does it not require all to lawfully rescind it? 13
Descending from these general principles, we find the proposition that in legal contemplation the Union is perpetual confirmed by the history of the Union itself. The Union is much older than the Constitution. It was formed, in fact, by the Articles of Association in 1774. It was matured and continued by the Declaration of Independence in 1776. It was further matured, and the faith of all the then thirteen States expressly plighted and engaged that it should be perpetual, by the Articles of Confederation in 1778. And finally, in 1787, one of the declared objects for ordaining and establishing the Constitution was "to form a more perfect Union." 14
But if destruction of the Union by one or by a part only of the States be lawfully possible, the Union is less perfect than before the Constitution, having lost the vital element of perpetuity. 15
It follows from these views that no State upon its own mere motion can lawfully get out of the Union; that resolves and ordinances to that effect are legally void, and that acts of violence within any State or States against the authority of the United States are insurrectionary or revolutionary, according to circumstances. 16
I therefore consider that in view of the Constitution and the laws the Union is unbroken, and to the extent of my ability, I shall take care, as the Constitution itself expressly enjoins upon me, that the laws of the Union be faithfully executed in all the States. Doing this I deem to be only a simple duty on my part, and I shall perform it so far as practicable unless my rightful masters, the American people, shall withhold the requisite means or in some authoritative manner direct the contrary. I trust this will not be regarded as a menace, but only as the declared purpose of the Union that it will constitutionally defend and maintain itself. 17
In doing this there needs to be no bloodshed or violence, and there shall be none unless it be forced upon the national authority. The power confided to me will be used to hold, occupy, and possess the property and places belonging to the Government and to collect the duties and imposts; but beyond what may be necessary for these objects, there will be no invasion, no using of force against or among the people anywhere. Where hostility to the United States in any interior locality shall be so great and universal as to prevent competent resident citizens from holding the Federal offices, there will be no attempt to force obnoxious strangers among the people for that object. While the strict legal right may exist in the Government to enforce the exercise of these offices, the attempt to do so would be so irritating and so nearly impracticable withal that I deem it better to forego for the time the uses of such offices. 18
The mails, unless repelled, will continue to be furnished in all parts of the Union. So far as possible the people everywhere shall have that sense of perfect security which is most favorable to calm thought and reflection. The course here indicated will be followed unless current events and experience shall show a modification or change to be proper, and in every case and exigency my best discretion will be exercised, according to circumstances actually existing and with a view and a hope of a peaceful solution of the national troubles and the restoration of fraternal sympathies and affections. 19
That there are persons in one section or another who seek to destroy the Union at all events and are glad of any pretext to do it I will neither affirm nor deny; but if there be such, I need address no word to them. To those, however, who really love the Union may I not speak? 20
Before entering upon so grave a matter as the destruction of our national fabric, with all its benefits, its memories, and its hopes, would it not be wise to ascertain precisely why we do it? Will you hazard so desperate a step while there is any possibility that any portion of the ills you fly from have no real existence? Will you, while the certain ills you fly to are greater than all the real ones you fly from, will you risk the commission of so fearful a mistake? 21
All profess to be content in the Union if all constitutional rights can be maintained. Is it true, then, that any right plainly written in the Constitution has been denied? I think not. Happily, the human mind is so constituted that no party can reach to the audacity of doing this. Think, if you can, of a single instance in which a plainly written provision of the Constitution has ever been denied. If by the mere force of numbers a majority should deprive a minority of any clearly written constitutional right, it might in a moral point of view justify revolution; certainly would if such right were a vital one. But such is not our case. All the vital rights of minorities and of individuals are so plainly assured to them by affirmations and negations, guaranties and prohibitions, in the Constitution that controversies never arise concerning them. But no organic law can ever be framed with a provision specifically applicable to every question which may occur in practical administration. No foresight can anticipate nor any document of reasonable length contain express provisions for all possible questions. Shall fugitives from labor be surrendered by national or by State authority? The Constitution does not expressly say. May Congress prohibit slavery in the Territories? The Constitution does not expressly say. Must Congress protect slavery in the Territories? The Constitution does not expressly say. 22
From questions of this class spring all our constitutional controversies, and we divide upon them into majorities and minorities. If the minority will not acquiesce, the majority must, or the Government must cease. There is no other alternative, for continuing the Government is acquiescence on one side or the other. If a minority in such case will secede rather than acquiesce, they make a precedent which in turn will divide and ruin them, for a minority of their own will secede from them whenever a majority refuses to be controlled by such minority. For instance, why may not any portion of a new confederacy a year or two hence arbitrarily secede again, precisely as portions of the present Union now claim to secede from it? All who cherish disunion sentiments are now being educated to the exact temper of doing this. 23
Is there such perfect identity of interests among the States to compose a new union as to produce harmony only and prevent renewed secession? 24
Plainly the central idea of secession is the essence of anarchy. A majority held in restraint by constitutional checks and limitations, and always changing easily with deliberate changes of popular opinions and sentiments, is the only true sovereign of a free people. Whoever rejects it does of necessity fly to anarchy or to despotism. Unanimity is impossible. The rule of a minority, as a permanent arrangement, is wholly inadmissible; so that, rejecting the majority principle, anarchy or despotism in some form is all that is left. 25
I do not forget the position assumed by some that constitutional questions are to be decided by the Supreme Court, nor do I deny that such decisions must be binding in any case upon the parties to a suit as to the object of that suit, while they are also entitled to very high respect and consideration in all parallel cases by all other departments of the Government. And while it is obviously possible that such decision may be erroneous in any given case, still the evil effect following it, being limited to that particular case, with the chance that it may be overruled and never become a precedent for other cases, can better be borne than could the evils of a different practice. At the same time, the candid citizen must confess that if the policy of the Government upon vital questions affecting the whole people is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court, the instant they are made in ordinary litigation between parties in personal actions the people will have ceased to be their own rulers, having to that extent practically resigned their Government into the hands of that eminent tribunal. Nor is there in this view any assault upon the court or the judges. It is a duty from which they may not shrink to decide cases properly brought before them, and it is no fault of theirs if others seek to turn their decisions to political purposes. 26
One section of our country believes slavery is right and ought to be extended, while the other believes it is wrong and ought not to be extended. This is the only substantial dispute. The fugitive-slave clause of the Constitution and the law for the suppression of the foreign slave trade are each as well enforced, perhaps, as any law can ever be in a community where the moral sense of the people imperfectly supports the law itself. The great body of the people abide by the dry legal obligation in both cases, and a few break over in each. This, I think, can not be perfectly cured, and it would be worse in both cases after the separation of the sections than before. The foreign slave trade, now imperfectly suppressed, would be ultimately revived without restriction in one section, while fugitive slaves, now only partially surrendered, would not be surrendered at all by the other. 27
Physically speaking, we can not separate. We can not remove our respective sections from each other nor build an impassable wall between them. A husband and wife may be divorced and go out of the presence and beyond the reach of each other, but the different parts of our country can not do this. They can not but remain face to face, and intercourse, either amicable or hostile, must continue between them. Is it possible, then, to make that intercourse more advantageous or more satisfactory after separation than before? Can aliens make treaties easier than friends can make laws? Can treaties be more faithfully enforced between aliens than laws can among friends? Suppose you go to war, you can not fight always; and when, after much loss on both sides and no gain on either, you cease fighting, the identical old questions, as to terms of intercourse, are again upon you. 28
This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing Government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it or their revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow it. I can not be ignorant of the fact that many worthy and patriotic citizens are desirous of having the National Constitution amended. While I make no recommendation of amendments, I fully recognize the rightful authority of the people over the whole subject, to be exercised in either of the modes prescribed in the instrument itself; and I should, under existing circumstances, favor rather than oppose a fair opportunity being afforded the people to act upon it. I will venture to add that to me the convention mode seems preferable, in that it allows amendments to originate with the people themselves, instead of only permitting them to take or reject propositions originated by others, not especially chosen for the purpose, and which might not be precisely such as they would wish to either accept or refuse. I understand a proposed amendment to the Constitution—which amendment, however, I have not seen—has passed Congress, to the effect that the Federal Government shall never interfere with the domestic institutions of the States, including that of persons held to service. To avoid misconstruction of what I have said, I depart from my purpose not to speak of particular amendments so far as to say that, holding such a provision to now be implied constitutional law, I have no objection to its being made express and irrevocable. 29
The Chief Magistrate derives all his authority from the people, and they have referred none upon him to fix terms for the separation of the States. The people themselves can do this if also they choose, but the Executive as such has nothing to do with it. His duty is to administer the present Government as it came to his hands and to transmit it unimpaired by him to his successor. 30
Why should there not be a patient confidence in the ultimate justice of the people? Is there any better or equal hope in the world? In our present differences, is either party without faith of being in the right? If the Almighty Ruler of Nations, with His eternal truth and justice, be on your side of the North, or on yours of the South, that truth and that justice will surely prevail by the judgment of this great tribunal of the American people. 31
By the frame of the Government under which we live this same people have wisely given their public servants but little power for mischief, and have with equal wisdom provided for the return of that little to their own hands at very short intervals. While the people retain their virtue and vigilance no Administration by any extreme of wickedness or folly can very seriously injure the Government in the short space of four years. 32
My countrymen, one and all, think calmly and well upon this whole subject. Nothing valuable can be lost by taking time. If there be an object to hurry any of you in hot haste to a step which you would never take deliberately, that object will be frustrated by taking time; but no good object can be frustrated by it. Such of you as are now dissatisfied still have the old Constitution unimpaired, and, on the sensitive point, the laws of your own framing under it; while the new Administration will have no immediate power, if it would, to change either. If it were admitted that you who are dissatisfied hold the right side in the dispute, there still is no single good reason for precipitate action. Intelligence, patriotism, Christianity, and a firm reliance on Him who has never yet forsaken this favored land are still competent to adjust in the best way all our present difficulty. 33
In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow-countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The Government will not assail you. You can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors. You have no oath registered in heaven to destroy the Government, while I shall have the most solemn one to "preserve, protect, and defend it." 34
I am loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.

Abraham Lincoln's 2nd Inaugural Address

Weeks of wet weather preceding Lincoln's second inauguration had caused Pennsylvania Avenue to become a sea of mud and standing water. Thousands of spectators stood in thick mud at the Capitol grounds to hear the President. As he stood on the East Portico to take the executive oath, the completed Capitol dome over the President's head was a physical reminder of the resolve of his Administration throughout the years of civil war. Chief Justice Salmon Chase administered the oath of office. In little more than a month, the President would be assassinated.




Fellow-Countrymen:

AT this second appearing to take the oath of the Presidential office there is less occasion for an extended address than there was at the first. Then a statement somewhat in detail of a course to be pursued seemed fitting and proper. Now, at the expiration of four years, during which public declarations have been constantly called forth on every point and phase of the great contest which still absorbs the attention and engrosses the energies of the nation, little that is new could be presented. The progress of our arms, upon which all else chiefly depends, is as well known to the public as to myself, and it is, I trust, reasonably satisfactory and encouraging to all. With high hope for the future, no prediction in regard to it is ventured.

On the occasion corresponding to this four years ago all thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending civil war. All dreaded it, all sought to avert it. While the inaugural address was being delivered from this place, devoted altogether to saving the Union without war, urgent agents were in the city seeking to destroy it without war—seeking to dissolve the Union and divide effects by negotiation. Both parties deprecated war, but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than let it perish, and the war came.

One-eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was somehow the cause of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union even by war, while the Government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it. Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with or even before the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. "Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh." If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether."

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.

Railsplitter redux: Decatur's Lonn Pressnall finds Mr. Lincoln's skin a comfortable fit

Copyright (c) 2006, Herald & Review, Decatur, Ill. Distributed byMcClatchy-Tribune Business News. For reprints, emailtmsreprints@permissionsgroup.com, call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions GroupInc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.

Aug. 26--FORSYTH -- Looking back, it seems inevitable that Lonn Pressnall and Abraham Lincoln would wind up touring together.

Pressnall, 63, has been bumping into the 197-year-old memory of Lincoln since he first learned to recite the Gettysburg Address by heart in grade school. But he really got up close and personal with the 16th president while at college in his home state of Nebraska and performing in a play called the "World of Carl Sandburg," based on the work of one of the first and most important Lincoln biographers.

"I used to be kind of 'methody' you might say in my preparation back then, and I read a lot about Lincoln and got very interested in him," said Pressnall, who lives in Forsyth. "But then I kind of drifted away with all the other things I was doing as I pursued my theater education."

He would meet Lincoln again in 2001 when, as professor of speech and theater at Richland Community College, he revived the "World of Carl Sandburg" and did a Lincoln cameo role. And then he took the stage as the Great Emancipator in "The Last Great Hope," a play he wrote about Lincoln's friendship with Frederick Douglass, the former slave who spoke and wrote with a muse of fire. Busy researching Lincoln's dealings with Douglass and just delving deeper into the Lincoln mystique in general, Pressnall soon found himself held in the gravitational field of the Railsplitter's fascinating personality.

"I also discovered by happy accident that Lincoln was well- versed and knowledgeable in Shakespeare, and I've had a love affair with Shakespeare since my days as an undergraduate English major," Pressnall said. "Lincoln loved going to the theater, and he loved plays and, of course, he was killed by an actor in a theater. There is just so much irony and beauty in the Lincoln saga, and it was easy for me to get caught up in it."

So much so he started becoming Lincoln professionally after the Richland performances, dying his hair dark and elevating his 6-foot- 1 frame an extra few inches with thick-heeled boots to get closer to his alter ego's 6-foot-3-plus. Cosmetically, the professor was already almost there: His long face resembles Lincoln's, and he even has a mole on the same spot on the right side of the face where Lincoln had one.

Some rigorous exercise gave him the gauntish looks necessary to complete the effect, and then he was off: His first paying gig was portraying Lincoln at the opening of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield in 2005. Since then, he's appeared as the costumed Lincoln at everything from Republican dinners to the Windy City's "Taste of Chicago" and has loved every minute of it, much to his wife Mary's nonsurprise.

"I'm not really sure just what the fascination with Lincoln is, but it's a deep one," said Mary Pressnall, who has slipstreamed behind her wide-eyed husband on pilgrimages to just about every Lincoln site in Kentucky, Indiana and Illinois. She's too tall to be Mrs. Lincoln, by the way, and has no desire to play her. "We went to New Salem again the other week, and I do find that part of the history fascinating, whether it's Lincoln or anyone else," she said. "The day-to-day struggle and the primitive conditions they lived in, it was hard."

Lonn Pressnall tries to capture some of the flavor of a man who could rise from that prairie frontier to become a self-taught lawyer, lover of literature and a man widely seen as the greatest president. The thespian offers a Lincoln portrayal for all seasons, too, available for hire in character to just meet and greet and shake hands, or appear as the great orator thundering out the Gettysburg Address or performing a piece he calls "A. Lincoln: A Touch of the Poet," looking at the president's fascination with great literature. "There's something in Lincoln for everybody," he said.

His performances have attracted much attention and praise. His latest honor is the most prized: the 2006 Rail-splitter Award from the Association of Lincoln Presenters, a 150-strong group of nationwide enthusiasts who portray Lincoln, which came in the form of a handmade, hand-painted whirligig that shows an ax-swinging Lincoln splitting a log.

"It's very cool, and I'm very proud of it," Pressnall said.

Now the Lincoln performer is hoping to take his presidential show on the road and is contemplating the perfect alignment of means, motive and opportunity.

After a 27-year-career at Richland, he retired July 31 and plans to make overseas travel a big part of his golden years. He can't afford to take off on some global grand tour but, with his friend Lincoln along for the ride, the possibility looms of working his ticket by spending some time overseas in character: target countries for presidential performances range from Scotland to Japan, Russia and Greece.

"You know something?" Pressnall said. "I've heard that in every country, even if there are people who have absolutely no English, there is one word they all know: Lincoln."

Tony Reid can be reached at treid@herald-review.com or 421-7977.

Credit: Herald & Review, Decatur, Ill.

The True Lincoln: Source Time, Inc. 2005

The True Lincoln: He was underestimated as President, then turned into an icon at his death. Only now are historians discovering the personal and political depth of the leader who saved the nation. (Abraham Lincoln)(Cover Story)(Biography) Joshua Wolf Shenk.

Full Text: COPYRIGHT 2005 Time, Inc.

Byline: Joshua Wolf Shenk

We don't outright invent history, but often it is made by the questions we ask. Few figures have provoked more questions than Abraham Lincoln, both because of his broad importance and his fantastic complexity. And few figures have proved so malleable.

At times, the bearded man in the stovepipe hat seems much like a hologram, a medium for our fears and fantasies. Recent claims that Lincoln was gay--based on a tortured misreading of conventional 19th century sleeping arrangements--resemble the long-standing efforts to draft the famously nonsectarian man for one Christian denomination or another. Over the years, he has been trotted out to support everything from communism and feminism to prohibitionism and vegetarianism. But if a figure can be made to stand for everything, does he really mean anything?

Today, as we march toward the 2009 bicentennial of Lincoln's birth and a trove of Lincoln scholarship has become instantly available on the Internet, primary material has become newly accessible, and there's a new drive to get him right. "We really are in a renaissance of Lincoln literature," notes Harold Holzer, a co-chairman of the Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission. "All of the classic works are being updated and improved upon. All the great themes that hitherto we thought had been dealt with definitively are being re-explored." In popular culture too, there is a Lincoln boom: in April a $150 million Lincoln library and museum complex opened in Springfield, Ill. Steven Spielberg has cast Liam Neeson to star in the first feature film on Lincoln since before World War II.

But after 140 years of manipulation, can Lincoln's memory ever again find its true shape?

Abraham Lincoln died shortly after 7 a.m. on April 15, 1865. "Now he belongs to the ages," Edwin Stanton, Lincoln's Secretary of War, said at the President's deathbed. It was a prescient thought, because it suggested not only the long cultural presence ahead for Lincoln but also the fact that generations would possess him.

From the start, his memory was molded to serve a purpose. When telegraph wires clicked with the news that Lincoln had been shot at Ford's Theatre, the nation was facing the monumental and confounding task of restoring peace after four years of broiling war. Lincoln had thought both North and South were complicit in the shame of slavery. He even suggested, in his second Inaugural Address, that God may have brought "this terrible war" to punish both regions, urging the nation to bind up its wounds "with malice towards none, with charity for all."

He wanted reconciliation, but his eulogists struck a different note. With a sentimental tip of the hat to the fallen leader, many Northern journalists, preachers and politicians actually tried to use Lincoln's death to stoke the fires of vengeance. "If the rebels can do a deed like this to the kind, good, generous, tender-hearted ruler, whose every thought was purity," exclaimed Benjamin Butler, a general in the war, to a crowd in New York City, "whose every desire a yearning for forgiveness and peace, what shall be done to them in high places who guided the assassin's knife?" The crowd began to chant, "Hang them! Hang them!" The assassination, Northern leaders saw, had a great political value. "His death," noted a caucus of Republican Congressmen, "is a godsend to our cause."

If his contemporaries quickly contradicted his ideas, they were also slow to elevate him as an icon, even though he had all the ingredients to be one: an epic time (the split of a nation and a war over its future), bold ideas (union and liberty) and a violent death. One reason is that while people felt strongly the symbolic loss of a President through the nation's first assassination, few knew what to make of Lincoln as a man. Beneath the spectacular symbols of mourning--houses draped in black, endless ceremonies as his body was taken by train from Washington to his home of Springfield--was an intense ambiguity: stories circulated regularly about him as a religious doubter, a teller of vulgar stories, an uncouth and awkward man, a usurper of power. But Republicans saw him as a great asset and tried to build a myth that would last--and do the party lasting good. In May 1865, the Republican editor Josiah Holland interviewed the President's law partner William Herndon at length. When the subject of religion came up, Herndon told him, "The less said, the better," doubting that the pious Holland would want the details of Lincoln's unorthodox history. How, for example, Lincoln had doubted the divinity of Christ and the infallibility of the Bible. "Oh, never mind," Holland said. "I'll fix that"--and his book made Lincoln a model Christian.

Holland wasn't alone in trying to "fix" Lincoln. "Those who have spoken most confidently of their knowledge of his personal qualities," Pennsylvania Republican Alexander McClure said of Lincoln, "are, as a rule, those who saw least of them below the surface." And many real Lincoln intimates kept a low profile, wishing to avoid the media circus. Meanwhile, one man who tried to talk about Lincoln in a complex and honest way paid a heavy price. After Lincoln died, Herndon solicited memories from men and women who had known him, identifying and tracking down crucial sources, then hounding them until they gave a statement or an interview. We call that kind of material oral history, but in the late 19th century it was just as likely to be called gossip--or, worse, scurrilous trash. Herndon thought that history should tell the full truth about a man and that Lincoln's character could only be magnified by a full portrait of it. He dug hard on matters that polite people thought should be left to rest: that Lincoln's mother had been born out of wedlock, for example, and that Lincoln as a young man had serious, nearly fatal depressions. Down on his luck, Herndon didn't publish his book until 1889. It didn't reach many readers, but he caught plenty of flak. "It vilely distorts the image of an ideal statesman, patriot, and martyr," the Chicago Journal said of his book. "It clothes him in vulgarity and grossness. Its indecencies are spread like a curtain to hide the colossal proportions and the splendid purity of his character."

The Journal, it's important to note, was a Republican paper. Today, when Lincoln is the favorite of everyone from George W. Bush to Mario Cuomo (not to mention Fidel Castro), it is easy to forget how partisan his memory once was. In the late 19th century, a kind of cult of Lincoln grew up among the party faithful, with banquets on his birthday as a rite, while Southerners licked their wounds and Democrats rebuilt an organization that had been split in the war.

But in the early 20th century, Lincoln's appeal broadened considerably. By then, adults who had lived and suffered through the Civil War had died. Once a symbol of division, Lincoln came to be seen as a symbol of national peacemaking, admired alike by New York bankers and the Sons of the Confederate Veterans. In 1922, the Lincoln Memorial was dedicated, its structure modeled after the temples of ancient Greece, its statue reminiscent of Zeus on his throne, its location chosen to maximize the power of impression by an object of reverence and honor. In Illinois, sites associated with the 16th President were marked as "Lincoln shrines."

And so the legend grew. In the 1930s, Henry Fonda played Lincoln on the big screen and stonecutters carved his face on Mount Rushmore; in the 1940s, Aaron Copland's magisterial Lincoln Portrait debuted; in the 1950s, Carl Sandburg held a joint session of Congress rapt with his speech that began, "Not often in the story of mankind does a man arrive on earth who is both steel and velvet, who is hard as rock and soft as a drifting fog, who holds in his heart and mind the paradox of terrible storm and peace unspeakable and perfect." In 1963, TIME put Lincoln on the cover of its 40th-anniversary issue, "The Individual in America," and christened him the embodiment of that quality "in the special double sense that Americans attributed to the word--the common man who is yet uncommon."

In retrospect, one of the high points of the Lincoln legend may also have marked its breaking point. In August 1963, the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom gathered in front of the Lincoln Memorial, and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. began his landmark "I Have a Dream" speech by paying homage to Lincoln: "Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of captivity."

For decades, African Americans had not only remembered Lincoln kindly but also invoked him as a present-day force. "The rise of Jim Crow segregation in the South," explains Allen C. Guelzo, "occurred hand in hand with the efforts of Southerners to downplay the significance of slavery both for the war and for Lincoln, and blacks battled back by keeping slavery and Lincoln's image as the Great Emancipator at the forefront of the nation's memory." A common folktale in the mid--20th century South--which Leadbelly poignantly rendered in a song he recorded in the early 1940s--had Lincoln rising from the dead, coming down and bringing justice to the Jim Crow South.

But as the civil rights movement shone a spotlight on inequality and discrimination, Lincoln's image came in for a beating. The myth of Lincoln as the black man's best friend was hard to square with his own words, from the Lincoln-Douglas debates, that he had "no purpose to introduce political and social equality between the white and the black races" and that "there is a physical difference between the two, which in my judgment, will probably forever forbid their living upon the footing of perfect equality." In a 1968 piece for Ebony, "Was Abe Lincoln a White Supremacist?", Lerone Bennett Jr. presented a Lincoln who often told racist jokes and who, well into his presidency, urged that freed blacks should leave the U.S. for another continent. Three decades later, Bennett returned to the theme in his book Forced into Glory, which became a best seller in black-interest bookstores.

Bennett's book is only one side of a sharp argument over Lincoln and race, but its success served as a sharp reminder that--just as in all previous times--modern America will insist on seeing Lincoln on its own terms. Consider C.A. Tripp and his argument that Lincoln was gay. His book The Intimate World of Abraham Lincoln begins with the fact that Lincoln during his late 20s and early 30s shared a bed with a young man named Joshua Speed. As President, Lincoln may also have shared his bed with a captain of his guard unit in Washington.

But for men to share beds in the mid-19th century was as common and as mundane as men sharing houses or apartments in the early 21st. Tripp's claim proceeds from what Jonathan Ned Katz calls "epistemological hubris and ontological chutzpah." A scholar of 19th century sexuality, Katz explains that the terms homosexual and heterosexual did not exist in Lincoln's time, and that fact is just one piece of evidence that the concepts of gender, sexuality and same-sex relationships were radically different in Lincoln's world. In those days, men could be openly affectionate with one another, physically and verbally, without having to stake their identity on it.

So what do we, today, make of a world that operated according to such fundamentally different rules? And what do we make of the personal life of a leader so long encrusted in mythology? Fortunately, we've never been in a better position to see him. Along with new interest in the private lives of public figures, new trends in scholarship allow us a fresh chance to see Lincoln as he lived, thought and acted. Following the boom in oral history in the 1960s, today's Lincoln scholars are closely studying the massive body of recollections from people who knew him well, including intimate portraits that had long been neglected or obscured. In the past decade, more than a dozen volumes of essential primary evidence on Lincoln have been published, including original writings and research by his White House secretaries, John Hay and John Nicolay, and the Civil War dispatches of Lincoln intimate Noah Brooks. The granddaddy of all oral histories, the interviews and statements collected by Lincoln's law partner Herndon, are now easily available for the first time.

Then there's the Internet. It is possible to word-search, online, Lincoln's collected speeches, his known activities on each day of his life, his incoming correspondence and other ephemera at the Library of Congress and a vast array of primary sources from the 19th century, including letters, diaries and memoirs.

Those new historical tools can be easily abused, allowing writers with a fixed idea to go fish out evidence to support their claim. To do his research, Tripp took 80-some volumes of crucial Lincoln material, shipped them off to India to be digitized and put the results into a database. Then he did his research the new-fashioned way, by typing terms in a search bar. Presumably, a search for various body parts yielded the delicious bit that Lincoln's New Salem, Ill., friend William Greene considered his thighs "as perfect as a human being's could be."

But the revival of attention to primary sources has also peeled back the layers on Lincoln and produced a fresh round of portraits of his life and times. Douglas L. Wilson's incisive study In Honor's Voice cuts straight to Lincoln as a young man, showing him as creative and vulnerable, at once vastly ambitious and preoccupied with doubts and concerns about his future. Similarly, Guelzo's intellectual biography, Abraham Lincoln: Redeemer President, shows a man wrestling with the basic issues of fate and free will, torn between the Calvinism of his youth and the Enlightenment doctrines of freedom. Michael Burlingame's forthcoming multivolume biography will add a tall stack of new documents to the record, including hundreds of newspaper articles that, Burlingame has determined, Lincoln wrote anonymously in his early political career. The articles shed new light on Lincoln's early political hackwork--which, Burlingame argues, makes his later achievements all the more remarkable.

My own research on Lincoln began seven years ago, when I learned, much to my surprise, that the vital subject of his melancholy--which his friends uniformly identified as one of his chief characteristics--had been neglected for much of the 20th century. As I dug into the story, I learned about the two times, at ages 26 and 32, when Lincoln broke down so severely that he came near suicide; about his profound gloom in his middle years and his deliberate work to cope with it; and, finally, about how his depression both plagued him and fueled his great work as President. How could such an amazing story be so long left untold?

One answer to that question is a paradox about history. In order to appreciate Lincoln's significance for our time, we have to humble ourselves to an understanding of his time and how he lived. Previous works on Lincoln's psychology have tried to force his melancholy into the mold of psychoanalytic theory: finding explanations in his early childhood and searching his adult writings for clues about his lust for his mother and rage toward his father. But Lincoln had his own ideas about why he suffered. He was seeped in his own rich culture, in which psychology was wrapped up with philosophy and spirituality. By studying that context, alongside Lincoln's words and the commentaries of his friends, neighbors and colleagues, we can begin to see his story. When Lincoln wrote, "I am now the most miserable man living"; when he averred that melancholy is a "misfortune, not a fault"; and when he said that without his jokes, he would die, for they "are the vents of my moods & gloom," he was leaving a record, not only of how he lived and grew but also of how he saw the world.

Looking at how Lincoln really lived isn't always easy, but it has the chance of reinvigorating our relationship to a man that is otherwise deeply threatened by so much iconography. More than 30 years ago, a typical illustration of Lincoln in popular culture was his appearance on Star Trek, in which he joined the crew members of the U.S.S. Enterprise in their war of good against evil. Today, a typical portrait is the wickedly brilliant cartoon Hard Drinkin' Lincoln, on the website icebox.com, which makes the 16th President a cross between Homer Simpson and Kenny on South Park.

There's a good reason, though, to take Lincoln seriously: he offers many lessons for our own future. As we stand divided on religion, we can learn from a deeply spiritual man who was also deeply skeptical of religious dogma, who felt guided by a divine will but insisted that every public act be justified in secular language and reason. As we stand divided over a war, we can learn from a man who insisted that conflict in arms raised questions about who we are as a people--and who understood that "right makes might."

There is something useful, too, in Lincoln's humor. At a time when we both take ourselves desperately seriously and scoff off all attempts at meaning, we can learn something from a man who saw life as serious and deeply absurd, and who drew on both to fuel his deep sense of purpose. "I've been a fan of Lincoln's from an early age," Conan O'Brien told TIME, "and really fascinated by him. The main thing for me is that he was really funny. He chose the right words and kept things short, and those are two secrets to being timelessly funny. My favorite example was after the battle of Chickamauga. One of the Union generals had behaved badly and had become unnerved. Lincoln said the general was 'confused and stunned like a duck hit on the head.' You don't have to think about that in the context of 1863. It's just a funny image--full of anger and bitterness but getting deeply to the truth too."

"If there was a fire in my house," O'Brien says, "I'd get my wife and child out, and then I'd run back in and get a Lincoln signature that I own--a pardon that he signed. I think I look at it every day." Asked why, he pauses for a second. "He's become such an otherworldly figure, such an iconic figure. But the fact is, he's a person. I guess it's inspiring to me that people are capable of being that cool."

Shenk is the author of Lincoln's Melancholy: How Depression Challenged a President and Fueled His Greatness, to be published in September by Houghton Mifflin

Visit us at time.com/lincoln for more stories and photos, such as Hugh Sidey's look at the history of the Lincoln Bedroom

[QUOTE:]

Lincoln has been trotted out to support everything from communism to prohibitionism and vegetarianism

In order to appreciate Lincoln's significance for our time, we have to understand his time and how he lived

John Marshall

John Marshall (September 24, 1755–July 6, 1835) was an American statesman and jurist who more than anyone shaped American constitutional law and made the Supreme Court a center of power. Marshall was the fourth Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, serving from February 4, 1801 until his death. He served in the United States House of Representatives from March 4, 1799 to June 7, 1800, and under President John Adams was Secretary of State from June 6, 1800 to March 4, 1801. Marshall was a native of the state of Virginia and a leader of the Federalist Party.

The longest-serving Chief Justice in Supreme Court history, Marshall dominated the Court for over three decades and played a significant role in the development of the American legal system. Most notably, he established that the courts are entitled to exercise judicial review, i.e., the power to strike down laws that violate the Constitution. Thus, Marshall has been credited with cementing the position of the judiciary as an independent and influential branch of government. Furthermore, Marshall made several important decisions relating to Federalism, shaping the balance of power between the federal government and the states during the early years of the republic. In particular, he repeatedly confirmed the supremacy of federal law over state law, and supported an expansive reading of the enumerated powers.

Early years

John Marshall was born in a log cabin near Germantown, a rural community on the Virginia frontier, in what is now Fauquier County near Midland, Virginia. His parents were Thomas Marshall, a planter, and Mary Randolph Keith. (His mother was a cousin of Thomas Jefferson; his cousin was United States Representative Humphrey Marshall.) John was the oldest of fifteen children (seven boys and eight girls), all of whom survived into adulthood, and many of whom were remarkably significant in the development of the republic. Marshall was of English descent.[1]

As a young man, he studied the classics and English literature, eventually working with a private tutor from Scotland, the Reverend James Thompson. At the age of fourteen, he was sent to a classical academy in Westmoreland County for additional instruction. James Monroe, who would later become the fifth President of the United States, studied alongside Marshall. After a year, he returned home to resume studies with the Reverend Thompson.

As the American Revolutionary War began in 1775, Marshall joined the Culpeper Minutemen and was appointed as a lieutenant. He fought at the Battle of Great Bridge, where the minutemen defeated British troops under Lord Dunmore, permanently ending British control of Virginia. In 1776, Marshall's company was attached to the Eleventh Virginia Continental Regiment. He participated in many battles, including Brandywine, Germantown, Monmouth, Stony Point and Paulus Hook. In the winter of 1777-1778, he was at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, with General George Washington's troops.[2] During his military service, he became personally acquainted with Washington.

Having reached the rank of captain, Marshall returned to Virginia in 1779. He studied law privately, attending lectures conducted by George Wythe at the College of William and Mary. He was admitted to the bar in 1780, but returned to the army when British troops invaded Virginia later in the same year. He served under the Baron von Steuben until 1781, when he resigned his army commission in order to begin private law practice. Soon, Marshall gained a reputation as a leading lawyer. He married seventeen-year-old Mary Willis Ambler in 1783; the couple would have ten children, of whom six would survive into adulthood. With his new wife, the young lawyer settled in Richmond, the state capital.[3]


State political career

In 1782, Marshall entered politics, winning a seat in the Virginia House of Delegates, in which he served until 1790, and again from 1795–1796. The Virginia General Assembly elected him to serve on the Council of State later in the same year. In 1785, Marshall took up the additional office of Recorder of the Richmond City Hustings Court.[4]

In 1788, Marshall was selected as a delegate to the Virginia convention responsible for ratifying or rejecting the United States Constitution, which had been proposed by the Philadelphia Convention a year earlier. Together with James Madison and Edmund Randolph, Marshall led the fight for ratification. He was especially active in defense of Article III which provides for the Federal judiciary.[2] His most prominent opponent at the ratification convention was the anti-Federalist leader Patrick Henry. Ultimately, the convention approved the constitution by a vote of 89–79. Marshall identified with the new Federalist Party (which supported a strong national government and commercial interests), rather than Jefferson's Republican Party (which advocated states' rights and idealized the yeoman farmer and the French Revolution).

Meanwhile, Marshall's private law practice continued to flourish. He successfully represented the heirs of Lord Fairfax in Hite v. Fairfax (1786), an important Virginia Supreme Court case involving a large tract of land in the Northern Neck of Virginia. In 1796, he appeared before the United States Supreme Court in another important case, Ware v. Hylton, a case involving the validity of a Virginia law providing for the confiscation of debts owed to British subjects. Marshall argued that the law was a legitimate exercise of the state's power; however, the Supreme Court ruled against him, holding that the Treaty of Paris required the collection of such debts.[3]


Federal political career

In 1795, Marshall declined Washington's offer of Attorney General of the United States, and in 1796 declined to serve as minister to France. In 1797 he accepted when President John Adams appointed him to a three-member commission to represent the United States in France. (The other members of this commission were Charles Pinckney and Elbridge Gerry.) However, when the envoys arrived, the French refused to conduct diplomatic negotiations unless the United States paid enormous bribes. This diplomatic scandal became known as the XYZ Affair, inflaming anti-French opinion in the United States. Hostility increased even further when the Directoire expelled Marshall and Pinckney from France. Marshall's handling of the affair, as well as public resentment towards the French, made him popular with the American public when he returned to the United States.[3]

In 1798, Marshall declined a Supreme Court appointment, recommending Bushrod Washington, who would later become one of Marshall's staunchest allies on the Court.[5] In 1799, Marshall reluctantly ran for a seat in the United States House of Representatives. Although his congressional district (which included the city of Richmond) favored the Republican Party, Marshall won the race, in part due to his conduct during the XYZ Affair and in part due to the support of Patrick Henry. His most notable speech was related to the case of Thomas Nash (alias Jonathan Robbins), whom the government had extradited to Great Britain on charges of murder. Marshall defended the government's actions, arguing that nothing in the Constitution prevents the United States from extraditing one of its citizens.[1]

On May 7, 1799, President Adams nominated Congressman Marshall as Secretary of War. However, on May 12, Adams withdrew the nomination, instead naming him Secretary of State, as a replacement for Timothy Pickering. Confirmed by the Senate on May 13, Marshall took office on June 6, 1800. As Secretary of State, Marshall directed the negotiation of the Convention of 1800 which ended the Quasi-War with France and brought peace to the new nation.

Supreme Court career

It was in 1801 that Marshall embarked upon the most important work of his life, that of leading the Supreme Court of the United States. On January 20 of that year, President Adams nominated him to replace Oliver Ellsworth as Chief Justice. Adams had first offered the seat to ex-Chief Justice John Jay, who declined on the grounds that the Court lacked "energy, weight, and dignity."[6] Marshall was unanimously confirmed by the Senate on January 27 and took office on February 4. However, he continued to serve as Secretary of State until President Adams' term expired on March 4.

Soon after becoming Chief Justice, Marshall revolutionized the manner in which the Supreme Court announced its decisions. Previously, each Justice would author a separate opinion (known as a seriatim opinion). Under Marshall, however, the Supreme Court adopted the practice of handing down a single opinion of the Court. As Marshall was almost always the author of this opinion, he essentially became the Court's sole mouthpiece in important cases. His forceful personality allowed him to dominate his fellow Justices; he very rarely found himself on the losing side. (The case of Ogden v. Saunders in 1827 was the sole constitutional case in which he dissented from the majority.)[5]

The first important case of Marshall's career was Marbury v. Madison (1803), in which the Supreme Court invalidated a provision of the Judiciary Act of 1789 on the grounds that it violated the Constitution. Marbury was the first case in which the Supreme Court ruled an act of Congress unconstitutional; it firmly established the doctrine of judicial review. Oddly enough the Justice-of-the-Peace commissions which were the subject of the Marbury case were to be delivered to the nominees by then Secretary of State, John Marshall. Some historians have speculated that Marshall may have deliberately failed to deliver several of the commissions so as to trigger a case that would ultimately create the doctrine of judicial review. The Court's decision was opposed by President Thomas Jefferson, who lamented that this doctrine made the Constitution "a mere thing of wax in the hands of the judiciary, which they may twist and shape into any form they please."[7]

In 1807, he presided, with Judge Cyrus Griffin, at the great state trial of former Vice President Aaron Burr, who was charged with treason and misdemeanor. Prior to the trial, President Jefferson condemned Burr and strongly supported conviction. Marshall, however, narrowly construed the definition of treason provided in Article III of the Constitution; he noted that the prosecution had failed to prove that Burr had committed an "overt act," as the Constitution required. As a result, the jury acquitted the defendant, leading to increased animosity between the President and the Chief Justice.[8]

During the 1810s and 1820s, Marshall made a series of decisions involving the balance of power between the federal government and the states. He repeatedly affirmed federal supremacy; for example, he established in McCulloch v. Maryland (1819) that states could not tax federal institutions and upheld congressional authority to create the Second Bank of the United States, even though the authority to do this was not expressly stated in the Constitution. Also, in Cohens v. Virginia (1821), he established that the Federal judiciary could hear appeals from decisions of state courts. Justices Bushrod Washington and Joseph Story proved to be his strongest allies in these cases.
The text of the McCulloch v. Maryland decision, handed down March 6, 1819, as recorded in the minutes of the Supreme Court of the United States, in which the Court determined the separate states could not tax the federal government.
Enlarge
The text of the McCulloch v. Maryland decision, handed down March 6, 1819, as recorded in the minutes of the Supreme Court of the United States, in which the Court determined the separate states could not tax the federal government.

As the young nation was endangered by regional and local interests which often threatened to fracture its hard-fought unity, Marshall repeatedly interpreted the Constitution broadly so that the Federal Government had the power to become a respected and creative force guiding and encouraging the nation's growth. Thus, for all practical purposes, the Constitution in its most important aspects today is the Constitution as John Marshall interpreted it. As Chief Justice, he embodied the majesty of the judiciary of the government as fully as the President of the United States stood for the power of the Executive Branch.

Marshall wrote several important Supreme Court opinions, including:

* Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. (1 Cranch) 137 (1803)
* Fletcher v. Peck, 10 U.S. 87 (1810)
* McCulloch v. Maryland, 17 U.S. 316 (1819)
* Dartmouth College v. Woodward, 17 U.S. 518 (1819)
* Cohens v. Virginia, 19 U.S. 264 (1821)
* Gibbons v. Ogden, 22 U.S. 1 (1824)
* Worcester v. Georgia, 31 U.S. 515 (1832)

Marshall served as Chief Justice through all or part of six Presidential administrations (John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson), and remained a stalwart proponent of Federalism and a nemesis of the Jeffersonian school of government throughout its heyday. He participated in over 1000 decisions, writing 519 of the opinions himself.[2]
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Other work, later life, legacy

Marshall loved his home near Richmond, Virginia and spent as much time there as possible in quiet contentment. For approximately three months in every year, however, he would be away in Washington for the Court's annual term, and he would also be away for several weeks to serve on the circuit court in Raleigh, North Carolina.

In 1805, he published a five-volume biography of George Washington, the Life of Washington, based on records and papers provided him by the President's family, of which the first volume was in 1824 reissued separately as A History of the American Colonies. The work reflected Marshall's Federalist principles.

In 1823, he became first president of the Richmond branch of the American Colonization Society, which was dedicated to resettling freed American slaves in Liberia, on the West coast of Africa.

In 1828, he presided over a convention to promote internal improvements in Virginia.

In 1829, he was a delegate to the state constitutional convention where he was again joined by fellow American statesman and loyal Virginians, James Madison and James Monroe, although all were quite old by that time. Marshall mainly spoke at this convention to promote the necessity of an independent judiciary.

On Christmas Day, 1831, Mary, his beloved wife of some 49 years, died. Most who knew him agreed that after Mary's death, he was never quite the same.

In 1832, Marshall's revised and condensed two-volume Life of Washington was published.

On returning from Washington, D.C. in the spring of 1835 he suffered severe contusions resulting from an accident to the stage coach in which he was riding. His health, which had not been good, now rapidly declined and in June he journeyed to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania for medical attendance. There he died on July 6, at the age of 79, having served as Chief Justice for over 34 years.

Two days before his death he enjoined his friends to place only a plain slab over his and his wife's graves, and he wrote the simple inscription himself. His body, which was taken to Richmond, lies in Shockhoe Hill Cemetery.