he must be reëlected. Such was the popular logic; and reëlected Jefferson was - triumphantly, almost unanimously. Circumstances which had shackled his hands now suddenly freed them. Henceforth the President could do as he liked, both personally and politically. No longer should John Marshall, the abominated head of the National Judiciary, rest easy on the bench which his audacity had elevated above President and Congress. The opinion of the "usurping" Chief Justice in Marbury vs. Madison should have answer at last. So on with the impeachment trial of Samuel Chase! Let him be deposed, and then, if Marshall would not bend the knee, that obdurate judicial defender of Nationalism should follow Chase into desuetude and disgrace. The incessant clamor of the Federalist past-statesmen, unheard by the popular ear, had nevertheless done some good - all the good it ought to have done. It had aroused misgivings in the minds of certain Northern Republican Senators as to the expediency, wisdom, and justice of the Republican plan to shackle or overthrow the National Judiciary. This hesitation was, however, unknown to the masters of the Republican organization in Congress. The Federalists themselves were totally unaware of it. Only Jefferson, with his abnormal sensibility, had an indistinct impression that somewhere, in the apparently perfect alignment of the Republican forces, there was potential weakness. Marshall was gifted with no such divination. He knew only the fate that had been prepared for him. A crisis was reached in his career and a determinative phase of American history entered upon. His place as Chief Justice was to be made secure and the stability of American institutions saved by as narrow a margin as that by which the National Constitution had been established. CHAPTER IV IMPEACHMENT The judges of the Supreme Court must fall. Our affairs approach an important crisis. (William Plumer.) These articles contained in themselves a virtual impeachment of not only Mr. Chase but of all the Judges of the Supreme Court. (John Quincy Adams.) We shall bring forward such a specimen of judicial tyranny, as, I trust in (Joseph Hopkinson.) Our property, our liberty, our lives can only be protected by independent judges. (Luther Martin.) "WE want your offices, for the purpose of giving them to men who will fill them better." In these frank words, Senator William Branch Giles1 of Virginia stated one of the purposes of the Republicans in their determined attack on the National Judiciary. He was speaking to the recently elected young Federalist Senator from Massachusetts, John Quincy Adams.2 They were sitting before the blazing logs in the wide fireplace that warmed the Senate Chamber. John Randolph, the Republican leader of the House, and Israel Smith, a Republican Senator from Vermont, were also in the group. The talk was of the 1 Giles was appointed Senator August 11, 1804, by the Governor to fill the unexpired term of Abraham Venable who resigned in order that Giles might be sent to the Senate. In December the Legislature elected him for the full term. Upon taking his seat Giles immediately became the Republican leader of the Senate. (See Anderson, 93.) * Dec. 21, 1804, Memoirs, J. Q. A.: Adams, 1, 322–23. approaching trial of Samuel Chase, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, whom the House had impeached for high crimes and misdemeanors. Giles and Randolph were, "with excessive earnestness," trying to convince the doubting Vermont Senator of the wisdom and justice of the Republican method of ousting from the National Bench those judges who did not agree with the views of the Republican Party. Giles scorned the idea of "an independent judiciary!" The independence claimed by the National judges was "nothing more nor less than an attempt to establish an aristocratic despotism in themselves." The power of the House to impeach, and of the Senate to try, any public officer was unlimited. "If," continued Giles, "the Judges of the Supreme Court should dare, as they had done, to declare acts of Congress unconstitutional, or to send a mandamus to the Secretary of State, as they had done, it was the undoubted right of the House to impeach them, and of the Senate to remove them for giving such opinions, however honest or sincere they may have been in entertaining them." He held that the Senate, when trying an impeached officer, did not act as a court. "Removal by impeachment was nothing more than a declaration by Congress to this effect: You hold dangerous opinions, and if you are suffered to carry them into effect you will work the destruction of the Nation." 1 Thus Giles made plain the Republican objective. 1 Dec. 21, 1804, Memoirs, J. Q. A.: Adams 1, 322–23. Judges were to be removed for any cause that a dominant political party considered to be sufficient.1 The National Judiciary was, in this manner, to be made responsive to the popular will and responsible to the representatives of the people in the House and of the States in the Senate.2 Giles, who was now Jefferson's personal representative in the Senate, as he had been in the House, bore down upon his mild but reluctant fellow partisan from Vermont in a "manner dogmatical and peremptory." Not only must the aggressive and irritating Chase be stripped of his robes, but the same fate must fall upon "all other Judges of the Supreme Court except the one last "4 seappointed," who, being a Republican, was cure. Adams rightly concluded that the plan was 1 Plumer, 274-75; and see especially Plumer, Jan. 5, 1804, "Congress," Plumer MSS. Lib. Cong. The powerful Republican organ, the Aurora, of Philadelphia, thus indicted the National Judiciary: Because judges could not be removed, "many wrongs are daily done by the courts to humble, obscure, or poor suitors. . . It is a prodigeous monster in a free government to see a class of men set apart, not simply to administer the laws, but who exercise a legislative and even an executive power, directly in defiance and contempt of the Constitution." (Aurora, Jan. 28, 1805, as quoted in Corwin, 41.) Professor Corwin says that this utterance was approved by Jefferson. 3 "Mr. Giles from Virginia.. is the Ministerial leader in the Senate." (Plumer to Thompson, Dec. 23, 1804, Plumer MSS. Lib. Cong.) "I considered Mr. Giles as the ablest practical politician of the whole party enlisted under Mr. Jefferson's banners." (Pickering to Marshall, Jan. 24, 1826, Pickering MSS. Mass. Hist. Soc.) William Johnson of South Carolina, appointed March 26, 1804, vice William Moore, resigned. Johnson was a stanch Jeffersonian when appointed. He was thirty-three years old at the time he was made Associate Justice. It is impossible to put too much emphasis on Giles's avowal. His statement is the key to the Chase impeachment. |