nomination, but had previously exerted his influence with the President on your behalf."[1]
On January 31, the Secretary of War, Samuel Dexter, acting pro tempore as Secretary of State, by direction of the President, signed the new Chief Justice's commission; and on February 4, the day that the Court convened, Marshall wrote to the President expressing his "grateful acknowledgment for the honor" and saying: "This additional and flattering mark of your good opinion has made an impression on my mind which time will not efface. I shall enter immediately on the duties of this office and hope never to give you occasion to regret having made this appointment."
Though Senator Dayton had termed Marshall's appointment a "wild freak" of President Adams, the latter never wavered in his confidence in the supreme fitness of his new Chief Justice. "My gift of John Marshall to the people of the United States was the proudest act of my life," he said to Marshall's son, twenty-five years later, and to another visitor: "There is no act of my life on which I reflect with more pleasure. I have given to my country a Judge, equal to a Hale, a Holt, or a Mansfield."[2] The party associates of the
- ↑ It appears from a letter of Dayton to Paterson, Feb. 1, 1801, that Paterson had written Feb. 25, saying that he felt "neither resentment nor disgust" at the appointment of Marshall, and good naturedly reproving Dayton for the warmth
of temper of his letter. Dayton stated in his letter that "the dissatisfaction among
the Members of Congress in consequence of your being thus passed by appeared
to me universal, and this sensation probably derived greater strength from the
apprehension that it might drive you from your seat upon the Bench, where all men
of all parties were anxious that you should remain."
Marshall wrote to Paterson, Feb. 2, 1801, asking him to "accept my warm and sincere acknowledgment for your polite and friendly sentiments on the appointment with which I have been lately honored." - ↑ See oration by John H. Bryan, Congressman from North Carolina, June 23, 1830, in Niles Register, XXXIX, 11. Judge Story, in his Discourse on Marshall, states also that John Quincy Adams wrote to a certain Judge: "One of the last acts of my father's Administration was the transmission of a commission to John Marshall as Chief Justice of the United States. One of the last acts of my Administration is the transmission of the enclosed commission to you. If neither of us had ever done anything else to deserve the approbation of our country and of pos-
