Washington of Virginia appeared) that the session
began and John Marshall took the oath of office.
The installation of the new Chief Justice attracted
no attention and was not described, or even noticed, in
letters of the day or in the public press, the leading
Washington newspaper printing only the following
meager reference: "The Justices of the Supreme
Court have made a court, the following Justices
being present, viz. Marshall, Cushing, Chase and Washington."[1]
While no cases are reported as decided at this Term, it was marked, nevertheless, by a political episode which had a most potent effect upon the future history of the Court. On February 17, the long and closely con- tested balloting for President in the House of Repre- sentatives resulted in the election of Jefferson. Four days before that event, nine days after Chief Justice Marshall took his seat on the Bench, and only three weeks before President Adams was to retire from office, the Federalist Congress enacted the Circuit Court Act of February 13, 1801, changing the entire Judiciary system of the United States. Had this measure been adopted at an earlier period and under less partisan auspices, there would have been strong arguments in its favor, for it brought about a reform long recognized as desirable. From the very outset of the Government, there had been much dissatisfaction with that provision of the Judiciary Act which required the Judges of the Supreme Court to sit in the United
- ↑ National Intelligencer, Feb. 5, 1801. James A. Bayard (then a Congressman from Delaware) in writing an account of the Term did not mention the new Chief Justice and said: "I was occupied two or three days, in the hours of Congressional leisure, in preparing myself for the argument of a cause in the Supreme Court of the United States—Silas Talbot v. Hans Fred Seaman. The cause went off, I have received three hundred dollars and in consequence will be obliged to return again next August. The Court was attended by several lawyers from Philadelphia and the Maryland lawyers." James A. Bayard Papers (1915), letter of Feb. 6, 1801.
