Page:American Historical Review, Volume 12.djvu/787

 Chief Jjisticc Marsliall and I'irginia 777 fight against the national Constitution was made and lost;' and there can be no doubt that he never quite forgave Marshall and ]Iadison for their work on that occasion. After the election of Jefferson he seems to have acquiesced in the existing order of things, though he threatened to give the peace-loving President no end of trouble by his repeated agitation in favor of war against England. In 1804 he founded the Richmond Enquirer and placed his cousin Thomas Ritchie in charge.^ He and Ritchie and the Virginian " prophet of secession ", John Taylor of Caroline, succeeded to the management of the Republican machine which Jefferson and Madi- son had built in 1796-1800. In 1815 Roane was the most powerful politician in the state. He nominated members of the legislature and caused them to be elected, he drew bills and resolutions which the law-makers passed almost without amendment: and when the sessions closed his friend, Ritchie, usually published a " leader " in the Enquirer headed " Well done, good and faithful servants ".' The first open conflict between Chief Justice Marshall and this machine came in the year 1815, when the United States Supreme Court in Martin i'. Hunter's Lessee overruled the decision of the Virginia Court of Appeals.'' The case was an old one. The first suit, it would appear, that Marshall argued before the General Court of A'irginia was that of Hite v. Fairfax in which he appeared as counsel for Fairfax. The question at issue was the title to large tracts of land lying between the Rappahannock and Potomac rivers. The Fairfax grant from the English crown in 1736 had been declared null and void by the state of Virginia in 1782, the property having fallen to Denny Fairfax, an " alien enemy " living in the county of Kent, England. The unoccupied land belonged thence- forth to the state. Hite had taken out a patent from the state and settled on the land. Fairfax took steps in the proper local court to eject Hite and failing to gain his point appealed to the General Court of X'irginia, predecessor of the Court of Appeals. Marshall urged with great force that Fairfax had been unlawfully deprived of his property;^ he was not sustained by the court. But the later chief justice had made himself familiar with this notable case. In April 1789 David Hunter was granted a patent for 788 acres of the Fairfax lands. Unable to get possession in the face of opposition from Fairfax he brought suit in 1793 in the district 1 Ibid., II. 47. 2 Virginia Law Register, II. 481 ; J. Q. Adams. Diary, IV. 313-314. 'Letters to his son. Branch Historical Papers, II. 123-126. 5 4 Call, Reports, 42; Thayer. John Marshall, 24-27.
 * I Wheaton, 313.