Page:American Historical Review, Volume 12.djvu/795

 Chief Justice ]Iarshall and Virginia 785 " A deep design to convert our government into a mere league of states has taken strong. hold of a powerful and violent party in Virginia." He closes this interesting part of his letter as follows : " The whole attack, if not originating with Mr. Jefferson, is obviously approved and guided by him. It is therefore formidable in other states as well as in this, and it behoves the friends of the union to be more on the alert than they have been. An effort will certainly be made to repeal the 2Sth section of the judicial act." It was indeed no half-hearted attack which Roane and the Enquirer were leading. The Washington Gazette, rival to the National Intelligencer, took up the cause of Virginia. De Witt Clinton of New York, again powerful in his own state and in the country generally, openly defended Roane's position.^ The Louis- iana Advertiser and other Southern papers as well as practically all the Virginia press espoused vigorously the cause of state su- premacy. The sentiment of the toasts of the Fourth of July fol- lowing was largely particularist ; only in Richmond — an ancient stronghold of Federalism — do we find public speakers with the hardihood to defend the Supreme Court and the chief justice. The next step was to be taken by the legislature. The plan was to pass the most drastic resolutions. But here the National Intelli- gencer calls to mind the action of Virginia in 1809 when, on losing in the famous Olmstead case, Pennsylvania had appealed to her sister states to aid her in resisting the national authority. Popular opinion in Pennsylvania then favored the establishment of a special tribunal for the settlement of just such questions as that now exciting so much attention. Virginia had then in quite positive language declared that the Supreme Court was the last resort and that it was the duty of the states to abide by its rulings." Nevertheless Governor Randolph, direct from Jefferson's roof, made the Supreme Court the chief item of his message in December 1821. A passage of it runs: "The commonwealth has undergone the humiliation of having endeavoured in vain to vindicate and as- sert her rights and her sovereignty at the bar of the Supreme Court of the United States, and now endures the mortification, ... of having altogether failed to procure a disavowal of the right, or the intention, to violate that sovereignty and those rights. ... It [the Supreme Court of the United States] arrogates to itself, always, the high authority to judge exclusively in the last resort how far the federal compact is violated, and to arraign before it, 'Richmond Enquirer, August 31, 1821. 'J'irginia Senate Journals. December 4. 1809; House Journals. January 23, 1810: Ames. Stale Documents on Federal Relations, pp. 49-50.