=The Missouri Compromise.=—­Respecting one other important measure of this period, the Republicans also took a broad view of their obligations under the Constitution; namely, the Missouri Compromise.  It is true, they insisted on the admission of Missouri as a slave state, balanced against the free state of Maine; but at the same time they assented to the prohibition of slavery in the Louisiana territory north of the line 36 deg. 30’.  During the debate on the subject an extreme view had been presented, to the effect that Congress had no constitutional warrant for abolishing slavery in the territories.  The precedent of the Northwest Ordinance, ratified by Congress in 1789, seemed a conclusive answer from practice to this contention; but Monroe submitted the issue to his cabinet, which included Calhoun of South Carolina, Crawford of Georgia, and Wirt of Virginia, all presumably adherents to the Jeffersonian principle of strict construction.  He received in reply a unanimous verdict to the effect that Congress did have the power to prohibit slavery in the territories governed by it.  Acting on this advice he approved, on March 6, 1820, the bill establishing freedom north of the compromise line.  This generous interpretation of the powers of Congress stood for nearly forty years, until repudiated by the Supreme Court in the Dred Scott case.

THE NATIONAL DECISIONS OF CHIEF JUSTICE MARSHALL

=John Marshall, the Nationalist.=—­The Republicans in the lower ranges of state politics, who did not catch the grand national style of their leaders charged with responsibilities in the national field, were assisted in their education by a Federalist from the Old Dominion, John Marshall, who, as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1801 to 1835, lost no occasion to exalt the Constitution above the claims of the provinces.  No differences of opinion as to his political views have ever led even his warmest opponents to deny his superb abilities or his sincere devotion to the national idea.  All will likewise agree that for talents, native and acquired, he was an ornament to the humble democracy that brought him forth.  His whole career was American.  Born on the frontier of Virginia, reared in a log cabin, granted only the barest rudiments of education, inured to hardship and rough life, he rose by masterly efforts to the highest judicial honor America can bestow.

On him the bitter experience of the Revolution and of later days made a lasting impression.  He was no “summer patriot.”  He had been a soldier in the Revolutionary army.  He had suffered with Washington at Valley Forge.  He had seen his comrades in arms starving and freezing because the Continental Congress had neither the power nor the inclination to force the states to do their full duty.  To him the Articles of Confederation were the symbol of futility.  Into the struggle for the formation of the Constitution and its ratification