He had come
to serve, and found that he must instruct. When he marched with the
regiment of these mountaineers, who carried tomahawks and
scalping-knives, the people of Williamsburg trembled for their lives. At
that time, the country near Harper's Ferry was the Far West. In a very
little while, these mountaineers, by mingled stratagem and system,
defeated Lord Dunmore, very much as Andrew Jackson defeated the British
at New Orleans thirty-five years later. Marshall then went with the army
to the vicinity of Philadelphia; was in the battles of Brandywine and
Germantown, and in the long Winter of Valley Forge. Almost naked at that
place, he showed an abounding good-nature, that kept the whole camp
content. If he had to eat meat without bread, he did it with a jest.
Among his men he had the influence of a father, though a boy. He was so
much better read than others that he frequently became a judge advocate,
and in this way he got to know Alexander Hamilton, who was on
Washington's staff. Marshall was always willing to see the greatness of
another person, and Judge Story says that he said of Hamilton that he
was not only of consummate ability as both soldier and statesman, but
that, in great, comprehensive mind, sound principle, and purity of
patriotism, no nation ever had his superior.
It became Marshall's duty, in the course of twenty-five years, to try
for high treason the man who killed his friend Hamilton, but he
conducted that trial with such an absence of personal feeling that it
was among the greatest marvels of our legal history.
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