John Marshall

John Marshall was Secretary of State during the final year of John Adams’s presidency, before his long service as chief justice of the United States. A Continental Army veteran and Virginia lawyer, he supported ratification of the Constitution and became a leading Virginia Federalist. His diplomatic experience began in 1797, when Adams sent him to France with Charles Cotesworth Pinckney and Elbridge Gerry to seek a settlement of disputes over American shipping. ¹

French intermediaries demanded payments before substantive negotiations, producing the XYZ Affair. Although that mission failed, Marshall later supported Adams’s decision to renew talks. As secretary from 1800 to 1801, he backed the Convention of 1800, which ended the Quasi-War and disentangled the United States from its revolutionary alliance with France. He rejected the preference of some Federalists for alignment with Britain and also protested British seizures of ships and impressment of American sailors. ¹

Marshall’s approach reflected the limits of American naval power. He accepted continuing payments to the North African states whose forces threatened American trade while trying to defend neutral commerce against the European belligerents. Adams appointed him chief justice near the end of the administration, and he briefly continued as acting secretary while taking up the judicial office. He remained on the Supreme Court until 1835, moving from the conduct of foreign relations to the constitutional questions that shaped federal authority. ¹