Excerpt from John Marshall One of the most important characters in the earlier history of the United States was John Marshall. Yet how few persons have any genu ine appreciation of this fact, or know much of him. Most readers, even of those who fancy themselves fairly familiar with our national his tory, mention his name with an odd mingling of respect for his supposed greatness and igno rance of the facts on which their respect is based. It is natural enough that this should be so, for judicial achievements have scant elements of popularity. Yet in the ripeness of time there will surely arise some student more ambitious of doing a useful work than of writing a book which shall attract many readers, and he will devote his laborious days to discussing the topic of the influence of the Supreme Court in the history of the United States. It is a subject of grand possibilities. Then at last the greatness of Marshall's services will adequately appear, and it will be seen that he has left the imprint of his views as strongly impressed upon our. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.