Soon after Lexington and Concord, John Marshall joined the Culpepper Minutemen and on December 9, 1775, received his first taste of war at the Battle of Great Bridge. The following summer, Marshall received a commission as a lieutenant in the Eleventh Virginia Regiment, beginning a four-year stint in the Continental Army. By all accounts, Marshall was an outstanding junior officer, a great leader of men and an inspiration for all those who served with him. It was through this crucible of war that Marshall’s deep sense of nationalism was formed, a nationalism that would shape all his decisions in the years to come.

John Marshall is perhaps the most impactful and influential man in American history who was never president. Almost single handedly, Marshall created our national judiciary and established it as a branch of government co-equal to the legislative and executive branches. He was born on September 24, 1755, on the western frontier of the colony of Virginia and was raised in a frontier two-room log cabin, which he shared with his parents and numerous siblings. Obtaining an education on the frontier of Virginia was difficult and John had received less than two years of  formal instruction. And except for a short six-week stint at the College of William and Mary studying law under George Wythe, that was all the schooling Marshall would ever receive.

Near the end of his single term in office, President John Adams signed into law the Judiciary Act of 1801 to enact much needed judicial reform but also to solidify the judiciary as a Federalist bastion against the seismic changes in government expected from Thomas Jefferson’s Democratic-Republicans. Naturally, when Jefferson was sworn in as president and his Democratic-Republicans took over both houses of Congress, they moved quickly to reverse Adams’ judiciary measures.

One of the first pieces of legislation crafted in the first Congress was the Judiciary Act of 1789, signed into law by President George Washington on September 24. This act established that “The supreme court of the United States shall consist of a chief justice and five associate justices” and that it would meet in two sessions each year in the nation’s capital.”

In Colonial America, because judges were appointed and paid for by the Crown, they were seen as an extension of Royal authority and its tyranny. Consequently, as states created their own constitutions after 1776, most gave the power to appoint judges to the legislature.

After the city of Derne fell to General William Eaton’s expedition on April 27, 1805, Yusef Karamanli, the Pasha of Tripoli, knowing his capital city was next, again sent word to Tobias Lear, the American Consul to Algiers that he wanted peace. The final terms included an exchange of prisoners and the end of all tribute payments to Tripoli, the first agreement of its kind ever reached with a Barbary State.

In 1804, William Eaton, the former Consul to Tunis, hatched a plan to end the war with Tripoli. Eaton proposed to invade Tripoli, drive the Pasha, Yusef Karamanli, from the throne, and replace him with his older brother Hamet. In the process, all American prisoners would be released, and all tribute demands ended. In early March 1805, Eaton began a 400-mile trek to his first objective, the city of Derne, an important Tripolitan seaport east of the capital. Following a harrowing fifty-four-day march, the army arrived on the outskirts of town and Eaton sent surrender demands into the city to which the Governor responded, “My head or yours.” Taking that as a “no,” Eaton launched his attack on April 27, while three ships from the Mediterranean squadron fired on the town.

In January 1804, Captain Edward Preble sent Lieutenant Stephen Decatur the following instructions: “It is my order that you proceed to Tripoli…enter that harbor in the night, board the Philadelphia, burn her and make good your retreat with the Intrepid.” The plan was audacious and filled with risk as the Philadelphia was surrounded by a dozen Tripolitan warships. On the evening of February 16, Decatur entered the harbor and the Intrepid slowly drifted towards the Philadelphia, whose guards hailed the ship asking its intention. Decatur’s Sicilian pilot stated his ship had lost its anchor in the storm and requested permission to tie his ship to theirs for the night and they agreed.

On May 10, 1801, Tripoli declared war on the United States, hoping to coerce President Thomas Jefferson to increase tribute payments, but Jefferson felt the honor of the United States was at stake and he refused. Instead, Jefferson sent Commodore Richard Dale and a small fleet of American frigates to impose a blockade of Tripoli. In September 1803, to better prosecute the war, additional warships were sent to the Mediterranean under the command of Captain Edward Preble along with a star-studded cast of future naval heroes including Oliver Hazard Perry, Issac Hull, Stephen Decatur, and John Rodgers. But before Preble’s fleet was on station and aggressive action could be taken, one of the American ships, the frigate USS Philadelphia under Captain William Bainbridge, met with disaster.

For several centuries, the northern crescent of Africa had been controlled by the Ottoman Empire and consisted of several puppet states including Morocco, Algeria, Tunis, and Tripoli. Each of these Muslim provinces, known collectively as the Barbary States, derived their main revenue from seizing unarmed merchant ships, taking the crews prisoner, and offering to return them for a ransom payment, or, failing that, selling them into slavery. After the American Revolution, as American merchantmen began to ply the waters of the Mediterranean without the protection of the Royal Navy, they suffered the same fate.

The Corps of Discovery began its final push for home in the summer of 1806. The last stretch went fast and between the Missouri’s strong current and an even stronger desire to get home, the men averaged almost eighty miles a day. Meriwether Lewis and William Clark had taken thirty men, mostly civilians, and molded them into a fine-tuned, cohesive military unit that had faced every hardship and overcome every obstacle using just their innate skills and faith in each other to complete the greatest expedition in American history.

The Lewis and Clark Expedition reached the Pacific Ocean in November 1805 and built Fort Clatsop on a small bluff roughly three miles upstream from the Columbia. It was here they would spend their final winter away from home, reflecting on their journey thus far, and the hopes for finding a practical trade route from St. Louis to the Pacific Ocean. Unfortunately, between the troublesome Chinook Indians, miserable weather, and a monotonous diet, it would prove to be a most unpleasant three months.

On September 11, 1805, after making final preparations at a camp Lewis and Clark dubbed “Traveler’s Rest,” the Corps of Discovery started up the Lolo Trail towards what would be the most demanding stretch of the entire expedition. The trail was narrow and there was no game to hunt. The pack horses struggled as well and were close to starvation as there was little or no grass on which to feed. Between fatigued men and horses, snow, and a wretched trail, the Corps made barely ten miles a day. Finally, on September 22, as the men were reaching their breaking points, the Corps emerged from their mountain odyssey and found their way to a village of the Nez Perce, the largest and most powerful tribe in the Pacific Northwest.

In late July 1805, the Lewis and Clark Expedition entered the Rockies, searching for the Shoshone from whom they hoped to purchase horses for their journey over the mountains. Lewis led scouting parties up an Indian trail that led to Lemhi Pass, and on August 12, one of the most memorable days of the expedition, became the first American to cross the Continental Divide. The next day Lewis finally found the elusive Shoshone. On August 17, in a script seemingly out of Hollywood, as the captains and Shoshone Chief Cameahwait sat down for a council, Sacagawea shrieked and began hugging the chief; turns out Cameahwait was Sacagawea’s brother! Fortune was definitely shining on Lewis and Clark.

On May 26, 1804, Captain Meriwether Lewis noted in his journal that he “beheld the Rocky Mountains for the first time…covered with snow and the sun shone on it to give me the most satisfactory view.” Soon thereafter, the Corps came upon the Missouri River Breaks, what Captain Clark called the “Deserts of America,” a stretch of 160 miles running from today’s Fort Benton to Fort Peck Lake, where the Missouri courses between 300 foot tall canyon walls; it remains one of the most remote parts of America. But perhaps the most wondrous site they experienced on their entire journey was the Great Falls of the Missouri, which Lewis called “the grandest site I ever beheld.”

The Corps of Discovery arrived at the Mandan villages near present day Bismarck, North Dakota, in late October 1804 and immediately began work on Fort Mandan on the north bank Missouri River. While at Fort Mandan, Lewis and Clark met a French fur trader named Toussaint Charbonneau and his two teenage Shoshone wives who Charbonneau had won in a bet. They hired Charbonneau and his fifteen-year-old wife, Sacagawea, who was six months pregnant, as interpreters. On April 7, 1805, Lewis sent the keelboat back down river to St. Louis with detailed maps of lands west of the Mississippi and extensive reports written by the captains, as well as a treasure trove for President Jefferson, including almost two hundred specimens.

On October 14, 1803, Meriwether Lewis and William Clark met in Clarksville, Indiana Territory, and commenced the most famous partnership in American history. They planned to leave with the spring thaw and reach the Mandan villages, 1,300 river miles above St. Louis, and spend the winter there before proceeding west. On May 21, 1804, the Corps pushed out into the current of the Missouri and, as the men moved north, they entered an enchanting land that very few would ever see again. But despite the idyllic surroundings, the Corps of Discovery was still an independent military expedition traveling in hostile territory. 

In March 1801, Captain Meriwether Lewis received a letter from Thomas Jefferson, the newly inaugurated president and a family friend, asking Lewis to become his private secretary. At the time, Lewis was a twenty-seven-year-old captain serving as the paymaster for the First Infantry Regiment. Over the next two years, Jefferson tutored Lewis on the lands west of the Mississippi and in the sciences of astronomy, botany, and anatomy in anticipation of an exploratory expedition to the Pacific Ocean. But both Jefferson and Lewis recognized the need to find a capable second officer for the expedition, and the man Lewis wanted to fill this coveted position was William Clark.