John Marshall is arguably the most influential man in American history who was never elected president. For more than three and a half decades as the chief justice of the Supreme Court, Marshall oversaw the creation of the American judiciary and established that it is the responsibility of the courts to say what the law is. John Adams, who appointed Marshall as chief justice, stated, “my gift of John Marshall to the people of the United States was the proudest act of my life.” Marshall’s decisions seemed to always have a view towards establishing a strong central government and strengthening the bonds necessary to create a nation, building those ties that allowed our country’s disparate parts to function as one.

On May 22, 1807, Aaron Burr was brought before a grand jury in Richmond, Virginia, charged with committing treason against the United States. The prosecution’s star witness, General James Wilkinson, proved to be a liability as Wilkinson was forced to admit that he had forged a letter from Burr which was the prosecution’s main piece of evidence. Regardless, the grand jury, made up mostly of Democratic-Republicans, indicted Burr for treason, the only time in our country’s history when a President or Vice President has been indicted for this crime.

In the presidential election of 1800, Aaron Burr and Thomas Jefferson tied for the most electoral votes, but Burr refused to stand aside for Jefferson. The House of Representatives ultimately selected Jefferson to be president and Burr vice president, but Burr’s decision to challenge Jefferson made him an arch enemy of the president and an outcast in the Democratic-Republican party. Upon leaving office in the spring 0f 1805, Burr was a ruined man, financially and politically, with his reputation in tatters.

Samuel Chase is the only Supreme Court Justice in our nation’s history to be impeached and that occurred during a political tussle over the independence and power of the judiciary between President Thomas Jefferson and Chief Justice John Marshall. In March 1804, the House of Representatives, in a party line vote, approved eight charges of impeachment against Chase. The problem was that the Constitution states that civil officers like Supreme Court justices may only be removed for “Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors” and Chase was not charged with any of these. But that was just the point; the Chase trial was part of a larger Democratic-Republican plan to reduce the power and independence of the judiciary.

On March 2, 1801, two days before leaving office, President John Adams submitted to Congress a list of fifty-eight names, all Federalists, to fill positions created by the recently passed Judiciary Act. But Secretary of State John Marshall was unable to fill all the commissions before Thomas Jefferson was sworn in as president on March 4. Jefferson directed his secretary of state, James Madison, to not deliver the remaining commissions, one of which was for a justice of the peace position for William Marbury. Marbury then sued requesting the Supreme Court issue a writ of mandamus which is a court order that compels a government official to perform a legally appointed task. On February 24, 1803, John Marshall, who was now the chief justice of the Supreme Court, issued his landmark ruling.

In 1780, John Marshall spent just six short weeks studying law under George Wythe at the College of William and Mary before leaving school and obtaining his license to practice law in the state of Virginia. Within a few years, Marshall’s intelligence and charm had established him as one of the finest attorneys in Richmond. He was elected to the Virginia House of Burgesses and became one of the leading conservatives in the state and helped lead the fight in Virginia to ratify the Constitution. By 1798, Marshall began a run of nearly forty years of continuous service to his country, during which this devoted Patriot served in all three branches of government, one of only a handful of men to ever do so.

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.