The Boy of the Frontier
In a Log Cabin
Through the ancient and unbroken forests, toward the Monongahela River, Braddock made his slow and painful way. Weeks passed, then months. But the Colonists felt no impatience because everybody knew what would happen when his scarlet columns should finally meet and throw themselves upon the enemy.
Yet this meeting when it came, proved to be one of the lesser tragedies of history, and had a deep and fateful effect upon American public opinion, and upon the life and future of the American People.
Time has not dulled the vivid picture of that disaster. The golden sunshine of that July day; the pleasant murmur of the waters of the Monongahela; the silent and sombre forests; the steady tramp, tramp of the British to the inspiriting music of their regimental bands, playing the martial airs of England; the bright uniforms of the advancing columns giving to the background of stream and forest a touch of splendour;—and then the ambush and surprise; the war-whoops of savage foes that could not be seen; the hail of invisible death, no pellet of which went astray; the pathetic volleys which the doomed British troops fired at hidden antagonists; the panic; the rout; the pursuit; the slaughter; the crushing, humiliating defeat!
Most of the British officers were killed or wounded, as they vainly tried to halt the stampede. Braddock himself received a mortal hurt.
Furious at what he felt was the stupidity and cowardice of the British regulars, the youthful Washington rode among the fear-frenzied Englishmen striving to save the day. Two horses were shot under him. Four bullets rent his uniform. But crazed with fright, the Royal soldiers were beyond human control.
Only the Virginia Rangers kept their heads and their courage. Obeying the shouted orders of their young Commander, they threw themselves between the terror-stricken British and the savage victors, and, fighting behind trees and rocks, were an ever-moving rampart of fire that saved the flying remnants of the English troops.
But for Washington and his Rangers, Braddock’s whole force would have been annihilated.
So everywhere went up the cry, “The British are beaten!”
At first, rumour had it, that the whole force was destroyed, and that Washington had been killed in action. But soon another word followed hard upon this error—the word that the boyish Virginia Captain and his Rangers had fought with coolness, skill, and courage; that they alone had prevented the extinction of the British Regulars.
Thus it was that the American Colonists suddenly came to think, that they themselves must be their own defenders. It was a revelation, all the more impressive because it was so abrupt, unexpected, and dramatic, that the red-coated professional soldiers were not the unconquerable warriors, the Colonists had been told that they were. From colonial mansion to log cabin, from the provincial capitals to the mean and exposed frontier settlements, Braddock’s defeat sowed the seed of the idea that Americans must depend upon themselves.
Close upon the heels of this epoch-making event, John Marshall came into the world.
He was born in a little log cabin in what is now a part of Virginia, eleven weeks after Braddock’s defeat. The Marshall cabin stood about a mile and a half from a cluster of a dozen similar log structures, a little settlement practically on the frontier.
Off to the Blue Ridge
Some ten years after Braddock’s defeat, we can picture a strong rude wagon drawn by two horses, crawling along the stumpy, rock-roughened, and mud-mired road through the dense woods that led to a valley in the Blue Ridge Mountains.
In the wagon sat a young woman. By her side a sturdy red-cheeked boy looked out with alert but quiet interest showing from his brilliant black eyes. And three other children cried their delight or vexation as the hours wore on.
The red-cheeked boy was John Marshall.
In this wagon, too, were piled the little family’s household goods. By the side of the wagon, strode a young man dressed in the costume of the frontier. Tall, broad-shouldered, lithe-hipped, erect, he was a very oak of a man. His splendid head was carried with a peculiar dignity. And the grave but kindly command that shone from his face, together with the brooding thoughtfulness and fearless light of his striking eyes, would have singled him out in any assemblage, as a man to be respected and trusted.
A negro drove the team, and a negro girl walked behind. So went little John Marshall with his father and mother, from the log cabin to their new Blue Ridge home, which was not a log cabin, but a frame house built of whipsawed uprights and boards.
Making an American
John Marshall lived near the frontier, until he was nineteen, when as Lieutenant of the famous Culpeper Minute Men, he marched away to battle.
And during those nineteen years he had been growing up to be an American.
The earliest stories told little John Marshall must have been frontier ones of daring and sacrifice.
Almost from the home-made cradle, he was taught the idea of American solidarity. Braddock’s defeat was the theme of fireside talk of the Colonists, and from this grew in time the conviction that Americans, if united, could not only protect their homes from the savages and the French, but could defeat, if need be, the British themselves.
So thought John Marshall’s father and mother, and so they taught their children.
For the most part, the boy’s days were spent studying and reading, or rifle in hand, in the surrounding mountains and by the pleasant waters that flowed through the valley of his forest home. He helped his mother, of course, did the innumerable chores which the day’s work required, and looked after the younger children. He ate game from the forest and fish from the stream. Bear meat was plentiful.
Whether at home with his mother, or on surveying trips with his father, the boy continually was under the influence and direction of hardy, clear-minded unusual parents.
Their lofty and simple ideals, their rational thinking, their unbending uprightness, their religious convictions—these were the intellectual companions of John Marshall’s childhood and youth.
Give Me Liberty!
Thomas Marshall, John’s father, served in the Virginia House of Burgesses of which Patrick Henry was a member.
When Thomas Marshall returned to his Blue Ridge home, he described, of course, the scenes he had witnessed and taken part in. The heart of his son thrilled, we may be sure, as he listened to his father reciting Patrick Henry’s words of fire.
And again, when Patrick Henry became the voice of America, and offered the “Resolutions for Arming and Defense,” and carried them with that amazing speech ending with:—
Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death!
Thomas Marshall sat beneath its spell.
And John Marshall, now nineteen years old, heard those words from his father’s lips, as the family clustered around the fireside of Oak Hill, their Blue Ridge home.
The effect on John Marshall’s mind and spirit was heroic and profound.
Albert J. Beveridge (Arranged)