TO THE HON. SAMUEL NELSON, ONE OF THE ASSOCIATE-JUSTICES OF THE SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES. SIR,-I do not know to whom I can more appropriately dedicate this work than to yourself. For more than twenty years, as Circuit-Judge, as Associate-Justice, and as Chief-Justice of the New York Supreme Court, your learning illustrated, and your virtues adorned, the judicial records of our State. Appointed to the elevated position you now occupy, as the successor of a THOMPSON, and a LIVINGSTON, you carried with you the unanimous verdict of the profession that the ermine of those illustrious judges could not have fallen on one more worthy to receive it; and a service there of nearly ten years has rendered it abundantly evident that posterity will not seek to set that verdict aside. As the only present member of the Court from our own State, whose bench and bar you may, therefore, be said to represent in the Federal Judiciary, there seems to be such a peculiar fitness in inscribing your name on these pages, that I esteem it not only an honor, but a privilege, in being allowed to make this dedication. Permit me then to express the lively gratification I feel in having your permission to inscribe this work to you. With sincere respect, I have the honor to be your obliged and humble servant, TROY, N. Y., August 1st, 1854. G. VAN SANTVOORD. PREFACE. Or the five eminent Jurists who have successively filled the elevated station of Chief Justice of the United States, only one-the first Chief-Justice, Jay -has hitherto been the subject of anything like a complete biography. So far as I know, with this exception, and except also an occasional sketch, or an obituary notice such as that pronounced on Marshall, by his brother Judge Story, before the Suffolk bar-no attempt has been made to preserve in a connected narrative, even the public history and career, to say nothing of the professional life and judicial services, of these distinguished men, three of whom were prominent and active leaders among the statesmen of the Revolution. I have seen it stated some years since, that a son-in-law of Judge Ellsworth was preparing an extensive and complete biography of that gentleman, containing his speeches, extracts from his writings, and many interesting facts in regard to him, but, for some cause which I have not seen explained, the promised memoir has not made its appearance. It might indeed seem a singular, and unaccountable neglect, that one so eminent and distinguished in our civil and diplomatic, as well as our judicial annals, should not hitherto have had a place assigned him in our biographical literature, were not the same unaccountable neglect manifest in the case of his immediate predecessor, as well as in that of his illustrious successor, on the bench of the Supreme Court. Surely the rich mine of American biography cannot be nearly exhausted when such treasures as the lives of RUTLEDGE, ELLSWORTH, and MARSHALL lie still undeveloped and comparatively neglected. The plan of these memoirs, which are now submitted with unaffected diffidence to the public, is such, as necessarily to restrict that part of them which may properly be called biographical, within very narrow limits. They do not pretend to the minuteness of the full and complete biography, and I have not, therefore, assumed to dignify them with a higher title than simply that of "sketches." My object has been rather to trace the judicial history and follow |