Joseph Story: Letter to Samuel P. P. Fay as “Matthew Bramble”

Explanation and Analysis of the Document

In 1807, when he was not yet thirty years old, Story made his first trip to Washington, D.C. He traveled on business, primarily to lobby on behalf of some New England land speculators who had interests in disputed grants in the Old Southwest, but he also made sure to introduce himself to the leading figures in the city. He met President Thomas Jefferson, various members of Congress, and, perhaps most important to Story, the justices of the Supreme Court. At this point Story stood at the beginning of his public career; he had served on his town committee in Salem and was sitting in the Massachusetts House of Representatives. Despite his youth and relative inexperience, however, he already displayed a strong sense of himself as an intellectual and as an advocate of a particular brand of commercially minded republicanism. A letter written to one of his friends during this trip underscores those characteristics.

Story wrote his friend and fellow Harvard graduate Samuel P. P. Fay, describing his travel to and impressions of Washington in a way that was playfully erudite. He bracketed his account with references to English novels, addressing the letter not to Fay but to “Mathew Bramble,” a character in Tobias Smollett's comedic work The Expedition of Humphry Clinker (1771), and signing the letter under the name of “Jeremy Melford,” another character from the novel. In opening, he refers to a second book, James Beresford's Miseries of Human Life; or, The Last Groans of Timothy Testy and Samuel Sensitive (1806), to describe his current state: “Take down the Miseries of Human Life, and look at the pages of that groaning work for the articles respecting travelling.” If Fay sympathized with “the wretch who is soused into a horsepond or bespattered with mud,” then he should do the same with Story. Story relates a favorable impression of the unfinished Capitol building—“when the centre is completed the effect will certainly be striking”—but seems less impressed by the city surrounding the yet-to-be completed building. Story also discusses architecture, even though his “curiosity rather respects men than things,” because discussing the city's people would result in a “sleepy narrative from a very sleepy pen.” Thenceforth, his entire letter rests on what he was “deciding by a first impression, without caring to investigate facts.” He closes his letter with a reference to a third novel, Laurence Sterne's Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (1759–1767), and yet another to Humphry Clinker.

This letter underscores two features of Story's personality. First, he considered himself a man of letters. He dropped references to classic and current works of English literature and was at this time a published poet and legal commentator; he later would become the author of numerous judicial opinions and legal treatises. Second, Story ironically portrayed himself as an intellectual sloth. After noting that he was relying on first impressions, he comments that “it is so much easier to loll in one's elbow chair, and decide by speculation, than drudge through matters of fact.… How unfortunate would it be to live in suspense, and at every turn to encounter some stubborn truth, that would overset all our opinions.” Yet Story was hardly an armchair commentator; he would devote much of his life to the drudgery of legal research. His judicial opinions and treatises would be meticulously researched, and he would emerge at the center of a group of commentators that would transform the legal landscape of the United States in the early nineteenth century.

Story's description of Washington hinted at an understanding of American political development that would inform his future work. The city held promise: “I confess very few plots of ground are so well adapted for municipal purposes.” One day the city might have “a million of inhabitants,” but at the moment Washington “seems to demand a century of years before it can become a numerous metropolis.” Story attributed the slow growth to two sources. Because the United States was a republic, the capital lacked a despotic government that could “draw its millions to the spot.” In addition, Washington showed little sign of becoming a commercial center, and as he notes, “St. Petersburg might be dragged from the fens of the Baltic by a Czar, but among a free people the tide of population follows the mart of commerce more than the residence of power.” Over the course of his career, Story would devote himself to articulating what he considered the proper legal foundations for both American republicanism and for commerce. In matters of constitutional law, he believed the nation to be best served by a relatively powerful central government that worked to restrain potentially irresponsible state legislatures. On economic issues, Story favored strict contracts, easy transmission of property, and other policies that generally promoted economic development while providing some security for long-term investors.

Story's letter points to one final feature that would dominate his life: the rigors of travel. The 140 miles between Philadelphia and Washington featured “as execrable roads as can be found in Christendom.… Take my word for it, I am reduced to a mere jelly.” Story would make treks to and from Washington many more times over the course of his life. He would return to serve in Congress in 1809 and again to represent his land-speculating clients in Fletcher v. Peck (1810), a case that brought him great success. He not only won the case for his clients but also convinced the Supreme Court that, under the Constitution, state governments possessed no authority to rescind grants of property that they had previously made. The Court thus agreed with Story that proper republican governance required that the states be subject to some external restraint.

Story's performance in Fletcher, along with his legal work in both state and federal courts in Massachusetts and his continued legal commentary, paid off when the Supreme Court's so-called New England seat opened up in 1811. Story, who despite his growing stature in the New England legal community was still a young and relatively inexperienced lawyer, received the post only after three other nominees declined or were rejected by the Senate. President James Madison offered Story the seat primarily for his decision to affiliate with the Democratic-Republican Party upon entering politics; the list of other qualified candidates in the Federalist bastion of New England had been short to begin with. Story's move to the Supreme Court meant more travel. He logged, according to his best biographer, an estimated one thousand miles a year riding circuit in New England, and he regularly made the five-hundred-mile trek to Washington as well. Such was the life of an early American Supreme Court justice.