It is February 23rd. Welcome to Episode 54 of History in a Year. Today, we witness the ultimate lame-duck revenge. John Adams has lost the Election of 1800, but he still has four months left in office. Realizing the Federalist Party has lost the presidency and Congress, Adams decides to build a fortress out of the only branch of government left: The Judiciary. We watch the frantic, chaotic final hours of the Adams administration as the President stays up until midnight packing the federal courts with his political allies, setting a trap that will infuriate Thomas Jefferson and change the United States government forever.
STEPHEN:
Welcome to History in a Year: America’s First 250 Years.
LEAH:
Join us every single day as we journey from the Revolution of 1776 to the 250th anniversary of the United States.
STEPHEN:
You can find every episode and join the discussion at PointedWords.com. I’m Stephen.
LEAH:
And I’m Leah.
STEPHEN:
It is February 23rd. Welcome to Episode 54. Yesterday, the Federalist Party suffered a catastrophic, crushing defeat in the Election of 1800.
LEAH:
Thomas Jefferson and the Democratic-Republicans didn’t just win the presidency; they swept the House of Representatives and the Senate. It was a total political wipeout. The Federalists were effectively dead as a national political force.
STEPHEN:
But there is a quirk in the American political calendar.
LEAH:
Back then, the elections were held in November and December. But the new President and the new Congress didn’t actually take office until March 4th.
STEPHEN:
That meant John Adams and his defeated Federalist Congress had a “lame-duck” period of almost four months. They had four months of absolute, unchecked power before they had to hand the keys over to Thomas Jefferson.
LEAH:
And they were not going to go quietly.
STEPHEN:
The Federalists looked at the map. They had lost the Executive Branch. They had lost the Legislative Branch. But there are three branches of government in the United States.
LEAH:
They still controlled the Judicial Branch. And unlike the President or Congress, federal judges serve for life.
STEPHEN:
So, the Federalists hatched a brilliant, incredibly petty, and highly effective plan. They decided to pack the courts.
LEAH:
In February 1801, just weeks before Jefferson’s inauguration, the lame-duck Federalist Congress passed the Judiciary Act of 1801.
STEPHEN:
This law did a few major things. First, it reorganized the court system and created 16 brand-new federal circuit court judgeships.
LEAH:
Second, it created dozens of new lower-level positions—justices of the peace, marshals, clerks, and attorneys.
STEPHEN:
And third—and this is the pettiest part of all—it actually shrank the size of the Supreme Court. The law stated that the next time a Supreme Court justice retired or died, their seat would simply be eliminated, reducing the court from six justices to five.
LEAH:
Why would they do that? Simply to deny Thomas Jefferson the chance to appoint someone to the Supreme Court! They literally changed the size of the highest court in the land just out of political spite.
STEPHEN:
As soon as the bill was passed, President John Adams went to work. He had to fill all these brand-new lifetime appointments with loyal Federalists before March 4th.
LEAH:
He nominated judges, the Federalist Senate immediately rubber-stamped them, and then Adams signed their commissions.
STEPHEN:
But the biggest appointment Adams made didn’t happen in the lower courts. It happened at the very top.
LEAH:
The Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, Oliver Ellsworth, had resigned for health reasons right in the middle of this lame-duck period. Adams needed to replace him.
STEPHEN:
Adams first tried to give the job back to John Jay, the guy who negotiated the Jay Treaty. But Jay said no. He hated riding the circuit, and he thought the Supreme Court was too weak and pointless.
LEAH:
So, Adams turned to his Secretary of State, a 45-year-old Virginian named John Marshall.
STEPHEN:
This is one of the most consequential appointments in the history of the world. John Marshall was a brilliant lawyer, a staunch Federalist, and—this is the most important part—he was Thomas Jefferson’s second cousin.
LEAH:
And they absolutely despised each other. They hated each other on a deeply personal, cellular level.
STEPHEN:
Adams appointed Marshall as Chief Justice. And because the Senate was about to go home, Marshall actually kept doing his old job as Secretary of State while serving as the new Chief Justice. He was doing double duty for the last month of the administration.
LEAH:
The clock was ticking down. It is now March 3rd, 1801. Thomas Jefferson is scheduled to be inaugurated the very next day.
STEPHEN:
The scene inside the executive offices was absolute chaos. John Adams was sitting at his desk, furiously signing judicial commissions as fast as he could.
LEAH:
Because he was literally signing these documents up until the final hours of his presidency, history calls these men the “Midnight Judges.”
STEPHEN:
But a piece of paper with the President’s signature isn’t enough to make someone a judge. There is a legal process.
LEAH:
First, the President signs it. Second, the Secretary of State has to stamp it with the Great Seal of the United States. And third, the commission has to be physically delivered to the person.
STEPHEN:
John Marshall—who, remember, is acting as Secretary of State—was running around stamping these documents with the Great Seal.
LEAH:
But he ran out of time. At midnight, the Adams administration officially ended. Marshall had managed to stamp all the commissions, but there was a stack of them still sitting on his desk that hadn’t been physically delivered yet.
STEPHEN:
Marshall looked at the stack of undelivered commissions and essentially said, “Well, I’m out of time. My shift is over. They are signed and sealed. The new guy can deliver them tomorrow.”
LEAH:
And he walked out the door.
STEPHEN:
The next day, March 4, 1801, Thomas Jefferson was inaugurated as the third President of the United States. He walked into the State Department office and found that stack of undelivered commissions sitting on the desk.
LEAH:
He looked at the names. They were all hardcore Federalists. They were his worst political enemies, placed there by John Adams at the very last second.
STEPHEN:
Jefferson was furious. He believed the Midnight Judges Act was an unconstitutional power grab. He told his brand-new Secretary of State—his best friend, James Madison—what to do with that stack of papers.
LEAH:
He essentially told Madison, “Throw them in the trash. Do not deliver them. If they aren’t delivered, these men aren’t judges.”
STEPHEN:
Madison locked the commissions away. Jefferson thought he had solved the problem. The Federalists had tried to pull a fast one, but he had caught them on a technicality.
LEAH:
But one of the men on that undelivered list was a wealthy Maryland financier named William Marbury.
STEPHEN:
Marbury had been appointed as a Justice of the Peace for the District of Columbia. It wasn’t a glamorous job—it was basically handling minor disputes and small claims. But Marbury was a proud Federalist, and he wanted his job.
LEAH:
He knew John Adams had signed his commission. He knew the Senate had confirmed him. He knew the Great Seal was on the paper.
STEPHEN:
So, William Marbury marched up to the new Secretary of State, James Madison, and demanded his commission. Madison refused to give it to him.
LEAH:
Marbury wasn’t going to take no for an answer. He hired a lawyer. And he didn’t file a lawsuit in a normal, lower trial court.
STEPHEN:
He went straight to the top. Marbury filed a petition directly with the Supreme Court of the United States.
LEAH:
He asked the Supreme Court to issue a “Writ of Mandamus”—which is basically a royal court order commanding a government official to do their job. He wanted the Supreme Court to legally force James Madison to hand over the piece of paper.
STEPHEN:
And who was sitting in the center chair of the Supreme Court, waiting to hear this case?
LEAH:
Chief Justice John Marshall. The exact same guy who had forgotten to deliver the paper in the first place!
STEPHEN:
And Thomas Jefferson’s worst nightmare.
LEAH:
The stage is set for the ultimate legal showdown. It is Thomas Jefferson and James Madison on one side, and John Marshall and William Marbury on the other.
STEPHEN:
It is a political standoff that could break the young government. If Marshall orders Madison to hand over the paper, Jefferson will simply ignore the order, proving that the Supreme Court is powerless. But if Marshall backs down, he proves that the Court is just a puppet of the President.
LEAH:
John Marshall has to find a way out of an impossible trap.
STEPHEN:
Join us tomorrow for Episode 55. Marbury v. Madison. We witness the most brilliant legal magic trick in American history. We’ll see how Chief Justice John Marshall deliberately loses a battle to win the war, and in the process, invents the awesome power of Judicial Review—making the Supreme Court the ultimate referee of the United States.
LEAH:
I’m Leah.
STEPHEN:
And I’m Stephen.
STEPHEN:
You can find every episode at PointedWords.com. And this… is our story.