If the General were here today?
Well, congratulations, Sir, it seems you have
gained yourself a worthy and formidable force
of individuals to continue your legacy.
There was so much about which he was so silent.
His taciturnity obviously was famous.
Yet, ... yet, I am to lament that the person
who took charge of what you are now doing
originally was so ill-equipped for the task
and inappropriate for the task of memorializing
General Washington--I mean, of course, Chief
Justice John Marshall.
And I would congratulate him in that he finally
now has an honest and true history recorded
rather than that tabulam that the Chief Justice
John Marshall published.
(Offscreen: What do you take issue with the
most with John Marshall's, Chief Justice Marshall's
version?)
TJ: I have reflected that as John Marshall
did for General Washington or served for General
Washington, perhaps I to do what General Washington
did.
Get the person who hates John Marshall more
than anyone else in the world to write my
biography after I am gone.
This would be similar, but then I reflected
on the impossibility of that as everyone knows
this would create the singular circumstance
of a person writing a posthumous autobiography.
Thus it would be impossible.
His prejudices, his bigotry against me in
everything show through in every line of it.
It was not a work of true history but a work
of party politics for the monarchists and
the federalists, and I worked very hard trying
to find someone to counteract it.
I see though, just by being true, you may
not be prejudiced in any way, just by being
true to each word, each syllable, you are
doing certainly doing better than Chief Justice
did in pretty much everything he wrote...including
that biography of the General.
