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THE PROPERTY OF A GENTLEMAN
ADAMS, John. Document signed ("John Adams"), as President, COUNTER-SIGNED BY JOHN MARSHALL ("J. Marshall"), as Secretary of State, Washington, 3 March 1801. A judicial appointment, naming Elijah Paine Judge of the District Court for the Vermont District. 1 page, large folio (12¾ x 14 in.), ON VELLUM, accomplished in a clerical hand, (day and month effaced and accomplished again in a different but clearly contemporary hand), paper seal of the United States at lower left, seal hole repaired, minor chipping along edge. In a fine gilt frame (20¼ x 28 3/8 in.).
細節
ADAMS, John. Document signed ("John Adams"), as President, COUNTER-SIGNED BY JOHN MARSHALL ("J. Marshall"), as Secretary of State, Washington, 3 March 1801. A judicial appointment, naming Elijah Paine Judge of the District Court for the Vermont District. 1 page, large folio (12¾ x 14 in.), ON VELLUM, accomplished in a clerical hand, (day and month effaced and accomplished again in a different but clearly contemporary hand), paper seal of the United States at lower left, seal hole repaired, minor chipping along edge. In a fine gilt frame (20¼ x 28 3/8 in.).
A EXCEEEDINGLY RARE "MIDNIGHT APPOINTMENT" BY OUTGOING PRESIDENT JOHN ADAMS
On Adams's final day as President, he and John Marshall seek to thwart his successor by packing the nation's judiciary with Federalists. Jefferson's victory in the election of 1800 devastated Adams. The friendship between the two men was long over, destroyed in the flames of vicious partisan warfare that characterized the 1790s. Far worse was the news in mid-December that Adams's son Charles had died of alcoholism in a seedy New York lodging house. Adams's whole world seemed to be collapsing. When he left Washington ignominiously at 4 a.m. on March 4, the morning of Jefferson's inauguration--without maing any effort to extend courtesies to his successor--the picture of an embittered, angry ex-President seems complete.
Yet Adams's defenders dispute the whole notion of the Midnight appointments, deeming it a partisan exaggeration. Page Smith maintains that Adams did not sit up late into the night, wearing out his hand signing appointments. As for the 4 a.m. departure, several Adams defenders point out that there was as yet no protocol for outgoing Presidents to follow, and he simply left at the hour required to catch his coach to Baltimore. All concede, however, that Adams did indeed try to stack the judiciary with Federalists in the final weeks of his term, starting with the co-signer of this appointment, John Marshall, whom Adams named Chief Justice of the Supreme Court in February (Marshall would use the case of another Midnight Appointee, William Marbury, to assert the right of judicial review in 1803).
On 13 February, Congress had passed a bill that reorganized the judicial districts, created three additional Federal circuit courts, and in all opened up some 23 new judgeships that needed to be filled. Not a single Jeffersonian, to be sure, was among those tapped for these slots. One of them was Elijah Paine, who helped his own appointment along by voting on it in the Senate, where he served as the Federalist Senator for the state of Vermont! Paine held his dual posts as judge and Senator from March to September 1801, when he finally resigned from the legislature. The Jeffersonian press immediately denounced "The Duke of Braintree's Midnight Judges" and the term was soon in common political usage. (See Jefferson's reference to "midnight appointments" in the 1804 letter to Eppes, included in this sale, lot 262.) Jefferson devoted immense political effort to breaking the Federalist grip on the judiciary, going after opponents on the Supreme Court (the Chase impeachment), and filling new slots in the District Courts wherever he could with good Jeffersonians.
If Smith is right, and Adams in fact signed only a few appointments on his final night, Paine's commission is all the more remarkable. MIDNIGHT APPOINTMENTS ARE EXTRAORDINARILY RARE: only a single example (sold in 1970) is traceable at auction since World War II.
A EXCEEEDINGLY RARE "MIDNIGHT APPOINTMENT" BY OUTGOING PRESIDENT JOHN ADAMS
On Adams's final day as President, he and John Marshall seek to thwart his successor by packing the nation's judiciary with Federalists. Jefferson's victory in the election of 1800 devastated Adams. The friendship between the two men was long over, destroyed in the flames of vicious partisan warfare that characterized the 1790s. Far worse was the news in mid-December that Adams's son Charles had died of alcoholism in a seedy New York lodging house. Adams's whole world seemed to be collapsing. When he left Washington ignominiously at 4 a.m. on March 4, the morning of Jefferson's inauguration--without maing any effort to extend courtesies to his successor--the picture of an embittered, angry ex-President seems complete.
Yet Adams's defenders dispute the whole notion of the Midnight appointments, deeming it a partisan exaggeration. Page Smith maintains that Adams did not sit up late into the night, wearing out his hand signing appointments. As for the 4 a.m. departure, several Adams defenders point out that there was as yet no protocol for outgoing Presidents to follow, and he simply left at the hour required to catch his coach to Baltimore. All concede, however, that Adams did indeed try to stack the judiciary with Federalists in the final weeks of his term, starting with the co-signer of this appointment, John Marshall, whom Adams named Chief Justice of the Supreme Court in February (Marshall would use the case of another Midnight Appointee, William Marbury, to assert the right of judicial review in 1803).
On 13 February, Congress had passed a bill that reorganized the judicial districts, created three additional Federal circuit courts, and in all opened up some 23 new judgeships that needed to be filled. Not a single Jeffersonian, to be sure, was among those tapped for these slots. One of them was Elijah Paine, who helped his own appointment along by voting on it in the Senate, where he served as the Federalist Senator for the state of Vermont! Paine held his dual posts as judge and Senator from March to September 1801, when he finally resigned from the legislature. The Jeffersonian press immediately denounced "The Duke of Braintree's Midnight Judges" and the term was soon in common political usage. (See Jefferson's reference to "midnight appointments" in the 1804 letter to Eppes, included in this sale, lot 262.) Jefferson devoted immense political effort to breaking the Federalist grip on the judiciary, going after opponents on the Supreme Court (the Chase impeachment), and filling new slots in the District Courts wherever he could with good Jeffersonians.
If Smith is right, and Adams in fact signed only a few appointments on his final night, Paine's commission is all the more remarkable. MIDNIGHT APPOINTMENTS ARE EXTRAORDINARILY RARE: only a single example (sold in 1970) is traceable at auction since World War II.