When Political History Happens Over Dinner

Heated elections, fraught presidential transitions, and strategic maneuvering for lame-duck appointments are nothing new in American politics—even in situations that historians deem to be dramatically escalated or wholly unprecedented in recent years. But not all of that happens in the open. Indeed, some of the most consequential developments occur off the record in social environments.

Consider a dinner that outgoing president John Adams had with his newly almost-Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, John Marshall, in late January 1801. The following day, Adams finalized the appointment of the man who would become one of the most consequential Chief Justices in American history and a key player in resisting the Jefferson Administration. We can only guess at exactly what they talked about, but the timing and context of this dinner offers some hints that point towards a historic truism: that decisions made and strategies developed to govern how political institutions and presidential transitions ran were often forged over dinner conversation.

In comparison to the voluminous records of later years, the documentary evidence for reconstructing the lives and experiences of even the most privileged and celebrated founders can be elusive. In spite of remarkable archival efforts to collect and preserve sources and publish documentary editions from this period—mostly collected in the public resource Founders Online, and the ongoing interpretive work of historians—there are still large gaps in our knowledge. Marshall’s archive, for example, is limited. The careful work of The Papers of John Marshall project, for example, reconstructed his early legal work, and recovered some of his personal papers. But given the length and impact of his career, it’s still a comparatively thin record. Even a brief additional manuscript can give us a useful window onto this world.

And so it is with a tiny scrap, penned by Marshall in the unpleasant political and winter weather of January 1801. “Mr. Marshall accepts with great pleasure the invitation of the President to dine with him on friday the 30th of January at five.” That’s it. Folded, on the other side is the direction to be delivered to “The President of the United States.”

Newly uncovered at the John Carter Brown Library in Providence, and now slated for inclusion in a volume of the Adams Papers, this dinner RSVP provides an important clue about the broader context of this consequential and controversial appointment.

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In the wake of the heated 1800 election where party hostilities and rivalries reached a peak, it would be hard to find harsher words for the incoming president than those of Marshall, a Congressman and then John Adams’ last Secretary of State. Jefferson’s morals, his judgment, and his prejudices, Marshall wrote to Alexander Hamilton, would do “deep & permanent injury” to both the office of the presidency and the nation and thus, he had “almost insuperable objections” to his fellow Virginian (and kinsman).

Introducing this personal animosity to the Supreme Court especially mattered at the conclusion of an electoral race where the presidential election still needed to be resolved. Jefferson and his putative running mate, Aaron Burr, each bested their Federalist rivals, Adams and his vice presidential pick, Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, but Jefferson and Burr were tied in electoral votes. As outlined in the Constitution, the election would thus have to go to the House of Representatives to be decided. Intense politicking ensued that put Jefferson over the top.

Meanwhile, the election results highlighted the need for constitutional reform. The Twelfth Amendment would resolve the presidential election quagmire that ensnared the candidates in 1800. The federal judiciary was also in need of restructuring, in particular to address the burden on justices to travel to the circuit courts. A revised Federal Judiciary Act, which had been on the back burner, was suddenly on track for consideration in Congress in January. It would reduce the number of justices on the Supreme Court from six to five, and would relieve them of circuit court duties by establishing a circuit system staffed by 16 new federal judgeships—all of whom might be appointed during Adam’s lame duck period before Jefferson took office.

Into this complex political situation a new wrinkle was introduced in December when, after it was already known that he had lost the presidency, Adams received the resignation of the Chief Justice of Supreme Court, Oliver Ellsworth. Adams’s first instinct was to nominate John Jay, another Federalist ally and then-Governor of New York, who declined. By this time it was already well into January of 1801, two months before Jefferson’s inauguration in March.

Then, on Tuesday, Jan. 20, Adams sent Marshall’s nomination to the Senate, on the same day that the Judiciary Act was brought to a vote in the House of Representatives. This was no coincidence; Adams’ allies in Congress kept him abreast of their plans and their expectations of his. On the following Tuesday, Jan. 27, the Senate record reflects only that the body “proceeded to consider” Marshall’s appointment and that they “do advise and consent to the appointment.”

On that Friday night, Jan. 30, Marshall and Adams dined together. Marshall was both a Virginian and a Federalist, not a common combination, but he was also something of a moderate. He did not always agree with his party colleagues, which surely annoyed them, but according to historian Lindsay Chervinsky, probably pleased Adams. Their dinner may have allowed the two men to discuss, among other things, how to manage what they thought would be the new federal judiciary, the legislation that Adams would sign into law just a few weeks later.

The next day, Saturday, Jan. 31, Adams signed and sent forward directions for Marshall’s official commission as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States.

Jefferson took the oath of office just over a month later, on March 4, sworn in by his once and future critic, now Chief Justice John Marshall. Soon after, Jefferson’s allies in Congress repealed the Judiciary Act, and when they passed a new one, it eradicated the whole circuit court system. But Marshall would see through court decisions that would thwart the Jeffersonians just the same. Certainly Marshall’s most important decision, in Marbury v. Madison confirming the authority of the Supreme Court to interpret constitutionality through judicial review, was contrary to the Jeffersonian notion of limited government, and Jefferson himself thought Marshall guilty of interpretive sleight of hand in his efforts to enhance the power of the court.

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Marshall and Jefferson would continue to be implacable political foes into the next decades, exchanging their divergent views about the history of the revolution and the early republic, the nature of political parties, and the powers of their respective offices.

John Adams died on July 4 in 1826. He spent some of his later years reflecting on the intensity of his political career, and the partisanship that marked it. Although he and Jefferson, who died the same day, resumed the friendship that had been so badly wrecked by the ferocity of political battle, Adams called nominating Marshall “the pride of my life.”

What difference did a dinner make? We don’t know. Maybe more pieces of this puzzle will turn up. But we know it happened in the midst of an extraordinary period in American political history, as decisions were made that would resound across the centuries. It happened at the very pivot for Marshall’s career, and for American jurisprudence.

Karin Wulf is Director and Librarian of the John Carter Brown Library and Professor of History at Brown University. Her book Lineage: Genealogy and the Power of Connection in Early America will be published by Oxford University Press in 2025.

Made by History takes readers beyond the headlines with articles written and edited by professional historians. Learn more about Made by History at TIME here. Opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of TIME editors.