Luther Martin

Aaron Burr, an early victim of big government, whose trial of the century in the early 1800s against President Thomas Jefferson defined the limits of executive power and warned of its potential for abuse.

Luther Martin, who refused to sign the Constitution based on what he perceived as its failure to protect individual rights.

Mercy Otis Warren, one of America's first female writers and a John Adams protege, who spent her life warning against the encroachment of federal power.

Canasatego, an Iroquois chief, who taught Benjamin Franklin the basic principles behind the separation of powers and confederate government.

Jefferson had given Hay blanket pardons to use at Hay's unfettered discretion to secure witnesses willing to testify in support of the prosecution.

By the time he had finished, Hay had assembled 140 such witnesses.

Burr's defense team, in turn, included such notables as Benjamin Botts, Charles Lee, Edmund Randolph, John Wickham, and Luther Martin, a delegate to the Constitutional Convention.

Martin made no secret of his friendship with Burr or of his contempt for the dictatorial tactics of Thomas Jefferson.

We asked him to speak with us, but he declined.

But Luther Martin, his chief counsel, has remained behind.

He and his associates have been having a sort of pre-victory gala here.

Mr. Martin, as you know, is the prominent Baltimore attorney who, during the three weeks of the impeachment proceedings, has captured the admiration of all Washington with his brilliant defense of Justice Chase.

Now, sir, the voting is about to begin.

I must leave the Indian Queen.

Thank you, Mr. Luther Martin.

And now back to John Daly in the Capitol.

They had given the essential parts of sovereignty away in 1781, and a union of states was, underneath, a union of men composing them.

Luther Martin of Maryland, the verbose Attorney General, in his first full speech on the floor, answered with a small state's bedrock doctrine.

The separation from Great Britain, he said, had placed the thirteen states in a state of nature towards one another.

They had entered the Confederation as equals.

He speaks warmly of the ladies notwithstanding.

He was next to Maryland's Attorney General, Luther Martin.

This gentleman possesses a good deal of information, but he has very bad delivery, and so extremely prolix that he never speaks without tiring the patience of all who hear him.

Luther Martin had not yet arrived when Major Pierce first looked around the room.

He took his seat on June 9th.

North Carolina's bench held Hugh Williamson, physician, scientist, and politician in one man with a great degree of good humor and pleasantry of his character, who entered freely into public debate, though Pierce judged he is no orator.

Yep.

So several of the anti-federalists immediately went back to their home States, Richard Henry Lee, Eldridge, Gary, the Gary gerrymandering guy, Luther Martin, Patrick Henry, the guy that said, let me Liberty here, let me death all went out and went back to their States and started saying, we can't pass this because it violates article 13 of the artist confederation, because it's not allowing for unanimous.

agreement by the states that violates the rules.

And that was actually, that's one of the big arguments they were making.

No, it goes for a couple of years, but it extends into the bad years of 1798.

So while Jefferson is trying to keep the union together, he's also having to deal with trying to defend himself against Luther Martin's charges.

And Martin is saying Jefferson's made this up, that the Cressips were heroic.

and defended the frontier from the savages of whom Logan is one of them.

So Jefferson, when he writes it down in 1774, he takes at face value all the wrong mistakes that are going on.

And so he, again, like Logan, blames the Crescent family for this.

And this is what Luther Martin, who's married into the Crescent family, and he's the longest serving attorney general for um maryland he's he goes to the constitutional convention he uh he he allegedly hates federalists but he hates jefferson more so he becomes a federalist becomes pals with aaron burr because they hate jefferson together and so uh and so but this logan's lament becomes kind of the the centerpiece of of uh uh what you extract out of the notes in the state of Virginia.

And so it falls into all of these school primers of which the McGuffey readers are the most famous and the most prominent.

It's Saturday, June 9th, 1787.

Gathered as usual in the Pennsylvania State House Assembly Room, with the windows shut to guard against eavesdropping, the convention has welcomed Maryland's newly arrived Luther Martin, and is now listening to Elbridge Gerry argue that state governors should elect the national executive.

The lithe Massachusetts man also believes each governor's vote should be weighted, that governors from bigger states should have more voting power than those from smaller states.

Governor Edmund Randolph rises.

He reiterates this on June 20th.

But the delegates aren't ready to heed such rational thought yet.

A week later, Maryland's Luther Martin gives a terrible, rambling two-day speech against proportional representation.

Given that Luther is what we in the 21st century will call a high-functioning alcoholic, the delegates and future historians will forever wonder if he's utterly plastered.