This is an I-Heart podcast.

This is Lee Habib, and this is Our American Stories, the show where America is the star

and the American people. Up next, the story

of an often overlooked founding father. While you may have heard of John Marshall in history class,

it was probably but for a brief moment concerning the landmark decision his Supreme Court

handed down in 1803 Marbury v. Madison.

But his life is much more than just his cases.

Here to tell the story of the man is Richard Berkheiser, author of John Marshall,

the man who made the Supreme Court.

So I think the first thing to say about who John Marshall was, and this is even though he spent

most of his adult life in Richmond, spent a couple years in Philadelphia, six months in Paris,

despite all that experience of city living, he was a country boy, all his life. The house he was

born in was a log cabin. The second house he grew up in was a frame house. The third

had glass in the windows. It wasn't Daniel Boone going through the Cumberland Gap, but

it was out in the country. And it seems to me

that Marshall so enjoyed that manner of life that he never entirely forsook it. The word

that comes up over and over again in descriptions of him is simple. This word is used by people

who are meeting him for the first time. It's used by people

who've known him for years. They describe him as simple. He didn't care how he dressed.

He didn't care how his hair was cut. His wife cut it for him. He had simple attitudes toward

drinking.

He liked it.

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