Superb 1807 letter of Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story to Future Massachusetts Governor Levi Lincoln, Jr. Reaffirming His Full Faith in the Republican Principles He Cherished in His Youth

Autograph Letter Signed, Salem, Massachusetts, August 6, 1807 to future Mass. Gov. Levi Lincoln, Jr. praising his Fourth of July oration. “I had the pleasure this day of receiving your oration pronounced the 4th of July last, and I thank you for the politeness, which has given me an opportunity to peruse it. In the full faiths of republican principles I was cherished in my youth, and with mature life I feel no disposition to doubt or abandon them. In your oration I find portrayed a spirit that can vindicate, and a firmness that can support them. May you long live to reap in the honors of your country the reward of talent devoted to her service.” A bit amusing since Story was only 28 years old and far from complete maturity and Lincoln was 3 years younger and would live another 61 years.

Story was elected to Congress the following year, and became an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States in 1812, serving until his death in 1845. Story opposed Jacksonian democracy, saying it was “oppression” of property rights by republican governments. A recent biographer, R. Kent Newmyer, professor at Yale Law School and biographer of Story, presents Story as a “Statesman of the Old Republic”, who tried to be above democratic politics and to shape the law in accordance with the republicanism of Alexander Hamilton and John Marshall, and the New England Whigs of the 1820s and 1830s, including Daniel Webster. Historians generally agree that Story reshaped American law—as much or more than Marshall or anyone else—in a conservative direction that protected property rights. Thus it is fascinating to see Story as a young man reaffirming republicanism.