Cambridge History of American Literature: volume 2
Trent, William Peterfield, 1862-1939., Erskine, John, 1879-1951., Sherman, Stuart Pratt, 1881-1926., Van Doren, Carl, 1885-1950., Ed.

What two men could do in expounding the law, making it intelligible and effective, and showing the strength and reasonableness of fundamental principles, in short, what could be done in fashioning the main lines of a growing jurisprudence for a rapidly growing country, these two men accomplished. The layman commonly thinks of the law as fixed, or as developing only by the addition of statutes passed by some legislative body, but the truth is that law grows, and the common law above all, as questions and problems arise; judges on the bench and writers of text-books who do more than merely chronicle decisions, have great opportunity to direct the law into new channels and to determine the course of its development. Such power and influence naturally belonged in unusual measure to Kent and Story, because of their learning, because they taught and wrote as well as gave opinions from the bench, and above all because the period in which they worked was a formative period in the early life of a nation, during which law, like everything else, had to find expression and formulation.

To the list of jurists deserving special mention must be added Henry Wheaton (1785-1848). His early important work was that of reporter of the Supreme Court; but in 1827 he was appointed charge d'affaires to Denmark, and a few years later minister to the court of Prussia. His diplomatic experience was doubtless of much service to him in his career as a publicist. In 1836 appeared the work by which he is chiefly known, the Elements of international law. It passed through various editions, was translated into foreign languages, and is justly considered one of the most valuable contributions to the science of international law made during the nineteenth century.

With the possible exception of Marshall and Webster,¹ John C. Calhoun (1782-1850) was the most important statesman and writer on public affairs in the forty years preceding 1850. A South Carolinian, he belonged by birth, not to the lowland planter class, but to the men of the up-country. At an early day his father purchased a slave, not a usual possession for an up-country man, and when John Calhoun grew to manhood