In an article entitled “The First Generation of United States Marshals” shows President George Washington’s struggle on how to fill up the various offices of the newly established government. Washington fully understood that the success of government was not on the laws that define the government but on the quality of an individual that serve it and this can be best achieved through selecting able and capable men.
He considers the judicial department’s arrangement as “essential to the happiness of the country, and to the stability of its political system; hence the selection of the fittest characters to expound the laws, and dispense justice, has been an invariable object of his anxious concern. One office that was given by Washington a degree of care in selecting its officers was the United States Marshals Service (The First Generation of United States Marshals n.
d. ). On September 26, 1789, President Washington signed the commissions of the thirteen Marshals namely: Allan McLane (1746-1825) Delaware; Henry Dearborn (1751-1829) Maine; Isaac Huger (1742-1797) South Carolina; Nathanial Ramsay (1741-1817) Maryland; Jonathan Jackson (1743-1810) Massachusetts; Clement Biddle (1740-1814) Pennsylvania; William Smith (1755-1816) New York; Lewis R.
Morris (1760-1825) Vermont; Robert Forsyth (1754-1794) Georgia; Thomas Lowry (1737-1806) New Jersey; Samuel McDowell (1764-1834) Kentucky; Edward Carrington (1748-1810) Virginia; John Skinner (1760-1819) North Carolina; John Parker (1732-1791) New Hampshire; Phillip Bradley (1738-1821) Connecticut; and William Peck (1755-1832) Rhode Island. The personalities appointed proved their commitment to the nation at war, with strong local ties and respect their individual states. The Washington appointed U.
S. Marshals were well-respected men that were active in their respective local/community/state affairs that supported the courts and the federal government. (The First Generation of United States Marshals n. d. ). The first U. S. Marshals were committed to the establishment of the national government with a varied experience needed for the young nation. The paper on the First Generation of United States Marshals told that fourteen [Marshals] served during the American Revolution.
At the end of the war, the youngest was a private; there was a Captain; two were Majors; three were Lieutenant Colonels; five were Colonels; one was a Brigadier General; and one, too young to serve, was a general’s aide. Of the two who did not see military service, one turned his trading ships into privateers and represented his state in the Continental Congress, and the other worked as a counselor to his governor and sat in his state’s legislature.
The average appointment was 42 years old with 25 years old as the youngest and 52 years old as the oldest. After leaving their office, some Marshals were appointed as War Secretary under Thomas Jefferson, three Continental Congress members; one was killed in the line of duty and one died of disease while in office while the rest retired to private affairs (The First Generation of United States Marshals n. d. ).
Finally, in the early days of the Marshals’ history and the American nation, they were called to represent the Federal government within their respective districts through taking census every ten years until 1870 (National Research Council, 2005), and performs the function of distributing presidential proclamations, collecting variety information through statistics and data-gathering from commerce and manufacturing sectors, supplied government employees’ names for the national register, and preformed other tasks needed for the central government to function effectively (Calhoun, 1989).