Luther Martin - Legal Career

Legal Career

Martin's postwar law practice grew to become one of the largest and most successful in the country.

The beginning of the 1800s saw Martin as defense counsel in two controversial national cases. In the first case, Martin won an acquittal for his close friend Supreme Court Justice Samuel Chase in his impeachment trial in 1805. Two years later, Martin was one of Aaron Burr's defense lawyers when Burr stood trial for treason in 1807.

After a record 28 consecutive years as state attorney general, Martin resigned in December 1805. In 1813, he became chief judge of the court of oyer and terminer for the City and County of Baltimore. He was reappointed attorney general of Maryland in 1818, and, in 1819, he argued Maryland's position in the landmark Supreme Court case McCulloch v. Maryland. The plaintiffs were represented by Daniel Webster, William Pinkney and William Wirt.

Martin's fortunes declined dramatically in his last years. He also continued to drink heavily, sinking into bankruptcy and madness. By the mid-1820s, he was subsisting on a special tax imposed on Maryland lawyers solely for his personal support. Eventually, he was taken in by Aaron Burr, whom he had defended at this disgraced ex-vice president's 1807 trial for treason. By this time, detestation of Thomas Jefferson, his one-time decentralist ally, led Martin to embrace the Federalist Party, in apparent repudiation of everything he had argued for so strenuously. Paralysis, which had struck in 1819, forced him to retire as Maryland's attorney general in 1822.

On July 8, 1826, at the age of 78, he died in Aaron Burr's home in New York City and was buried in an unmarked grave in St. John's churchyard. His death came four days after the deaths on July 4 of Jefferson and John Adams.

Martin married Maria Cresap (daughter of Captain Michael Cresap) on Christmas Day 1783. Of their five children, three daughters lived to adulthood.

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