Note 818 — Chapter VI
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The Nationalist ideas of Marshall and Lincoln are identical; and their language is so similar that it seems not unlikely that Lincoln paraphrased this noble passage of Marshall and thus made it immortal. This probability is increased by the fact that Lincoln was a profound student of Marshall's Constitutional opinions and committed a great many of them to memory.
The famous sentence of Lincoln's Gettysburg Address was, however, almost exactly given by Webster in his Reply to Hayne: "It is ... the people's Government; made for the people; made by the people; and answerable to the people." (Debates, 21st Cong. 1st Sess. 74; also Curtis, I, 355-61.) But both Lincoln and Webster merely stated in condensed and simpler form Marshall's immortal utterance in M'Culloch vs. Maryland. (See also infra, chap. x.)