Pennington V. Coxe: A Glimpse at the Federal Government at the End of the Federalist Era‪.‬

I. INTRODUCTION For those concerned with the vitality of the fledging federal government, the beginning of 1802 was a disconcerting time. Both the federal judiciary and the federal internal tax bureaucracy were little more than a decade old. These institutions were still young enough to be precarious even if they had had no obvious enemies. And they did have enemies.