In 1828 Marsh married Harriet Buell. They had two sons, the older of whom died in 1833, within a few days of Harriet Marsh's death. Marsh later married Caroline Crane. In 1843 he was elected to the first of two terms in Congress, where he distinguished himself as one of the guiding forces behind the establishment of the Smithsonian Institution.
During these years Marsh also built his reputation as a scholar. In 1838 he published A Compendious Grammar of the Old-Northern or Icelandic Language, a work based on the writings of R. K. Rask, which Marsh translated, compiled, and annotated. Along with his translation from Swedish for the American Eclectic magazine, it established him as the premier American student of Scandinavian languages and literature. Marsh drew further public attention, not all of it favorable, by some lectures delivered and published during this period. Most controversial were The Goths in New-England (1843) and Address, Delivered before the New England Society of the City of New-York, December 24, 1844 (1845). Both of these lectures chauvinistically argued the point that the Goths were superior in intellect and character to the Romans, and that the Puritans of New England were the inheritors of Gothic virtues.
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