University of Virginia Library

John Randolph,

AMONG American families few have been more eminent,
either in colonial days or since, than the Randolphs
of Virginia. The name had, indeed, been a distinguished
one in England for centuries before William
Randolph, Gentleman, of Warwickshire (Shakespeare's
County), came to Virginia in 1674 and settled at Turkey
Island, James River.

The spot is historic. For close by was the estate of
Nathaniel Bacon, who two years later led the rebellion
against Sir Willian Berkeley, the royal Governor. In
close proximity, too, is Malvern Hill, where nearly two
centuries later the shattered army of McClellan found
shelter from the sledge-hammer blows of Robert E. Lee.

The young Englishman was not long alone at Turkey
Island, but soon married a young woman of the colony.
The billing and cooing of most loving couples is of small
consequence to the world at large. But not so in this
case. Gibbon truly says that, when the enemies of Mohammed
caught up with him on his flight from Mecca
to Medina, "in this eventful moment the lance of an Arab

might have changed the history of the world." And it
may be said with equal truth that the glance of Mary
Isham's eye did actually change the course of history.
Had she failed to look tenderly upon William Randolph,
not a few of the greatest Americans had never been born.
For not only were this pair the progenitors of such men

Robert E Lee

as Peyton Randolph, the
first President of the first
Continental Congress, Edmund
Randolph, the first
Attorney-General and second
Secretary of State of
the United States, William
Stith, the historian of Virginia,
Bishop William Meade,
the historian as well as "Restorer"
of the Episcopal
Church of Virginia, and
Bishop Alfred M. Randolph,
but also of Thomas Jefferson, Chief Justice Marshall,
and last, but not least one, grandest and noblest of all—
Robert Edward Lee. Such being the descendants of
this couple, the fair reader will doubtless shudder at what
might have been—or might not have been—had Mary
Isham been obdurate, and died an old maid.

Fortunately, however, she hardened not her heart, but
wedded, and in due time presented her husband with seven
sons and two daughters.

One of these sons, Richard by name, became the owner
of Curles, the confiscated estate of Nathaniel Bacon, and

married Jane Bolling, a great-great-granddaughter of Pocahontas.
Richard Randolph's fourth son, John, married
Frances Bland, daughter of Col. Theodorick Bland of
Cawsons, Prince George Co., situated on the high bank of
the Appomattox, near its junction with the James. Here,
on June 2, 1773, the third son of John and Frances Randolph,
the subject of this sketch, first saw the light.

Though born at the house of his maternal grandfather,
his early childhood was chiefly spent at his father's place,
Matoax, on the Appomattox, two miles above Petersburg.
His father died in 1775, and his mother, a woman of great
beauty and high mental qualities, continued to reside at
Matoax both before and after her marriage to St. George
Tucker of Bermuda in 1778. Sincerely pious herself,
she took great pains with the religious training of the
dark-eyed boy; and although John Randolph, after his
mother's death, eagerly imbibed the deistical philosophy
of the day and was a scoffer at Christianity during his
early manhood, yet when troubles of many kinds had
saddened his heart, the memory of his mother's teachings
came vividly back to his mind.

"When I could first remember," says he, "I slept in
the same bed with my widowed mother—each night, before
putting me to bed, I repeated on my knees before
her the Lord's Prayer and the Apostles' Creed—each
morning kneeling in the bed I put up my little hands in
prayer in the same form. Years have since passed away:
I have been a skeptic, a professed scoffer, glorying in my
infidelity, and vain of the ingenuity with which I could
defend it. Prayer never crossed my mind, but in scorn.

I am now conscious that the lessons above mentioned,
taught me by my dear and revered mother, are of more
value to me than all that I have learned from my preceptors
and compeers."

Shielding him from contact with vulgarity and meanness
in every form, she taught him to read so early that
by the time he was eleven years old he is said to have
read "Robinson Crusoe," "Gulliver's Travels," Plutarch's
"Lives," "Don Quixote," "Gil Blas," "Quintus
Curtius," "Pope's Homer," "Orlando Furioso," "Tom
Jones," Voltaire's "Charles XII," Thomson's "Seasons,"
the "Spectator," "Humphrey Clinker," Goldsmith's
"Roman History," "Shakespeare," "The Arabian
Nights," etc; the last two, in particular, being his delight,
as giving free scope to his own active and poetic
imagination.

The boy was born in stirring times; and before he was
eight years old, they became more stirring still. For in
the early days of January, 1781, his mother and step-father,
hearing of the approach of Benedict Arnold and his
marauding band, hastily collected some of their movable
goods, and with their children (one of them a new-born
infant, who afterwards became the eminent jurist, Judge
Henry St. George Tucker, Professor of Law at the University
of Virginia), fled to Bizarre, another of their estates,
ninety miles further up the Appomattox.

Before he was nine years old, John was sent with his
two brothers to Walker Maury's school in Orange Co.,
and afterwards to Williamsburg, when Maury had moved
there to take charge of a grammar school connected with

William and Mary College. Here he remained for about
a year, reading Sallust and Vergil, learning the Westminster
Greek Grammar by heart, and studying French and

William and Mary College, Williamsburg, Va.
Jefferson and many other noted Virginians attended this College.

the elements of Geometry. Being proud and reserved,
he mingled little with the general crowd of boys, but laid
the foundation of a life-long friendship with the brilliant
Littleton Waller Tazewell, afterwards Governor of Virginia
and United States Senator.

John was a very beautiful boy, but of such delicate
constitution that he was taken from school in the spring

of 1784, and spent the next eighteen months in the island
of Bermuda. We next hear of him at Princeton in 1787,
where he was "forced to be idle, being put into a noisy
wretched grammar school for Dr. Witherspoon's emolument,"
though "ten times a better scholar than the master
of it." He mentions that the prize of elocution there
"was borne away by mouthers and ranters," and evidently
derived but little profit from his connection with
Princeton, from which place he was called away in January,
1788, by the death of his beloved mother—an event
which he ever after regarded as the greatest misfortune
of his life.

In June of the same year he went to Columbia College,
N. Y., and was delighted with the instruction of Professor
Cochran, a scholarly Irishman, whom he paid with his
own pocket-money to give him private lessons. They
read Demosthenes together, and it is characteristic of the
future champion of State Rights that he wept with indignation
at the success of Philip's schemes for crushing
the Greek States beneath centralized Macedonian
despotism.

To his deep distress, however, Cochran removed to Nova
Scotia after three months, and the boy now began to
neglect his studies. That this was a calamity he always
believed, and with reason; for, while it is true that a racehorse
ought not to be put to the plough, or a genius with
delicate physique and electrical nerves forced through
the mechanical mill of stupid pedagogical routine, it is
equally certain that a few years more of systematic
guidance by able teachers would have given John Randolph's

intellect a balance and a steadiness that would
have made him a far more efficient man than he actually
became. For such guidance would not only have trained
his mind, but would have curbed his will and his temper
as well.

After Cochran left Columbia, the fifteen-year-old boy
read "only the trash of the circulating library" and never
read afterwards, he tells us, "except for amusement,
unless for a few weeks at Williamsburg at the close of
1793." Surely it was a calamity that a man so brilliant
should have had such a desultory schooling and should
never have acquired those disciplined habits of self-control
that might have enabled him to master a temper so
violent that at four years of age he actually swooned in
a fit of passion.

"I have been all my life," he long afterwards said,
"the creature of impulse, the sport of chance, the victim
of my own uncontrolled and uncontrollable sensations."

His nerves were so sensitive that he said he felt like a
man with no skin; and much of his erratic and eccentric
conduct was due to the fact that trifles which would have
failed to penetrate even the moral epidermis of thicker-skinned
men were poisoned dagger-thrusts to him.

The boy was still in New York when Washington was
inaugurated, and was a witness of the ceremony. His
mind was already intensely active on political questions;
and, as his uncle, Theodorick Bland, had been a member
of the Virginia Convention that ratified the Constitution,
and was a member of the first United States Congress,
as was also John's step-uncle, Thomas Tudor Tucker, his

opportunities for becoming acquainted with political principles
were ample. Theodorick Bland was a disciple of
Patrick Henry and George Mason, and had voted with
those far-seeing statesmen against the adoption of the
Constitution. John Randolph grew up to manhood,
therefore, in a political atmosphere saturated with love
of local liberty and jealousy of centralized power, and
his mind retained this bent to the end.

In December, 1790, the seat of government was moved
to Philadelphia, and we find our embryo statesman there
also at the house of his cousin, the Attorney-General. It
is needless to say that he also came into contact with his
still greater kinsman, the Secretary of State. With what
keen interest he drank in the political lessons to be derived
from intercourse with so many eminent men at the
very centre of affairs may well be imagined.

But, while he was a disciple of Jefferson in his strict
construction of the Constitution, he could not wholly follow
him and Thomas Paine in their views of the French
Revolution, which was now the theme of world-wide attention.
Rather was he a pupil of the profounder Burke,
whose prophecies of anarchy, followed by despotism, in
France were so soon to be verified.

Among Randolph's companions in Philadelphia were
John W. Eppes, the only man who ever succeeded—and
he but once—in defeating him for Congress; Thomas Marshall,
brother of the great John Marshall; Robert Rose,
who married the sister of James Madison; and Joseph Bryan
of Georgia (afterwards a member of Congress).

Some of John Randolph's friends in Philadelphia were

students of medicine, and he himself attended some lectures
on anatomy and physiology. If he studied law in
the office of Edmund Randolph, it was to a very limited
extent. He did pick up some knowledge of law from
his general reading, but there is no proof of his having
systematically studied it.

Reaching his majority in June, 1794, he took npon himself
the management of his estate Roanoke in Charlotte
Co. on the Staunton River, but resided for some years at
Bizarre, in Cumberland, with his eldest brother Richard,
whom he devotedly loved and admired. But, while Bizarre
was his headquarters, it is not to be supposed that
this brilliant young fellow, living in hospitable Virginia,
settled quietly down to a humdrum existence. He rode
over to Roanoke often enough to look after his estate,
but spent much of his time in hunting, riding, visiting
his friends, and writing to those at a distance. Few men,
indeed, have ever carried on so voluminous a friendly
correspondence throughout life as John Randolph. Great
numbers of his letters are still extant, and throw much
light upon his character and that of his time.

Two of his friends, Rutledge of South Carolina, and
Bryan of Georgia, induced him to visit them early in
1796—Bryan promising him the "best Spanish segars
and the best of liquors—good horses, deer hunting in
perfection—good companions, that is to say, not merely
bottle crackers, Jack, but good, sound, well-informed
Democrats." That nevertheless a few bottles, as well as
political nuts, were cracked by the jovial young blades,
we gather from a subsequent letter from Joe Bryan, in

which he reminds his friend Jack that his eldest brother
still remembered the rum ducking he had given him.

Returning to Bizarre in July, John Randolph was terribly
shocked to find that his brother Richard, said to
have been the most promising young man in Virginia,
had died on the 14th of June, leaving a widow and two
children. And not only was he called upon to bear the
weight of this great sorrow, but also the responsibility of
managing his brother's estate as well as his own.

The death of his brother affected John Randolph profoundly,
and his sensitive and highly wrought nervous
system was thrown into such disorder that his cousin,
Mrs. Dudley, testified after his death that she regarded
him at this time as always eccentric and sometimes insane.
Her room was just over his, and she said he was
the most sleepless man she ever knew—frequently throwing
things about his room, exclaiming "Macbeth hath
murdered sleep," or mounting his horse and riding, sword
in hand, over the plantation at dead of night. But the
poignancy of his grief was at length allayed, and we will
pass on to the year 1799, when his active political career
began.

The Constitution of the United States declares explicitly
that Congress shall pass no law abridging the freedom
of speech or of the press; the States, which made the
Constitution, reserving the right to deal with such questions
themselves. Yet the Federalist party, carried away
by partisan rage at the violent attacks made upon its policy
by the Republican press, deliberately trampled the
Constitution under foot, and passed not only the Alien

Act, which gave the President the usurped power to banish
foreigners obnoxious in his eyes, but also the Sedition
Act, which punished with fine and imprisonment any
one who should write, print, utter or publish anything
in criticism of Congress or the President which partisan
judges might choose to consider false, scandalous or malicious.
In response to this glaring usurpation, Virginia
declared through her legislature that in case of a deliberate,
palpable and dangerous violation of the constitutional
compact by the general government, the States, the
parties to that compact, were in duty bound to interpose
for the preservation of their liberties. Virginia's daughter,
Kentucky, also asserted this doctrine in still more
emphatic language.

Immense efforts were now made by the Federalists to
win over to their cause the aged Patrick Henry; and
their efforts were, strange to say, so successful that the
man who had not hesitated to advocate the secession of
the colonies from the mother country because of parliamentary
taxation, the man who had opposed Virginia's
ratification of the Constitution because he dreaded
and predicted just such usurpations as had now taken
place, was induced to take the side of congressional despotism
against the liberties of the States. By what arts
he was brought to this, need not here be discussed. Suffice
it to say that he made a speech at Charlotte Court
House in March, 1799, of such surpassing eloquence that
tears are said to have flowed from many eyes at his
fervid appeals for harmony and peace.

That John Randolph, a slender, beardless stripling of

twenty-six, who looked little more than sixteen, should
have risen to make his first political speech in reply to
the greatest orator of all time, is a most astonishing fact,
and sheds much light upon his character. It shows, in
the first place, that the Charleston bookseller who had
seen him three years before was not far wrong in saying

Patrick Henry.

that he possessed "as much assumed
self-consequence as any
two-footed animal" he had ever
seen. But it may be mentioned
that Henry himself had been only
twenty-seven when he had so bewitched
the jury in the Parsons'
Cause as to make them trample
law and justice under foot. And,
however rash it may have been
in young Randolph to measure
his strength against that of the
great Revolutionary Hero, the event showed that his
boldness was fully justified. For, while the prestige and
eloquence of Patrick Henry insured his election to the
Legislature, the power with which his youthful opponent
wielded the very weapons which his "political father"
had formerly forged insured his own election to Congress.
That he dared to face Henry at all showed moral
courage of no common order. That the audience who
had just been thrilled by the magic tones of the "forestborn
Demosthenes" should have even listened to the
youth whom they had known before, if at all, chiefly as
a dashing rider of fast horses, is sufficiently strange. But
that they not only listened, but heeded, and elected the
young speaker to Congress, is a fact that speaks volumes
in proof of his commanding ability. It demonstrates also
the good feeling and good sense of his constituents—
"such constituents," he long afterwards called them, "as
man never had before, and never will have again"—that,
while honoring Patrick Henry for his past services, they
nevertheless stood firm for constitutional liberty and rallied
around the young defender of freedom.

John Randolph served in Congress from 1799 till 1813;
was then defeated; was re-elected in 1815; declined election
in 1817; returned to Congress in 1819; was elected
Senator in December, 1825, and served till March, 1827;
was elected in April to the House; declined election in
1829; served in the Virginia Constitutional Convention
of 1829-30; went as minister to Russia in 1830, and returned
to Virginia in November, 1831; was elected to the
House in 1833, but died in June.

Such is the bare chronological summary of his public
services; but as lack of space forbids a detailed survey of
his whole career, it seems better to treat it topically rather
than in strict chronological order.

To appreciate his political views, it is necessary to
glance briefly at the origin and nature of the Constitution,
and to grasp firmly certain facts that are nowadays frequently
ignored.

In the Continental Congresses, and also in the Congresses
under the Old Constitution, or "Articles of Confederaation,"
there were not two Houses, as at present, but only
one; and in that one House each State, whatever its

population or the number of its delegates, had only one
vote. Congress had no power to levy any tax whatever,
but could only issue "requisitions" for amounts apportioned
to the several States—which requisitions were
heeded or not, exactly as the States saw fit.

Just as independent nations are accustomed, when making
treaties of peace, to declare these treaties perpetual,
so the Old Constitution not only twice asserted that the
Union should be perpetual, but solemnly plighted and
pledged the faith of the States to observe inviolably all
the Articles, and make no alteration at any time in any
of them, unless agreed to by Congress and confirmed by
the legislatures of every State.

No language could be stronger. Each State was solemnly
pledged never to leave the Union, and never to
sanction any change in the Constitution unless approved
by unanimous consent of the States.

Yet, evidently, all this emphatic language meant no
more, and was intended to mean no more, than that used
by nations when they make treaties of peace, or than a
man means when he signs himself "your humble servant"
at the close of a letter. The whole was but a form of
words, and the thirteen sovereign States interpreted them
exactly according to the good pleasure of each. The
Articles proving unsatisfactory, and various proposed amendments
having failed to receive unanimous consent,
the legal requirement that Congress should first agree to
all amendments was calmly ignored, and a "Convention"
of delegates from twelve States (Rhode Island refusing to
participate) was elected in 1787 to propose amendments.

In this Convention, as in Congress, each State had but
one vote, and the body as a whole could do nothing whatever
except submit its proposals to the consideration of
each sovereign State.

The amendments proposed, however, were so numerous
and so radical as to change materially the nature of
the league. Their work being done, eleven of the States
deliberately seceded from the Union (in spite of the solemn
pledge that it should be "perpetual,") and, leaving
Rhode Island and North Carolina out in the cold, ratified
the new Constitution and elected a President, Senate
and House of Representatives under its provisions.

It was in 1788—'89, therefore, and not in 1860—'61,
that secession first took place in this country (unless we
go back to the secession of the thirteen colonies from the
British Empire.)

Remembering that the Convention of 1787 had no legal
authority whatever, it is evident that the chance phraseology
of the mere preamble to the Constitution had no
binding power. The preamble to a document is not the
document itself, but merely states in general terms the
objects at which the document aims.

But if there was ever a man intimately acquainted
with the provisions of the Constitution, that man
was John Randolph of Roanoke, who made it the business
of his life to guard with eternal vigilance the liberties
which it guaranteed. He was the watchful champion
of the stockholders against the directors, and stood at
times almost alone in denouncing the insidious encroachments
which unscrupulous politicians of his own as well

as of the opposite party were ever ready to make upon
the rights of the States. Ceaselessly guarding not merely
the citadel, but the remotest outworks of the Constitution,
he was sometimes accused of riding a hobby, by
those who were ready to sacrifice a principle for a momentary
advantage,
or who did
not know, as he
did, the universal
tendency of legislative
bodies to use
even the most trifling
precedents in
order to justify
further usurpations.

Thomas Jefferson Late in Life.

It must be admitted,
however,
that even John
Randolph's keen
eye occasionally
failed to detect the
poison of centralization.
Such was
particularly the case with the Louisiana purchase,
for which Jefferson himself admitted that he had no
constitutional warrant. It is at least doubtful, however,
whether Jefferson was technically correct in this
opinion. The Constitution certainly grants to the
President and Senate conjointly, the power to make

treaties; and it would seem, therefore, that as Louisiana
was purchased in accordance with a formal
treaty the act was technically constitutional. John Randolph,
at least, considered it so. But, if we look to the
spirit as well as to the letter of the Constitution, it may
well be questioned whether the purchase of so vast a
region, and the subsequent admission of numerous States
carved out of that region, without the unanimous consent
of the thirteen original State, were in accord with the
spirit of the agreement between them. To promote the
general welfare was the object of that agreement, not the
special welfare of any particular class or section.
But, as far the larger portion of the Louisiana territory
was north of Mason's and Dixon's line, it is clear that
the purchase of this region with money belonging to all
the States, has ultimately benefited the Northern group
far more than the Southern. The sentiment of devotion
to State Rights, moreover, was inevitably weaker among
the miscellaneous population of the new Western States,
without traditions or history, than in the original thirteen.
Being the creatures of the Union instead of its creators,
the Western States inevitably looked more to the federal
government, and were more ready to call centralized
power to their aid in any project they might have in view.

Strange to say, it seemed to be thought at the time
that, because the southern end of the territory was then
the more populous, the Louisiana purchase was a measure
hostile to the North; and when the bill for admitting the
State of Louisiana to the Union was before the House in
1811, Josiah Quincy of Massachusetts declared that such

admission would be an "atrocious usurpation of power,"
and said: "it is my deliberate opinion, that, if this bill
passes, the bonds of this union are, virtually, dissolved;
that the States which compose it are free from their moral
obligations, and that as it will be the right of all, so it
will be the duty of some, to prepare, definitely, for a separation:
amicably, if they can; violently, if they must."

At the time of the Louisiana purchase, John Randolph
did not foresee its ultimate results. But when his eyes
were at length opened, he candidly confessed his error,
and the bitter regret he felt at having committed it.

In regard to the embargo, he has been accused of inconsistency
and fickleness. It is true that, after moving,
on Dec. 11, 1807 (when Jefferson's message reached the
House) that an embargo be laid (which motion was tabled),
he voted against the amended Senate Embargo
Act ten days later. But, as the debate was secret, we do
not know what reasons he gave for his opposition, while
we do know that he wrote to Judge J. H. Nicholson on
Dec. 24 and declared that peculiar circumstances had induced
him to oppose the embargo, "otherwise a favorite
measure."

Further reflection brought Randolph to the conviction
that the embargo was not only inexpedient, but also unconstitutional.
For, on April 7, 1808, he said:

"I ask any gentleman to point out that clause of the
Constitution by which this House possesses the power
of laying an embargo . . . . . . . . The power is not
to be found in the Constitution. It may be an implied
power, from the power to regulate commerce; but

regulation is one thing and annihilation is another. As
the Constitution prohibits us from laying a duty on exportation,
a fortiori, we ought to be prohibited from restraining
it altogether." Mr. Garland, Randolph's chief
biographer, thinks he was opposed only to an indefinite
embargo, but favored one for sixty or ninety days, as a
preparation for war. In this he is mistaken. Just such
an embargo was laid in 1812 as a war measure, but Randolph
denounced it vigorously in these words:

"I have been for a pacific policy; but if we are to go
to war, take off the embargo! Do not, in the style of Sangrado,
deplete us by way of preparation for battle. Give
us beefsteaks and porter, if we are to fight, and not water-gruel
and the lancet."

The more he thought, indeed, about embargoes in every
form, the more he opposed them. "We quarrelled
about impressed American seamen," said he (April 7,
1808,) "and commenced a system which produced consequences,
the remedy for which is an embargo; and we
give up all our seamen, for they are not to be embargoed;
they will slip out. Great Britain has now not only all
her own seamen but a great many of ours . . . . . . —
and I am not surprised to learn that in England the embargo
is a most popular measure; . . . . We differ about
some seamen, and we give them all up. We differ about
a particular branch of trade, and we give up all trade.
We surrender to Great Britain all the commerce of the
world, and what more can she ask? . . . . . I therefore
am not one of those who approve the embargo; . . . .
commerce and agriculture are lingering and must die, under

its operation." And again: "The operation of the
embargo is to furnish rogues with an opportunity of getting
rich at the expense of honest men . . . . . . you
are teaching your merchants . . . . to disregard their
oath for the sake of profit."

On Feb. 3, 1809, he expressed the "belief that the popularity
of no man whom God ever made, could have endured
the test which that of the present President of the United
States has not merely endured, but gone through with
victory. There could not have been so strong a proof of
the deep-seated love, and unqualified approbation of that
man, as his having been politically able to support the
weight of that experiment. . . . . . But it is asked, what
substitute would I propose for the embargo. None . . . .
Shall a man refuse to be cured of a cancer unless you will
provide him with a substitute? But if I were asked what
the nation is to do after repealing the embargo? my answer
is ready. . . . . France claims the power to issue
certain decrees, on the ground of England's having
usurped the empire of the ocean. You resist that usurpation.
Those decrees, then, are not in any respect applicable
to you; for I understand your non-resistance to
be the sole alleged cause of those decrees. England retaliates
the system—why? Because, as she says, you do
not resist it. France issues the decrees because you do
not resist (as she alleges) the British orders—England issues
her orders because you do not resist the French decrees.
Now, I would resist both, and if either construe
that resistance (which they have both called upon you to
make) into war, and do notwithstanding, capture your

armed ships, why then, sir, you have nothing left but to
annoy them by every means in your power." "I look
upon the embargo as the most fatal measure that ever
happened in this country—as the most calamitous event
. . . . . . . . we have lifted the veil which concealed our
weakness—we have exposed our imbecility. The veil
of the temple of the Constitution is rent in twain; the
nakedness of the fathers of the country, has been exposed
to their unnatural, impious children. That is our situation.
You never can redeem it. The Constitution has
received a wound that ages cannot heal."

From December, 1801, till March, 1807, John Randolph
was chairman of the Ways and Means Committee
of the House, being appointed by Nathaniel Macon, the
Speaker, a man whose sterling character and sound sense
so attracted Randolph, that they became warm and lifelong
friends—Randolph mentioning Macon in his last
will as "the best and purest and wisest man I ever knew."
Macon, like Randolph, was a strict constructionist of the
Constitution and an ardent adherent of Republican principles—principles
which Randolph declared to be: "Love
of peace, hatred of offensive war; jealousy of the State
Governments towards the General Government, and the
influence of the Executive Government over the co-ordinate
branches of that Government; a dread of standing
armies; a loathing of public debt, taxes and excises; tenderness
for the liberty of the citizen; jealousy, Argus-eyed
jealousy, of the patronage of the President . . . . . . . .
Principle does not consist in names. Federalism is a real
thing—not a spectre, a shadow, a phantom. It is a living

addition to the power of the General Government, in
preference to the power of the States; partiality for the
Executive power, in distinction to that of the co-ordinate
Departments of the Government; the support of great
military and naval forces, and of an `energetic' administration
of the Government. That is what is called Federalism.
. . . . . I care not with whom I vote; I will be
true to my principles."

Such were the principles of the two parties; and Randolph,
who greatly admired his illustrious kinsman, Jefferson,
co-operated heartily and efficiently with the President
for four or five years. In spite of an education little
tending to fit him for the arduous and prosaic labors
of the Ways and Means Committee, he was an active,
energetic and alert chairman—preparing his estimates
with care, and meeting hostile critics in debate, with clear
reasoning or pungent wit. And not only was he chairman
of this all-important standing committee, but was
very frequently a member, sometimes chairman, of select
committees on various subjects, and exercised his keen
and penetrating intellect upon nearly every question of
importance. Sneers have sometimes been levelled at him
because he fathered little positive legislation. But those
who sneer for such a reason have no understanding of his
principles. In his view of both constitutionality and expediency,
the business of Congress was simply to make
the absolutely necessary appropriations for a strictly economical
administration of a government with the fewest
possible functions. He believed in the capacity of men
to take care of themselves without being either coddled

John Randolph, at 33 Years of Age.

From the Original Painting by Gilbert Stuart.

or meddled with by lawgivers. "For my part," said he
in 1822, "I wish we could have done nothing but talk,
unless, indeed, we had gone to sleep, for many years
past; . . . . give me fifty speeches, I care not how dull
or stupid, rather than one law on the statute book."

All magnificent schemes for spending money and opening
the doors to jobbery, all meddlesome interference with
the laws of trade or the liberties of the citizen all Jingoism
and humbug humanitarianism were intolerable in
his eyes.

Feeling "Argus-eyed jealousy" of executive patronage,
and knowing how easy it is for Emperor, King or President
to bribe members of the Legislature by giving them
the disposal of offices, he wished to reduce the number
of these to a minimum. In accordance with which principle
he succeeded in repealing the internal taxes, not
only because they had led to such troubles as the Whiskey
Rebellion, but also because their collection requires
far more officials than that of import duties.

And so, too, in regard to the reduction of the army and
navy. They are expensive; they magnify the power of
the executive; and they are dangerous to civil liberty.
Hence he believed that they should be kept strictly down
to a minimum. Large armies and navies tempt nations
into unnecessary wars, not only because of a natural desire
to experiment with these costly instruments after
once creating them, but because it is the interest of the
officers to promote war in order to gain opportunities for
glory and promotion.

Randolph's first speech of appreciable length in Congress

was made on Jan. 9, 1800, in favor of reducing the
army.

"I oppose the establishment of a standing army in this
country, not only as a useless and enormous expense, but
upon the ground of the Constitution. The spirit of that
instrument and the genius of a free people are equally
hostile to this dangerous institution, which ought to be
resorted to (if at all) only in extreme cases of difficulty
and danger. . . . . . If ever a hostile nation should be
rash enough to attempt an invasion of these States, it is
upon the militia that we must rely for the defense of their
own rights and everything that is dear to man. . . . . . .
I did hope, sir, that our remote distance from the great
disturbers of human repose, would have permitted us to
be exempted from those perpetual alarms, those armings
and counter-armings, which have raised the national
debt of Britain to its present astonishing amount, and
which sends her laborers supperless to bed. . . . . . .

"Our citizens are confident in their strength; they
know themselves to be capable of protecting their own
property and liberties; they do not want their noses to be
held to the grindstone to pay protectors."

Twelve years later he said:

"Let not gentlemen deceive themselves—the army of
the present day is not the army of the Revolution—General
Wilkinson is not General Washington. A more corrupt
military body never existed than the Praetorian
band . . . . . . There are in the Army many worthy, gallant
spirits; but, taken in the mass, it is cankered to the
core. I recollect the evidence which I was compelled

to take in the trial of Aaron Burr. I know by whom
Burr was received, and supplied with arms out of the
public stores, with aids—orderly sergeants, I believe, they
were called—and I have seen these very persons since
promoted."

On April 4, 1808, he opposed increasing the regular
army, declaring that in case of invasion the additional
force proposed (6000 men) was wholly inadequate, and
that reliance must be placed upon the militia; and the
next day he said:

"The system of embargo is one system, withdrawing
from every conquest, quitting the arena, flying the pit;
the system of raising troops and fleets of whatever sort,
is another, and opposite to that dormant state.. . . . . . . .
This system of expensive Military Establishment . . . does
not comport with your system of no commerce. They
are at war with each other and cannot go on together; . .
My worthy friend from Georgia [Troup] has said that
the tigress, prowling for food for her young, may steal
upon you in the night. I would as soon attempt to fence
a tiger out of my plantation with a four-railed fence, as
to fence out the British navy with this force. It is because
she may come in the night and choose her point of
attack, that this force is incompetent; for that very reason,
sir, you ought to be prepared; not with 6000 men,
but with every man, at every point."

His opinion of the class of men that enlisted in the
regular army was very low, and he had created a great
stir by speaking of them as "ragamuffins" in Jan., 1800.
Eight years later he said: "The regular army consists

not of men like the militia, but of the scouring of jails
and lazarettos, not your own merely, but of Europe."
And again; "A standing army is the death of which all
Republics have died."

For the militia he had a high regard, as being the citizens
themselves in arms for the defense of their own liberties;
and on Dec. 16, 1811, he said:

"I will ever uphold the militia; and I detest standing
armies, as the profligate instruments of despotism. . . . . .
They will support any and every existing Government.
In all history I remember only one instance
of their deserting their Government and taking part
with the people; and that was when the Duke of Orleans
had bribed the army of the last of the Bourbon
kings. A mercenary soldier is disgusting to the eye
of reason, republicanism, and religion. Yet, that `mere
machine of murder,' rude as it is, has been the manufacturer
of all the Cæsars and Cromwells, and Bonapartes
of the earth; . . . . . . Are we to forget as chimerical,
our notions of this institution, which we imbibed from
our very cradles, which are imprinted on our Bills of
Rights and Constitutions, which we avowed under the
reign of John Adams? Are they to be scourged out of us
by the birch of the unfledged political pedagogues of the
day?"

And in 1816 he said that nothing was so likely to lead
the country into war "as an overgrown Military Establishment.
Military men were fond of glory, the constituent
elements of which were blood and taxes; . . . , . . .
Before another three and twenty years should elapse, there

would be another harvest of glory to be reaped; and the
same song would be sung over and over again, till at last
it would fare with the United States, as it fared with
Great Britain, who was saddled with a debt which sent
her laborers at night supperless to bed."

His views of the navy were similar. It is true that
on April 17, 1802, he said he "did not desire to starve the
navy;" that he said at a time (Oct. 14, 1804), when British
frigates were searching American vessels for contraband
goods and British deserters, that he would vote a
naval force to blow these frigates out of the water; and
that two days later he told the House that our navy ought
to be used for defending our ports, even though annihilated
in repelling British insults. It may be that he had
not yet carefully looked into the maritime code of international
law; or it may be that he was at this time merely
angry, as Mr. Henry Adams says, and had forgotten
his principles.

But at all events he was for many years afterwards
uniformly opposed, for various reasons, to increasing the
navy. As a matter of course, for example, he opposed
Jefferson's astounding scheme of keeping our few ships
of war in the Eastern Branch and building a "mosquito
fleet" of infinitesimal gunboats, to be carefully hauled
ashore and kept under sheds in time of peace, while each
was to be manned by from five to seven militiamen and a
single gun in time of war. In regard to this scheme, Randolph
declared that it was no time "to make ducks and
drakes" of the people's dollars, "to waste them in millpond
projects of childish amusement." In 1810 he said:

"I have ever believed that the people of the United
States were destined to become, at some period or other,
a great Naval Power. . . . . . . . . But I believe, if anything
could retard or eventually destroy it—if anything
could strangle in the cradle, the infant Hercules of the
American Navy—it would be the very injudicious mode
in which that power has been attempted to be prematurely
brought into action, and kept in action, during the
last administrations. Again, a Naval Power necessarily
grows out of tonnage and seamen. We have not only
driven away our tonnage, but have exerted ourselves with
no little zeal, even at this very session, to prevent its ever
coming back. We have not been willing to consent
that vessels polluted by the unpardonable sin of a breach
of the embargo should return. . . . . . .

"Sir, shall we keep up an expensive Naval Establishment,
necessarily driving us into loans and taxes, for the
protection of a commerce which the Government itself
says we shall not carry on; and when members of this
House tell us that the natural protection of commerce
is the annihilation of it? . . . . . . . We were told that our
fleet might be Copenhagened, and that it was therefore
necessary to stow it away here. . . . . . . But, sir, if our
object really be to prevent our fleet from being Copenhagened,
we had better put it above the Falls of Niagara.
. . . . . We are to have a navy for the protection of commerce,
and all our measures in relation to it are calculated
on the basis of keeping it (poor thing! like some
sickly child) out of harm's way! . . . . . I had forgotten
the gunboats; . . . Children must have toys and baubles,

and we must indulge ourselves in an expense of many
millions on this ridiculous plaything!"

Like others, Randolph was thrilled, however, by the
brilliant achievements of our navy in the war of 1812,
and did not proclaim, as the pious Massachusetts Legislature
did, that "it did not become a religious people to
express any approbation of military or naval exploits not
immediately defensive." But he fully recognized the
folly of the war, and was entirely capable of doing justice
to the British. For, on Dec. 9, 1812, after complimenting
the gallantry of our sailors, he proceeded to assert
the right of England to seize her deserters, and asked
what would have happened, had a certain Benedict Arnold
been captured by the Americans. A month later he
said:

"But it may be said that . . . . if a search of our ships
be permitted for British seamen, they may actually take
American seamen. Sir, there is no doubt of the fact that
by mistake, sometimes by wilful misconduct, on the part
of officers engaged in the search, such a thing may happen.
But, should we not think it exceedingly strange
that the misconduct of an officer of the American Government,
in one case in twenty if you will, should be a
cause of war for any nation against us? . . . . . One thing
is certain; that the right of search does practically exist,
and has been acknowledged by all nations."

One of Jefferson's ideas in wishing to keep our warships
in the Eastern Branch was that they "would be under
the immediate eye of the department, and would require
but one set of plunderers to take care of them."

So far as this desire to minimize the supply of federal
pap was concerned, Randolph heartily agreed with him.
In opposition, e. g., to Calhoun's plan for a great navy,
he said, Jan. 16, 1816:

"He may vote the money as a patriot, if he follows
that vote through all the different ramifications of its execution,
he will find it in sinecure pockets, or given for
rotten timber; he will find it by the right hand, received
from the Treasury by the navy agent of the Government,
and he will find it paid with the left hand into the pocket
of the same agent—that virtuous man will not let his
left hand know what his right hand doeth . . . . . as to the
plunderers of the public, I meet them on the avenue as
familiarly as the lords in England, are said to meet the
blacklegs at the gaming table—I see them rising from
nothing by the stilts of fat contracts into sumptuous palaces."

Such being Randolph's views concerning the army
and navy, aggressive war was necessarily an abomination
in his eyes—not the least objection to it being that he
regarded it as utterly unconstitutional. The Constitution
empowers Congress "to provide for the common defence
and general welfare of the United States." It grants no
power whatever for offensive attack upon other countries,
or for defending and providing for the welfare of predatory
banditti in the provinces of foreign powers. "I declare
in the face of day," said Randolph, "that this Government
was not instituted for the purposes of foreign
war . . . . . I call that offensive war, which goes out of
our jurisdiction and limits for the attainment or protection

of objects, not within those limits and that jurisdiction.
As in 1798 I was opposed to this species of warfare,
because I believed it would raze the Constitution to
its very foundation—so, in 1806, I am opposed to it, and
on the same grounds. . . . . . I fear if you go into a foreign
war, for a circuitous unfair carrying trade, you will
come out without your Constitution. Have not you
contractors enough yet in this House? Or do you want
to be overrun and devoured by commissaries, and all the
vermin of contract? I fear, sir, that what are called "the
energy men' will rise up again—men who will burn the
parchment. We shall be told that . . . . we must give
the President power to call forth the resources of the nation.
That is, to filch the last shilling from our pockets—to
drain the last drop of blood from our veins.

"I am against giving this power to any man, be he
who he may. The American people must either withhold
this power, or resign their liberties. . . . . . For my
part, I will never go to war but in self-defence. I have
no desire for conquests—no ambition to possess Nova
Scotia. I hold the liberties of this people at a higher
rate."

"We have it in our power to remain free and at peace.
Our firesides are safe. Our ports and harbors may be
defended; but we have imbibed a portion of that spirit
which lost the angels their seat in heaven. We are about
to throw aside our peaceful state and mingle in the dreadful
conflict of European ambition and disorder."

Not only the war of 1812 itself, but the whole series
of non-importation, embargo and non-intercourse acts,

which, though intended to avoid the war, in reality led
up to it, were bitterly opposed by Randolph.

Opposing Gregg's resolution for non-importation of
English goods, he said on March 5, 1806: "If war is necessary—if

The Battle of New Orleans—The Decisive Battle in the War of 1812.

we have reached this point—let us have war.
But while I have life, I will never consent to these incipient
war measures, which, in their commencement
breathe nothing but peace, though they plunge us at
last into war." And in reference to Gregg's wild claim
that we were an over-match for Great Britain on the sea,
he said in that tone of supercilious scorn which made
him so many enemies:

"It is mere waste of time to reason with such persons.
They do not deserve anything like serious refutation.
The proper arguments for such statesmen are a straight
waistcoat, a dark room, water gruel and depletion." And
in the same powerful speech he asked: "What is the question
in dispute? The carrying trade. What part of it?
. . . . . . that carrying trade which covers enemy's property,
and carries the coffee, the sugar, and other West
India products to the mother country. . . . . It is not for
the honest carrying trade of America, but for this mushroom,
this fungus of war—for a trade which, as soon as
the nations of Europe are at peace, will no longer exist,
it is for this that the spirit of avaricious traffic would
plunge us into war. . . . .

"I deem it no sacrifice of dignity to say to the Leviathan
of the deep—we are unable to contend with you
in your own element, but if you come within our actual
limits, we will shed our last drop of blood in their defence.
. . . . . I am averse to a naval war with any nation whatever.
. . . . . What! shall this great mammoth of the
American forest leave his native element, and plunge into
the water in a mad contest with the shark? Let him beware
that his proboscis is not bitten off in the engagement."

Continuing the next day, he said: "But I am asked if
we shall submit to a tame and dastardly abandonment
of our rights; and by those, too, who have made a cowardly
surrender of our best interests and our honor, when
we were well able to maintain them? I beg leave to reply
to this question by another: Are you prepared to assert

them; to go all lengths to enforce them? In what consists
true dignity? In vaporing in the newspapers? In printed
handbills and resolutions? Or in taking ground which
you can and will maintain; which no change of fortune
shall compel you to desert? . . . . . And what constitutes
false dignity? Playing the part of a Bobadil—bullying
England and truckling to Spain—I beg pardon, there is
no Spain—bullying England and truckling to France. .
. . . . With all their bravery, many a man who would
willingly meet the corsairs, or even the Dons and Monsieurs,
would feel reluctant to be led to battle against a
British fleet—and why, sir? Because, waiving other considerations,
a great proportion of our seamen are foreigners—natives
of Great Britain—who still feel prejudices
for their parent country. . . . . . .

"If you want war, there is no doubt that you may have
it. Great Britain will not submit to all the hardships
and mischiefs of war, because you choose to call it peace.
She will prefer open war to war in disguise; and I, sir,
have no hesitation in saying that I am for no half-measures.
. . . . . . . I abhor this political quackery."

Eight days later: "I say I am unwilling to grasp at a
shadow and lose the substance—to jeopardize the whole
commerce of the United States in a vain attempt to engross
the commerce of the world. . . . . . . But gentlemen
reiterate the question, Will you do nothing? I have
always thought it better to remain idle than to do what
would be worse than nothing. But I would take this
course: I would remonstrate with Great Britain; I would
tell her of the wrongs done to the American people; I

would tell her how absurd it was for her, under existing
circumstances, to compel us to throw our weight into
the scale of her enemy; I would put this question home
to her, Are you mad enough to increase the number of
your enemies?"

More than six years later, when the crisis was approaching,
he said: "I know not how gentlemen, calling
themselves Republicans, can advocate such a war. What
was their doctrine in 1798-9, when the command of the
army . . . . . . was reposed in the bosom of the Father of
his Country, the sanctuary of a nation's love, the only
hope that never came in vain! . . . . . . . Republicans
were then unwilling to trust a standing army, even to
his hands who had given proof that he was above all human
temptation. Where now is the Revolutionary hero
to whom you are about to confide this sacred trust? To
whom will you confide the charge of leading the flower
of our youth to the Heights of Abraham? . . . . . Those
who opposed the army then were indeed denounced as the
partisans of France; just as the same men—some of them
at least—are now held up as the advocates of England;
those firm and undeviating Republicans, who then dared,
and now dare, to cling to the ark of the Constitution, to
defend it even at the expense of their fame, rather than
surrender themselves to the wild projects of mad ambition.
. . . . .

"This war of conquest, a war for the acquisition of territory
and subjects, is to be a new commentary on the
doctrine that Republics are destitute of ambition—that
they are addied to peace, wedded to the happiness and

safety of the great body of their people. But it seems
this is to be a holiday campaign—there is to be no expense
of blood or treasure, on our part—Canada is to conquer
herself—she is to be subdued by the principles of
fraternity. The people of that country are first to be seduced

Chair from Randolph's House.
Now in Libby Prison War
Museum, Chicago

from their allegiance,
and converted into traitors, as
preparatory to the making them
good citizens. . . . .

"I am not surprised at the war
spirit which is manifesting itself
in gentlemen from the
South."

On Feb. 25, 1812, he said:
"No man who hears me will
say that we have any cause of
war now, that we had not eighteen
months ago. . . . . . If our
Treasury be empty, it is owing
to our own acts. Repeal your
non-importation act. Do away with your whole restrictive
system—and, rather than do this, will this House
plunge this nation into a foreign war, contrary to the public
sentiment? Contrary to the wishes of many of those
who are within the hearing of my voice, who may be
pushed into a vote, which they wish, if possible, to
avoid?"

On May 6 he refers thus to the "yellow journals" of
his time: "The war spirit is principally stimulated at this
moment by those who have escaped from the tyranny

(or justice, as it may be termed), of the British Government,
long since the war of independence. Almost every
leading press in the United States is conducted by
persons of that description . . . . . who, in resentment of
the wrongs they have recently received from the Irish
and British Governments, are now goading us to war;
talking about American spirit; the spirit of our Revolution;
and of tarring and feathering the `Tories,' as they
have the matchless audacity to term the Whigs of the
Revolution. . . . . I have no hesitation in averring that,
if the session was to go over again, those gentlemen who
have, from a yielding disposition, or a respect for the
opinions of their violent friends, been swept down the
current, would make an efficient and manly resistance;
for I see no one, unless it be a very few, some one or two
individuals for whom I profess to have the highest esteem,
who will not be glad to get out of the scrape. But they
have advanced to the brink of a precipice, and not left
themselves room to turn."

On Jan. 13, 1813, he said: "I rise with a heart saddened
by the disgrace of our common country, and sickened by
the way in which the business of the State has been managed.
. . . . . The war in Europe brought to this country,
among other birds of passage, a ravenous flock of neutralized
carriers, which interposed the flag of neutrality,
not only between the property, but even between the
persons of the two belligerent Powers; and it was their
clamor principally, aided by the representations of those
of our merchants who saw and wished to participate in
the gains of such a commerce, that the first step was

taken in that policy of restriction, which it was then foreseen
would lead to the disastrous condition in which we
now find ourselves. Yes, it was then foreseen and foretold.
What was then prophesied is now history. It is
so. `You,' said the prophet, `are prospering beyond all
human example. You, favorites of Almighty God, while
all the rest of the world are scourged, and ravaged, and
desolated by war, are about to enter upon a policy called
preventive of war; a policy which comes into this House
in the garb of peace, but which must end in war.' And
in war it has ended."

But let us return to Randolph's earlier career. With Jefferson's
wise policy of economy and debt-reduction he
was in thorough accord. "No man," said he, Jan 12,
1807, "is more an advocate for the speedy reduction of
the national debt than I am, but I wish the reduction of
the debt, and the repeal of the taxes, to go on together.
I hope to see the time when all the taxes of the General
Government shall be repealed, except a small advalorem
duty of five per cent."

Furious at Jefferson's election to the presidency, the
Federalists had determined to utilize the time left them
before his inauguration in establishing a number of new
federal judgeships. Naturally indignant at this scheme
for entrenching the defeated party in a lot of life-tenure
sinecures, Jefferson determined that the useless offices,
hastily filled by John Adams's so-called "midnight" appointments,
should be abolished. Randolph seconded
him ably in the House, and, in reply to the Federalist
contention that Congress had no constitutional power to

remove a judge during good behavior, he said:

"Gentlemen have not, they cannot meet the distinction
between removing the judges from office for the purpose
of putting in another person, and abolishing an office,
because it is useless or oppressive. Suppose the collectors
of your taxes held their offices by the tenure of
good behavior, would the abolition of your taxes have
been an infraction of that tenure?"

And with delicate discrimination and cogent logic he
continued: "I am free to declare, that if the intent of
this bill is to get rid of the judges, it is a perversion of
your power to a base purpose; it is an unconstitutional
act. If, on the contrary, it aims not at the displaciug
one set of men, from whom you differ in political opinion,
with a view to introduce others, but at the general
good by abolishing useless offices, it is a constitutional
act. The quo animo determines the nature of this
act, as it determines the innocence or guilt of other acts.
. . . . . If you are precluded from passing this law, lest
depraved men make it a precedent to destroy the independence
of your Judiciary, do you not concede that a
desperate faction, finding themselves about to be dismissed
from the confidence of their country, may pervert the
power of erecting courts, to provide . . . . for their adherents
and themselves?"

These clear and forcible arguments prevailed; and the
new judicial offices were abolished. Moreover, Judge
Pickering was impeached for drunkenness and violence
on the bench and removed. So far, the course of Jefferson
and Randolph had been wise and proper. But the impeachment

of Judge Chase was a blunder. Chase richly
deserved condemnation, it is true; and it is possible that
(as Randolph thought), the impeachment might have
succeeded, had it been tried three years sooner. It might
possibly have succeeded also, had Randolph confined himself
to arraigning Chase simply for his partisan stump
speeches from the bench. But, being no lawyer, and
committing the mistake of making other charges that
involved legal technicalities, Randolph was no match for
the professional acumen of Luther Martin, the "bull-dog
of federalism."

It was Jefferson who had privately suggested the impeachment,
but it was Randolph who boldly and publicly
undertook it. All circumstances considered, he made
a good fight. But his failure was complete. His defeat,
moreover, left the judiciary stronger than ever; and John
Marshall soon began to issue from the supreme bench
those decisions which have tended so much toward consolidation.
With his usual keen insight Randolph had
foreseen this danger, and had said, as early as Dec., 1803:

"If I were to point out the part of this Constitution
which tends to consolidation, I should lay my hand on
the Judiciary. The giving to that department jurisdiction
not only under Federal laws, but cases between man
and man, arising under the laws of a State, where one of
the parties is a foreigner, or citizen of another State, and
even between citizens of the same State under the bankrupt
system, is the strongest feature of consolidation in
this Government."

In January he asked: "Has it come to this, that an

unrighteous judge may condemn whom he pleases to an
ignominious death, without a hearing, in the teeth of the
Constitution and laws, and that such proceedings should
find advocates here? Shall we be told that judges have
certain rights, and whatever the Constitution or laws
may declare to the contrary we must continue to travel
in the go-cart of precedent, and the injured remain unredressed?"—In
spite of illness and lack of legal training,
the speech in which he opened Chase's trial before the
Senate was not unworthy of the great orator.

Here are a few specimen sentences: "I ask this honorable
Court whether the prostitution of the bench of justice,
to the purpose of an hustings, is to be tolerated?
We have nothing to do with the politics of the man.
Let him speak, and write, and publish, as he pleases.
This is his right in common with his fellow-citizens.
The press is free. If he must electioneer and abuse the
Government under which he lives, I know no law to prevent
or punish him, provided he seeks the wonted theatres
for his exhibition. But shall a judge declaim on
these topics from his seat of office? Shall he not put off
the political partisan when he ascends the tribune? or
shall we have the pure stream of public justice polluted
with the venom of party virulence?"

After the acquittal of Chase, Randolph moved a constitutional
amendment empowering the President to remove
federal judges from office upon the joint address of
the two Houses. Nor does his failure to have the amendment
adopted prove the plan to have been unwise. It is
the English mode of getting rid of incompetent or unworthy

judges, and works well. John Randolph loathed
corruption in every form; and his keen insight into the
various aspects under which it may show itself, appears
plainly in the following reply to Smilie of Pennsylvania,
who had asked whether Congress was indeed so
corrupt.

"The gentleman ought to know," said Randolph, "there
are different sorts of corruption. There is a corruption
of interest, that is number one; there is a corruption of
timidity, which consists in men not saying what they
think, that is number two; there is a corruption of Court
influence—of party—and there is a corruption, which,
though last is not least, the corruption of irreconcilable,
personal animosity—a corruption which will engage a
man to go all lengths to injure him whom he hates and
despises, or rather, whom he cannot despise, because he
hates."

In Randolph's ear the very word caucus had a hateful
sound, and he would have cut his own throat sooner than
sacrifice a political or moral principle to party expediency.
His contempt for the man who, in obedience to
the party lash, advocates a policy contrary to his convictions,
was withering and without bounds.

To the average congressman who spends his time, not
in studying those great economic and political questions
of which his ignorance is so profound, but in providing
his henchmen with federal offices, it will be a revelation
to learn that Randolph declared (Dec. 13, 1816), that he
"would never compromise himself so far in his individual
character, much less as a member of this House, as to ask

of the Executive the appointment or removal, to or from
any office of any individual;" and that, alluding, in the
Virginia Convention of 1829-30, to recommendations for
federal office, he exclaimed: "Thank God no man ever
dared to approach me, for my name to one of them."

It was not by constructing a "machine" in his district,
or by "mending his political fences" that he was elected
again and again by his faithful constituents. Nor can we
credit the idle gossip, which indicated that his success
was due to alternate terrorism and flattery. The truth
is that he cared little whether he was elected or not.
Twice he positively declined election, and more than once
he yielded reluctantly to the wishes of constituents proud
of a representative of such brilliant abilities, and of integrity
so unbending that he would have gone to the
stake rather than betray his trust or palter with the truth.

Once only—on account of his courageous opposition to
the war of 1812—was he beaten, and then only by a man
imported into his district for the purpose, and supported
by the whole weight of the war party outside. Randolph
fought hard in this campaign, and one of his hearers declared
himself to have been swept along by his passionate
eloquence "like a feather on the bosom of a cataract."
But the outside pressure was too strong, and he was beaten,
because too sternly honest to yield to popular clamor.

Randolph's hatred of corruption shone conspicuous in
his treatment of the infamous "Yazoo" frauds. It was
during his visit to Joseph Bryan that Georgia was ringing
with denunciation of the corrupt legislature that had
recently been bribed by four land companies to grant

them, for a mere song, many millions of acres in the territory
from which the States of Alabama and Mississippi
have since been carved.

When the gigantic swindle became public, the grand
jury of every county but two declared the act unconstitutional;
and the next legislature, having an "Anti-Yazoo"
majority, did the same, and revoked the sale as null and
void—the act being burnt by the common hangman, and
expunged from the statute book. But, in spite of this,
the fraudulent title to the land was bought up by the
New England and Mississippi Land Co., (consisting
largely of Northern speculators), which, after Georgia had
ceded the land in question to the United States, petitioned
Congress to pay them for it.

At the head of this nefarious scheme was Gideon Granger,
the Postmaster General, who actually had the effrontery
to act as the company's agent in presenting the
claim to Congress.

Madison, Gallatin and Levi Lincoln, being appointed
to investigate the matter, reported in favor of a compromise.
But Randolph set his face like flint against it.

That Granger and the congressmen whom he bribed
with post-office contracts, as well as others who had stock
in the land company, were furious at Randolph's fierce
resistance to their rascality goes without saying. Granger
made a tour of New England to organize a party to
pull down Randolph; and Barnabas Bidwell, a Massachusetts
congressman, became the leader of this Yazoo
faction.

To defy "a combination of northern democrats, federalists,

and executive influence" was a thing which "required
no little courage," as Henry Adams admits,
"and if there were selfish or personal motives behind his
action they are not to be seen." Moreover, "he won his
single-handed battle; the path of compromise was blocked,
and he himself was now a great political power, for never
before had any man, living or dead, fought such a
fight in Congress and won it." Not till 1814, when he
had lost his seat, did the Yazoo men succeed in securing
their prey.

The Yazoo struggle was the first thing which brought
Randolph into collision with the administration; but the
foreign policy of the latter was soon to provoke such
hostile criticism from him that an irremediable breach
was the result. The boundaries of Louisiana being vague
and undefined, disputes had arisen with Spain, and the
United States had taken possession of Mobile.

Further disputes arising which diplomacy failed to
settle, and parties of Spaniards having actually trespassed
upon the Mississippi territory, President Jefferson sent a
warlike message to Congress on Dec. 3, 1805, but followed
it up three days later by a secret message, saying
that, while formal war might not be necessary, yet "force
should be interposed to a certain degree," and that an
appropriation of money was necessary. But the President
made no recommendation of any definite action;
throwing the responsibility upon Congress.

In the secret debate on this message Randolph is said
to have made the "ablest and most eloquent speech ever
heard on the floor of Congress," and the message was referred

to a select committee of which he was chairman.
Calling on the President, he learned to his surprise that
two millions were wanted towards purchasing Florida.
But not only was Randolph opposed to this for other
reasons; but, having once already shielded Jefferson from
responsibility by taking
the initiative in
the Chase impeachment,
he now frankly
told the President
that he declined having
the responsibility
for the latter's
plans again shifted
to his shoulders.

James Madison

Not long afterwards
he saw Secretary
Madison, who told
him that France
would not permit
Spain to adjust her
differences with us;
that France wanted money, and that we must give it to
her, or have a Spanish and French war.

Having long distrusted Madison, Randolph was now
indignant at being called upon, as leader of the House,
to father what he regarded as the utterly unworthy
scheme of allowing France to blackmail us into bribing
her to bully Spain.

"Good morning, sir!" he therefore abruptly exclaimed

to the Secretary, "I see I am not calculated for a politician."

Scorning to stoop to methods which he held dishonorable,
and defying the administration, it is not strange that
his influence waned. But he was by no means politically
dead; or, if so, was an uncommonly vigorous corpse,
and made things extremely hot for the administration.

"I have before protested, and I again protest," said he
on March 5, 1806, "against secret, irresponsible, overruling
influence. . . . . . . I speak of back-stairs influence—
of men who bring messages to this House, which, although
they do not appear on the Journals, govern its
decisions. . . . . . Let not the master [Jefferson] and mate
[Madison] go below when the ship is in distress, and
throw the responsibility upon the cook and the cabinboy.
I said so when your doors were shut; I scorn to
say less now that they are open. Gentlemen may say
what they please. They may put an insignificant individual
to the ban of the Republic—I shall not alter
my course."

Randolph strongly opposed the candidacy of Madison
for the Presidency, and ardently advocated that of Monroe,
who was glad to have his help, so long as there
seemed a prospect of success, but promptly dropped him
after Madison's election and his own elevation to the
Secretaryship of State—conduct which Randolph naturally
resented.

The embargo had been a long step toward centralization;
and not only the war of 1812, but the other measures
of Madison's and Monroe's administrations carried

the country in the same direction. The truth is that the
party of strict construction and State Rights soon tossed
its principles to the winds and gave itself up to the enjoyment
of power. But, as time went on, Randolph more
and more opposed
federal usurpation
in every shape, and
lost no opportunity
to taunt the
time-serving politicians
of his party
with their inconsistency.

James Monroe.

"In the course
of my political experience,"
said he
in 1809, "I have
found but two parties
in all states—
the ins and outs;
the ins desirous so
to construe the
charter of the Government as to give themselves the greatest
possible degree of patronage and wealth; and the outs
striving so to construe it as to circumscribe what?
Their own power? No, sir, their adversaries' power.
But let the outs get in, and lay hold of the artillery of
Government, and you will find their Constitutional scruples
and arguments vanish like dew before the morning
sun. No, sir; I have no faith in the declarations of parties,

and, if we mean to guard the liberties of this State,
we must watch the ins, be they who they may, be they
Federalists or be they Republicans."

The Bank question was one of those on which Republican
principles were abandoned. Jefferson and Madison
had both argued that the charter of a bank by the federal
government was unconstitutional, and they were right.
Congress does have power to pass all laws "necessary and
proper" to the carrying out of the powers specifically
granted to it. But it is sheer nonsense to say that the
old United States Bank—useful though it was—was necessary
to the performance of the government's fiscal functions.
Food is necessary to the preservation of human
life, but no special forms of food, as oysters or ice cream,
are necessary; and the simple fact that the United States
have actually enjoyed great prosperity during much of
their history without a national bank, is proof that such
a bank is not a necessity.

The bank's charter expired in 1811, and Henry Clay's
argument against a re-charter was simply overwhelming,
while his right-about-face in 1816 was sophistry of the
worst kind. But the war with England had vastly increased
the forces of centralization, and the charter was
granted. And what is more, Madison (who, being in
power, was now a centralizer,) signed the bill—Madison,
who had argued against its constitutionality with a force
thus afterwards described by Randolph: "He, in that
masterly and unrivalled report in the Legislature of Virginia,
which is worthy to be the text-book of every American
statesman, has settled this question. . . . . . But, sir,

I cannot but deplore—my heart aches when I think of
it—that the hand which erected that monument of political
wisdom, should have signed the act to incorporate
the present
Bank of the
United States."

John C. Calhoun.

Of course
Randolph also
opposed the
schemes of Clay
and Calhoun
for vast internal
improvements
by federal agency.
For many
years the power
"to establish
post-roads" had
meant simply
the power to
designate the
existing roads
over which mail
should be carried.
But the
consolidationists now discovered that they could juggle
with this phrase and make it mean to construct roads,
canals, and pretty much anything else. Randolph opposed
all this both on grounds of unconstitutionality and
because it opened up a boundless field for corrupt jobbery.

"Figure to yourself," said he, "a committee of this
House determining on some road, and giving out the contracts
to the members of both Houses of Congress, or to
their friends, etc. Sir, if I had strength, I could show
. . . . . that the Asiatic plunder of Leadenhall street has
not been more corrupting to the British Government than
the exercise of such a power as this would prove to us."
Those gigantic modern swindles, the river and harbor
bills, prove the sagacity of his words.

That great political prophet, Patrick Henry, had
warned the people of his State that Congress would not
confine itself to the powers enumerated in the Constitution,
but would claim all sorts of "implied" powers as
well; and the ink upon the parchment was hardly dry
before his prediction was fulfilled and the monstrous
principle that Peter may be legally robbed to pay Paul
was embodied in the tariff bill of 1789.

But, although the fatal principle was recognized in the
very title of this "Act for the encouragement and protection
of manufactures," still the highest advalorem duty
was fifteen per cent, and the main object of the act was
revenue. But when the embargo and the war of 1812
had well-nigh destroyed American commerce and diverted
much capital into manufactures, and when the restoration
of peace had exposed the latter to the competition
of English goods, the manufacturers besieged Congress
with petitions for legalized permission to take money
from the pockets of other people and transfer it to their
own. Then and there these mendicants should have
been informed that, having put their capital into manufactures

of their own free will, knowing that neither the
embargo nor the war would last forever, and having,
moreover, reaped enormous profits during the stoppage
of intercourse with England, they must now be content
to stand on their own feet without federal props. But
even then the hirelings of the lobby were mightier
than the unorganized mass of citizens, and skilfully
took advantage of the spirit of spreadeagleism fostered
by the war—a spirit which proclaimed that AMERICA
must have her own manufactures, even if the vast majority
of americans were robbed in the process. Up with
the NATION! Down with the individual! Up with the
imperial despotism! Down with the citizen's right to
buy his clothes or his tools in the cheapest market!

It was a splendid theme for "patriotic" oratory. But
of course the orators said nothing of its dishonesty and
tyranny; and, to do them justice, it is probable that most
of them were too blind to see it.

But while orators thundered and the Eagle screamed;
while the unthinking populace shouted with applause;
there was one man—standing well-nigh alone—who saw
through the sophistry and looked deep down into the
bottom of the business. John Randolph opposed the tariff
of 1816, radically and on principle. Fourteen years
before he had declared that "every dollar laid on foreign
productions operates as a tax on the consumer, and as a
bounty upon our own productions;" and he now flatly
called the tariff bill "a scheme of public robbery."

And in his great speech of April 15, 1824, he said:
"This bill is an attempt to reduce the country South of

Mason and Dixon's line and East of the Alleghany Mountains,
to a state of worse than colonial bondage; a state
to which the domination of Great Britain was, in my judgment,
far preferable; . . . . It ought to be met, and I
trust it will be met, in the Southern country, as was the
Stamp Act." Countless congressional usurpations
had taught him the vanity of the idea that a written Constitution
can restrain an unscrupulous majority; and he
continued: "I do not stop here, sir, to argue about the constitutionality
of this bill; I consider the Constitution a
dead letter; I consider it to consist, at this time, of the
power of the General Government and the power of the
States—that is the Constitution. You may intrench
yourself in parchment to the teeth, says Lord Chatham,
the sword will find its way to the vitals of the Constitution.
I have no faith in parchment, sir; I have no faith
in the abracadabra of the Constitution; I have no faith
in it. I have faith in the power of that Commonwealth,
of which I am an unworthy son; in the power of those
Carolinas, and of that Georgia, in her ancient and utmost
extent, to the Mississippi."

But if the orators of the fervid, magnetic type were
determined to fence off the rest of the world from America
by a high tariff wall, it is not to be supposed that
they contemplated keeping the American Eagle at home.
On the contrary, that majestic bird was to range the
heavens at will and to swoop down with beak and talons
upon any nation that managed its affairs in a manner not
approved by congressional omniscience. At Turks and
Spaniards he was to glare defiantly; while to Greeks and

South Americans he was to donate a few of his tail-feathers,
that these people, too, might learn how to soar. The
tariff was to keep Europe from flooding America with
cheap goods; but no power on earth was to keep America
from deluging the world with cheap talk about "liberty"
and "humanity."

It is to the immortal honor of John Randolph, therefore,
that no great orator ever made less use of clap-trap than he.
Most orators say what they believe the people wish to
hear. But "it is an infirmity of my nature," said Randolph,
"it is constitutional, it was born with me, and has
caused the misery (if you will) of my life; it is an infirmity
of my nature to have an obstinate preference of the
true over the agreeable."

When the country was thrilled by the glowing words
of Webster and Clay in behalf of the Greeks and South
Americans, John Randolph, though eulogizing Webster
for his "very able and masterly argument," nevertheless
refused to gain popularity by endorsing his views.
"This," said he, "is perhaps one of the finest and prettiest
themes for declamation ever presented to a deliberative
assembly. But it appears to me in a light very different
from any that has as yet been thrown upon it. . .
. . . . I wish to have some time to think of this business,
to deliberate, before we take this leap into the dark into the
Archipelago, or the Black Sea, or into the wide-mouthed
La Plata. . . . It is a difficult and invidious task to stem
the torrent of public sentiment, when all the generous
feelings of the human heart are appealed to. But I was
delegated, sir, to this House, to guard the interests of the

people of the United States, not to guard the rights of
other people; . . . . This Quixotism, in regard either to
Greece or to South America, is not what the sober and
reflecting minds of our people require at our hands. . . Let
us adhere to the policy laid down by the second as well
as the first founder of our republic—by him who was the
Camillus, as well as Romulus of the infant State—to the
policy of peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all
nations; entangling alliances with none; for to entangling
alliances we must come, if you once embark in
policy such as this. And with all my British predilections,
I suspect I shall, whenever that question shall present
itself, resist as strongly an alliance with Great
Britain, as with any other power."

Strangely enough, cool wisdom triumphed, for once,
over fervid folly. The resolutions proposed by Clay and
Webster were laid upon the table, and there they remained.
This was not the first time, however, that Randolph
had protested against meddling with other people's
affairs. Eight years before he had said: "I cannot be
frightened with the raw head and bloody bones of old
Spain. I believe that General Andrew Jackson and the
Tennessee militia would give a good account of all the
Spaniards who will ever show themselves west of the Perdido,
and their red brethren the Creeks, the Choctaws,
and Seminoles to boot. . . . . . As for South America,
I am not going a tilting for the liberties of the people of
Spanish America—they came not to our aid—let us
mind our own business; let not our people be taxed for
the liberties of the people of Spanish America. . . . . . .

Andrew Jackson.

I do not want any of the territories in that region by
conquest, purchase, or voluntary cession. This struggle
for liberty in South America will turn out in the end
something like the French liberty, a detestable despotism.
You cannot make liberty out of Spanish matter—you
might as well try to build a seventy-four out of pine saplings."

His clear eye penetrated beneath the surface, and saw
into the essence, of things. He could not be duped by
the pretence of humanitarianism, and had asked in March,
1806, whether any man were "so weak, or so wicked, as
to pretend that there is any principle of action between
nations except interest? . . . . . . . Sir, we are not theophilanthropists,
but politicians; not dreamers and soothsayers,
but men of flesh and blood. It is idle to talk of a
sense of justice in any nation. Each pursues its sense of
interest, and if you calculate on their acting upon any
other principle, you may be very amiable, but you will
prove a cully."

On another subject—Slavery—he well knew the difference
between genuine humanity and either humbug or
fanaticism. He knew the difference between an emancipationist
and an abolitionist, between the man who
voluntarily freed his own slaves and the man who wished
to free his neighbor's by violence. Following the example
of his brother Richard, he freed and made provision in
his will for 300 slaves; but fiercely, and rightly, resented
the dictation of scheming politicians who used the wrongs,
real and imaginary, of the dear negro, as stepping stones
to power. No man denounced the abuses of slavery (such

as the auctioning of kidnapped negroes in the District of
Columbia,) in more scathing language; but he discovered
from his travels that the laborers in many parts of
Europe were far more to be pitied than the well-fed negroes
of the South.

The slave auctions in Washington he called "the most
nefarious, the most disgraceful, and most infernal traffic
that has ever stained the annals of the human race." But
he also said of slavery in general that "it must not be
tampered with by quacks, who never saw the disease or
the patient. The disease will run its course—it has run
its course in the Northern States; it is beginning to run
its course in Maryland.

"The natural death of slavery is the unprofitableness
of its most expensive labor—it is also beginning in the
meadow and grain country of Virginia— . . . . The moment
the labor of the slave ceases to be profitable to the
master, or very soon after it has reached that stage—if
the slave will not run away from the master, the master
will run away from the slave; and this is the history of
the passage from slavery to freedom of the villenage of
England." Again he said: "That man has a hard heart,
or at least a narrow understanding—yes, and a narrow
heart too, who would justify slavery in the abstract. But
that man, although he may have a heart as capacious as
the Atlantic Ocean itself, has a narrow and confined intellect,
who undertakes to make himself and his country
the judge and the standard for other men and other countries.
. . . Sir, there has a spirit gone abroad—both in
England and here— . . . . it is raging here, and I wish I

could say that it does not exist even in Virginia. It is the
spirit of neglecting our own affairs for the purpose of regulating
the affairs of our neighbors. Sir, this spirit takes
the plodder—yes, the plodder from the field—to become
a plodder in the pulpit. It has taken the shoemaker
from his last—and, what is worse than all, it takes the
mother from the fireside and from her children, into a
sort of religious dissipation, in which the Church is made
as much a Theatre as the Grand Opera at Paris, or as
Drury Lane or Convent Garden in London." His keen
observation in Europe showed him that the life of the
Southern negro was luxury itself compared with the utter
squalor of the Irish and Russian peasantry; and even
of England he spoke thus: "There is, at this moment, within
three miles of St. Stephen's Chapel, more misery and
more vice than exists in the whole of North America,
the West Indies included. And what is the cure, sir?
The philanthropists, instead of ferreting out that which
is immediately under their noses, or rather which they
are glad to stop their noses to avoid, occupy themselves
in taking care of the slaves of Mr. Watson Taylor, Mr.
Beckford, Mr. Hibbert, and other West India gentlemen,
whose condition, in comparison with the canaille of St.
Giles's, St. Paul's, Westminster, and other quarters of
London, is a condition of independence, virtue, happiness.
The misery before their eyes they cannot see—
their philanthropy acts only at a distance."

As slavery was recognized in the Constitution, John
Randolph of course opposed uncompromisingly the celebrated
measure—falsely termed a "Compromise"—by

which, in order to secure the admission of Missouri into
the Union, the Southern congressmen surrendered the
constitutional right of Southern men to carry their slaves
into all that portion of the common territory of the Union
out of which the States of Iowa, Minnesota, Kansas, Nebraska,
the two Dakotas, Montana, Idaho. etc., have since
been formed.

John Quincy Adams.

Randolph knew, of course,
that (as the Supreme Court
decided thirty-seven years
afterwards) Congress had no
more legal right to pass such
a law than it had to banish
all slaveholders to the moon.
He knew, too, that the exclusion
of slavery from this
region amounted, practically,
to the exclusion of their white
owners, who would be compelled,
if they moved there, either to free their negroes
before they went or to sell them at a probable sacrifice.
Randolph's chief speeches on this subject were not reported,
but he opposed vehemently all conditions whatever
to the act admitting Missouri.

It is well known that, when the presidential election
of 1824 was thrown into the House, and Clay, failing to
be elected himself, threw his influence to John Quincy
Adams, and was appointed Secretary of State by the latter,
it was charged that this appointment was due to a
corrupt bargain between the two men. The justice of

the charge need not be discussed here; but Randolph was
firmly convinced of its truth. His dislike of Clay as the
leading advocate of paternalism and loose construction
of the Constitution was very strong; and the personality
of Adams inspired him with an even greater antipathy —
"the cub is a greater bear than the old one"—than he
had felt for his father.

In the Senate, March 30, 1826, Randolph speaks of
"an alliance offensive and defensive between old Massachusetts
and Kentucky—between the frost of January,
and young, blythe, buxom, and blooming May. . . . not
so young, however, as not to make a prudent match, and
sell her charms for their full value." Then, mentioning
that both Chatham and Junius had compared the union
between the profligate Lord Sandwich and the sanctimonious
Lord Mansfield to that between Blifil and Black
George, he says: "I shall not say which is Blifil and
which is Black George. I do not draw my pictures in
such a way as to render it necessary to write under them,
`this is a man, this is a horse.' "

His meaning was certainly plain that Adams, "the Puritan"
was Blifil, and Clay, "the blackleg," Black George.
Moreover, it was in this speech that he said: "there is
strong reason to believe that these South American communications,
which have been laid before us, were manufactured
here at Washington, if not by the pens, under
the eye of our own Ministers, to subserve their purposes."

On account of these insulting remarks, Clay called
him to the field. Randolph was one of the best shots in
Virginia; but, having no desire to take Clay's life, he

said to General Hamilton of South Carolina the night
before the duel: "Hamilton, I have determined to receive,
without returning, Clay's fire; nothing shall induce
me to harm a hair of his head; I will not make his
wife a widow, or his children orphans. Their tears
would be shed over his grave, but when the sod of Virginia
rests on my bosom, there is not in this wide world
one individual to pay this tribute upon mine."

He was as good as his word. For, when the meeting
took place, Randolph deliberately fired in the air, whereupon
Clay exclaimed:

"I trust in God, my dear sir, you are untouched; after
what has occurred, I would not have harmed you for a
thousand worlds."

To break down the administration of Adams was an
persistently adhered to by Randolph; and one of his
opponents, an Ohioan, declared his deliberate opinion
that Randolph had done more to break Adams down than
any three men in the country. Strongly advocating the
election of Andrew Jackson, and having seen his object
accomplished, Randolph declined re-election to Congress
and retired to private life. He supposed his political career
ended.

But, in spite of his having declared on Feb. 1, 1828,
that he desired no office either at home or "at the tail of
the corps diplomatique in Europe," he was so strongly
urged by Jackson to undertake a mission to Russia on
special diplomatic business that he accepted the offer and
went in 1830—having meantime most reluctantly, but
ably, taken part in the debates of the Virginia Constitutional

Convention of 1829-30. He had intended going
to England for his health, but had declined the missions
to both France and England as too laborious.

The special mission to Russia, however, was accepted
as not requiring him to stay continuously at his post;
and it so happened that, when he reached St. Petersburg,
there had just been a change in the Russian ministry,
the cholera was raging through Europe, and a no less contagious
revolution in France, Belgium, Germany, Italy
and Poland. Under these circumstances it was impossible—although
he was presented to the Czar and Czarina
— for the Russian Government to give attention to Randolph's
business; and, as the Russian climate proved
very disastrous to him, he went to London in a short
time, leaving his secretary of legation behind him with
instructions to inform him promptly when the Russian
ministry were ready to confer with him.

But the Polish insurrection so occupied the latter that,
although he was in constant communication with St.
Petersburg, ready to go there at a moment's notice, they
were never able to give him the necessary time for his
business. Hence, as his health grew ever worse, consumption
having secured a firm hold upon him, he resigned
his place and returned home in the fall of 1831.
His failure to accomplish much by his mission was surely
no fault of his. Had he accepted the position merely
for pecuniary reasons, he would not have resigned it when
he did; and we may dismiss the bitter attack upon him
by Henry Adams with the remark that the latter is a
grandson of John Quincy Adams, and resents the prominent

part which Randolph took in thwarting his grandfather's
efforts to secure a second presidential term.

Upon his return from Russia, Randolph's health became
so deplorable that he probably came nearer dying
in the spring of 1832 than ever before. He rallied, however,
and the vital forces lasted one year more. He had
been a beautiful boy, and exceedingly handsome as a young
man. But disease prematurely covered his face with innumerable
wrinkles, and reduced his body in old age to the
utmost extreme of attenuation; and in this last year he
was kept alive by little save the force of an indomitable
will. Indeed, but for the wondrous brilliancy of the
eyes that still blazed from their sockets in the parchment-covered
skull, he would have closely resembled an emaciated
corpse.

Yet the spirit that inhabited this feeble frame was unconquerable
still; and when he heard of the proclamation
in which Jackson denounced the nullification ordinance
of South Carolina, and threatened to invade that State
with a military force, all the fiery energy of his soul was
aroused, and he girded up his loins for a last battle for
State Rights.

Randolph loved the Union. In the debate on Burr's
conspiracy he had said that the very mention of disunion
was a great public injury, and ought to be held in abhorrence
by every true patriot. No wiser or more patriotic
letter was ever written than that in which, on the day
when the Hartford Convention met, he appealed (through
a senator) to the New England States not to exercise
their right of secession.

Yet, even in this letter, he admits that the Union was
only a means of liberty and safety, and not an end to
which these blessings were to be sacrificed. He loved
the Union - the Constitutional Union of Sovereign States
under a government based upon the consent of the governed—not
an unconstitutional Union of a tyrant section
and subject provinces pinned together by bayonets. No
wonder, then, that, when South Carolina, hot with wrath
at the successive tariff acts, each worse than its predecessor,
by which she had been plundered, turned fiercely
upon her oppressors, and declared the latest of these acts
null and void, and when the imperious Jackson prepared
to crush her by force and hang her leaders to the nearest
tree, Randolph sprang once more into the lists.

Sick, suffering and dying though he was, he had himself
lifted into the carriage and driven from county to
county in his district. No longer strong enough to stand,
he nevertheless spoke to multitudes from his seat and
held them with his glittering eye and thrilling voice.

Thirty-four years before, in the bloom of young manhood,
he had dared to face Henry in defense of the States;
and now, tottering on the brink of the grave, he hurled
down the gauntlet to Jackson in the same cause.

Nor did he appeal to his constituents in vain. For
throughout his district they passed resolutions condemning
Jackson's proclamation. His sagacious insight into
character, as well as the readiness with which he recognized
the greater qualities of his opponents, are seen in a
few words spoken at Buckingham Court House. Declaring
himself to be "filled with the most gloomy apprehensions

Henry Clay.

for the fate of the Union," he said: "If Madison
filled the Executive chair, he might be bullied
into some compromise. If Monroe was in power, he
might be coaxed into some adjustment of this difficulty.
But Jackson is obstinate, headstrong, and fond of
fight. I fear matters must come to an open rupture. If
so, this Union is gone!"

Then, after a long and impressive pause, he raised his
finger and said: "There is one man, and one man only,
who can save this Union—that man is HENRY CLAY.
I know he has the power, I believe he will be found to
have the patriotism and firmness equal to the occasion."

Once more he was elected to Congress, but was never
to take his seat. Hoping against hope that a sea voyage
and the English climate would somewhat restore his shattered
strength, he reached Philadelphia, but could go no
further. In the city that had witnessed some of the jolliest
days of his youth, as well as his entrance upon the
congressional stage, he was now stricken down and
breathed his last on June 24, 1833.

And now we have reached the most difficult part of
our task, the delineation of the character of this extraordinary
man. Few men have had bitterer enemies or
more devoted friends; and the judgments passed upon
him have therefore been radically different. The present
writer cannot hope to do more than approximate the
truth; but he will at least endeavor to avoid extravagant
eulogy on the one hand and rabid hostility on the other.

The story of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde does not tell the
whole truth. For every man contains within himself

not simply two, but a thousand different natures. Each
man is the descendant of countless ancestors, from each
of whom he inherits traits physical, mental or moral,
which may or may not reach full development according
to circumstances. Seeds cast by the wayside may be devoured
by the fowls of the air, while those sown in fertile
soil may bring forth an hundred fold.

Had Shakespeare been kidnapped in infancy by a
Choctaw chief, he might have lived to take many scalps,
but would surely have never written Hamlet. Before
the French Revolution Robespierre was so opposed to
capital punishment that he conscientiously resigned his
seat on the bench, rather than condemn a murderer to
death. But the writings of Rousseau and the frenzy of
the Revolution transformed this gentle lamb into a tiger
thirsting for blood.

But for the Revolution, Charlotte Corday, instead of
plunging a dagger into the heart of Marat, might have
lived to sew buttons on the garments of a dozen children.

"In my opinion," said Randolph, "the wisest prayer
that ever was composed is that which deprecates the being
led into temptation." Let not the man, then, who
has never been tempted, sanctimoniously prate of his
superior virtue. For there has probably never lived a
man who, at birth, was not potentially a murderer and
a thief. In a cool, dry place gunpowder might lie for
ages, harmless as the cooing of a dove. Drop but a
spark, however, among the innocent-looking grains, and
the roar of a lion is as silence compared with the horrid
sound that splits the ear.

In these considerations are to be found the key
to much that seems unaccountable in John Randolph's
career. His was a highly complex character; the most
varied and antagonistic traits existing side by side in his
nature, and not merely potentially, as in all men, but
actually. In Whittier's words, he was:

Some of these traits might have lain dormant, but for
unfortunate circumstances. Chief among these, chief
among the influences that developed Randolph's evil propensities,
was inveterate, chronic bad health. "I have
been sick all my life," he said shortly before his death;
and Nathaniel Macon told Thomas H. Benton that Randolph
had never in his life enjoyed one day of perfect
health.

It is comparatively easy for a robust man to be cheerful.
But let not such a man estimate too lightly the influence
of a complication of painful and chronic maladies
in souring and embittering the temper.

It is, of course, perfectly true that there have been

sweet-tempered men and women who have borne
life-long suffering and pain with scarcely a murmur.
Nor is it pretended that John Randolph did not have
a bad temper to begin with. He fully admitted it himself,

Thomas H. Benton.

saying that
his "ungovernable
temper" had been
the chief cause of
his unhappiness.
But undoubtedly
his irritability was
increased by constant
physical
pain. No man
confessed with
deeper contrition,
to his intimate
friends, the faults
into which this
temper betrayed
him; and on his
death-bed he deliriously cried out: "Remorse, remorse,
remorse!" and, making his physician write the word on
a card, looked at it and exclaimed:

"Remorse, you have no idea what it is; you can form
no idea of it, whatever; it has contributed to bring me to
my present situation — but I have looked to the Lord Jesus
Christ, and hope I have obtained pardon."

Having by nature a profoundly religious spirit, and a
sense of sin like that of Luther, who in his lonely cell

often cried aloud "my sin, my sin!" Randolph habitually
reproached himself, in letters to his bosom friends,
with his shortcomings, and sank at times into despair at
his failure to live up to the Christian standard. Writing
to Francis S. Key on May 31, 1815, he said: "I have had
a strong desire to go to the Lord's Supper; but I was deterred
by a sense of my unworthiness; and, only yesterday,
reading the denunciation against those who received
unworthily, I thought it would never be in my power to
present myself at the altar. . . . . . . . I feel a comfort
in repeating the Liturgy that I would not be deprived
of for worlds."

To Dr. Brockenbrough, a month later, he speaks of his
"stubborn and rebellious nature," and declares it essential
that he should "strive against envy, malice, and all uncharitableness"
and cultivate "feelings of good will to all
mankind." A year later he writes to Key in this wise:

"My mind is filled with misgivings and doubts and perplexities
that leave me no repose. Of the necessity for
forgiveness I have the strongest conviction; but I cannot
receive any assurance that it has been accorded to me.
In short I am in the worst conceivable situation as respects
my internal peace and future welfare. . . . . . . I
have humbly sought comfort where alone it is effectually
to be obtained, but without success. To you and Mr.
Meade [afterwards Bishop Meade of Virginia] I can venture
to write in this style, without disguising the secret
workings of my heart."

And a few months later: "My opinions seem daily to
become more unsettled, and the awful mystery which

shrouds the future alone renders the present tolerable.
The darkness of my hours, so far from having passed
away has thickened into the deepest gloom."

There can be little doubt, indeed, that had Randolph
lived in the sixteenth

John Calvin.

century,
he would have
been a religious
reformer; and,
paradoxical as it
may seem to
those who know
only the legendary,
and not the
real Randolph,
there was a certain
resemblance,
in some
respects, between
him and
John Calvin.
As Randolph admitted
his "ungovernable
temper," so Calvin confessed that he yielded
too often to the "wild beast of his anger." Neither of
them could well brook opposition; both were domineering;
and both were masters of vituperation.

There was a certain acerbity and censoriousness in each
(even Calvin's school-mates dubbing him the "Accusation
Case,") and in each these faults were aggravated by

bad health. They both inspired deepest love and bitterest
hate. Each may have been at times intellectually
inconsistent, but both were morally honest to the core.
Both were precocious; Calvin's theological system, like
Randolph's political principles, being adopted early in
life; and both sternly and rigidly refused to sacrifice one
iota of their principles to mere expediency.

In the sixteenth century Randolph might have founded
a sect. In the nineteenth, Calvin might have relentlessly
scourged the venal tricksters and time-serving
spoilsmen of Congress.

For a time in the year 1818, Randolph's religious despair
was dispelled. "Congratulate me, dear Frank" he
writes to the author of the "Star-Spangled Banner"-"I am
at last reconciled to my God, and have assurance of His
pardon, through faith in Christ, against which the very
gates of hell cannot prevail. Fear hath been driven out
by perfect love."

But he could not long rest content, and writes eight
months later: "My dear Frank, what is there in this
world to satisfy the cravings of an immortal nature? I
declare to you that the business and pleasures of it seem
to me as of no more consequence than the game of pushpin
that occupies the little negroes at the corner of the
street.

"Do not misunderstand me, my dear friend. My life
(I am ashamed to confess it) does not correspond with
my belief. I have made a vile return for the goodness
which has been manifested toward me—but I still cling
to the cross of my Redeemer."

And in another letter he says: "I am more than satiated
with the world. It is to me a fearful prison-house of
guilt and misery. . . . . . My own short-comings are the
sources of my regrets, `and why call ye me Lord, Lord,
and do not the things that I say.' This, my dear friend,
troubles me by day and by night. 'Tis not what others
do, but what I do, or omit, that annoys me."

We see, then, that Randolph, though deeply religious,
was no sanctimonious hypocrite. No man, indeed, ever
loathed canting hypocrisy more. Rarely did he speak of
his religious feelings except to his closest friends, and to
them he confessed his faults. The following anecdote
well illustrates the clearness of his conceptions and his
fine discrimination between cant and genuine piety.

One of the Bryan boys, his wards, having been taken
to task by his brother for not resenting an insult, and the
matter having been referred to Mr. Randolph: "My boy,"
said he, "if you were absolutely certain of being actuated
solely by the love of Christ, you were right to turn the
other cheek to your insulter. If not, you should have hit
him with all your might, remembering never to mistake
the fear of man for the love of God."

In this, at least, he practiced what he preached. Cowardice,
moral or physical, was a sensation of which he
knew naught. He faced Clay's bullet, and fired his own
into the air; and, when advised in 1813 not to speak in
Buckingham Co. against the war with England, for fear
of violence, he replied: "You know very little of me, or
you would not give such advice."

Then facing the angry crowd, he said:

"I understand that I am to be insulted today if I attempt
to address the people—that a mob is prepared to
lay their rude hands upon me and drag me from these
hustings, for daring exercise the rights of a freeman."

And then, tranfixing the ring-leaders with his piercing
gaze, and pointing toward them with that long,
lean, lank forefinger of his, he continued:

"My Bible teaches me that the fear of God is the beginning
of wisdom, but that the fear of man is the consummation
of folly."

As by magic, the incipient riot was quelled—his
dauntless courage compelling attention to his words.

Another striking trait was his colossal pride; while of
vanity he had little or none. Little he cared what the
world might think of him, so long as he maintained his
self-respect. So proud was he, indeed, that he refused to
let the world see him as he really was; and much of his
supposed cynicism and misanthropy was due to this aversion
to baring the deeper feelings of his heart to the public
gaze.

Were he living in our time, he would probably cane
the first "enterprising" reporter that attempted to "interview"
him on his private affairs. Intensely reserved, he
hotly resented any attempt at undue familiarity on the
part of strangers or mere acquaintances. His house was
his castle, and the obtrusive person who hinted for an
invitation to it reckoned without the host.

"Mr. Randolph," said a neighbor who met him one
day, "I passed by your front door this morning."

"I hope you will always continue to pass it, sir," was

the somewhat savage reply. That he made enemies by
this species of repartee goes without saying; and it is not
strange that some of his neighbors and their descendants
could and can see little good in him. Nor is it
surprising that some of those whom he offended did not
confine themselves to the truth, and that consequently a
goodly crop of legends has sprung up among the people
of Charlotte Co. at their monthly gatherings on the
court green, or by the fireside in the long winter evenings.
Much of this gossip has gotten into print. But neither
this nor the stories that arose in Washington can be accepted
as authentic.

His real wit was keen enough, and we need not repeat
the fictitious. Senator Benton, who lived in the house
with him for several years, says that his sarcasni was
"keen, refined, withering;" and the present writer, after
spending five weeks in the Library of Congress reading
his speeches and taking extracts therefrom, can fully endorse
this view. Occasionally, in the heat of debate, and
under the influence of intense excitement, his wit was almost
ferocious; but such was not often the case. No one,
of course, who merely reads his words, without having
heard the penetrating tones and seen the flashing eye, the
haughty mien, and the long arm and forefinger stretched
scornfully toward his victim, can realize the feelings of
the latter.

"Agony and fear," says Benton, were the sensations
which he aroused in Congress. To many a member that
lean forefinger seemed as deadly as the tongue of a viper
exuding venom. But it should be remembered that Randolph's

sarcasm was not the only cause for these feelings.
In Randolph's opinion "the seven cardinal principles of
the average politician were the five loaves and the two
fishes;" and in many cases it was the guilty conscience of
the corrupt spoilsman that made him wince beneath the
withering wit of a rabidly honest man. Samples of this
sarcasm have already been given in the citations from his
speeches—as, for example, the contemptuous manner in
which he spoke of Gregg's views of English and American
sea-power.

Upon another occasion he made a savage attack upon
Sheffey of Virginia, taunting him with his former occupation
by citing the Latin saw ne sutor ultra crepidam.
He once referred to Bayard of Delaware as the "Goliah of
the adverse party" and a "gigantic boaster." In 1815 he
exasperated Philip P. Barbour of Virginia (who had criticised
him) by citing the lines,

Yet fifteen years afterward it was he who moved a resolution
of thanks to Mr. Barbour for the "impartiality
and dignity," as well as "distinguished ability," with
which he had presided over the Virginia Convention. He
also said that "notwithstanding any occasional heat excited
by the collision of debate," he parted from every
member of the Convention" with the most hearty good
will."

And, indeed, it is not true that Randolph was an
implacable man. After his breach with Jefferson he
paid more than one eloquent tribute to that statesman.

Even Madison he eulogized in some respects; and
shortly before his death he clasped the hand of Clay,
whom he had generously declared to be the one man who
could save the Union. He was not, then, implacable;
and his vindictive attacks upon opponents were due largely
to temper intensified by physical suffering. His feelings
were strong and intense, and he possessed but a
small share of what he once termed "that rascally virtue,
prudence."

"I am willing to allow," he said, "that in the heat of
debate, expressions improper for me to use, but not improper
in their application to those to whom they referred,
may have escaped me—the verba ardentia of an
honest mind. I scorn to retract them. They were made
in the presence of the nation, and in their presence I will
defend them. I will never snivel, whatever may be the
result."

Certainly some of his thrusts were uncalled for. For
example, when Goddard of Connecticut had alluded to
his great learning, Randolph lamented his "inability to
return the compliment but at an expense of sincerity and
truth, which even the gentleman from Connecticut, he
hoped, would be unwilling to require." And to John
Smilie he once said: "And let me tell the gentleman
from Pennsylvania that I would rather have his vote than
his speech at any time. Who would suppose, had he not
averred it, that he held silence and good sense in such
high respect, that he preferred the calm decisions of quiet
wisdom to the effusions of empty garrulity?"

Space will only permit of one more sample of his contemptuous

treatment of opponents. Beecher of Ohio
having annoyed him by repeated calls for the previous
question, he convulsed the House and suppressed Beecher
by saying:

"Mr. Speaker, in the Netherlands a man of small capacity,
with bits of wood and leather, will in a few moments
construct a toy that, with the pressure of the finger
and the thumb, will cry `Cuckoo! Cuckoo!' With
less of ingenuity, and inferior materials, the people of Ohio
have made a toy that will, without much pressure, cry,
`Previous question, Mr. Speaker! Previous question, Mr.
Speaker!' "

And yet—such is the complexity of human nature, so
manifold the passions that can coexist in a single breast
—this man who shot so many poisoned darts into the
bosoms of his foes, and whose pride made him conceal
the softer side of his nature from all but a favored few,
was also a man who was not only capable of feeling, but
did feel, the tenderest and deepest love. His ardent affection
for his mother and brother has already been mentioned.
His family pride and his family affections were
exceedingly strong. No father could have loved his
children more dearly than he loved his two nephews, the
sons of his brother Richard; and the heart-rending grief
which he experienced at the early death of one and the
insanity of the other was one of the fatal influences that
embittered his life and plunged him into hypochondria
and gloom. He also felt the tenderest love for the children
of his sister who married Judge Coalter, and particularly
for her daughter Elizabeth, who married John

Randolph Bryan, the son of his friend, Joseph Bryan.
So dear to him was the memory of this friend that he
cared for his two orphaned sons in the way described by
one of them in 1878 as follows:

"In 1816, Mr. Randolph took it upon himself to direct
the education of three very young orphan boys, the oldest
of whom was barely ten years of age. Two of these boys
(J. R. Clay, Esq., and the writer) are yet living. They
were sent to school, but passed their vacations of about
two months of the year at Mr. Randolph's house, where
they were treated as his children—some one of them often
sleeping in the same bed with him, and when away receiving
letters from him frequently. He took an interest
in their manners, language, and reading, made them
say their prayers, and often read to them. This supervision
and care of my brother and myself continued four
years, when, in 1820, we returned to our home in Georgia.
After our separation he wrote constantly to me
while I was at school and at college. . . . . . . In his intercourse
with us boys the sweetness of his manner and
considerateness to our blunders and awkwardness were
truly paternal."

Another boy whom he educated, and who lived with
him for years at Roanoke was Theodore Bland Dudley,
his cousin. In his frequent letters to these boys he shows
an almost motherly interest in the smallest details affecting
them—telling them, for example, to be sure to clean
their teeth, and the like. Surely here was a side of his
nature invisible to the public. And the same must be
said of the passionate craving for affection, displayed in

his letters to such friends as Dr. Brockenbrough and Francis
S. Key. His close attachment to Nathaniel Macon
is historic, and their names are indissolubly linked in
the title of Randolph-Macon College. His unostentatious
charity is attested by Senator Benton who says he
often saw him send little children out to give to the poor.

These are authentic facts, not myths, and show that
the man who could unquestionably display the most rancorous
malignity, also had a warm, loving heart. But
over the deepest passion of that heart hangs a mystery
unpenetrated by his biographers. He loved Maria Ward
with all the fervor of his nature—"more than his own
soul, or the God that made it"—and he loved no other
woman but her. But why they were not married cannot
be said. Even her marriage to another did not banish
her memory from his heart; and years after they parted
he was heard to breathe her name in fever-dreams. To
the lonely anchorite of Roanoke her idealized image remained
a guiding star, beckoning him to higher things.

Was Randolph a drunkard? Was he an opium-eater?
Was he insane?

A careful examination of two volumes of Mss. containing
the evidence in the law-suits growing out of the contest
over his will justifies the following conclusions.

In spite of the indignant denial of his godson, John
Randolph Bryan, that he never drank to excess, and of
Benton's statement that he never saw him affected by
wine, "even to the slightest departure from the habitual
and scrupulous decorum of his manners," it is unquestionable
that, though nearly always temperate, and sometimes

a total abstainer, he did occasionally drink to very
great excess.

It is also undeniable that during the last years of his
life he frequently resorted to opium. There is ample
testimony on both these points. But, even if all testimony
were destroyed but his own, that would be sufficient.
He alluded in some of his letters to his potations,
and made no secret of his use of opium—saying a few
months before his death to the Hon. John Taliaferro:
"I am the veriest sot on earth, and that from necessity,
for I never am free from pain except by an excessive use
of brandy and opium."

That at certain periods of his life he was insane is also
perfectly clear; and the study of his case reveals some
strangely interesting psychological facts. The worst of
these periods was from Nov., 1831 to April, 1832; and,
curiously enough, there can be no doubt that, while he
was probably never wholly sane during any entire day in
that period, yet there were few days during which he did
not have lucid hours. At one hour he might manage
his business affairs in a perfectly clear-headed way, or
write absolutely rational letters; and at another hour he
might be as mad as a March hare. That opium had
something to do with this is highly probable. And yet
it is clear, when we look at his whole life, that his occasional
insanity was not caused by either opium or drink.
But of course their excessive use aggravated the insanity.

Religious mania more than once afflicted him; and just
as Luther threw his inkstand at the devil and, indeed,
very frequently encountered that formidable personage,

so Randolph had to do battle with him more than once.
To a Mr. Holliday he wrote a letter stating a wish to
buy two of the latter's horses, for the reason that he had
signed a contract with no less a person than His Satanic
Majesty himself, not to drink the asses' milk essential to
the preservation of his life until he had bought those two
horses. This letter he entrusted to his friend, Judge
William Leigh, to mail; but, when the latter had ridden
a mile or two, one of Randolph's servants caught up with
him and said his master wanted the letter back, as a
charm was upon it. Later on, the negro again galloped
up with the letter, saying that his master now declared
the charm to be removed.

During this same period he told a Mr. Flournoy that
he had had a "controversy with his God," who would
not forgive him for misusing his talents, wealth and influence,
and for being such a reprobate. For two nights
and a day he slept not a wink, as Flournoy testifies. In
April he told Mr. John Nelson he had had a personal interview
with the Saviour of the world, who told him his
sins were forgiven. The next day he resolved to test
the reality of the vision by praying that a certain tree
should be moved to another part of the yard; but was
interrupted before he could thus test the power of prayer.
He once told Judge Leigh that in the next room there
was a man writing a dead man's will with a dead man's
hand.

But enough. He told Senator Benton that he had always
lived in dread of insanity, and Benton was convinced
that he was insane on several occasions, "and during

such periods he would do and say strange things—
but always in his own way—not only method, but genius
in his fantasies: nothing to bespeak a bad heart, but
only exaltation and excitement. The most brilliant talk
that I ever heard from him came forth on such occasions
—a flow for hours (at one time seven hours) of copious
wit and classic allusion—a perfect scattering of the diamonds
of the mind. I heard a friend remark on one of
these occasions, `he has wasted intellectual jewelry enough
here this evening to equip many speakers for great orations.'
"

John Randolph was a strange, sad, wonderful man.
He had his faults, and they were grave. But those who
reflect upon the incessant pain which he suffered, the agony
of soul which a perpetual dread of insanity must
have caused him, the death of those nearest and dearest
to him, his disappointment in love, and the dreary loneliness
of his life at Roanoke, will not be disposed to cast
the first stone at the most tragic character in American
history.

For forty-six years his body rested in the solitude of
Roanoke, but in 1879 was removed to Richmond by his
great-nephew, Joseph Bryan, Esq., the present editor of
the Richmond "Times." The State Legislature adjourned
to attend the ceremony of re-interment, and they
did well. For, with all his faults, Virginia has had few
greater or more devoted sons.

The soil of his old home seemed loath to relinquish
the blackened bones. For the roots of a pine and an oak
had penetrated the coffin and so entwined the skeleton—

the very skull, in which once the fiery brain had
throbbed, being completely filled with a dense mass of
rootlets—that they had to be severed with an axe before
Mother Earth could be compelled to relax her embrace
upon the remains. But she received them again, and
in Hollywood Cemetery they now repose.

Interior Old House of Representatives, the Scene of Randolph's Triumph