University of Virginia Library

CHAPTER XII.

"FACULTIES MISEMPLOYED."

Randolph certainly became more sagacious
with age, but he did not improve in political
sagacity alone. That his moral sense was lost
may be true, for his mind had been dragged
through one degradation after another, until
its finer essence was destroyed; but in return
it had gained from its very degradation a quality
which at first it wanted. Randolph was
a worse man than in his youth, but a better
rhetorician. No longer heroic even in his own
eyes, he could more coolly play the hero. His
epigrammatic effects were occasionally very
striking, especially on paper. He rose to what
in a man of true character would have been
great elevation of tone in his retort on Mr.
McLane of Delaware. That member had said
with perfect justice that he would not take
Randolph's head, if he were obliged to take his
heart along with it.

This was the best of all Randolph's retorts,
and remarkable for expression and temper.
Unhappily for its effect, it wanted an element
which alone gives weight to such a style of

rhetoric. It was melodramatic, but untrue.
One may imagine with what quiet amusement
Mr. Jefferson, Mr. Madison, Mr. Monroe, Mr.
Clay, not to speak of a score of smaller victims
like Gideon Granger, the poor clerk Vanzandt,
and many an old member, must have smiled on
reading this announcement that Randolph's
frank, brave heart repudiated the use of the
poisoned arrow, the tomahawk, and the scalping-knife.
He was happier, because truer to himself,
in the more brutal forms of personal attack, as
in turning on Mr. Beecher of Ohio, who persisted
in breaking his long pauses by motions
for the previous question: "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!' " This must have been very effective
as spoken with his shrill voice, and accented
by his pointing finger, but it may be doubted
whether Randolph ever produced much serious
effect in the elevated style. His most famous
bit of self-exaltation was in the speech on retrenchment
and reform in 1828:—

If the criticism already made be just, that
the reply to McLane was melodramatic but untrue,
the same criticism applies with treble
force to this famous appeal to his constituents.
Without inquiring too deeply what the children
in Charlotte County would have said to a suggestion
of climbing Randolph's knee, or whether
conflicting emotions could not be read on the
beaming faces of his constituents, it is enough
to add that there can be little doubt of Randolph's
actual aberration of mind at this time.
He talked quite wildly, and his acts had no relation
with his language. This patriot would
accept no tawdry honors from a corrupt and

corrupting national government! He would not
take a seat in the Cabinet, like Clay, to help
trample on the rights of Virginia! He would
not take a foreign mission, to pocket the people's
money without equivalent! He owed everything
to his constitutents, and from them
alone he would receive his reward! This speech
was made in February, 1828. In September,
1829, he was offered and accepted a special mission
to Russia; he sailed in June, 1830; remained
ten days at his post; then passed near
a year in England; and, returning home in
October, 1831, drew $21,407 from the government,
with which he paid off his old British
debt. This act of Roman virtue, worthy of the
satire of Juvenal, still stands as the most flagrant
bit of diplomatic jobbery in the annals
of the United States government.

Had Randolph, at this period of his life,
shown any respect for his own dignity, or had
he even respected the dignity of Congress, he
would have been a very formidable man, but he
sacrificed his influence to an irrational vanity.
His best friends excused him on the ground that
he was partially insane; his enemies declared
that this insanity was due only to drink; and
perhaps a charitable explanation will agree with
his own belief that all his peculiarities had their
source in an ungovernable temper, which he had

indulged until it led him to the verge of madness.
Be this as it may, certain it is that his
flashes of inspiration were obtained only at a
painful cost of time and power. During these
last years Randolph was like a jockey, thrown
early out of the race, who rides on, with antics
and gesticulations, amid the jeers and wonder
of the crowd, towards that winning-post which
his old rivals have long since passed. He despised
the gaping clowns who applauded him,
even while he enjoyed amusing them. He depised
himself, perhaps, more than all the rest.
Not once or twice, only, but day after day, and
especially during his short senatorial term, he
would take the floor, and, leaning or lolling
against the railing which in the old senate chamber
surrounded the outer row of desks, he would
talk two or three hours at a time, with no perceptible
reference to the business in hand, while
Mr. Calhoun sat like a statue in the Vice-President's
chair, until the senators one by one retired,
leaving the Senate to adjourn without
a quorum, a thing till then unknown to its
courteous habits; and the gallery looked down
with titters or open laughter at this exhibition
of a half-insane, half-intoxicated man, talking
a dreary monologue, broken at long intervals
by passages beautiful in their construction, direct
in their purpose, and not the less amusing
from their occasional virulence. These long
speeches, if speeches they could be called, were
never reported. The reporters broke down in
attempting to cope with the rapid utterance, the
discursiveness and interminable length, the innumerable
"Yes, sirs," and "No, sirs," of
these harangues. Mr. Niles printed in his Register
for 1826 one specimen verbatim report,
merely to show why no more was attempted.
In the same volume, Mr. Niles gave an account
of a visit he made to the senate gallery on
May 2, 1826, when Randolph was talking.
Lolling against the rail, stopping occasionally
to rest himself and think what next to talk
about, he rambled on with careless ease in conversational
tones, while the senate chamber was
nearly empty, and the imperturbable Calhoun
patiently listened from his throne. Mr. Niles
did not know the subject of debate, but when
he entered the gallery Randolph was giving out
a plan to make a bank: —

He dwelt upon this making of a bank for
about five minutes, and then said something
concerning Unitarians in religion and politics,
making a dash at the administration, and
bringing in Sir Robert Walpole. Then he
spoke of the Bible, and expressed his disgust at
what are called "family Bibles," though he
thought no family safe without a Bible — but
not an American edition. Those published by
the Stationers Company of London ought only
or chiefly to have authority, except those from
the presses of the Universities of Oxford and
Cambridge. He described these corporations
briefly; they would be fined £10,000 sterling
if they should leave the word not out of the
seventh commandment, however convenient it
might be to some or agreeable to others (looking
directly at certain members, and half turning
himself round to the ladies). He never bought
an American edition of any book; he had no
faith in their accuracy. He wished all his books
to have Cadell's imprint — Cadell, of the Strand,
London. But people were liable to be cheated.
He bought a copy of Aristotle's Ethics to present

to a lady — to a lady, sir, who could understand
them — yes, sir — and he found it full
of errors, though it had Cadell's imprint —
which he gave to be understood was a forgery.
From the Bible he passed to Shakespeare, drubbing
some one soundly for publishing a "family
Shakespeare." He next jumped to the American
"Protestant Episcopal Church," and disavowed
all connection with it, declaring that he
belonged to the Church of Old England; he had
been baptized by a man regularly authorized by
the bishop of London, who had laid his hands
upon him (laying his own hands on the head
of the gentleman next to him), and he spoke
warmly of the bishop and of the priest. Then
he quoted from the service, "Them that," as
bad grammar. Suddenly he spoke about wine
— it was often mentioned in the Bible, and he
approved of drinking it — if in a gentlemanly
way — at the table — not in the closet — not in
the closet; but as to whiskey, he demanded
that any one should show him the word in the
Bible — it was not there — no, sir, you can't
find it in the whole book. Then he spoke of
his land at Roanoke, saying that he held it by
a royal grant. In a minute or two he was talking
of the "men of Kent," saying that Kent
had never been conquered by William the Norman,
but had made terms with him. He spoke
of a song on the men of Kent which he would
give a thousand pounds to have written. All
these subjects were discussed within the space
of thirty-five minutes.

These illustrations of the almost incredible
capacity for attitudinizing which belonged to
Randolph's later career do not affect the fact
that he discovered and mapped out from beginning
to end a chart of the whole course on which
the slave power was to sail to its destruction.
He did no legislative work, sat on no committees,
and was not remotely connected with any
useful measure or idea; but he organized the
slave power on strong and well-chosen ground;
he taught it discipline, gave it popular cohesion,
pointed out to it the fact that before it could
hope for power it must break down Henry Clay,
and, having taught his followers what to do,
helped them to do it.

In this campaign, Randolph and his friends
made but one strategical mistake, and it was one
of which they were conscious. In order to pull
down Adams and Clay, they were forced to set
up Andrew Jackson, a man whom they knew
to be unmanageable, despotic in temper and
military in discipline. Meanwhile, Randolph
was defeated in his candidacy for reëlection to
the Senate. Virginia could not tolerate his extravagances,
and sent John Tyler to take his

place. Deeply wounded, he was still consoled
by the devotion of his district, which immediately
returned him to his old seat in the House.
He was also a member of the constitutional
convention of Virginia in 1829, and of course
took the conservative side on the great questions
it was called to consider. Broken to
pieces by disease, and in the last stages of consumption,
when President Jackson, amid the
jeers of the entire country, offered him the mission
to Russia, he accepted it, in order to remain
in England about eighteen months. Of this
journey, as of his other journeys, it is better to
say as little as possible; they have no bearing
on his political opinions or influence, and exhibit
him otherwise in an unfavorable light. A
warm admirer of everything English, nothing
delighted him so much as attentions from English
noblemen. He was impressed by the atmosphere
of a court, and plumped down on his
knees before the Empress of Russia, who was
greatly amused, as well she might be, at his
eccentric ideas of republican etiquette. Curiously
enough, an American woman, no less a
person than the famous Mrs. Patterson Bonaparte,
was in the palace at the time, and to her
dying day told how the ladies in attendance on
the Empress, coming directly from the audience,
laughed in describing his behavior.

On his return home, in October, 1831, he
hastened to Charlotte to make a speech in defence
of his conduct as minister; but the subject
which chiefly occupied his thoughts was the
poverty, the dirt, the pride, and the degeneracy
of Virginia, until he was roused to new life by
the nullification excitement which his own doctrines,
now represented by Mr. Calhoun, were
stirring up in South Carolina and Georgia.

Jackson's administration had displeased him
from the start, but so long as he wore its livery
his tongue had been tied. Now, however, when
South Carolina raised the standard of resistance,
and refused obedience to an act of Congress,
Randolph was hot in his applause. He
felt that the days of 1798 had returned. He
wanted to fight with her armies in case of war.
When the President's famous proclamation,
"the ferocious and blood-thirsty proclamation
of our Djezzar," appeared, he was beside himself
with rage. "The apathy of our people is
most alarming," he wrote. "If they do not
rouse themselves to a sense of our condition and
put down this wretched old man, the country is
irretrievably ruined. The mercenary troops
who have embarked for Charleston have not
disappointed me. They are working in their
vocation, poor devils! I trust that no quarter
will be given to them." Weak and dying as he

was, he set out to rouse Virginia, and spoke
in several counties against Jackson, as he had
spoken against John Adams. Nullification, he
said, was nonsense. He was no nullifier, but he
would not desert those whose interests were identical
with his own. One of the touches in these
harangues is very characteristic of the taste and
temper of this ami des noirs: —

He forced a set of states' rights resolutions
down the throat of his county, driving poor
Captain Watkins and the other malcontents out
of his presence. Nevertheless, the President's
proclamation remained and the force-bill stood
on the statute-book, — first-fruits of Randolph's
attempt to maintain the slave power by a
union of slave-holders behind the bulwark of
states' rights; while the next was the elevation
of Henry Clay to a position more powerful than

ever, as arbiter between the South and the
North.

Anxious to get back to England, where he
hoped, by aid of climate, to prolong his existence,
Randolph started again for Europe; but,
seized by a last and fatal attack on his lungs,
he died in Philadelphia, June 24, 1833. Of his
death-bed, it is as well not to attempt a description.
It was grotesque — like his life. During
the few days of his last illness his mind was
never quite itself, and there can be no pleasure
or profit in describing the expiring irrational
wanderings of a brain never too steady in its
processes. His remains were taken to Virginia,
and buried at Roanoke. His will was the subject
of a contest in the courts, which produced a
vast quantity of curious evidence in regard to
his character, and at last a verdict from the
jury that in the later years of his life he was
not of sane mind. It is, perhaps, difficult to
draw any precise line between eccentricity and
insanity, but it is still more difficult to understand
how the jury could possibly have held the
will of 1821, which emancipated his slaves, to
be a saner document than that of 1832, which
did not.

The question of his sanity has greatly troubled
his biographers. He himself called his "unprosperous
life, the fruit of an ungovernable

temper." So far as his public speeches are concerned,
there is no apparent proof that he was
less sane in 1831 than in 1806, except that
he was weakened by age, excesses, and disease.
Nevertheless, it seems to be certain that, on
several occasions, he was distinctly irresponsible;
his truest friends, the Tuckers, thought
so, and the evidence supports them; but
whether this condition of mind was anything
more than the excitement due to over-indulgence
of temper and appetite is a question for
experts to decide. Neither sickness nor suffering,
however, are excuses for habitual want of
self-restraint. Myriads of other men have suffered
as much without showing it in brutality
or bitterness, and he himself never in his candid
moments pretended to defend his errors:
"Time misspent, and faculties misemployed,
and senses jaded by labor or impaired by excess,
cannot be recalled."