John Randolph of Roanoke, 1773-1833 a biography based largely on new material |
| I. | CHAPTER I |
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 | CHAPTER I John Randolph of Roanoke, 1773-1833 |  |
CHAPTER I
"Like Sweet Bells Jangled"
When Randolph reached Richmond on his return from
Russia to Roanoke, he was so ill that he had to take to his
bed; and to bed or room he was confined until a day or so
before the first Monday in November, when he found
himself strong enough to proceed to Charlotte Court
House and to address the people there on that day. On
the second Monday of November, he addressed the people
of Buckingham County, and on the third Monday of
November the people of Prince Edward County; and he
was prevented by rain only from addressing the people of
Cumberland County on the fourth Monday of November.[1]
In all these speeches, doubtless, he still had sufficient
command of his mental faculties to display some of his old
brilliancy and force. This was certainly true of his
speeches at Charlotte Court House and Prince Edward
Court House, and his audience at Prince Edward Court
House, at any rate, was willing to listen to him hour after
hour. But to every really observant person, to whom he
had been a familiar figure in the past, it was obvious that
he was demented; and this impression was created even
more by what he said and did when off the hustings than
when on.
When he had retired from Congress in 1829, he had
prevailed on Thomas T. Bouldin, of Charlotte County,
then a Circuit Court Judge, to resign his seat on the bench
that he yielded reluctantly to Randolph's persuasion, and
only subject to the condition suggested by him that,
whenever Randolph should desire to resume his old seat,
he should be at liberty to do so. Judge Bouldin was
elected, and, at the close of his first term, offered himself
again as a candidate at the Congressional election in April,
1831. In the meantime, Randolph, too, while in Russia, had
formally announced himself through Judge Leigh as a
candidate at this election, but without notifying Judge
Bouldin or his friends of his intention to do so. Subsequently,
finding that he could not get back to the United
States in time for the election, he withdrew his name as a
candidate. Before he did this, however, Dr. Geo. W.
Crump, who had made way for the return of Randolph to
Congress in 1827, had offered himself as a candidate in
opposition to Judge Bouldin with a view, it was said, of
keeping the bed warm until it suited Randolph's convenience
to get into it. Judge Bouldin was elected, but
not until much bitterness of feeling had been stirred up
among his friends by Randolph's conduct, which did not
fail to excite a spirit of responsive bitterness in Randolph;
and the action of Dr. Crump Randolph considered a piece
of officious impertinence, as it had been taken by Dr.
Crump without his consent or knowledge. But how he
gave vent to his animosity towards each of the two offenders,
we will let the Rev. John S. Kirkpatrick, a Presbyterian
clergyman, tell in his own way.
"About a month after his arrival from Europe, he made
the speech at Prince Edward Court House which I heard. Its
avowed purpose, so far as any was avowed, was to set himself
right before the people with reference to Judge Bouldin, but,
in the six hours I stood drinking in, with quenchless avidity,
every word from his lips, I heard nothing that availed, or that
I could suppose was expected to avail, for this end. True, he
had much to say of Judge Bouldin, and, for the most part, it
yet, in the most favorable light, in which his character and life
were presented, there was always something, in the allusion or
tone, that set him before us as one to be pitied, and borne with,
rather than one to be approved and admired. Judge Bouldin,
in a conference with Mr. Randolph the week before,
incautiously said that, for his own part, he had been willing
to pass by the slight he had received; but that his sons and
sons-in-law had demanded that he should resent it, so far as to
persist in his candidacy for Congress, notwithstanding Mr.
Randolph had taken the field against him. Over and over
again in his speech, did Mr. Randolph refer to this admission,
saying that Judge Bouldin was a `wax nose,' to be twisted,
and shaped, and turned, in one direction or another, by his
`sons and sons-in-law,' at their pleasure. `What are they,' he
would say, `that he should surrender his judgment to theirs?
He had more sense than all of them put together.' I wondered
why he so often came over the words, `sons and sons-in-law,'
and always with a most significant, sneer-like emphasis. I
afterwards learned that one of the `sons-in-law' was not regarded
as a credit to the highly respectable, and much beloved, family
of the Judge.
"Just before the speaking closed, Judge Bouldin gave an
explanation of what he intended by the remark so often cited
by Mr. Randolph, but I did not gather its import, for, during
all the time he was speaking, Mr. Randolph, sitting behind him,
kept us amused and laughing with interjectional comments on
what the Judge was saying, which, piercing our ears with
[their] fife-like shrillness, allowed nothing else to be attended
to. Thus, the Judge's opening remark was: `What Mr. Randolph
has stated respecting our conference at Buckingham
C. H. last week is strictly true.' `Yes, it is true,' piped out
Randolph. `I never told but one lie in my life, and then my
mother liked to have killed me for it.' And so throughout the
judge's speech of ten or fifteen minutes. I have said that, in
the reference to Judge Bouldin, there was a mingling of praise
and disparagement, yet all so manoeuvered that no offence could
be taken, or, at least, confessed to have been taken. Speaking
of the Judge's amiable character, Mr. Randolph declared that
I love him—and you all know and regret that he has some; as
I trust he loves me with all mine, which, although of another
kind, are greater than his.' Closing what appeared to be a
sincere and fervent eulogy of the Judge, in which he spoke of
his talents, integrity, and public services, he reverted to his
kindness of heart and gentle manners, and ended in these
words: `I do not believe that a more amiable man breathes
on the earth than Judge Bouldin. Great pity he isn't a woman!'
If there was kindness, real or affected, towards Judge Bouldin,
there was none toward Dr. Crump, but, instead, undisguised,
undiluted bitterness. His offence was that he had offered himself
as a candidate for Congress in Mr. Randolph's old district, not,
indeed, in opposition to the latter, but, far worse, as the friend,
the vindicator or substitute, unsolicited, and unauthorized by
him. This was a presumption for which there was no atonement
and no mercy. The castigation of Dr. Crump was
reserved for the cap-stone of the whole-day speech, as though
his audacity had supplied the materials for the tower, nay, the
very spire, of a climax. In his invective, Mr. Randolph said in
a tone in which contempt and hatred were so blended it was
hard to tell which predominated: `I have a very slight acquaintance
with the gentleman. True, he once made me a
visit at my home, but he came uninvited, and departed when
he chose to do so.' Dr. Crump, who was present, and heard
with apparent composure all that was said about him, attempted
a vindication of his character from this last attack,
and, stepping forward, as Judge Bouldin desisted from his vain
effort to get a hearing, stated that he did make the visit to
which a reference had been made, but that it was in compliance
with an express, urgent, written invitation from Mr.
Randolph—that he had been cordially received, and hospitably
entertained. He went on to detail the occasion, reasons, and
all the circumstances of the invitation and the visit. But Mr.
Randolph would not hear him; for, as soon as he began speaking,
the former commenced his preparations for leaving the
house, and, as he was being supported and led by his bodyguard,
from his seat to the door, he discharged his last, the
Parthian arrow—`I never did invite you to my house, and,
words I heard from Mr. Randolph that day. These personal
encounters between the parties named could have consumed
but a small portion of the day."[2]
The burden of Randolph's speech at Prince Edward
Court House was what he conceived to be the painful
decadence undergone by Virginia in recent years, and the
inferiority of the younger men of his old district to their
fathers. Thus, after making a slurring, though partly
complimentary, reference to Wm. M. Watkins, the brother
of Henry A. Watkins, (b) he went on to say, according to
his own subsequent version of his words, that his friend,
Henry A. Watkins, although one of the kindest and best
men in the world, would be the first to admit the higher
claims of his father on the country for general utility and
energy of character; that [this sportively] he was too old
to know much of his father's sons personally but that he
could venture to affirm that, placed in their grandfather's
shoes, and having to keep off the calf whilst the wife
milked the cow, they never would have achieved what the
grandfather had done in point of character and fortune.
The latent malice in these remarks is too manifest to
require comment. Equally slighting, too, were similar
observations made by Randolph on the descendants of
Capt. John Morton, Col. Wm. Morton, Capt. Nat. Price,
Patrick Henry, George Mason, Chief Justice Marshall,
John Wickham and John Taylor of Caroline; "In
short," he said, "look at the Lees, Washingtons, Randolphs—what
woeful degeneracy."[3]
Disordered as Randolph's mind was at this time, the
following words from a letter, written by him to Dr.
Brockenbrough from Charlotte Court House immediately
after he had addressed the people of Buckingham County,
and color had not deserted him:
"On my road to Buckingham, I passed a night in Farmville,
in an apartment which in England they would not have thought
fit for my servant; nor on the continent did I ever occupy so
mean a one. Wherever I stop, it is the same—walls black and
filthy—bed and furniture sordid—furniture scanty and mean,
generally broken—no mirror—no fire-irons—in short, dirt and
discomfort, universally prevail, and in most private houses the
matter is not mended. The cows milked half a mile off—or not
got up, and no milk to be had at any distance—no jordan—in
fact, the old gentry are gone and the nouveaux riches, where
they have the inclination, do not know how to live. Biscuit,
not half cuit, every thing, animal and vegetable, smeared with
melted butter or lard. Poverty stalking through the land,
while we are engaged in political metaphysics, and, amidst our
filth and vermin, like the Spaniard and Portuguese, look down
with contempt on other nations, England and France especially.
We hug our lousy cloaks around us, take another chaw
of tubbacker, float the room with nastiness, or ruin the grate and
fire-irons, where they happen not to be rusty, and try conclusions
upon constitutional points."[4]
(a)
During the winter of 1831-1832, Randolph's dementia
assumed a more and more tragic character, to which drink
and the habitual use of opium, fastened upon him by the
promptings of disease and pain, added their dark pigments
too. In the opinion of John Marshall, of Charlotte
County, and Judge Wm. Leigh, his two most intimate
friends, in his last years he was an insane man from the
time of his return from Russia until the month of May,
1832, when his mind cleared up and became once more
comparatively serene; a condition which, with occasional
aberrations, continued almost until the last hours of his life.[5]
No good purpose would be subserved by going very
deeply into the painful testimony which was brought out
with respect to the insanity of Randolph at this period
during the course of the litigation that was subsequently
waged over his wills.
No small part of his unreasoning impulses and actions
sprang from his belief that all, or practically all, of his
overseers and slaves had been faithless to him during his
absence. That there had been indeed considerable misconduct
on the part of some of his slaves, and a certain
degree of dereliction of duty on the part of his overseers,
evidence is by no means lacking to establish; but a shortage
in his usual crop and a theft of wool by his negro headman
would seem to have afforded the only really substantial
justification for a mad resentment which involved
every one on his Roanoke plantations in its excesses.
Among his favorite servants were an old man whom he
called "Daddy Essex," and his beloved John and Juba;
but now his heart was steeled against them too. Whenever
Essex came into his presence, he would break out
into a fit of passion. He accused him of keeping a tavern
during his absence and entertaining a peddler, and even
went so far as to strike him with a stick. Of John and
Juba, though he was slow to withdraw his confidence from
John, he said: "When I arrived in New York, I would
not have taken for John or Juba, or for the smallest child
either of them had, 2,000 guineas; but now I would as soon
sell them to a negro trader as not." Finally, he sent off all,
or nearly all, of his house servants, with a few exceptions,
to a plantation owned by Judge Leigh on Dan River.
Even John was driven for a time into exile from his person.
In place of these trained servants, he introduced a number
of "cornfield" negroes into his house; among them a field
hand named Moses, whom he called "Bull," and of whom
he was soon heard saying: "Moses goes rooting about
the house like a hog." Once or twice he even either
members of his household.[6]
His mind also became enslaved to strange hallucinations.
One was that his life depended upon ass' milk, and some of
his later letters to his friend Nathan Loughborough are
filled with feverish appeals to him to hasten the progress
to Roanoke of certain jennies that Loughborough had
undertaken to forward to him for the purpose of supplying
him with such milk.[7]
Then later, when he had two fine
jennies at Roanoke, and was having them milked daily, his
mind cherished the delusion that he was under a contract
with His Satanic Majesty not to drink any of this milk
until he had purchased two colts or horses which had been
sired by his stallion, Janus. On one occasion, he told
Judge Leigh that he was glad of his arrival, because Mrs.
Leigh and her little boy had been upstairs in his house for
sometime, and that he had had hard work to keep the
devils from them; on another, that there was a man in the
next room writing a dead man's will with a dead man's
hand.
He at times exhibited angry and vindictive feelings
against almost all persons with whom he had had any
intercourse, with a few exceptions, and occasionally he
was possessed by the sheer desire to kill of a maniac.[8]
The very first time that Judge Leigh saw him after his
return from Russia he became satisfied that his mind was
disordered.
"My opinion," Judge Leigh testified in the litigation over
Randolph's wills, "was formed upon his appearance and manner—and
the total change in his language, feelings, and conduct.
He had in his appearance a fierce wildness; he was ever
restless, scarcely ever still, and took more exercise than I
without adequate cause, and he seemed to me when I was with
him to sleep scarcely at all."[9]
In many respects, as is too often the case when the mind
is dethroned, he was the exact reverse of his former self.
Edmund Badger, one of the proprietors of the hotel in
Philadelphia, in which Randolph died, testified in the
Randolph will litigation that, even in his last hours,
Randolph's manner was "peculiarly pleasing and entertaining."
Now it was excited, irate, savage. Before, his
mode of living had been generous; now it was penurious.
His conversation was at times obscene, though John
Marshall, who had known him intimately for years, testified
in the same litigation: "I never heard him use such
language previous to his return from Russia. He was
generally very chaste and delicate in his language." His
relations to women had always been marked by the highest
degree of chivalrous deference and refinement. At this
time, he wrote on one occasion to Henry A. Watkins: "I
write with a blotting pen, upon greasy paper—unclean, all
offensive in the eye of God. I am under the powerful
influence of the Prince of Darkness, who tempts me with a
beautiful mulattress." In the past, his treatment of his
slaves had been so kind and, in many instances, affectionate
that John Marshall testified in the will litigation
"that his slaves almost worshipped him"; now he was
harsh and abusive to them to an extreme degree. He
had always been truth itself, and now he repeatedly resorted
to cunning or falsehood to carry some freakish
point.[10]
If anyone has been so fortunate as never to have had
a relation or friend bereft of reason, and is yet desirous of
knowing how pitiable is the estate of "the fair and radiant
longer "by good angels tenanted," all that he has to do is
to peer into the black prison-house of frenzy, horror,
sensual nakedness, and despair which the depositions in
the Randolph will litigation exposed to the eye of court
and jury.
About the 25th day of April, 1831, Randolph was removed
to the home of John Marshall, at Charlotte Court
House, at a time when his condition was so feeble that
his death seemed near at hand. (a) In the will litigation,
Marshall testified that, while there, Randolph sent for
him very often, and, when he came into his room, would
frequently say: "You are too late, it is all over." And
sometimes he had a small bell in his hand which he would
ring slowly and say: "It is all over"; and sometimes,
instead of ringing the bell himself, he would make John
ring it. Again, at times, he would seem to be perturbed
by some vague fear and would ask Marshall if he would
stand by him, and yet no sooner would Marshall come
into his room than he would exercise all the address, of
which he was capable, to induce him by one suggestion or
another to leave it. But it is gratifying to state that in
the ashes of Randolph's former identity, after he returned
from Russia, there still lived some of its nobler traits.
Though he could no longer say grace at his table without
being at times incited to profanity by some trivial occurrence,
he still persisted in going through its forms. A
witness in the will litigation, Wyatt Cardwell, testified
that once, when John was given a whipping at his master's
instance for gross misconduct, it was plain that the latter
was pleased to see how lightly the chastisement was
administered. On one occasion, during dinner at Roanoke,
when Judge Leigh was present, Randolph spoke of Judge
Leigh's grave face, and later said that he was sorry that
Leigh had come. But, when he saw that Leigh's feelings
were hurt, he arose from his seat, and took one of his old
word as he did so in his kindest tone.
More than once, when he was attempting to make a
fresh will, his mind reverted to the desire to emancipate all
his slaves that was such a rich refrain in his life; though
in executing a previous will which was stricken down after
his death, as the fruit of mental incompetency, he had
forsaken for a time this purpose. He had a small phial of
the opiate that he was in the habit of using so freely after
his return from Russia. It was labelled "poison," and he
declared that he kept this phial so that he could use its
contents to put an end to his existence in case he should do
anything dishonorable. Much else had been completely
transformed, but his honorable spirit still strove to work
itself free from the murk of insanity.[11]
(a)
"I am fast sinking," he said, "into an opium-eating sot;
but, please God! I will shake off the incubus yet before I die;
for, whatever difference of opinion may exist on the subject of
suicide, there can be none as to `rushing into the presence of our
Creator' in a state of drunkenness, whether produced by opium
or brandy."[12]
But even the sad Acheron or the black Cocytus of
mental distraction is lit up by a momentary gleam now
and then. In the possession of the Library of Congress,
are quite a number of letters written by Randolph to
Andrew Jackson between the date of his return from
Russia and the date of his temporary restoration to reason
in May, 1832; and it is impossible to note some of the
vagaries that play over these letters, melancholy as is the
infirmity revealed by them as a whole, without a smile. It
is certain that such an irascible man as Andrew Jackson
would never have submitted as patiently as he did to
of his first and second cabinets had he not been fully
conscious of the mental irresponsibility of the writer.
In one letter, Randoph expressed his regret that Jackson
had been surrounded by such advisers, with a single
exception, as the members of his first cabinet; and also his
fear that "Leviathan" (the Bank of the United States)
had too many friends among the members of his second
cabinet, and that this was true not only of the "monster in
Chestnut Street" but of the "American System" and
Internal Improvements too.[13]
In a later letter, Randolph declared that Jackson's first
Lord of the Treasury was most assuredly leading him
to the Caudian Forks where he must be politically
Burgoyned.[14]
In another letter, he informed Jackson that he deemed
it his duty to tell him as a friend that he was surrounded
by evil counsellors.[15]
In the same letter, with his usual
honesty, sane or insane, he let Jackson know that his views
differed from his in regard to the Tariff, Internal Improvements,
and the Distribution of the Federal Surplus, and
that, if Jackson were a friend of the Chestnut Street
Monster, as he was its bitter enemy, it would be impossible
for him to support him cordially.
Later, in still another letter, he hinted that "Leviathan"
was making loans to needy members of Congress
and to Cabinet ministers in embarrassed circumstances,
who had houses full of children and no estate.[16]
In yet another letter, he warned Jackson that, if the
latter did not avert the impending struggle between the
great slave-holding interest and the Federal Government
by a prompt redress of the intolerable wrongs of that
In this letter, he also said:
"I am resolute not to assist in the subjugation of South
Carolina; but, if she does move (as I fear she will), to make
common cause with her against the usurpations of the Federal
Government and of the Supreme Court especially. The late
infamous decision of those minions of arbitrary power will
give us Georgia. Everything south of Ohio, except perhaps
Kentucky and the western district of Virginia, must be with us.
With this noble country and Cuba, where we can make a hogshead
of sugar as easily as a pound can be grown on the
Mississippi or in Florida, we shall have a vast empire capable of
indefinite improvement and of supporting easily 40,000,000
of people."
With Havana and the Bay of Tampa, the only port in the
Gulf of Mexico capable of receiving a first rate line-of-battle
ship, they would have, Randolph also said, a slipknot
around the throat of the Mississippi, and could
strangle the commerce of the "free States," northwest of
the River Ohio, if these States gave them any annoyance.
The imminence of a deadly breach between the Northern
and Southern portions of the United States was not so
great, however, that one of the proudest men in the world,
when he was himself, could not urge Jackson in this letter
to send him as our minister either to London, where Van
Buren then was, or to Paris.
"Van," he said, "is the best of the set, but he is too great an
intriguer, and besides wants personal dignity and weight of
character. He is an adroit, dapper, little managing man,
but he can't inspire respect, much less veneration. He is very
well in his place—not where he now is, because the English
are the most fastidious people on earth. You may talk as
much nonsense as you please, but you must not betray a
want of education. Now, Van Buren cannot speak or write
the fashionable raised at his false pronunciation. He always
says `consitherable' for considerable, etc., etc. A single
substitution of will for shall, or a single false quantity would
blow him up. (a) For either of these embassies I offer you my
services. For that of England I am more fit than any man I
know, unless perhaps Mr. Gallatin. For that and a popular
assembly or a public meeting I am particularly well qualified.
You must not send needy people abroad but especially to
England. Your minister there must give as well as receive dinners.
I ask no outfit—let the one I have serve, and I will go,
stay out my two, three or four years. Don't mistake me, I
am not asking for office—I scorn it and spurn the idea."
In a subsequent letter from Roanoke, Randolph's mind,
or what was left of it, was still running on the same subject,
and he said that, if Jackson would send him to England as
an unpaid, secret, confidential agent, he would discharge
the duties of the mission gratuitously; that his character
stood high with all parties in England; that Lords Harrowby,
Calthorpe, and Wynford, late Chief Justice of the
Bench of Common Pleas, looked upon him as a high aristocrat,
and that even old Eldon was in the habit of giving
him a nod of recognition. "I stand well with every
interest in England," he said. "There I am Alcibiades;
here Diogenes." In the same letter, Randolph further
said: "In a word I can do, and, if you shall permit me, I
will do, our country and your administration more service
for nothing than you can procure from all your diplomatic
troops abroad, and I serve volunteer and find myself. I
do not ask even a ration."[18]
Granting that Alcibiades and Diogenes were not beyond
the range of Andrew Jackson's early classical education,
he must have felt somewhat perplexed when he received
these words in an earlier letter from Randolph:
"But, my dear Sir, your letter has lifted a load from my
mind and put me where I hope ever to stand in my own court
towards you—on a footing of unreserved confidence and
esteem, and, so long as I have this feeling in my own breast, I
shall feel assured of your reciprocal friendship for me. If
Alexander be satisfied of the friendship of Hephæstus, he will
care little about his estimation of his lieutenants. Now, although
you are not Alexander (that would be fulsome flattery),
and I trust that I am something better than his minion (the
nature of their connection, if I forget not, was Greek love),
yet, if I could discern in your lieutenants an Eumenes, or even
an Antigonus, Lysimachus, Perdiccas or Antipater he should
have my voice."[19]
These various letters were attended by an accompaniment
of violent abuse aimed at various public
characters:
Ritchie was holding with the hare and running with the
hounds, and, if the bug were worth his resentment, he
could crush him.[20]
Clay had cut his throat with his own tongue.[21]
Calhoun, who had always had a knack of turning young
men's heads, when he was young himself and with a great
character for talents, and yet greater for stern uncompromising
public virtue, had turned out to be an old
battered "He-Bawd"; another Sir Pandarus of Troy,
quoad procurement of offices for his adherents, in order to
obtain the highest for himself.[22]
(a)
We have dwelt upon these babblings of a deranged
intellect largely for the purpose of bringing out the gross
injustice of the hostile or unreflecting writers, notably
Powhatan Bouldin, who have garnished their pages with
extravagant incidents culled from the later years of
was even when sane.
In May, 1832, as we have said, Randolph's mind became
lucid. On the first occasion, when the change became
truly obvious to John Marshall, he was alone with him.
During the interview, Randolph burst into tears and said:
"Bear with me, my friend; this is unmanly, but I am hard
pressed." Apparently he was suffering great pain.
"It is impossible—I speak it reverently—," he further
said, "that the Almighty himself, consistent with his holy
counsel, can withhold this bitter cup. It is necessary to
afflict me thus to subdue my stubborn will." He then shut
his eyes, uttered a few words of prayer audibly, and then
seemed to be praying in a low whisper.[23]
Subsequently,
there was a marked improvement in his appetite, his
spirits, and his disposition. He even gained flesh, or,
rather perhaps, as he put it on a previous occasion in his
life, skin. His temper became cheerful and his judgments
of men, including his political enemies, kinder.[24]
But, even
after the lapse of three or four months, the reaction in his
condition had not been so decided that he could not
describe it as wretched in the extreme.[25]
In one respect, insanity did not work any change in
Randolph at all. The political convictions, which he
expressed to Andrew Jackson, when he was insane, were
but his convictions both before he lost, and after he
recovered, his reason. With his return to sanity, he did
not abate one jot of his stern enmity to the United States
Bank, or the protective tariff. While his mind was still
in eclipse, he had said in a letter:
"I know Jackson to be firm on the Bank of the United
States, and I believe the tariff too. In United States Bank
stock there will be a fall, for everything is settled by the London
prices, and there will be a panic; but the bank will bribe
coming into Congress next election si le Roy (peuple) le veut.
When the Union shall crumble to pieces, the bank will stand;
the courts and its debtors will sustain it in each grain of our
rope of sand."[26]
If this prophecy proved false, and the bank did crumble
before the Union, it was only because neither bank nor
anything else could well withstand the Bersekir rage of
Andrew Jackson at its worst. Afterwards, when the
bright disk of Randolph's mind was no longer darkened,
he came to the aid of Jackson in a vigorous letter to Mark
Alexander, of Virginia, one of his former Congressional
colleagues:
"I have just received," he said, "your blank envelope
covering the Telegraph of the 21st. I write to entreat you to
tell Warren R. Davis and his colleagues (alas! for poor Johnston)
that, if by their votes the United States Bank bill shall
pass the House of Representatives, they will receive the curses
loud and deep of every old-school Republican of the South.
To embarrass Jackson is a small gain compared with saddling
the country with that worst and most flagrant of the usurpations
of the Federal Government and the most dangerous
engine against the rights and very existence of the States. I
am warm and abrupt, but I am dying, and have not time to be
more courtly and circumlocutory. The tariff, the internal
improvement jobs, and the Supreme Court combined are not to
be put into the scale against this accursed thing. The man
who supports the bank, and denounces the tariff as unconstitutional,
may take his choice between knave or fool, unless
he admits that he is both. In one case, the power to lay duties,
excises, etc., is granted; in the other no such power is given.
The true key is that the abuse under pretence of exercise of any
power (midnight judiciary, etc.) is unconstitutional. This
unlocks every difficulty. Killing a man may be justifiable
homicide, chance medley, manslaughter or murder according
honest exercise of a power may be blamed, but it is not unconstitutional;
but every usurped power (as the bank) is so."[27]
The bank bill passed both houses of Congress, but was
vetoed by Jackson, who never rested until "Leviathan"
was floating lifeless on its side with its white upturned
belly exposed to scorn. But, before Jackson vetoed the
bank bill, events had been in train to produce a lasting
rupture between Jackson and Randolph. The latter
hated, with an inappeasable hatred, the protective tariff,
which, beginning in 1824, throve so rapidly on the successive
triumphs of its own greedy rapacity that Randolph
could say of it even more truly in 1832 than he had said
of it in 1824:
"I cannot believe that we are at any time hereafter long
to be exempt from the demands of those sturdy beggars who
will take no denial. Every concession does but render every
fresh demand and new concession more easy. It is like those
dastard nations who vainly think to buy peace."[28]
Subsequently, when the truth was brought home to him
that South Carolina was inflexibly resolved to nullify
the tariff of 1832, that Jackson was inflexibly resolved to
enforce the laws of the Union at any cost of treasure or
blood, and that the principle of State Sovereignty, to
which he had been so long attached, was about to be
sacrificed between the very horns of its own altar, he felt
that the time had come, much as he admired the man of
whom he had so often spoken as the "old hero," and
deeply grateful as he was to him for his unfailing loyalty,
gentleness, and compassion, to live up to the assurance
that he had given to Edward Everett in his speech on
Retrenchment and Reform, when he turned upon Everett
with these words:
"The gentleman from Massachusetts warned us that, if the
individual we seek to elevate shall succeed, he will in his turn
become the object of public pursuit, and that the same pack
will be unkennelled at his heels that have run his rival down.
It may be so. I have no hesitation to say that, if his conduct
shall deserve it, and I live, I shall be one of that pack; because
I maintain the interest of stockholders, against presidents,
directors, and cashiers."[29]
Randolph had already, with the first flashes of the coming
storm, declared that he would have himself buckled on his
horse, Radical, and would fight for the South to the last
breath.[30]
And now, feeble as he was, he passed from county
to county in his former district, summoning all who had ever
felt the spell of his eye or voice to the shock of the direful
and bloody contest which seemed to be actually at hand.
As soon as he had heard of the Proclamation issued
against South Carolina by Jackson, of which it may be
said in the words of John Adams about an earlier event
in our history slightly paraphrased, "Then was the child
Nationality born," he wrote to Dr. Brockenbrough:
"Your letter of the 12th was received late last night, whilst
I was under the influence of morphine and blue-pill; but, such
was the interest I took in it and in the Jesuitical comments
of Mr. `Enquirer' Ritchie on the ferocious and bloodthirsty
proclamation of our Djezzar Pacha, (a) that I did not close an
eye until daybreak. I am now just out of bed (1 o'clock P.M.)
and not more than half alive; indeed not so much. The
apathy of our people is most alarming. 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."[31]
A week or so later, Randolph wrote to Jacob Harvey:
"My life is ebbing fast. What will the New York Evening
Post say to Ritchie's apology for the proclamation in his Enquirer
of the 1st inst? Never was there so impudent a thing. It
seems then that the President did not know, good easy man,
what his proclamation contained. Verily, I believe it. He is
now all for law and the civil power and shudders at blood.
`Save me from my friends,' is a good old Spanish proverb, but
his soi disant friends are his bitterest enemies, and use him as a
tool for their own unhallowed purposes of guilty ambition.
They have first brought him into odium and then sunk him
into contempt! Alas! Alas!"[32]
Later, during the same month, Randolph wrote to
Harvey:
"I am now much worse than when I wrote you last and see
no probability of my ever recovering sufficiently to leave this
place. The springs of life are worn out. Indeed, in the
abject state of the public mind, there is nothing worth living
for. It is a merciful dispensation of Providence that death
can release the captive from the clutches of the tyrant. I was
not born to endure a master; I could not brook military
despotism in Europe, but at home it is not to be endured. I
could not have believed that the people would so soon have
shown themselves unfit for free government. I leave to
General Jackson, and the Hartford men, and the ultra Federalists
and tories, and the office-holders and office-seekers,
their triumph over the liberties of the country. They will stand
damned to everlasting fame."[33]
In his speeches to the People of his former District,
though so frail that he had to speak for the most part from
his chair, he spoke at least once, as we shall see further
on, with commanding power. Nor did he ever exhibit
more address, perseverance, or masterful force of will
denunciatory of the political doctrines promulgated
in the Proclamation. Andrew Jackson did not lack
friends in Randolph's home district; nor were patriotic and
clear-sighted men wanting in it who had no sympathy
whatever with the nullification movement inaugurated
by Calhoun and the other South Carolina leaders of his
faction; but Randolph's former constituents, as a rule,
were infatuated with his extreme ideas about State Sovereignty
and, wherever he went, with but little dissent, they
adopted his resolutions condemning the Proclamation.
With the nullification dogma of Calhoun Randolph had
no patience whatever. Subtle abstractions were always
abhorrent to his practical mind; but the right of
Revolution, that is the right of renouncing the Federal
Union altogether in a proper cause, was one that nothing
could have induced him to surrender. As far back as the
tariff discussion in 1824, he had said:
"And I say again, if we are to submit to such usurpations,
give me George Grenville, give me Lord North for a master.
It is in this point of view that I most deprecate the bill. If
from the language I have used, any gentleman shall believe I
am not as much attached to this Union as anyone on this
floor, he will labor under a great mistake. But there is no
magic in this word Union; I value it as the means of preserving
the liberty and happiness of the people. Marriage itself is a
good thing; but the marriages of Mezentius were not so
esteemed. The marriage of Sinbad the Sailor with the corse
of his deceased wife was an union; and just such an union will
this be if by a bare majority in both Houses this bill shall
become a law."[34]
(a)
Even through the distorting haze of madness, with the
prescience which was one of his remarkable gifts, he had
seen the real significance of the conflict between South
tariff. He had predicted that civil war was at hand; that
South Carolina would fight, and that Jackson would then
indeed hang as high as Haman Calhoun, Hayne, McDuffie,
and Hamilton, the chiefs of the Nullification Party
in South Carolina, if he could lay his hands on them. In
one of his distraught moments he wrote to Jackson that
Calhoun had fallen into the very trap that had caught
and destroyed Clay: "He is self-mutilated," he declared;
"like the fanatic that emasculated himself."[35]
Towards the end of the year 1832, after he had recovered
his reason, Randolph wrote to Jackson: "I wish most
intensely that I could have even half an hour's interview
with you."[36]
Two days later, he wrote to him that he was
then in a situation to recede with dignity, and that he
spoke the language of many of Jackson's staunchest
friends when he expressed the hope that Jackson would
give to their sister, South Carolina, ample time for consideration.[37]
And now, knowing as few knew, how unbending
Jackson's will was, he was more than willing even to
call in his arch foe, Henry Clay, as a buffer between it
and the Commonwealth upon which it was about to
descend with inexorable force.
In his speech at Buckingham Court House, Randolph is
reported as saying to his audience:
"I cannot express to you how deeply I am penetrated
with a sense of the danger which at this moment threatens its
existence [the existence of the Union]. 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;
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."[38]
But it was at Charlotte Court House, on Feb. 4, 1833,
that Randolph shone at this time as few men have ever
done when they could say of themselves truthfully as he
said of himself on this occasion that the prostration of
their mental powers had kept so closely abreast with that
of their bodily that it was hard for them to decide which
rode the foremost horse. His object at this meeting, to
use a modern political term, was to "jam through," by
his eloquence and over-bearing will, a series of resolutions
condemning the Proclamation.
Happily for us, Winslow Robinson was the Secretary of
the meeting, and drew up a report of its proceedings which
was long, if it is not still, preserved. The report says that
Randolph was in a state of extreme feebleness; that he had
traversed the distance between Roanoke and Charlotte
Court House [some 12 or 13 miles] the day before; that
he was lifted to his seat on the bench of the County Court;
and that he rose and spoke a few minutes; but soon sat
down exhausted and continued to speak sitting; though
sometimes for a moment the excitement of his feelings
brought him to his feet; and that he ended his speech by
moving a set of resolutions of which a copy was annexed to
the report.[39]
It was at Randolph's request that the use of the Court
House for the occasion had been permitted, and at his
request, too, the County magistrates who held their
sessions in it adjourned as soon as he appeared in the building.
He made the requests because in his debilitated
condition at that time it was necessary for him to measure
out his strength drop by drop.[40]
By Bouldin we are told that he began with three dress
coats on, but that before he concluded he had on only one,
and that he spoke with a glass of toddy beside him from
which he drank freely from time to time.[41]
The resolutions submitted by Randolph on this occasion
are worth reading, if for no other reason because of
the lucidity and point which characterize everything of
this kind that ever left his hands. The last resolution
of the series relates to the mission upon which Benjamin
Watkins Leigh had been recently sent by the State of Virginia
to South Carolina for the purpose of promoting a
reconciliation between that State and the Federal
Government.
"1. Resolved, that, while we retain a grateful sense of the
many services rendered by Andrew Jackson, Esq., to the
United States, we owe it to our country and to our posterity
to make our solemn protest against many of the doctrines of
his late proclamation.
"2. Resolved, that Virginia `is, and of right ought to be,
a free, sovereign, and independent State;' that she became so
by her own separate act, which has been since recognized by
all the civilized world, and has never been disavowed, retracted,
or in any wise impaired or weakened by any subsequent act of
hers.
"3. Resolved, that when, for purposes of common defence
and common welfare, Virginia entered into a strict league of
amity and alliance with the other twelve colonies of British
North America, she parted with no portion of her sovereignty,
although, from the necessity of the case, the authority to enforce
obedience thereto was, in certain cases and for certain,
purposes, delegated to the common agents of the whole
Confederacy.
"4. Resolved, that Virginia has never parted with the
right to recall the authority so delegated for good and sufficient
cause, and to secede from the Confederacy, whenever she shall
the means of securing liberty and happiness, and not the end
to which these should be sacrificed.
"5. Resolved, that the ALLEGIANCE of the people of
Virginia is due to HER; that to her their obedience is due,
while to them she owes protection against all the consequences
of such obedience.
"6. Resolved, that we have seen with deep regret that
Andrew Jackson, Esq., President of the United States, has
been influenced by designing counsellers to subserve the
purposes of their own guilty ambition, to disavow the principles
to which he owed his election to the Chief Magistracy of
the Government of the United States, and to transfer his real
friends and supporters, bound hand and foot, to the tender
mercies of his and their bitterest enemies—the ultra-Federalists,
ultra-bank, ultra-internal improvement, and Hartford
Convention, men—the habitual scoffers at States Rights—and
to their instrument—the venal and prostituted press—by
which they have endeavored, and but too successfully, to
influence and mislead public opinion.
"7. Resolved, that Virginia will be found her own worst
enemy, whenever she consents to number among her friends
those who are never true to themselves but when they are
false to their country.
"8. Resolved, that we owe it to justice, while denouncing
the portentous combination between General Jackson and
the late unhallowed coalition of his and our enemies, to acquit
Them of any dereliction of principle, and to acknowledge that
they have but acted in their vocation.
"9. Resolved, that we cannot consent to adopt principles
which we have always disavowed, merely because they have
been adopted by the President; and, although we believe that
we shall be in a lean and proscribed minority, we are prepared
again to take up our cross, confident of success under that
banner, so long as we keep the faith, and can have access to the
public ear.
"10. Resolved, that, while we utterly reprobate the doctrine
of Nullification, as equally weak and mischievous, we cannot
for that reason give our countenance to principles equally
of the People.
"11. Resolved, that we highly approve of the mission of
Benjamin Watkins Leigh, not only as in itself expedient and
judicious, but as uniting upon the man the best qualified,
whether for abilities, integrity, and principles, moral and
political, beyond all others in the Commonwealth or in the
United States, for the high, arduous, and delicate task which
has been devolved upon him by the unanimous suffrage of the
Assembly, and as we believe of the people.[42]
(a)
"Chairman."
The submission of the resolutions was followed by a
powerful speech of Randolph's which was heard by two
auditors whose impressions we shall bring forward in a
later chapter of this book. On motion they were referred
to a committee, consisting of the following gentlemen,
whose family names, so strange to the eyes of many of our
readers, and yet so familiar to every resident of Charlotte
County, we recall, if for no other reason, because nothing
could more convincingly establish than a little inquiry
into the standing of these gentlemen would do how happy
in many respects, most vital to the well-being of a
Commonwealth, was any community in which the suffrage
was limited to such a class of individuals as they represented:
Col. Clement Carrington, Captain Thomas Pettus,
Henry A. Watkins, William M. Watkins, Robert
Morton, Samuel D. Morton, John Coleman, B. W. Lester,
George Hannah, John Marshall, John Thomas, John H.
Thomas, Henry Madison, Dr. Isaac Read, William B.
Green, Joseph Friend, Edward B. Fowlkes, Matthew J.
Williams, Samuel Venable, William Bacon, John Booth,
Francis Barnes, William H. Dennis, Richard Venable, Jr.,
Joseph M. Daniel, Thomas F. Spencer, Paul Carrington,
Marshall, J. H. Marshall, Cornelius Barnes, Dr. Hoge,
Dr. Bouldin, Elisha Hundley, Dr. Patillo, Dr. Edwin
Price, Dr. Garden, Samuel Daniel, Winslow Robinson,
Nicholas Edmunds, Major Gaines, R. I. Gaines, Henry
Carrington, Edward W. Henry, Thomas T. Bouldin,
James W. Bouldin, William B. Watkins, Anderson Morton,
John Morton, Thomas A. Morton, Martin Hancock,
D. B. Hancock, Clement Hancock, Colonel H. Spencer,
G. C. Friend, Jacob Morton, Wyatt Cardwell, William
Smith, Colonel Thomas Read, Thomas Read, Archibald
A. Davidson, William T. Scott, Major Thomas Nelson,
Isham Harvey, Dr. Joel Watkins, T. E. Watkins, Major
Samuel Baldwin, Robert Carrington, and John Randolph
of Roanoke.[43]
When Randolph, who was practically the Dictator of
the occasion, was making up the committee, he exclaimed:
"Call Col. Clem Carrington, the man who shed his blood
at Eutaw—none of your drunken stagger-weeds of the
court yard!" Col. Carrington came forward with his hat
in his hand; but, when requested to endorse the resolutions,
he promptly said: "I am for Jackson and the
Union, Sir," and retired.
"Mr. Green," Randolph said, addressing Wm. B. Green,
"I know you are dead shot against Jackson, and I appoint
you one of the Committee." Mr. Green replied: "I
am also dead shot against Nullification"; but, after some
explanations by Randolph, Green, to his lasting regret
consented to serve upon the committee, as did several
other dissidents who were brought over by Randolph
in the same way.[44]
When appointed, the members of the committee organized
with Capt. Henry A. Watkins in the chair, and with
Winslow Robinson as Secretary. Capt. William M.
future day, but the motion was lost; whereupon he withdrew
from the committee; and the resolutions were
adopted seriatim, with only a scattering opposition here
and there to any of them.[45] (a)
Before they were adopted, however, a painful colloquy
had taken place between Randolph and Captain William
M. Watkins. Addressing himself to the Captain, Randolph
declared that he did not "expect an old Yazoo
speculator to approve of them." In reply, Watkins rose
and denied that he was any such speculator; but Randolph,
looking him steadily in the face pointed his long forefinger
at him and said: "You are a Yazoo man, Mr.
Watkins." Again, Capt. Watkins rose, agitated and
embarrassed, and entered into some explanations; and
again, with the same deliberation, Randolph simply
repeated: "You are a Yazoo man, Mr. Watkins." A
third time, Capt. Watkins rose, this time overwhelmed
with chagrin and mortification; but, as he rose, it was only
to face the same accusing finger and the same unrelenting
indictment: "You are a Yazoo man"; and there was
nothing for him to do except to retire from the meeting.[46]
Of the general impression created by Randolph on this
occasion upon his audience, it is enough at this time to
mention that; in concluding his report, Winslow Robinson
says that, in responding to a final resolution of the meeting,
thanking him for his open and decided support of the
rights of the States and his strenuous and efficient opposition
to the odious consolidating doctrine of the President's
late proclamation, Mr. Randolph expressed his thanks
in a speech of considerable length, in the course of which
all the warmest sympathies which had so long united
him to his old constituents seemed to be awakened; and
that on the breaking up of the meeting they parted with
Until recently, the fact seems to have been lost sight of
that Randolph did go with his brother Beverley to Washington
in the winter of 1832-33. They had an interview
with Jackson, and, afterwards, were among the guests to
whom he gave a dinner at the White House. So provoked,
however, was Jackson by a certain article which appeared
in the Telegraph at this time, and which he attributed
to Randolph, that, when Beverley Tucker subsequently
called at the White House, Jackson, supposing that Randolph
was with him, sent word that he was too busy to see
them.
Letter from J. R. to H. A. Watkins, Jan. 21, 1832, filed in Coalter's
Exor. vs. Randolph's exor., Cl'k's Office, Cir. Ct., Petersburg, Va.
The attacks made by Randolph on Judge Bouldin and Dr. Crump at
this meeting are especially to be regretted, in view of the fact that Judge
Bouldin had been one of his intimate friends, as Randolph's Diary and
journals show; and Dr. Crump such a fiery partisan of his that when he met
Samuel McDowell Moore, after the scurrilous speech which the latter had
made against the re-election of Randolph to the United States Senate, he
came to blows with him over the matter. "Watkins Leigh," Randolph
once wrote to Dudley, "is well, much fattened and inspirited by matrimony.
Bouldin, too, is here; a heavy draft from our country of abilities and
integrity." Jan. 24, 1814, Letters to a Y. R., 151. Strange to say, it was
when Judge Bouldin was announcing the death of Randolph, that he
dropped dead in the middle of a sentence on the floor of the House of Representatives.
Letters and Times of the Tylers, by Tyler, v. 1. 507.
William M. Watkins voted against Randolph in 1813, and Randolph,
perhaps, never entirely forgot the fact; though their relations, on the whole,
remained those of good friends. On one occasion, Randolph expressed the
conviction that but for Watkins' propensity to drink, he might have been,
and ought to have been, and would have been, the first man in Charlotte
County and Randolph's District, and (as far as Randolph knew) South
of James River. Letter from J. R. to H. A. Watkins, Jan. 24, 1832,
Randolph Will Litigation at Petersburg.
Even were no allowance to be made for Randolph's intensive habits of
speech, what he says about this tavern would hardly deserve the significance
which sectional writers like Henry Adams and James Parton have hastened
to impart to it: "The taverns along the road (from Boston to Washington)
hostelries were the horror of civilized travellers." Life of Quincy, 72. In
other words, there were few good taverns or inns to be found anywhere in the
United States in Randolph's time; and besides it is only fair to the poorer
Virginia taverns and inns of that period to admit that their sorry quality
was due to some extent to the generous habits of private hospitality which
prevailed in Virginia. "The truth is," we are told by Dr. James Waddell
Alexander, "`comfort' in Virginia is not at public but private houses; the
case being reversed in Northern cities." 40 Yrs.' Letters, v. 2, 213.
John Randolph Bryan was told by Mrs. Wyatt Cardwell that, once when
Randolph was under her husband's roof at Charlotte Court House at this
time, he declared that he saw devils going up and down a stairway that
landed in his room; and that she had had his bedstead moved around so that
his back might be turned to the stairway; whereupon, after a time, he
looked revived, and told her that she had changed his polarity, and, by doing
so, saved his life. J. R. B. to Mr. Robertson, March 27, 1878, Bryan MSS.
"The interest which you express in my well being and the anxiety which
you have manifested for my safety demand every acknowledgment at my
hands. I am not careless of life. I am perhaps more than sufficiently attached
to it; but I do not, I cannot, value it so highly as to wish to hold it
with dishonor." J. R. to J. M. Garnett, July 5, 1806, J. M. Garnett, Jr., MSS.
The observations of Van Buren, in his Autobiography, on Randolph are
deeply tinged by his knowledge of a confidential letter, which he says was
written to Jackson by Randolph in an effort to create discord between
Jackson and Van Buren, and especially by a series of letters, of which this
may have been one, in which, Van Buren says, Randolph labored to
divert Jackson from the purpose of making Van Buren his successor in the
Presidency; and also, to some extent, by the chagrin resulting from the
partisan clamor excited by the departure of Randolph from St. Petersburg.
Pp. 12 and 420. But the Autobiography pays more than one striking
tribute to Randolph's intellectual and social endowments. In one place
Van Buren speaks of the "sparkling clearness" of his perceptions; in
another place he tells us that, though Randolph was occasionally melancholy
and irritable, he was generally lively, and, at times, remarkably
fascinating. Pp. 428, 430. And in still another place he more than confirms
what Sawyer has told us about Randolph's conversational characteristics
and powers: "He avoided as a general rule the subjects under discussion
in Congress, apparently glad to drop them and to recreate his mind in fresh
fields. Except when something of unusual piquancy was afoot, and when
left to himself, Virginia, her public men of earlier days, her people and her
ast condition, the character, the life, of his deceased brother, Richard,
talked better than I ever heard another man talk." P. 431. The general
estimate that Van Buren formed of Randolph's abilities and attainments is
expressed in the Autobiography in these words: "That he was a man of
extraordinary intelligence, well educated, well informed on most subjects,
thoroughly grounded in the history and rationale of the Constitution and of
the Government that was formed under it, eloquent in debate, and wielding a
power of invective superior to that of any man of his day, is unquestionable;
but with all these liberal endowments he lacked a balance wheel to regulate
his passions and to guide his judgment." P. 427.
Notwithstanding the coincidence of opinion which existed between
Randolph and Calhoun in some respects, their relations were never thoroughly
cordial; though there was a time when Calhoun spared no effort to
conciliate the support of Randolph in his Presidential aspirations. "He
is full of zeal, and almost makes love to Mr. M. (Macon) and another gent
you wot of," Randolph wrote to Tazewell. "He thinks that he will use us
for his ends. Quant à moi I shall go along with him very cheerfully until
I come to the `fork of the roads' that leads to my house, when, if he
will go home with me, well! and welcome! If not, I shall go home."
Feb. 28, 1826, L. W. Tazewell, Jr., MSS. In the first instance, Randolph
was kept from forming any intimacy with Calhoun by their wide divergence
on the subject of the War of 1812, and afterwards by the feud
between Calhoun and Andrew Jackson. Evidence is not wanting, however,
that Randolph had an underlying admiration for Calhoun, such as was
indicated by his remark on one occasion that Calhoun was a strong man
armed in mail. Nathan Loughborough MSS.
A member of Mr. Seaton's family, writing from Virginia, early in 1833,
says: "Mr. Randolph has been staying with us, but so feeble that he could
not leave his room. He talks as much and as wonderfully as usual, and is, if
possible, more witty and eccentric than ever. Cousin J. remarked to him
that he was surprised to see him persist in the exploded fashion of wearing
round-toed shoes. `Oh,' replied Mr. Randolph, `I am like Ritchie—I
neither track the one way nor the other.' " William Winston Seaton, A
Biographical Sketch, 152.
In a letter to James M. Garnett written before this speech was made,
Randolph, after saying that it was very plain to him that, if "Count Tariff"
carried his project, the slave States would be better off as English colonies
than nominal allies to his Countship, observed: "At this time I would not
give one farthing for all the benefit that Virginia and North Carolina get
from the General Government. The burthens which the British Parliament
would have imposed upon us were feathers compared with brother
one as the other; neither having the indispensable qualification of a common
interest and common feeling with us." Roanoke, Nov. 1, 1823, J. M. Garnett,
Jr., MSS.
Of these resolutions, Martin Van Buren says in his Autobiography: "I
do not believe that it was in the power of any one of our public men then on
the stage of action to set forth the principles therein advocated in a manner
so precise, lucid and statesmanlike as distinguished those resolutions." 424.
| CHAPTER I John Randolph of Roanoke, 1773-1833 | |