John Randolph of Roanoke, 1773-1833 a biography based largely on new material |
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| I. | Volume I |
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 | John Randolph of Roanoke, 1773-1833 |  |
Volume I
"There are along the river [the James] the ruins of many houses, which
I was told had been accidentally burnt by the negroes whose carelessness
is productive of infinite mischief." Notes on a Journey in America, by
Morris Birkbeck (3rd Ed.), 1818, 14. Three of the Southside Virginia
houses which sheltered Randolph during the different stages of his existence
—Cawsons, Matoax and Bizarre—were consumed by fire, and so also, in
1879, was the frame dwelling which was one of the two buildings in which
he lived at Roanoke, after it had become the home of the Hon. Wood Bouldin,
an upright and able judge, whose memory is still cherished in Virginia.
Among the painful things in that clever, but repulsive, book, The Education
of Henry Adams, is the detraction to which Adams subjects the intellectual
character of General William Henry Fitzhugh, or "Roony," Lee,
who was one of his classmates at Harvard on the eve of the Civil War.
He was not a scholar, he had no mental training, he was very simple in
character, no one knew enough to know how ignorant he was—these are
some of the kindly observations that Adams had to make, after the mellowing
lapse of forty-seven years, on a college comrade, for whom he says
that he entertained an unbroken and even warm friendship. It was such
friendship as this, we imagine, that first provoked the question: "What
is friendship but a name?" Indeed, so confidential does Adams become
with his readers that he even tells them that, when Gen. Winfield Scott
offered young Lee a military commission, the latter asked Adams to write
his letter of acceptance for him. This confidence, however, we confess
is not highly enough appreciated by us, at any rate, to make us forget the
observation of Henry S. Randall, the biographer of Jefferson (v. 2, p. 210)
that under such circumstances the well settled rule among gentlemen is
that the publication of the authorship should depend entirely upon the
will of the ostensible author. Altogether, as the result of his "momentary
contact" with Lee and two other Virginians in his class, whom, with Lee,
he likens to Sioux Indians, out of place, Adams declares that his self-esteem
as a Yankee was flattered by gaining the slow conviction that the Southerner,
with his slave-holding limitations, was as little fit to succeed in the
struggle of modern life as though he were still a maker of stone axes, living
in caves, and hunting the bos primigenius. If Lee did not shine as a scholar
in such a malignant manner for the purpose of disparaging not only him
but a whole people, especially as it is not necessary to go outside of the
Lee family to find two persons who did excel in academic competition;
namely, Robert E. Lee, who stood second in his class at West Point, and
George Washington Custis Lee, his son, who stood first in his at the same
institution—facts the importance of which it would be much easier to
exaggerate, if, like "Roony" Lee at Harvard, Ulysses S. Grant and "Stonewall"
Jackson had not had but a poor scholastic standing at West Point.
It must be admitted, of course, that "Roony" Lee lacked the literary
capacity—to say nothing of the unwholesome nature and dreary views
both of this world and the next necessary for the composition of such a book
as The Education of Henry Adams; which was but the last convulsive twitch
that its author gave to the dull ear of public attention when he had all
but relinquished in despair the hope of ever acquiring a solid fame like
that of his three immediate ancestors. It is certain, too, that "Roony"
Lee lacked the inclination, whether he lacked the ability or not, to fill such
a post as Adams filled abroad during the Civil War, when "the sweet
clarion's breath" was stirring "the soldier's scorn of death," and thousands
of gallant young men, such as his brother, Charles Francis Adams, the
younger, and "Roony" Lee, were sealing their faith with their blood on
the battlefields of Virginia. But if "Roony" Lee could not have written
The Education of Henry Adams, could Henry Adams have successfully
commanded a brigade in the Army of Northern Virginia, or in the Army of
the Potomac? The question, of course, cannot be put without a smile; and,
if Adams could not, then until human ideas about the relative merit of
academic writers and men of action shall undergo a profounder change
than they have yet undergone, the public judgment will be slow to consign
"Roony" Lee to the humble place in the scale of intellectual superiority
to which Adams consigns him, and will readily find a sufficient compensation
for any scholastic deficiencies that may have been justly attributed
to him at Harvard in the description which Henry Adams himself gives of
him in other respects: "Tall, largely built, handsome, genial, with liberal
Virginian openness towards all he liked, he had also the Virginian habit of
command, and took leadership as his natural habit." Nor will the fact be
overlooked that two much more remarkable men than either Henry Adams
or "Roony" Lee—Robert E. Lee and Ulysses S. Grant—did not disdain
in their military careers to avail themselves freely of the literary facility of
Col. Charles Marshall and General Adam Badeau, respectively. "Roony"
Lee was a gallant and skillful officer and an indefatigable and useful member
of Congress, and it can be truly said that in private life his sterling
virtues, amiable traits, and manners as bland and gentle as his heart was
brave and inspiring to the hearts of others endeared him to all who knew him.
It would be easy to mention not a few living descendants of William
Randolph of Turkey Island, who are successfully sustaining the prestige
engineer; John Randolph Bland, of Baltimore, the founder and President
of the United States Fidelity and Guaranty Co., one of the great guaranty
and fidelity companies of the world; Harold Randolph, of Baltimore, the
Director of the Peabody Conservatory of Music, and John Skelton Williams,
Comptroller of the Currency, under the administration of Woodrow
Wilson. At one time in the present century, a majority of the Virginia
Supreme Court of Appeals, Judges James Keith, George M. Harrison, and
Stafford G. Whittle, were descendants of William Randolph. Some Lawyers
in Colonial Va., by Armistead C. Gordon.
"I know one of my ancestors was a gentleman," declared Randolph,
"for he was a king." Nathan Loughborough MSS.
In his John Randolph, published in 1882, Henry Adams states that not
an acre of this land then belonged to a Randolph, but that the Randolphs
or anyone else might have bought back the whole of it for a song at any
time within half a century. But it can at least be said that an abandoned
farm, a thing that has been by no means uncommon even in such an industrious
and thrifty community as New England, is a phenomenon which
has never been known to Southside Virginia. In 1890, the Lower Quarter
of the Roanoke estate owned by John Randolph, which contained 1,027
acres, was sold for $20,000, or, at the rate of about $20.00 an acre. Multiply
the 40,000 acres of Richard Randolph of Curles by $20.00, and the
product will be $800,000—a sum which may have been a song to Henry
Adams, but would have been more like a grand crash of orchestral harmony
to a Southside Virginian in 1882. However, it must be admitted that
$20.00 an acre was a liberal price for the Lower Quarter in 1890.
In his John Randolph, Henry Adams states that Richard Randolph of
Curles disposed by will in 1742 of 40,000 acres of land, including Matoax.
(P. 3) The will of Richard Randolph was executed on Nov. 18, 1747
(Henrico Co., Va., Deed and Will Book for 1748-50, Va. State Libr.), and
he never owned Matoax at all. It was purchased by his son, John, the
father of John Randolph of Roanoke, many years after the death of Richard.
(Will Book 2, p. 328, Chesterfield Co., Va., Clerk's Office.)
For this politeness the British made him a poor return. When Phillips
and Arnold invaded Southside Virginia in 1781, Phillips in express requital
for it issued an order that no part of the property of Col. Theodorick Bland,
Sr., at Cawsons, should receive any injury from His Majesty's troops. But
they chose to construe the order literally, raided the home of Col. Theodorick
Bland, Jr., at Farmingdale, broke his furniture to pieces, pounded up his
china-ware, destroyed his crops and live-stock and carried off his negroes.
Hist. of the Colony, etc., of Va., by Chas. Campbell, 721.
"Among New Englanders, Chief Justice Parsons was the model of
judicial, social, and religious propriety; yet Parsons in 1808 presented to a
lady a copy of Tom Jones with a letter calling attention to the adventures
of Molly Seagrim, and the usefulness of describing vice." Hist. of the U.
S., by Henry Adams, v. 1, 48.
In one of his letters, Randolph said that there were times when the chaos
of his mind could be compared with nothing but the state that poor Cowper
was in before he found peace, or rather after the death of Mrs. Unwin.
Garland, v. 2, 107.
It is stated by Garland that Randolph was not inclined to the atheltic
outdoor sports of which boys are so fond. v. 1, 13. This assertion is
supported by no evidence to our knowledge. From an early age we find
him engaging in all the healthy open-air pastimes which belonged to the
life of Southside Virginia; such as trapping, fishing, hunting, and riding.
His brother, Beverley Tucker, tells us that, when a boy, he was not only
remarkable for personal beauty, but for "fondness for athletic sports."
The Hist. Mag. (1859), v. 3, 187. He even took his gun with him to
Philadelphia, when he went to that City in his youth, and often shot over
the ground between the upper ferry and the Falls of the Schuylkill. Letters
to a Y. R., 79.
A description of Grigsby by Dr. James Waddell Alexander deserves
transcription, though written in rather an elliptical way: "I have met
here an original. —is a Yale man, about as deaf as—.
He has an office built in the yard lined with glazed cases, wherein 2,000
volumes. As much of littérateur as I ever saw. Was a member of the
Virginia Convention in 1830. Thorough scholar in Greek, Latin and
French. Perfect health and athletic vigor. A boxer in all the forms; as
to diet and bathing almost a Cornaro. He has not eaten warm bread for
ten years. Shaves in his shirt in a cold room in winter. A pedestrian,
has walked all over Canada and several times over New England. The
last day of his return from Canada to Norfolk he walked 55 miles, and then
was at office business on his feet till 10 at night. For this journey he
trained on Captain Barclay's scheme, two meals a day of rare beef and
Madeira and stale bread, this for three weeks. He has every sort of gymnastical
contrivance, always stands at study with legs wide apart, and no
support. His chest is like the keel of a boat. He is an intimate friend of
Upshur, Judge B. Tucker and other ultra States-Rights men, to which
history, biography, heraldry and the like. He is an eloquent talker."
Forty Years' Familiar Letters, vol. 1, 352. March 21, 1842.
"I am now with my friend, Col. Mercer, of Fredericksburg. Tomorrow
I set off for Richmond, and from thence almost immediately to Williamsburg
to see Cabell, who has lately married one of the finest and richest
girls in Virginia." Letter from Washington Irving to Miss Mary Fairlie,
May 13, 1807, Irving by Irving, v. 1, 190.
Every now and then the old slander shows some signs of animation, but
for all practical purposes it has been dead ever since 1856, when The Vindication
was republished by Peter V. Daniel, supported by letters from Chief
Justice Roger B. Taney, George Bancroft, and others, expressing their
confidence in the entire innocence of Randolph. "His argument (I mean
Randolph's)," declares Taney, after a merciless dissection of the case
which very justly did not spare even Washington, "is conclusive." Edmund
Randolph, by Moncure D. Conway, 349-353. The departure of Washington,
in the Fauchet case, from the habitual principles of rigid justice, which all
but invariably governed his conduct, may well be compared to
The worse for what it soils."
Edmund Randolph was not only an honorable man, but, in many regards,
a very amiable one. "To respect, nay, to love Mr. Randolph," Benjamin
H. Latrobe says in his Diary, "it is only necessary to see him at his fireside
—the father, the husband and the friend." John H. B. Latrobe and His
Times, by John E. Semmes.
"We are now little better than the trustees of slave labor for the nabobs
of the East, and of the North (if there be any such persons in our country)
and to the speculators of the West. They regulate our labor. Are we to
have two masters? When every vein has been sluiced—when our whole
system presents nothing but one pitiful enchymosis—are we to be patted
and tapped to find yet another vein to breathe not for the Federal Government
but for our own?" Speech of J. R. on the Basis of Representation in
the Va. Conv., of 1829-30. Debates, 318.
Many years afterwards he stated in the House that he had spent almost
every day in attendance upon the sittings of the first Congress.
"Mr. James Innes, the Attorney General of the State, (also a Colonel)
ranks, I think, first in genius, in force of thought and power of expression,
most amiable and benevolent disposition, open, generous and unreserved;
more I think of the character of Charles Fox than any other man I ever
knew. His only fault is indolence." Diary of Benjamin H. Latrobe, John
H. B. Latrobe and His Times, by John E. Semmes, 7.
Side by side with the testimony of this discriminating critic, we might
as well place the "coarse praise" which Latrobe tells us was bestowed upon
Innes by one of his rustic auditors: "He has his belly full of words and they
come pouring along like a great fresh." Id., 8.
After reading the names of these Justices, we can readily understand
why Chief Justice Marshall and Benjamin Watkins Leigh should have
been such earnest upholders in the Virginia Convention of 1829-30 of a judicial
system that commanded the gratuitous services of the class in Virginia
most conspicuous for wealth, intelligence and social prominence. To the
old County Courts and the freehold suffrage, which withstood the levelling
influence of Jefferson until 1851, was unquestionably due the extraordinary
capacity exhibited by Virginia for filling the highest public places with the
men worthiest, in point of character and talent, to fill them. Marshall
thought that the fact that in no part of America was there less disquiet,
or less ill-feeling between man and man than in Virginia, was mainly referable
to its County Courts. Debates, 505. And in speaking of the success
with which they had performed their judicial and other duties, Leigh said:
"There is a purity, an easy unassuming, unconscious dignity, and, above
all, an impress of neighborly kindness seen and felt in the administration
of all their powers, which has endeared these tribunals to the people and
procured for them universal respect." Debates, 514.
"Each," Hugh Blair Grigsby tells us in his Discourse on Tazewell, "was
a supreme master of reasoning in his respective department, and, if we look
along their entire course at the bar, it is hard to say which of the two won
the most verdicts. Perhaps, though both of these able men wielded at
times an almost omnipotent sway over juries and over the Bench, yet it
may be said that the style of Tazewell was more decisive with the Court,
and that of Taylor with the jury." (P. 36) Taylor was also famous for
his colloquial powers. So. Lit. Mess., v. 18, 101. Tazewell is the Sidney,
and Taylor the Herbert, in the sketches of the two by William Wirt in
The Old Bachelor.
Garland states that Mrs. Dudley's husband had died when she came to
Bizarre, (v. 1, 63) but this was not the case. On Feb. 12, 1808, Randolph
wrote to Theodore Dudley, her son: "I have heard nothing from your
father or mother since I left home." Letters to a Y. R., 46.
If Thompson had not died early in life, there can be little doubt that,
with the sobering influence of time, he would have fully redeemed his
promise. He was a college mate of Littleton Waller Tazewell at William
and Mary, and by Tazewell he was pronounced the most wonderful young
man that he had ever seen. Discourse on Tazewell, by Grigsby, 13.
Creed Taylor has suffered the last indignity to which an once celebrated
American can be subjected—that of being wholly omitted from our populous
cyclopædias of American biography. He is nothing; not even an
academician; yet in his time he was a vigorous and learned lawyer, the
founder of an useful law school, a Virginia Chancellor, and a highly ininfluential
politician; not to speak of the aristocratic bearing and elegant
manners which set off his intellectual and social gifts to great advantage.
With the decline of his health in his later years, his temper is said to have
become so hasty and arbitrary that, on one occasion, when Peachy Gilmer,
a member of the Bar, reminded him that the clock wanted three-quarters
of an hour of twelve o'clock, the hour that he had fixed for the reassembling
of the court, he exclaimed passionately "Gentlemen, I will
have you in future to know that when I take my seat on the bench it is
12 o'clock!" Sketches of Lynchburg, by the oldest inhabitant. (Mrs. Cabell) 58.
Randolph does not seem to have added the words "of Roanoke" to his
signature before the year 1810. The first instance of his doing so, was, we
believe, at the foot of a letter written by him to Dr. George Logan, on Jan.
24, 1810. He adopted the words, there is little reason to doubt, to distinguish
him from a kinsman, John Randolph, one of the brothers of Judith
and Nancy Randolph, who resided at no great distance from Bizarre. This
man was described by John Randolph of Roanoke as a person of infamous
character, and a homeless vagabond, in a letter dated Roanoke, May 27,
1811, which was written to James M. Garnett (J. M. Garnett, Jr., MSS.)
shortly after the other John Randolph had made a murderous assault upon
the writer, which might have cost him his life; and all because the subject
of the assault had been guilty of the outrage of seeking to collect from him
the sum of £14 due by him for service to his mare by a stallion at Bizarre:
"I have every reason to suppose," said Randolph, incensed by the rabid
animosity of his political enemies, "that this fellow with whom I never
had any intercourse further than to speak when we met, was instigated
probably hired, (for he is needy and desperate), to commit the deed. I was
wholly unarmed, yet he drew a knife upon me, and would have stabbed
me, if it had not closed as he struck. He did cut my coat. I gave him the
lash, and afterwards the butt end, of Leigh's whip, leaving a mark upon him
that he will not soon lose." The assailant, who bore the nickname "Possum,"
according to Randolph's Diary, was further described by Randolph
with a pistol, loaded with saddler's tacks, as well as with the knife; but, with
the exception of a slightly lacerated eye Randolph issued from the fracas
without injury. With true refinement of feeling, he endeavored to keep the
knowledge of this disgraceful affair from Judith; but she heard of it, and
wrote to him in these terms, stern enough to have befitted the story of that
other Judith and Holofernes: "I have heard since I saw you of the ruffian-like
assault which has been made upon you. In justice to my own feelings,
I must declare my utter abhorrence of it. Since his marriage, I have never
seen the object who has been guilty of this cowardly action, and I now
sincerely hope I never may." J. R. to James M. Garnett, June 23, 1811,
J. M. Garnett, Jr., MSS.
"He spake as never man spake"; "In eloquence his deceit was deeper
than the bottom of the sea"; "The united powers of painting and eloquence
could alone give a faint idea of the character of Henry"; are other utterances
about Henry imputed to Randolph.
To this may be added a sentence or so from the abstract of Randolph's
career by his brother, Beverley Tucker, published in the Historical Magazine,
1859, v. 3, 187: "Candidate for Congress in '99. Unknown to the
people. Boy in appearance. No family influence or connection in District;
elected by the power of his eloquence."
"I have never been insensible to my numerous failures as a public
speaker; on the contrary, I believe not one of the audience has been so
deeply impressed with the sense of them as myself. I have a perception
equally clear to my more fortunate and happy efforts; perhaps the best of
these (certainly not inferior to any) was my effort against the Bankrupt
Bill about two years ago. It never appeared but fell still born from my lips
—nay I doubt if ten persons in the country ever knew that I had spoken at
all; and this has been the uniform fate of my best performances in this way
—The Connecticut Reserve, the first Yazoo debate, and some others." J.
R. to James M. Garnett, Jan. 14, 1824, J. M. Garnett, Jr., MSS.
"The skeleton of the speech has been mounted by some bungler, who
knows nothing of political osteology," he wrote to Theodore Dudley on one
occasion. "I feel ashamed of myself—not only stripped of my muscle, but
my very bones disjointed." Feb. 11, 1813, Letters to a Y. R., 137.
In a letter to James M. Garnett, dated March 22, 1820, Randolph said:
and if we can't get him, I want a Roanoke planter from the North State."
J. M. Garnett, Jr., MSS. A few months after these words were written,
John Quincy Adams entered the following observations on Macon in his
Memoirs: "Macon is a stern Republican, who has been about 25 years
without interruption in Congress—a man of small parts and mean education;
but of rigid integrity, and a blunt, though not offensive, deportment.
He was several years Speaker of the House of Representatives, and
is now one of the most influential members of the Senate. His integrity,
his indefatigable attention to business, and his long experience give him a
weight of character and consideration which few men of far superior minds
can acquire." v. 5, 205, Nov. 21, 1830.
In narrating the history of the Yazoo fraud, we wish to acknowledge our
indebtedness to Albert J. Beveridge, the author of the widely read Life of
John Marshall, for the assistance derived by us from his thorough investigation
of the authorities relating to that monstrous transaction; and also
to make a similar acknowledgment, in connection with the subsequent
portions of the present work, which bear upon the Chase trial, and the
character of the City of Washington at the beginning of the nineteenth
century.
"Harper is diffuse, but methodical and clear. He argues with considerable
warmth, and seems to depend upon the deliberate suggestions of his
mind. I incline to think that he studies his causes with great diligence, and
is to be considered as in some degree artificial." Jos. Story to Sam'l P. P.
Fay, Feb. 16, 1808, Story, by Story, v. 1, 162.
In a letter from Joseph Story to Sam'l P. P. Fay, dated Washington,
Feb. 16, 1808, Lee is presented to the eye of our time in this spectral fashion:
"Lee, of Virginia, is a thin, spare, short man. You cannot believe that he
was Attorney General of the United States. I heard him speak for a few
minutes, but the impression is so faint that I cannot analyze it." Story, by
Story, v. 1, 163.
As Judge Chase was no more bigoted in his hatred of Democrats, than
Dr. Samuel Johnson was in his hatred of American Whigs, it is but fair to
say that no less a person than Joseph Story was of the opinion that he also
possessed some of the strong points of Dr. Johnson: "In person, in
manners, in unwieldly strength, in severity of reproof, in real tenderness of
heart, and, above all, in intellect, he was the living, I had almost said, the
exact, image of Samuel Johnson." Letter to Fay, Feb. 25, 1808, Story, by
Story, v. 1, 168.
By a process of laborious inflation, Federalist writers, in their desire to
traduce Jefferson and John Randolph, have puffed up the figure of Luther
Martin to a degree of distension that is quite artificial. If the distempered
description given by John Quincy Adams of the final speech of Randolph
in the Chase case is to be accepted, what value are we to assign to the great
volume of testimony to the personal and professional defects of Martin,
who was happily termed, by one of the Virginia Mercers, "the Thersites of
the law"? Blennerhassett Papers, 378. "Martin," declares Blennerhassett
in connection with one of Martin's forensic efforts in the Burr trial, "at last
concluded with the adjournment this evening. Want of arrangement,
verbosity and eternal repetitions have more than sated the malice of his
enemies." Blennerhassett Journal, Oct. 14, 1807, Blennerhassett Papers, 455.
Describing Martin a little later, Joseph Story says: "Nothing in his voice,
his action, his language impresses. Of all men he is the most desultory,
wandering and inaccurate. Errors in grammar, and indeed an unexampled
laxity of speech mark him everywhere. All nature pays contribution to his
argument, if indeed it can be called one. You might hear him for three
hours, and he would neither enlighten nor amuse you, but, amid the abundance
of chaff, is excellent wheat, and, if you can find it, the quality is of the
first order. In the case to which I have alluded (a case in the Supreme
Court) he spoke three days. I heard him as much as I could, but I was
fatigued almost to death." Letter to Sam'l P. P. Fay, Washington, Feb. 16,
1808, Story, by Story, v. 1, 164.
"I find that Federal members have every day listened to John Randolph
with unmixed pleasure in opposition to the mean, dastardly Democrats of
N. England!" Timothy Pickering to Rufus King, Washington, Jan. 13,
1806, Life of King, by King, v. 4, 476.
Four years later, Nathaniel Macon wrote to Joseph H. Nicholson: "The
Feds seem to be in good spirits. They pay more attention to our friend
[Randolph] than I ever saw one set of men pay to any man." Apr. 3, 1810,
Nicholson MSS., Libr. Cong.
It has usually been thought that the biographer should have a certain
amount of general sympathy, at least, with the subject of his work but the
hereditary hatred of the Adams family for Randolph was apparently
considered a better qualification when Henry Adams was selected to write
his life. With such satisfaction does Adams chuckle over this description of
Randolph borrowed from Ovid's description of Envy that in his John
Randolph he hastens to cap the two lines quoted by his grandfather with
three more from the same context equally derogatory. (P. 290). In
another place (P. 284), he says that "it was not for an instant imagined or
imaginable that either of the Yankee Presidents (John Adams and John
Randolph. If Adams had no proper sense of delicacy to tell him that such
an exhibition of family spleen as this could not fail to disgust all fair-minded
men, he might at least, one would think, have had a sufficient sense of true
literary expediency to avoid such a violation of biographical decency. In
quoting his two lines from the Metamorphoses, John Quincy Adams
unwarrantably added an "est" after "macies" in the first line, and omitted
an intervening line,
"Nusquam recta acies, livent rubigine dentes."
He might have quoted the first half of this line too, for Randolph's vision
gave him a great deal of trouble at times; but not the second, for Randolph's
teeth were faultlessly clean and white.
The Diary of John Randolph contains the following bit of gossip in regard
to Granger, and the charge made by James Thompson Callander that
Jefferson had been turned out of the House of a certain Major Walker for
writing a love letter to his wife: "Gideon P. M. G. holds his office by a certain
tenure. When a prosecution was commenced at common law in
Connecticut for a libel upon Mr. J., he wrote to Granger confidentially and
intrusted certain papers to him relating to Mrs. W—'s affair, which the
wary Yankee refused to give up. He was alternately threatened and
soothed by the P. and his agents, but to no purpose; and, although he is for
the best reasons hated by Mr. M—n, and, what is of more moment, by
Mrs. M—n, he boasts that he will retain his place under the new P."
The Diary also asserts elsewhere that when John Marshall, as the biographer
of Washington, proceeded to examine the latter's correspondence,
which had been entrusted by Bushrod Washington to Tobias Lear, the private
secretary of Washington, all the letters from Jefferson to Washington
were found to be missing, and it hints a connection between this fact and the
fact that Lear had obtained from Jefferson an honorable and lucrative
appointment, which he still held by no precarious tenure.
Decidedly petty was the other form in which the chagrin of Randolph
over the result of the Chase trial was exhibited: that of endeavoring to
prevent the expenses incurred by Judge Chase in the production of his
witnesses from being paid out of the Federal Treasury.
But Randolph experienced no difficulty in subjecting Bidwell to extradition
for the purposes of parliamentary punishment at least. At a time
when the invasion of Canada was on every tongue, he said in the House:
"At the motion of a gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Bidwell), who had
since taken a great fancy also to Canada, and had marched off thither in
advance of the Committee on Foreign Relations, $2,000,000 were appropriated
incurred in the intercourse between the United States and foreign nations';
in other words, to buy off at Paris Spanish aggressions at home." A. of C.,
1811-12, v. 1, 445.
Nathaniel Macon to Joseph H. Nicholson, Wash., Jan. 6, 1807. Nicholson
MSS., Libr. Cong.
Hist. of U. S., by Adams, viii, 167. But did Jefferson have anything to
do with this matter? Nicholson was also offered the collectorship of the
Port of Baltimore by Jefferson; but declined it. Jos. Bryan to J. R., Dec.
28, 1806, Bryan MSS.
"His method of attack was always the same: to spring suddenly, violently,
straight at the face of his opponent, was his invariable rule; and in
this sort of rough-and-tumble he had no equal." John Randolph, by Henry
Adams, 172.
Indeed Sloan—for the worm will turn—drew quite a vivid picture of
Randolph, when, with his back to the wall, Randolph was warding off the
blows of his enemies with almost frenzied violence: "Has he been so
enamoured with the conduct of the once patriotic statesman, but afterward
apostate Burke, as to induce him to make a puerile attempt to exhibit on the
floor of that House his impressive and energetic mode of delivery by exerting
his weak nerves and feeble arm to cause the pens, the papers, the books and
the hats to fly in every direction, in so much that, if they had been musket
balls, instead of those light materials, the American patriot would soon
have been left to exhibit the remainder of his superlative eloquence within
empty walls." A. of C., 1805-07, 1110.
No book with which we are acquainted that is worth reading at all is
such a mass of errors as Sawyer's biography. They are scattered over its
pages as thickly as the pits over a badly pock-marked face; and it would be
a waste of time to point out even a tithe of them. He says, for instance,
that Randolph spoke only once in the Virginia Convention of 1829-30;
(P. 130) when a cursory examination of the printed Debates of the Convention
would have shown that Randolph spoke in it over and over again.
He also says that Randolph "did not attend during the Congressional
Session of 1818, being detained at home by indisposition" (P. 73) when his
own presence as a member in the House of 1818, if nothing else, should have
reminded him that Randolph was not even a member of the House in 1818.
Testifying in the Randolph Will Litigation, Captain William Smith, a
tavern keeper at Charlotte Court House, with whom Randolph was in the
the period between 1820 and 1829, he [Randolph] was the most clear-headed
and sensible man I ever saw or knew."
"Whatever may have been his (Randolph's) shortcomings, by reason of
bad health and other deficiencies more or less beyond his control, in making
his exertions effective, the political doctrines and principles which he
advocated were well adapted to the support of a system like ours—indeed
those only by which we can hope to uphold it in its integrity" Autobiog. of
Martin Van Buren, 428.
Speaking of the position of Randolph in the House just after the negotiation
of the Treaty for the Purchase of Louisiana, Henry Adams says
"His influence in the House became irresistible." John Randolph, 85.
The idea of Henry Adams that Randolph went back to Bizarre in April,
1806, a "ruined statesman," and never again represented anybody but himself,
or had any but mere rags and tatters of political principles (John
Randolph, 194, 195), is not only entirely foreign to the true facts of the case,
but hopelessly at war with his own observations, in his John Randolph and
History of the United States, in which he repeatedly certifies in the strongest
terms to the extraordinary influence exerted by Randolph in many respects
in opposition. The feelings entertained for Randolph by his constituents
and thousands of other citizens of the United States during the later stages
of his Congressional career were enthusiastically voiced by E. W. Duval in a
letter, dated March 31, 1828 (Nathan Loughborough MSS.): "I was, as
you are well aware, even in my boyish days, a warm and decided admirer
not only of the peculiar and splendid talents, but of the political course and
character, of Mr. Randolph. In all the changes that have taken place in
men and measures within my recollection, I have never been able to discover
in him any departure from the principles of his early life. This and
his great and felicitous endowments, together with the fearless independence,
which disdains to `feign a feeling or to conceal a truth,' by which the
whole history of his career is so strikingly characterized, place him, in my
estimation, on a more enviable and exalted eminence than is occupied by
any other public man of the present day. I would not, in solemn seriousness,—I
declare it—exchange, could I possess his natural gifts, learning and
acquirements, his present standing and prospects of future fame for those of
the numerous aspirants to the highest office in the gift of the people."
"You are as well known, and have as high a reputation in England as
Monroe himself." Jos. Bryan to J. R., March 8, 1807. Bryan MSS.
In these observations Randolph's arguments against Gregg's Resolution
are justly termed "very powerful and eloquent." P. 8.
On another occasion, he assailed the Senate in these words: "I am free
to declare that when a measure, tending to impose a burden on the people,
or to detract from the privileges of the citizen, comes from that quarter, I
shall always view it with jealousy. The inequality of the representation in
that branch, the long tenure of office, and the custom with which they are
so familiar of conducting their proceedings in conclave . . . render all their
proceedings touching the public burdens or the liberties of the people
highly suspicious." A. of C., 1805-07; v. 2, 417.
After telling us that Randolph said in 1817 that he had voted in favor of
the bill to prohibit trade with San Domingo, which came up in the House in
1806, Henry Adams says: "He was mistaken. He did not vote at all."
(John Randolph, 188.) If Randolph said in 1817 that he voted in favor of
this bill, he said no more than he said on May 6, 1812, too. (A. of C., 181112;
v. 2, 1404.) Why should the journal of a Legislative body be accepted
as infallible, when twice contradicted by the memory of an irreproachably
truthful member?
"The present Grand Jury (the most enlightened, perhaps, that was ever
assembled in this country) will be discharged." Letter from Washington
Irving to Mrs. Hoffman, Richmond, June 4, 1807, Life, &c., of W. I., by
Irving, v. 1, 192.
There are several descriptions of Richmond as it was at or about the time
of the Burr trial, which were written by persons whose judgment could not
be colored by birth or residence in Virginia. "I am absolutely enchanted
with Richmond," Washington Irving declared in one of his letters from
that City, written during the pendency of the Burr trial, "and like it more
and more every day. The society is polished, sociable and extremely hospitable."
Irving, by Irving, v. 1, 196. In the succeeding year, Edward
Hooker gives us this highly effective little picture of Richmond in his Diary:
"Richmond appears beautifully as you approach, and view it from the hills,
a mile distant. The Capitol towers pre-eminent, and appears gigantic
indeed among the other buildings. The side of the hill from the river up to
the top seems covered with clusters of buildings. Remote from the center,
on the right and left, a mile or two, and at a still greater distance, handsome
seats crown the top and sides of the mountain, scattered here and there.
Above you hear the roaring of the waters, and see its white sheet here and
there between the rocks and islands. Below a calmer scene invites you to
you come up, you pass through Manchester, a separate corporation on this
side of the river; then, crossing the very long, tall bridge, at the foot of the
falls, you enter one of the most beautiful cities on the continent. Richmond,
as I viewed it a mile or two off, appears more like some of the drafts of
European cities, particularly those on the banks of the Rhine, than any I
had ever seen. Walked up a very steep hill indeed, and visited the Capitol
soon after my arrival. The House of Delegates had just met, and chosen
Mr. Hugh Nelson, of Albermarle, their Speaker, and were proceeding to
business. It seemed the most dignified body I ever beheld. The room
was spacious and very elegant. The members in elliptical seats, and
around the Speaker's chair. All, with very few exceptions, were well
dressed and easy and graceful in deportment. Many young, mostly middle-aged,
and few or none are quite old. Many spoke shortly, and with ease,
grace and composure on the returns of elections from Amherst County."
1896 Report of Amer. Hist. Assoc., v. 1, 917.
What Hooker says about the manner in which the members of the
Virginia Legislature were dressed does not accord with the ideas that
Joseph Story expressed on the same subject in a letter to Sam'l P. P. Fay,
dated May 30, 1807: "You know Virginians have some pride in appearing
in simple habiliments, and are willing to rest their claim to attention upon
their force of mind and suavity of manners." Story by Story, v. 1, 151.
To the eye of John Melish, an English traveller, who passed through
Richmond in 1806, it was "a large elegant city, consisting of more than one
thousand houses," and containing "about eight thousand inhabitants."
The ladies in Richmond, too, "appeared very handsome"; nor did he fail to
note that the town already had the manufacturing bent which has always
given it a distinctive place of its own among Southern Cities. Travels
Through the U. S. in 1806, &c., 160.
Richmond also early acquired a reputation for good cheer worthy of a
State that might well be termed the mother of cook-books as well as
Presidents. In one of his letters to Nicholson, Randolph declared that good
eating and drinking were as well understood and practiced upon there as at
Capua itself. Richmond, June 6, 1810, Nicholson MSS., Libr. Cong.
"Almost every respectable officer of the old service regarded Wilkinson
with antipathy or contempt." Hist. of U. S., by Henry Adams, v. 7, 174.
By Albert J. Beveridge he has been recently pronounced not only a corrupt
pensioner of Spain but a "fecund liar." Life of John Marshall, v. 3, 354
(note 2).
It was in this same year that Joseph Story wrote to Joseph White a letter
in which he termed Randolph a speaker in the House of the first class.
Feb. 3, 1808, Story by Story, v. 1, 161.
John Randolph was suspected of writing for the press above the name
"One of the Protesters," and, in a letter to Dabney Carr, dated May 11,
1808, Wm. Wirt said: "When I said in the Enquirer that I should be glad
to receive the promised respects of `one of the Protesters,' I made sure that
John Randolph was coming out. I would have engaged with Achilles, but
I do not relish a combat with one of his myrmidons." Life of William Wirt,
by Kennedy, v. 1, 231. There is still another reference to Randolph by
Wirt. "John Randolph," he wrote to the same correspondent, "has not
gone on (to Washington), and to hear him speak was the primum mobile of
Peter's project and mind. I am very anxious to hear John Randolph.
They tell me that he is an orator, and I am curious to hear one; for I never
yet heard a man who answered the idea I have formed of an orator. He has
ever been ambitious, and I do not doubt that from the time he was seventeen
years old he has been training himself most assiduously for public
speaking." Id., v. 1, 253.
"Some men are born for the public. Nature, by fitting them for the
service of the human race on a broad scale, has stamped them with the
evidences of her destination and their duty." Jefferson to Monroe, Jan. 13,
1803, Works of T. J., v. 4, 455.
This was the second occasion on which Randolph visited Monroe in
Albemarle County. In 1809, he made an equestrian excursion to the
Valley of Virginia, visiting his brother Henry at Winchester, and his sister
near Staunton, and then stopping on his way to Bizarre at the home of
Monroe, whom he describes as being at that time "almost as recluse as a
hermit," though busily engaged in the cultivation of a good estate of 2800
acres and the management of about 20 hands. J. R. to James M. Garnett,
July 31, 1809; J. M. Garnett, Jr., MSS. On his second visit to Monroe,
only a change in his original itinerary saved him from an awkward rencontre
there with the Jeffersons—the royal family as Randolph calls them—who
had just paid a visit to Monroe. J. R. to J. M. G., Oct. 10, 1810, J. M. Garnett,
Jr., MSS.
The correspondence between John Randolph and James M. Garnett
establishes the fact that, when the opportunity was held out to Monroe
by Madison of renewing his party connection with Jefferson and his friends,
he was very desirous before doing so of obtaining the approval of his own
"Old Republican" friends, including John Randolph, and of taking them
back into the party fold with him; and that, with a view to accomplishing
these objects, he sounded certainly John Taylor of Caroline, Benjamin
Watkins Leigh and Randolph. Taylor, from a high-minded desire to promote
through Monroe the political principles, to which he was so religiously
and the Jeffersonians; but Randolph did not, though he declined to advise
Monroe whether he should become Secretary of State in Madison's cabinet
or not, when Monroe solicited his advice on that subject. James M. Garnett
to J. R., Feb. 19, 1811, J. M. Garnett, Jr., MSS; J. R. to James M.
Garnett, Apr. 11, 1811, Id. There could be no better proof of Randolph's
political disinterestedness, for he wrote to Garnett three days afterwards:
"What think you of —S. of S.? I believe it will be so. Glamis and
Cawdor—the greatest is behind." March 19, 1811, J. M. Garnett, Jr.,
MSS.
The worst thing that Monroe is reported to have said of Randolph, after
the estrangement between them, was this to Judge Watson: "Mr. Randolph
is, I think, a capital hand to pull down, but I am not aware that he
has ever exhibited much skill as a builder." James Monroe, by Daniel C.
Gilman, Amer. Statesmen Series, 190.
Only a short time before Monroe accepted the post of Secretary of State
under the Madison administration, he wrote to Tazewell in these terms:
"I fear, if the system of policy which has been so long persevered in, after
so many proofs of its dangerous tendency, is still adhered to, that a crisis
will arise, the dangers of which will require all the virtue, firmness and
talent of our country to avert; and that it will be persevered in seems too
probable while the present men remain in power. . . . And, if the blame
of improvident and injudicious measures is ever to attach to them among
the people, it must be by leaving to the authors of those measures the entire
responsibility belonging to them." Feb. 6. 1811, Monroe MSS.
Nor probably was this Randolph's cooler or more habitual view of the
matter. That was rather of the nature of the one expressed by him in a
letter to James M. Garnett, dated Feb 17, 1811: "I pity— from the very
bottom of my soul. I am persuaded that he has been more weak than
wicked; that he is habitually and incurably ambitious; that he cannot live
without office; the stimulus of public consideration having become necessary
to his existence. The resources of his own mind and estate cannot support
him. He is not naturally flagitious. He has sacrificed no more of principle,
and his friends no farther, than was absolutely indispensable to the attainment
of his object." J. M. Garnett, Jr., MSS.
Chief Justice Marshall or Chancellor Kent could not have shaded justice
with nicer precision. James M. Garnett and Benjamin Watkins Leigh
thought that, even if Monroe did go over, at least "a personal intercourse
and a reciprocity of friendly offices" might still subsist between Monroe
and Randolph. But neither John Randolph nor John Mercer could see
G., March 13, 1811; J. M. Garnett, Jr., MSS.
Even if Monroe backslid a little after he got into office, he might yet do
some good to the cause, was Garnett's idea. "For," said Garnett emphatically,
"he will always be in office." Letter to J. R., Feb. 26, 1811,
J. M. G., Jr., MSS.
It is obvious that Randolph was the real obstacle to Monroe's desire to
return to Federal office with a comforting and imposing queue of Tertium
Quids behind him to keep him in countenance and strengthen his hands.
But the renewal of homage by Monroe to the party influences, with which
he had been hardly less deeply disaffected than Randolph, could not fail
to excite a certain amount of derisive contempt in other breasts than
Randolph's. "What do you think," wrote Randolph to Garnett, on Feb.
4, 1811, "of the emissary [George Hay], who was dispatched to me on a late
occasion, `having signalized himself a few days ago at a public dinner by
hanging on the skirts of Mr. G—s [Giles], who repelled him with great
dignity until the wine placed all the company on a level.' So reads one
of my late letters, and the writer adds that `the most profound contempt
is pouring on him from every quarter.' Hear another of my correspondents
on the same subject: `I am well informed that at a dinner given by
certain members of the Assembly to the late Governor T., which was meant
in reality as a State Dinner, in honor of the reunion (as it is called) of the
Republicans, that person fastened himself upon G—s in spite of visible
efforts in the latter (who is not at all pleased, as you may suppose at the
reunion) to shake him off; sat by him at dinner, in spite of his teeth, insisting
on waiting on him, changing his plate, filling his wine and the like menial
offices; in short, courted him throughout the day with an assiduity which no
coyness could avoid, no coldness repel, until at last the Great Man, warmed
with wine and softened by submission and penitence, did condescend to
bestow some little notice upon him.' " J. M. G., Jr., MSS. The whole
attitude of Randolph towards Monroe and Hay, when they were
seeking by personal interviews to induce him to "rat" too, was one of
contemptuous amusement. "Yesterday," he said in a letter to Garnett,
"— called upon me, and in the afternoon his envoy. Both seemed
disposed that I should forget late transactions, and there was a visible
effort to forget it themselves, which, like an effort to go to sleep, served only
to make the matter worse." Richm., Mar. 16, 1811, J. M. Garnett, Jr., MSS.
The newspaper communications signed "Mucius," and "One of the
Protesters," respectively, which were published during the long running fire
of hostility, kept up by Randolph and his friends with Jefferson and his
friends, have been ascribed to Randolph; but he was the author of neither.
Beverley Tucker was the reputed author of the latter. J. R. to James M.
Garnett, May 27, and July 24, 1808, J. M. Garnett, Jr., MSS. Aside
from the "Decius" letters, we know of none, either anonymous or
pseudonymous, written by Randolph for the press. It is very much to be
certainly commenced. Letter to J. M. Garnett, Aug. 31, 1807, J. M. Garnett,
Jr., MSS. Except for the purpose of writing letters, which he threw off
in showers, he was, as he said of himself in a letter to Garnett, "but a poor
scribe." June 19, 1806, J. M. Garnett, MSS. And this has been true
of many another orator, whose tongue was too fluent to render the friction
of pen and paper otherwise than insufferably irksome to him.
On just what grounds Federalist writers, like Henry Cabot Lodge and
Henry Adams, have reached the conclusion that William B. Giles was an
unworthy man, in point of character, is not very clear. Perhaps, if his
remarkable powers as a debater had not been so successful in exposing the
privileged and proscriptive side of Federalism, his moral standing with
them might be higher. "Giles, of Virginia, whom no man ever trusted
without regret," is a phrase in the John Randolph of Henry Adams. (P.142).
But how can such purely academic extravagance or partisan strabismus
impose upon anyone when it is recollected that the people of Virginia, aside
from the occasional remissions of popularity which are inseparable from a
political career, trusted him from his youth until he could no longer move
or stand without the aid of his crutches, and never trusted him with any
regret, whether as a member of the House of Representatives, or of the
United States Senate, or as Governor of Virginia, or as a member of the
Virginia Convention of 1829-30, that has not long ago been swallowed up in
the lasting recollection of his remarkable talents and eminent services.
There is nothing in his life to suggest any uncommon elevation of character
or refinement of feeling, but we know nothing tending to show that he did
not comply faithfully with all his private as well as official duties. When he
is judged by the standards of his own time and place, the mind submits
impatiently for a moment to the apparent insensibility exhibited by him to
the menaces of John Randolph on several occasions; but it is manifest on
the whole that he was simply disposed to make the fullest allowance for
Randolph's heady temper, and that there was a point of endurance beyond
which he was firmly prepared to hold Randolph to account on the duelling
field.
"I look upon him (Crawford) as the ablest man in our councils. He
certainly possesses more of my confidence than any other man in Congress.
There is a singleness of heart about him, a plain manly good sense, and a
certain fairness of character that wins my regard and esteem. There is no
trash in his understanding, no crooked double-dealing in his conduct." J.
R. to J. H. Nicholson, Jan. 17, 1813, Nicholson MSS., Libr. Cong.
Randolph wrote to James M. Garnett on one occasion that a newspaper
article signed "No Time-Server," if he had any skill in such matters, would
in their pine woods; but the larger fly, commonly known as "the horse-fly,"
is a greater nuisance even than the May fly.
"This war, my old comrade, has been in most of its features a civil war—
as such at least it has proved to me. It has rent the nation in twain, it has
dissolved the oldest friendships, it has severed the ties of blood." J. R.
to Richard Stanford, April 9, 1814, J. M. Garnett, Jr., MSS.
It seemed so probable that, if John Randolph were beaten in 1815, in his
own District, he would be elected to the house from another Congressional
District in Virginia, that the Jeffersonian Republicans brought in a Bill in
the Virginia Legislature which sought to prohibit the election of anyone to
the House outside of his own District. Life of Jefferson, by Randall, v.
3, 401.
The absences of Randolph from his seat during the two sessions preceding
the Congressional Election in 1811 were among the things that cut down
his majority in his District at that election. J. R. to J. M. Garnett, April
16, 1811, and April 20, 1811, J. M. Garnett, Jr., MSS. Ill health, considered
in connection with the long exposure of a winter journey over frightful roads
from Roanoke to Washington, was doubtless usually the cause of his
occasional tardiness in leaving Roanoke at the beginning of the Congressional
session.
"On one occasion, when Mr. Clay, speaking in his not unusual personal
and self-sufficient strain, declared, among other things, that his parents had
left him nothing but indigence and ignorance, Randolph, turning to Mr.
Seaton, said in a stage whisper to be heard by the House: "The gentleman
might continue the alliteration, and add insolence." Wm. Winston Seaton,
A Biographical Sketch, 152.
Describing Randolph as he was at the time of the Missouri Compromise,
Goodrich says: "As he uttered the words `Mr. Speaker,' every member
turned in his seat, and, facing him, gazed as if some portent had suddenly
appeared before them. `Mr. Speaker,' said he in a shrill voice, which,
however, pierced every nook and corner of the hall, `I have but one word
to say; one word, Sir, and that is to state a fact. The measure to which
the gentleman has just alluded originated in a dirty trick." Recollections of
S. G. Goodrich, 744.
The distance that Randolph maintained between himself and President
Monroe also kept him aloof from William Wirt when the latter became a
member of President Monroe's Cabinet. To this he refers in a letter to
Francis W. Gilmer. Feb. 6, 1822, Bryan MSS. But, long before Monroe
became President, Randolph had expressed in singularly pointed terms his
distaste for the meretricious finery in which that gifted and charming man
sometimes tricked out his arguments in early life. Describing a speech by
Wirt in a case involving the will of Abner Osborne, which he had recently
heard at Powhatan Court House, he says: "At Powhatan C. H. I heard
the great Mr. — make a speech of 9 hours; mark me I heard only the last
half and it would have been thought bad even in Congress. It was a tangled
tissue of faded metaphors and languid figures and bore evident marks of the
Green Room, the Property Man, and the Prompter about it." Letter to
James M. Garnett, May 27, 1811, J. M. Garnett, Jr., MSS.
The reconciliation between Clay and Randolph was too dramatic, however,
to last, and, after the duel, Clay very sensibly allowed his challenge to
it to suffice as a salve to his wounded honor on subsequent occasions also,
when the hostility of his friends to Randolph had drawn from Randolph
language about Clay as opprobrious as that which had provoked the duel.
In his Speech on Retrenchment and Reform in the House, in 1828, Randolph,
after charging point-blank that there had been a "collusion and a
corrupt collusion" between John Quincy Adams and Clay, added: "He
had taken office under Mr. Adams and that very office, too, which had been
declared to be in the line of safe precedents—that very office which decided
his preference of Mr. Adams. Sir, are we children? Are we babies? Can't
we make out apple-pie without spelling and putting the letters together—a
—p, ap, p—l—e, ple, apple, p—i—e, pie, apple-pie?" Bouldin, 289.
Randolph's failure of re-election to the United States Senate was partly
due to the pride of character which made it difficult for him to consult the
little arts of political conciliation. Writing to Littleton Waller Tazewell
from Washington on Feb. 15, 1826, just after his election to the United
States Senate, he said of the Virginia Legislature: "Of the 24 Senators, I
knew 4; of the 216 Delegates, I knew 14 (8 of them from my late District);
of the rest, to the best of my knowledge, I had never seen but one,
M—n and B—h." L. W. Tazewell, Jr. MSS,.
The loss of influence which Randolph suffered from his extravagance in
the Senate was all the more to be deplored in view of the fact that in one of
his letters to Dr. John Brockenbrough he expressed the opinion that a seat
in the Senate was certainly to be preferred to any other position in the
Government. Feb. 11, 1827, Garland, v. 2, 284.
Randolph derived no little gratification from the fact that 20 years after
his deposition from the Chairmanship of the Committee of Ways and
Means of the House he was again made a member of that Committee.
Reg. of Deb., 1827-28, v. 4, Part 1, 1040.
"What business," he said in a note to this speech, when referring to the
judges who so far forgot their function as to take a prominent part in the
proceedings of the Convention held at Richmond for the purpose of promoting
the re-election of John Quincy Adams, "have these `most forcible Feebles'
in the van of election battles? Who gave them the right or the power to
call conventions, forsooth, and excommunicate and anathematize their
betters, in every point of view that gives value to the character of man?
Let them stick to their dull, heavy, yet light, long-winded opinions in the
Court of Appeals, where to our sorrow and to our cost they may play `Sir
Oracle'—where, when they ope their lips no dog must bark—but what
they say must be received as law in the last resort—without appeal. No
bill of exceptions can be tendered to their honors. Yes, let them keep to
their privileged sanctuary. For if these men, who are great by title and
office only, shall attempt to interfere with men at arms, let me tell them that
their judicial astrology will stand them in little stead: `There is no Royal
road to the Mathematics': and these ex officio champions will fare like the
delicate patrician troops of Pompey at the battle of Pharsalia. The Tenth
Legion will aim at their faces—and our fair-weather knights must expect
to meet with cracked crowns and bloody noses, and to staunch them as they
may.
But have you no respect for the ermine? Yes, as I have for the lion's
skin, but none at all for the ass beneath it. I was bred in a respect for
the ermine, for I lived when Pendleton, Blair, and Wythe composed the
`High Court of Chancery' in Virginia. Yes, I respect the pure ermine of
justice, when it is worn as it ought to be—and as it is by the illustrous judge
who presides in the Supreme Court of the United States, with modest
dignity and unpretending grace. I was bred in a respect for it approaching
to religious reverence. But it is the unpolluted ermine that I was taught to
venerate. Draggled in the vile mire of an election—reeking in the fumes
of whiskey and tobacco—it is an object, not of reverence, but of loathing
and disgust. `A parson may not' (say the canons of many churches) `use
himself as a layman.' And a judge is, so to speak, a lay parson. He should
keep himself emphatically `unspotted from the world.' " Bouldin, 312.
The acoustics and the atmosphere of the House were chronic causes
of irritation to Randolph. "We meet in a room," he declared on one
occasion, "in which we can neither hear nor see." A. of C., 1819-20, v. 1,
1066. In a letter to James M. Garnett, he termed the House "Pandemonium
where it is impossible to hear what is said or to read what is printed."
he told him that the atmosphere of the House was visible and
palpable, and that one might take it between his fingers like ill-ground meal.
Apr. 10, 1828, Mrs. Gilbert S. Meem, MSS. Long before that time he had
written to St. George Tucker that he could compare the House of Representatives
to nothing but the famous Dog Hole near Naples. March 13,
1810, Lucas MSS.
Seaton, the editor of the National Intelligencer, was of the opinion that
the fear in which the tongue of Randolph was held in the House was an
influence that counted not a little in the preservation of order in the House.
John Quincy Adams took a very different view of the matter. Randolph,
he thought, could no more keep order than he could keep silence. Memoirs,
v. 4, 532.
The close intercourse between man and pig disclosed by this narrative
deprives one of Randolph's observations (made doubtless to an Irishman)
of some of its humor: "Our pigs have not had the advantage of being
reared as one of the family circle." Nathan Loughborough MSS.
Nor was this the only thrifty territory between Washington and Richmond.
"The surrounding country (at Fredericksburg) is in a high state of
cultivation, and exceeded by none in fertility or beauty." Sketches of Hist.,
&c., in the U. S., by a Traveller, 118 (1826). And whatever else might be
asserted of stage travel between Washington and Richmond, the vehicles
and horses were capital. On May 18, 1826, Randolph said in the Senate:
"I have never seen such fine teams, such good carriages in my life as on that
road." Niles Reg., July 1, 1826 v. 6 (3rd series), 326.
"Provisions are most abundant and cheap in Virginia. . . . The dinner
this day, the 16th of February, was in all respects equal to Major Lomax'
anticipations; consisting of roast turkey, a whole ham, roast beef, canvass
back ducks, a pie of game, potatoes, hominy, etc." Three Years in North
America, by James Stuart (1833), v. 2, 50.
One accident is thus described in a letter from Randolph to James M.
Garnett: "I was not in the least hurt. Just on this side of R. Kenna's my
horse made a sudden start. The shaft, which was cracked before, as it
appeared, cracked loudly. He attempted to run off and tried to kick, but
I held him too closely. He had not got 50 yards when first one shaft and
then the other gave way, and I tumbled into the road holding the reins, and
stopped the horse, who turned round and looked at the mischief he had done
Jr., MSS.
"Major Lomax bought some canvass backs from the Hotel keeper at
Occoquan, at a shilling, sterling, apiece." Three Years in North America,
by Jas. Stuart (1833), v. 2, 49.
The plan on which the still-hunt pursued by Eppes in 1811 was conducted
was described by Randolph with his usual perspicacity in a letter to James
M. Garnett, dated March 19, 1811: "My enemies, I find, have been
playing a deep game, and have played it too with great skill and address.
An emissary (P. C.) [Peter Carr] from the `Old Man of the Mountain'
[Jefferson] has been slyly moving about the country, visiting Yancey
`Judge' Johnson, etc. All the initiated have been busily at work like
moles underground, and this has been and is their plan of operation; to
assail me by every species of calumny and whisper, but Parthian-like never
to show their faces or give battle on fixed ground; moving about from
individual to individual and securing them man by man. On the day of
election, a poll will be held for Mr. Eppes. This saves him the mortification
of a defeat, while it secures him more votes than if he were to offer and have
his pretensions fairly canvassed. It will operate as an irresistible invitation
to the proffer of his future services at a subsequent election and serve
as a standard by which to measure the probabilities of his success." J. M.
Garnett, Jr., MSS. "I should hate even the appearance of yielding to the
Great Bashaw (Jefferson), but really I see no reason why I should be at so
great expense of exertion and feeling when no adequate good can be obtained.
In the long run, I suppose, the Government and the presses must
break down any individual. I am sensible, too, that I subject my friends to
persecution and proscription, and this consideration hurts me more than
any other. It is a cruel thing to see men of merit overlooked and even
oppressed because of their support of me." Apr. 16, 1811, J. M. Garnett,
Jr., MSS.
In 1811 Eppes obtained a majority of one over Randolph in Buckingham
County; but, as Randolph obtained a decisive majority over him in the
whole District, the one vote did not make out a case for the application of
Nathaniel Macon's saying that a majority of one is the best majority in the
world. Sawyer, 41. A good story is told of a Maryland Judge who was
elected by a majority of two: "Your majority was very small," remarked
one of his friends. "Small!" he answered warmly. "If one is a majority
a majority twice as large is a hell of a majority!"
"I remember Mr. Eppes, it is true," says the Rev. Wm. S. Lacy, when
recalling a joint discussion between Eppes and Randolph to which he had
as a polished gentleman, who fingered a gold-headed cane—the first that
my childish eyes had ever beheld; but his speech made no impression on
me, or, if it did, has long since been entirely forgotten. Mr. Randolph was
the man I went to see; and I saw him, and heard him too. Much of his
speech I remember to this day, though it has been more than 45 years
ago." Early Recollections of John Randolph, So. Lit. Mess., June, 1859,
pp. 461-466.
As candidates, Carrington and Bruce were doubtless very much handicapped
by the fact that they had been political friends of John Quincy
Adams.
"The franchise of suffrage in Virginia was confined to the freeholders,
thus obviating in the public men the necessity of mingling with and courting
the opinion of the multitude. The system, too, of electioneering was to
address from the hustings the voters; to declare publicly the opinions of
candidates, and the policy they proposed supporting. The vote was given
viva voce. All concurred to make representative and constituent frank and
honest. While this system existed, Virginia ruled the nation. These
means secured the services of the first intellects and the first characters of
her people. The system was a training for debate and public display.
Eloquence became the first requisite to the candidate, and was the most
powerful means of influence and efficiency in the representative." The
Memories of 50 Years, by W. H. Sparks, 236.
"Giles exhibits in his appearance no marks of greatness. He has a dark
complexion and retreating eyes, black hair and robust form. His dress is
remarkably plain, and in the style of Virginia carelessness. Having broken
his leg a year or two since, he uses a crutch, and perhaps this adds somewhat
to the indifference or doubt with which you contemplate him. But, when
he speaks, your opinion immediately changes; not that he is an orator, for
he has neither action nor grace, nor that he abounds in rhetoric or metaphor,
but a clear, nervous impression, a well-digested and powerful condensation
of language, give to the continual flow of his thoughts an uninterrupted
expression. He holds his subject always before him and surveys it with
untiring eyes. He points his objections with calculated force, and sustains
his position with penetrating and wary argument. He certainly possesses
great natural strength of mind, and, if he reason on false principles, or with
sophistic evasions, he always brings to his subject a weight of thought which
can be shaken or disturbed only by the attack of superior wisdom. I heard
him a day or two since in support of a bill to define treason reported by
himself. Never did I hear such all unhinging and terrible doctrine. He laid
the axe at the root of judicial power, and every stroke might be distinctly
Among other things, he said: `I have learned that judicial opinions on
this subject are like changeable silks, which vary their colors as they are
held up in political sunshine.' " Jos. Story to Sam'l P.P. Fay, Feb. 13,
1808, Story, by Story, v. 1, 158.
In his sketches of the Virginia Convention of 1829-30, Hugh R. Pleasants
besides telling us that Robert Barraud Taylor was remarkable for his graceful
manner, fine person and finished style of speaking, gives this description
of Benjamin Watkins Leigh: "The man who of all others, with the exception
of John Randolph, attracted the largest share of attention in that
assembly was perhaps Benjamin Watkins Leigh. . . . Mr. Leigh was at
that time in the prime of life, being about 48 years old. His faculties naturally
very powerful, improved by continual study, rendered available by
constant exercise at the Bar, have reached their highest point of perfection.
An impassive disposition and a sanguine temper which never allowed him to
despair, gave full force to an energy which apparently sought out difficulties
for the mere love of the excitement produced by overcoming them. He
was known to the public as a profound lawyer who had no superior at the
Virginia Bar, and from his having been selected to compile the Code of 1819
was believed to be better acquainted with the history of Virginia legislation
from the foundation of the Colony than any other person in the Convention.
He was a small man, uncommonly well made, very graceful, with a hand
that would have formed a study for Kneller; eyes of uncommon brilliancy; a
forehead of striking beauty; hair as black as the wings of a raven, and glossy
and fine as a lady's; and features which but for a nose somewhat too short
would have been classically handsome. We heard it frequently remarked
at this period of his life that his face bore a striking resemblance to the
prints of Shakespeare, and we have ourselves been struck with the likeness.
Mr. Leigh wore a thick-soled shoe on one foot; his leg having been broken
many years before and never having recovered its proper length. This
defect, instead of impairing the ease and grace of his general carriage, rather
heightened their effect and contributed to render him what he undoubtedly
was at that time a man of uncommonly striking appearance." So.
Lit. Mess., v. 17, 148, 149.
These words remind us of an attack of unparalleled violence made by
Randolph upon the judge who acted as the Secretary of the Convention held
at Richmond for the purpose of promoting the re-election of John Quincy
Adams: "But what shall we say—not of the Secretary—no, it is needless
to say anything of him," Randolph declared in one of the notes to a reprint
of his speech on Retrenchment and Reform in the House in 1828. "His
name, associated with that of Chapman Johnson, must be grateful to that
distinguished luminary of the Bar and of Virginia. In our part of the
country, we still retain the old-fashioned prejudice against the three degrees
Prince Edward that every honest man pays his just debts. If I were to
go to Oakland (where I hope soon to be) and were to steal one of my friend
Wm. R. Johnson's plow horses, value perhaps $60.00, I should subject
myself to the penitentiary. But would he not rather be robbed of a work
horse than that any man should buy Medley or Sallie Walker of him for
some thousands of dollars and never pay him? Suum cuique tribuito is
still held in respect with us, and we pay small deference to the opinions of
judges even in the last resort whose creditors cry aloud in vain for justice
against the dispensers of justice—a judge who finally and conclusively
determines between meum and tuum who possesses nothing suum."
Bouldin, 311.
In his Autobiography, Martin Van Buren says that the appointment of
Randolph to the Russian Mission was made by Jackson at his instance.
He told Jackson, he informs us, that he had a suggestion to make to him
which would surprise him, and that his astonishment would probably be
much increased when he assured him in advance that the step he was about
to propose was one which he would neither take himself, if he were in his
place, nor recommend to any other President, but that he thought that
Jackson might take; although not without hazard. As to the reasons for this
conclusion which Van Buren then gave to Jackson, the Autobiography adds:
"They referred to the high estimation in which Mr. Randolph was held by
the masses of the Old Republicans in Virginia, to his identification with that
party from its commencement and his abiding attachment to it growing
out of his active participation in its early contests, to the imposing manner
in which he had discharged his duties as Chairman of the Committee of
Ways and Means during Mr. Jefferson's first term, and finally to his quarrel
with Jefferson, Madison, Monroe and Adams, which would, if he died
without some further opportunity to exert beneficially the remarkable
capacities, intelligence, sagacity and knowledge of men which he possessed
leave the world in the opinion that he had been an impracticable and
unprofitable man." P. 418.
A little later Van Buren wrote to Thomas Ritchie, the Editor of The
Enquirer, as follows: "I have no reason to believe that the information
in regard to Mr. Randolph's conduct at St. Petersburg has the slightest
foundation in truth. I believe them, on the contrary, to be sheer misrepresentations.
I regret, however, to inform you that Mr. Randolph's
health on his arrival at St. Petersburg was so very bad as to render his
immediate return to the South of France absolutely necessary for the
preservation of his life. This he was authorized to do if the state of his
health required it, and the affairs of the mission would admit of it without
prejudice to the public service. In the exercise of this discretion he left
St. Petersburg. . . . I have no doubt that his health is much worse
of St. Petersburg was found to be insupportable by him." Nov. 5, 1830,
Van Buren Papers, Libr. Cong.
| John Randolph of Roanoke, 1773-1833 | |