University of Virginia Library

CHAPTER VI

Congressional Career Continued,
Randolph Breaks with the Jefferson Administration

When the Ninth Congress met on December 2, 1805,
Macon was again elected Speaker of the House,[1] and Randolph
was again appointed Chairman of its Committee
on Ways and Means.[2] One of his first acts was to oppose
a proposition that a medal should be presented to William
Eaton for his gallantry and good conduct in his expedition
against Tripoli, and his opposition was voiced in the academic
English, of which Congress seems to have had the
good sense and taste never to complain:

The question really at issue was whether Eaton should be
given a medal or a sword, a gift of less significance, and
Randolph, and nearly a majority of the House besides,
thought a sword sufficient. And nothing could be more
felicitously expressed than the distinction upon which he
insisted, and which might well be taken to heart at the
present time, when military decorations for participation
in the World War are being so lavishly distributed that
their chief value consists in the protection that they afford
the wearer against the unfavorable inferences that might
be drawn from failure to receive one:

Here we reach the circumstances which led directly
to the defection of Randolph from the Jefferson administration,
and which were set forth by him in the first of the
celebrated letters signed "Decius." These letters were
published in the Richmond Enquirer, and the first appeared
on Aug. 15, 1806. Their authorship was never involved in
much doubt, but that they were from the hand of Randolph
himself is now, aside from other evidence, established
by a letter from Joseph Bryan to Randolph which

has never, we believe, been published. "I have seen your
piece signed Decius," Bryan said, "and all I can say is
you have a confounded way of writing and speaking broadout.
You can't learn to call black blue, and yellow white."[5]

On Dec. 3, 1805, Jefferson's first annual message, after
his sweeping reëlection to the Presidency, was laid before
the two Houses of Congress. It was penned at a time when
Great Britain and Napoleon were engaged in too desperate
a struggle with each other to care much whether the blows
aimed by them at each other fell upon a neutral head or
not; and when the jealousy of Spain, inflamed by the fact
that the soil of the North American Continent was slipping
from under her feet, was inflicting every grievous injury
that it dared to do upon the people of the United States
at sea and on land. After referring to the specific forms
that this injury had assumed, the message concluded with
the announcement that the President had found it necessary
at length to order the American troops on the
Spanish-American frontiers of the United States to be in
readiness to protect American citizens and to repel by
arms any future aggressions.

Three days after the transmission of this message the
President sent another to Congress, but this time a special
and confidential one on the subject of our relations with
Spain. It recalled the fruitless efforts which our representatives
at the Court of Madrid had made to obtain from
Spain indemnity for depredations upon American commerce
for which she was responsible, or to arrive at any
satisfactory understanding with her as to the true boundaries
of Louisiana; and it was accompanied by documents
which, in the opinion of the President, authorized the
inference that it was the intention of the Spaniards to
advance on our possessions until they should be repressed
by an opposing force. "Considering that Congress alone
is constitutionally invested with the power of changing our

conditions from peace to war," the President declared, "I
have thought it my duty to await their authority for using
force in any degree which could be avoided."

The message further stated that there was reason to believe
that France was disposed to effect a settlement of the
boundary dispute between Spain and the United States
on a plan analogous to what our Ministers had proposed,
and so comprehensive as to remove as far as possible the
grounds of future collision and controversy on the eastern
as well as western side of the Mississippi:

This message, with the accompanying documents, was
referred to a select committee composed of Randolph,
Nicholson, John Cotton Smith, of Connecticut, Gurdon S.
Mumford, of New York, David R. Williams, of South
Carolina, Barnabas Bidwell, of Massachusetts, and Robert
Brown, of Pennsylvania.

In his first letter, "Decius"[6] tells us that Randolph, as
chairman of this committee, immediately waited on the
President and informed him of the direction which had
been given to the message; expressing at the same time his

willingness and readiness to coöperate, so far as his principles
and judgment would permit, in such plans as the
Executive might have devised for the occasion. He then
learned, not without some surprise, that an appropriation
of two millions was wanted to purchase Florida. He told
the President without reserve that he would never agree to
such a measure because the money had not been asked for
in the message; that he could not consent to shift upon his
own shoulders, or those of the House, the proper responsibility
of the Executive; but that, even if the money had
been explicitly demanded, he should have been averse to
granting it, as, after the total failure of every attempt at
negotiation, such a step would disgrace the American
people, as France would never withhold her ill offices
when by their interposition she could extort money from
them, and because, if Great Britain, with whom the United
States had serious matters of controversy, did not consider
their supplying her enemies with money as a breach of their
neutrality, it must inspire her with contempt for any
attitude of resistance which they might assume towards her.
Under the circumstances, in the judgment of Randolph,
it was equally to the interest of Spain and the United
States to accommodate the matter by an exchange of territory.
To this idea the President seemed much opposed.
Randolph further stated that the nations of Europe, like
the Barbary Powers, would in the future refuse to look at
the credentials of American Ministers without a previous
douceur; and he said much more to the same purpose.

So far we have told the story in all but the exact words of
"Decius," and we shall continue for a time to follow closely
in his footsteps.

The Committee met on Dec. 7, but came to no definite
conclusion. One of its members, Barnabas Bidwell, to
whom the esoteric meaning of the message had doubtless
been confided by the President, construed it into a requisition
for money for purposes of foreign intercourse, and

proposed a grant to that effect; but his construction was
not supported, and his proposition was overruled. He,
himself, when the subject was agitated in the House, would
not avow the same construction of the message which he
had given to it in committee. On Dec. 14, Randolph was
obliged to go to Baltimore, whence he did not return until
Dec. 21. Previous to his departure, having occasion to
call on Madison, the Secretary of State, he was told by
him that France would not permit Spain to adjust her
differences with the United States; that France wanted
money, and that they must give it to her or have a Spanish
and French war. On the morning of Dec. 21, Randolph
returned from Baltimore, and the committee was immediately
convened. As they were about to assemble, he was
called aside by the Secretary of the Treasury—Gallatin—
with whom he retired, and who put into his hands a paper
headed: "Provision for the Purchase of Florida." As
soon as Randolph cast his eyes on this heading, he declared
that he would not vote a shilling. The Secretary interrupted
him by observing, with his characteristic caution,
that he did not mean to be understood as recommending
the measure; but that, if the committee should deem it
advisable to raise the necessary supplies, he had devised,
as he had been requested or directed to do, a plan for
effecting the object. Randolph expressed himself as disgusted
with the whole proceeding, which he could not but
consider as highly disingenuous. He said that he was as
sensible of the importance of Florida to the United States
and as willing to acquire it honorably as any man; but he
would never consent to proceed in that way; that the most
scrupulous care had been taken to cover the reputation of
the administration, though Congress was expected to act
as if it had no character to lose; that, whilst the official
language of the Executive was consistent and dignified,
warned them of the determination of Spain to advance
upon the possessions of the United States until she should
be repressed by an opposing force, declared that the protection
of American citizens as well as the spirit and honor
of the United States rendered the interposition of force
necessary, and announced at the same time the determination
of the President to pursue the course which the wisdom
of Congress might prescribe, Congress was privily
required to take upon itself all the odium of shrinking
from the national honor and national defence and of
delivering the public purse to the first cutthroat that demanded
it. From the face of the official communications, it
would appear that the Executive had discharged his duty
in recommending manly and vigorous measures which he
had been obliged to abandon because he had been compelled
by Congress to pursue an opposite course, when, in
fact, Congress itself had been acting all the while at Executive
instigation. Randolph further observed that he did
not understand this double set of opinions and principles,
the one ostensible to go upon the Journals and before the
public, the other the efficient and the real motive to action;
that he held true wisdom and cunning to be utterly incompatible
in the conduct of great affairs; and that he had
strong objections to the measure in itself; but that, in the
shape in which it was presented, his repugnance to it was
insuperable. And, in a subsequent conversation with the
President, in which these objections were recapitulated,
Randolph declared that he too had a character to support
and principles to maintain, and avowed his opposition to
the whole scheme.

So far we have trudged obsequiously along behind the
heels of "Decius," but to his narrative we might add the
fact that, when Madison made his statement that the
United States must give France money or have a Spanish
and French war, Randolph abruptly left his presence,
exclaiming as he went: "Good morning, Sir, I see I am not
calculated for a politician."[7]

Upon the assembling of the Committee, after the interview
between Randolph and Gallatin, it instructed Randolph
to obtain from the Secretary of War an opinion as
to the force which would be necessary for the defence of the
Southern frontier of the United States, and also information
as to the number of troops already stationed in that
part of the country. This instruction was duly carried
out by Randolph and a reply was made by the Secretary
of War which was laid before the Committee at another
meeting. At this meeting, Bidwell moved the adoption of
the same proposition which Gallatin had placed in Randolph's
hand, namely; that Congress should vote an appropriation
of two millions of dollars for the purchase
of Florida and, to raise the sum, should provide for the
continuance of certain existing duties. The motion was
rejected, and Randolph, under the instructions of the
Committee, drafted a report on its behalf stating that it
saw in the multiplied aggressions of Spain ample cause for
war, but, conceiving that the true interests of the American
people required peace, it forebore to recommend offensive
measures. The Committee, the report further stated,
believed it to be the policy of America to reap the neutral
harvest, and to seize the favorable occasion for extinguishing
the public debt, at once the price of her liberties and
the badge of her ancient servitude. Its sense was neither
to make war nor to purchase peace, but to provide for the
defence of the actual territory of the country which its
highest authority had announced to have been violated
and to be menaced with fresh invasion. Accompanying
the report, was a resolution that such number of troops
(not exceeding some maximum limit) as the President
should deem sufficient to protect the Southern frontier of
the United States from Spanish inroad and insult, and to
chastise the same, be immediately raised.

This reverberation of the battle-cry which the President
had set up in his Messages, mainly for the purpose of

strengthening his position at home, was the last thing that
he desired. When Bidwell's motion was made, Nicholson
had a set of resolutions in his pocket which had been
handed to him by Gallatin for the purpose of carrying the
real intentions of the President into effect, but, when the
motion was rejected by the Committee, without even being
seconded, Nicholson suppressed them, and returned them
the next day to Gallatin with the expression of his own disapproval.[8]
But Jefferson carried his point, as he rarely
failed to do in such cases, when the report and the resolution
drafted by Randolph reached the House. There the
report was rejected by a vote of 72 to 53, and a pending
proposition, which had been offered by Bidwell to appropriate
a blank sum for the purpose of defraying any
extraordinary expenses of foreign intercourse, was immediately
taken up. The avowed object of the measure was to
enable the President to begin a negotiation for the purchase
of Florida. A motion was made by Randolph to
confine the appropriation to that object, and this motion
was agreed to by a vote of 78 to 58. It was followed by
another made by Randolph which sought to render the
debt that was to be incurred redeemable at the pleasure of
the United States. This was carried without a division;
but, afterwards, when a bill was brought in for the purpose
of formally enacting the original proposition with these
amendments, the President had his retainers in such a good
state of discipline that the House rescinded its vote for a
specific appropriation, and framed its grant in such a
manner as to make the amount appropriated applicable at
the discretion of the Executive to any extraordinary purpose
whatsoever of foreign intercourse. Nothing daunted,
Randolph also made a motion to limit the amount that
the administration might agree to pay for the territory
in question upon the ground that, if Congress were disposed
to acquire Florida by purchase, it should fix the
maximum price, and thereby furnish our ministers with a
safeguard against the rapacity of France; but this motion
too was trampled under foot by the solid Jeffersonian
phalanx. When the bill was taken up for discussion, Randolph
assailed it in a speech of extraordinary eloquence,
of which he has given us a bare abstract in the first letter
of "Decius." It is deeply to be regretted that the entire
debate on the subject of which this bill was an outgrowth
should have been conducted in secrecy. "On that occasion,"
declares Garland, "John Randolph is said to have
delivered the ablest and most eloquent speech ever heard
on the floor of Congress."[9] This is pretty ardent even for
biographical love, but it is not out of keeping with the
reports of the speech which reached Timothy Pickering,
at the time a member of the Senate. "This bill (or rather
the resolution on which it was founded)," he wrote to Rufus
King from Washington, on Feb. 8, 1806, "was the subject
of John Randolph's determined opposition—sarcastic
reproaches on its advocates, and of strains of eloquence
never before heard from him in that House; such is the
report of members."[10]

"Decius" tells us that, in attacking the bill, Randolph
urged, among other things, that, if the President, acting
entirely upon his own responsibility, and exercising his
acknowledged constitutional powers, should negotiate for
the purchase of Florida, the House of Representatives
would, in that case, be left free to ratify or annul the contract;
but that the course, proposed to be pursued, would
reduce the discretion of the Legislature to a mere shadow.
At its ensuing session, Congress would find itself, in relation
to this subject, a deliberative body but in name; and
it could not, without a manifest dereliction of its own principles,
and, perhaps, without a violation of public faith,
refuse to sanction any treaty entered into by the President

under the auspices of the Legislature and with powers so
unlimited. However great its confidence in the Chief
Magistrate, he, Randolph said, would never consent to
give any President so dangerous a proof of it. If the President
deemed it advisable to purchase foreign territory, he
was free to enter into stipulations for that purpose, whilst
Congress would remain equally free to sanction or disapprove
such stipulations. If he thought proper to ask for an
appropriation for that object, the responsibility for the
measure would rest upon him, but, when the Legislature
undertook to prescribe the course which he should pursue,
and which he had pledged himself to pursue, the case was
entirely changed. The House should have no channel,
through which it could be made acquainted with the
opinions of the Executive, but such as was official, responsible
and known to the Constitution, and that it was a
prostitution of its high and solemn functions to act upon
an unconstitutional suggestion of the private wishes of
the President, irresponsibly announced by an irresponsible
individual and in direct hostility to his avowed opinions.
The case could not have been more clearly and vigorously
stated than it was by Randolph.

So far, however, as the ultimate object of persuasion was
concerned, all this eloquence was the merest babble; for
Jefferson, the most dexterous party leader of the higher
order ever known to the history of the United States, had
his forces well in hand. The bill was passed by a large
majority, and, on Jan. 16, 1806, was transmitted to the
Senate for its approval.

Randolph was more fortunate in his opposition to a concurrent
proposition, offered by Bidwell too, that provided
for the continuance of the duties mentioned above. It was
an unconstitutional mode of voting supplies, he said, to
raise taxes in conclave. If members of the House should
once come to levying impositions upon their constituents
with closed doors, whilst the votes which they should give

(to say nothing of the discussion) would from the very
nature of the secret journal remain concealed from their
constituents, there would be an end of the public liberties.
This reasoning was too cogent and axiomatic for even
brute force to withstand, and the idea was for a time abandoned,
but, on the last day of the session, it was carried
into effect upon the pretext that a previous message of the
President had intimated the existence of an unfriendly
disposition on the part of Tunis towards the United
States.

On Jan. 29, 1806, Andrew Gregg, of Pennsylvania,
offered a resolution in the House, declaring that no commodities
of Great Britain or any of her colonies or dependencies
ought to be imported into the United States
until "arrangements deemed satisfactory by the President
of the United States" should be arrived at between
the two countries; and, on March 5th, Randolph delivered
his first speech against it. This speech was one of the
most graphic and pungent that he ever delivered, was the
beginning of the course of conduct, which finally drew him
into flat disapproval of the War of 1812, and was all the
more interesting still because it was attended by a direct
attack upon the Jefferson administration, which severed
the last ligaments between himself and it. The origin of
the Gregg resolution was the right claimed by Great
Britain to visit American ships for the purpose of seizing
and impressing any British subjects that might be serving
as sailors on them, and the savage war of commercial
retaliation which Great Britain and France were waging
against each other. This war had occasioned the adoption
of stern and highly vexatious measures by England for the
suppression of the circuitous carrying-trade between the
West Indies and France which American ship owners had
been, to a large extent, fraudulently conducting through
American ports of entry and exportation without any real
change in the ownership of the cargoes at these ports.

Then, after declaring that he deemed it no sacrifice of
dignity to say to the Leviathan of the deep that we were
unable to contend with her on her own element but that,
if she came within our actual limits, we would shed our
last drop of blood in their defence, he continued in the same
strain of nervous rhetoric—every word like the arrow of
Acestes flaming as it flew:

Already Randolph's heart was fermenting with the
Sæva indignatio which Jefferson and everyone who adhered
to Jefferson were soon to feel so keenly, and, as he
always spoke without written preparation, whatever
lurked in his heart was almost certain to find its way to his
lips. Recalling the fact that Crowninshield, who had been a
sea-captain in the East Indian trade, had suggested in the
debate that, in case of war, the United States might confiscate
debts due by it to British subjects, Randolph said:

But Crowninshield thus contemptuously brushed aside
was only a feeble porter at the secret door which Randolph
was resolved to enter.

Then, Randolph stopped for a moment to hold up to scorn
what had been said about the fur trade.

Then, Randolph reverted to the time when he too was
singing Ca ira and dancing the Carmagnole.

And, having asked his question, Randolph answered it
in such a manner as to render him an object of rabid
animosity to James Sloan of New Jersey, a loyal Jeffersonian,
for a long time to come.

The cleverness of these covert allusions to the Executive
project for purchasing Florida, which Randolph had
arraigned, is apparent enough. There was a clever, satiric
touch, too, in Randolph's words a little later on, when, contrasting
the relative claims of visionary France and sobersided
England upon the good will of the United States, he
inquired: "And what is there in the situation of England
that invites to war with her? It is true she does not deal
so largely in perfectibility but she supplies you with a
much more useful commodity—with coarse woolens."[20]
And, immediately in the track of his epigram followed one
of those bold, illuminating statements of his which sometimes
condensed more solid reasoning into a single sentence
than is usually contained in pages of formal,

wiredrawn syllogisms. . . . Still speaking of England,
Randolph said: "With less profession, indeed, she occupies
the place of France in 1793. She is the sole bulwark of the
human race against universal dominion; no thanks to her
for it. In protecting her own existence, she insures
theirs."[21] And worthy of Mirabeau or Vergniaud was the
companion passage in which Randolph laid bare with the
edge of a single rhetorical image the weakness of Napoleon
at sea:

What his own conception of the demands of the hour was
he made clear enough:

A little later, he gave out what he called his projet in these
words:

And then came this purple patch:

And, with the end of the speech, came this additional
sting in it for the administration:

In a second speech on Gregg's resolution, Randolph put
the same thought into somewhat different language: "We
want the opinion of the doctor on the mode of treatment,
and don't choose to be referred to the apothecary; because
the superior does not choose to risk his reputation in a
dubious case."[27]

Randolph's second speech on Gregg's resolution was
delivered on March 6, 1806. His first was unquestionably
one of the most brilliant speeches ever uttered in Congress;
and the latter was but little its inferior. The former is also
noticeable as containing his first open attack on Madison.
It assumed the form of a disparaging reference to the
latter's dissertation on the rights of neutrals, copies of
which had been laid before members of the House. "If,
Sir," said Randolph, "I were the foe—as I trust I am the
friend of this nation—I would exclaim, `Oh! that mine
enemy would write a book!' "[28] ; and, after holding the
essay up to derision, he dashed the copy of it which he had
in his hand violently down upon the floor of the House.

To his strictures on the production, Smilie, of Pennsylvania,
who was an old man, replied that he ventured to
say that, when the mortal part of Randolph and himself
should be in ashes, the author of that work would be
considered a great man. This withering observation
might have silenced some more sensitive Congressman;
but, if Randolph preserved any measure of silence with
regard to the remark, it was only because he thought that
a very few words would suffice to make it ridiculous.

Randolph also makes some observations in the "Decius"
letters on the office assigned to the Committee of Ways and
Means of the House in connection with the Annual Message
which Jefferson laid before Congress two days before
he also laid before it his special message on Spanish affairs.
To this Committee was referred so much of the Annual
Message as related to the conduct of the belligerent European
Powers towards the United States and to the unjustifiable
construction lately given by some of them to the laws
of nations applicable to the rights of neutrals; and the
reference was accompanied by instructions to the Committee
to inquire in what particulars and to what extent
our neutral rights had been violated, and to ascertain what
legislative measures were required by the true interests of
the United States to counteract such violations. Bidwell,
who was seeking to supplant Randolph as the Democratic
leader in the House, stoutly strove to have the reference
made to a Select Committee; in which event he would
have had charge of the investigation as Chairman.[30] But,
for all practical purposes, the House at that time, as had
been true ever since the first election of Macon as Speaker,
was controlled by three men, the Speaker, Randolph, and
Nicholson, the intimate friend of the Speaker and Randolph,
and consequently to the Committee of Ways and
Means was the reference made. It was afterwards alleged
by Democratic members of the House, who had become
hostile to Randolph, that he was inexcusably dilatory in
rendering a report. Indeed, at the end of the session, Sloan
accused him of the habit of arbitrarily pocketing bills and

holding back reports[31] ; but, in the failure of the Secretary
of State, Madison, to return a seasonable reply to questions
put to him by Randolph, as Chairman of the Select
Committee in regard to the Spanish Message, on account of
his preoccupation with the task of writing his pamphlet
on the rights of neutrals, and in a severe attack of illness
experienced by Randolph besides, Randolph seems to
have had a valid justification for the delay imputed to him
by Sloan in connection with the Spanish Message.[32] On
Jan. 29, 1806, when he was still sick and absent from his
seat, the House on the motion of Smilie discharged the
Committee of Ways and Means from the further consideration
of so much of the President's Message as related to our
neutral rights, so as to bring the matter referred to it before
the House in Committee of the Whole.[33]

Before passing from the letters of "Decius," we might
add that they attracted universal attention.[34] This, of
course, was mainly because of the profound significance
in both a public and a party sense of such a schism as that
which the defection of Randolph had created in the Democratic
party; but it was partly, too, because of the grave,
dignified strain of high-minded remonstrance which ran
through the letters, and which rarely fails to command
general respect even when it does not command general
acquiescence; and also partly because, like all of Randolph's
public letters, they were well written. Among the replies
to Randolph, was a temperate and able one signed "Cato,"
which appeared in the Boston Chronicle, and was
ascribed by the Richmond Enquirer to Barnabas Bidwell.[35]
We experience some difficulty in recognizing a man, whom
Randolph had recently, in one of his speeches on Gregg's
resolution, belittled, along with other New England Democrats,
as a mussel, or a periwinkle on the strand, in the

stately, toga-clad figure which rises up before us in the
beginning of Bidwell's reply.

And it is but just to "Cato" to say that he not only
handled his short sword and his shield with admirable
adroitness but with a degree of generosity which was not
often characteristic of ancient warfare. Speaking of, or
rather at, Randolph, and of the insurgent Democrats
grouped about him, he says:

If this letter was really written by Bidwell, his contemporaries,
we should say, placed a lower estimate upon his
abilities than his deserts warranted. He was in Congress
but one term—from 1805-07—and brought with him to
the House such a high local reputation as an orator that
he would have been the Chairman of the Committee of
Ways and Means, instead of Randolph, if the efforts of
the more obsequious adherents of Jefferson at the beginning
of the Ninth Congress to defeat the election of Macon

to the Speakership had been successful.[38] But, like many
another local phenomenon who has found himself in Congress,
he was soon set down as a man whose shop did not
bear out the promise of his show window. "As a popular
speaker, he never can stand as the rival of John Randolph,"
was the comment of John Quincy Adams on him,
after the effect of the Chase impeachment on his feelings
about Randolph had somewhat worn off, and he had
heard Bidwell in the House.[39] Poor Bidwell! his rising, his
fleeting meridian, and his setting have all been mercilessly
set forth by Edmund Quincy, the biographer of the
eminent Federalist, Josiah Quincy, who was one of Bidwell's
fellow-Congressman.

There is also testimony, though this is Federalist testimony
too, to the effect that, when Bidwell left Congress,
he had been to a noticeable degree cowed by the tongue
and imperious temper of the man whose leadership he had
coveted. "Bidwell," Senator Benjamin Tallmadge, of
Connecticut, wrote to Dr. Manasseh Cutler, "is manifestly
not a little mortified, and speaks but rarely, especially
when R. [Randolph] is present."[41]

With what we have said about the Spanish Message
episode as a gloss, the meaning of the attacks, overt and
covert, made by Randolph on the Jefferson administration
in his speeches on Gregg's resolution becomes plain
enough. It is observable that in the first of these speeches
he had nothing to say on the burning issue of the impressment
of American sailors by British captains. And he
was, of course, taunted with the fact, but he hastened to
assure the House that it was due only to a slip of the
memory and to repair the omission.[42] His position on that
subject is very fully and clearly stated in the third letter
of "Decius."[43]

There can be little doubt that Gregg's resolution would
have been adopted by the House if it had received the
support of Jefferson; but its adoption would have meant a
loss to the Treasury of $5,000,000 a year. Gallatin, the
Secretary of the Treasury, naturally enough preferred
limited to unlimited restrictions on our commerce with
England; and, though compelled by the pressure of public
opinion to rattle the sword a little in his last messages to
Congress, Jefferson did not lose sight of the fact that war
is the probable sequel of the total refusal of one country
to trade with another. From first to last, his policy was to
avoid actual war with England, if it could be done without
positive national dishonor. The introduction of Gregg's
resolution was followed a few days later, perhaps at the
instance of Gallatin, by another resolution introduced by
Nicholson which prohibited the importation into the
United States of only such British goods as we might derive
from other countries or produce ourselves.[45] In favor of
this resolution, Jefferson, who never shrank from a contest
with rebellion in his party when it was really necessary to

quell rebellion, did take a stand, and what that meant any
historian who is familiar with the use of patronage by
which he helped to secure the repeal of the Federal Judiciary
Law, and the many other forms of artful conciliation
besides the seductive distribution of offices, to say nothing
of occasional applications of downright force, by which
he was in the habit of maintaining discipline and cohesion
in the ranks of his party, ought to be able to declare without
difficulty.

Knowing that Nicholson and Macon were, next to
Randolph, the most formidable of the Democrats in the
House who had come to be known as "the Old Republicans"
he sought by different means to keep them both from
making common cause with Randolph. This was not a
difficult thing to do in the case of Nicholson. He had a
sincere affection for Randolph and did not like Madison,
but to Gallatin he was bound both by ties of marriage and
personal intimacy. He was, besides, a man of slender
means and, the head of a growing family, and was finding
that his service in Congress was impairing his ability to
earn an adequate income for his needs. (a) To Nicholson
Jefferson offered a judicial position, and the offer was
accepted, and Randolph was deprived in this talented and
honorable man of little less than his right arm. (Hist. of U.
S., by Adams, viii, 167.) But did Jefferson have anything
to do with this matter? (b) No one knew better than
Jefferson that Macon was a Cincinnatus who could be
neither browbeaten nor bought, and that there was no
way of influencing him except by soothing assurances of
unbroken friendship.

Nor did Jefferson forget that Monroe was the chief instrument
upon which Randolph relied for the purpose of bringing
back the Democratic party to its pristine purity and
preventing the election of Madison to the Presidency as the
successor of Jefferson.

Indeed, there can be little doubt that Jefferson's placable
and generous temper would cheerfully have pardoned even
Randolph's offences if the latter had not exacted impossibilities.
Jefferson was too great a man, and too conscious
of his greatness to be jealous of anyone who was not an
Alexander Hamilton (if he was ever jealous of him); and,
while there is little, if any, evidence to show that Randolph
ever shared his confidence in the closet as Gallatin
and Madison did, there is evidence that Jefferson felt a
high degree of admiration for Randolph's peculiar talents
and observed with sincere pleasure the course of his swift
and brilliant ascent to parliamentary leadership. But
Randolph detested Madison because of his inclination
towards the Yazoo Compromise, and for other reasons.
It was a saying of his that Madison was as mean a man
for a Virginian as John Quincy Adams was for a Yankee.[48]
And it was a point of cardinal importance in his posture
towards the Jefferson Administration that Madison should
be sacrificed as a candidate for the Presidency. But such
was the deep-rooted respect and affection entertained by
Jefferson for Madison that to this part of Randolph's
plans, it is safe to say, nothing could have induced him to
accede. Under the circumstances, after shelving Nicholson,

coaxing Macon, warning Monroe and, doubtless,
dressing up his broken alignment at still other weak points,
there was nothing for him to do except to bring what Randolph
in the "Decius" letters calls his "colossal popularity"[49]
to bear with crushing effect upon Randolph.

Nicholson's resolution was adopted on March 17, and
was sent to a special committee to be reduced to the form
of a bill. It was adopted by a vote of 87 to 35.[50]

But when the Non-importation Bill based on Nicholson's
resolution was subsequently reported and passed by a vote
of 93 to 32,[52] with a provision postponing its actual operation
until quite far in the future, Randolph, who, aside
from all secondary incentives, had the genuine hatred of a
thoroughly sincere and resolute man for all disingenuous
and faint-hearted measures, did not let it pass by him
until he had hit off its true character in one of those happy
phrases which so often stuck in the memory of his hearers
with the tenacious hold of the Spanish needles or cockle
burrs which caused so much annoyance to the sportsman
in the Staunton River lowgrounds. "Never in the course
of my life," he said, "have I witnessed such a scene of
indignity and inefficiency as this measure holds forth to
the world. What is it? A milk and water bill! A dose of
chicken broth to be taken nine months hence!"[53]

And it is scarcely too much to affirm that from that time

until the first session of the Ninth Congress ended it was
hard to determine whether Jefferson or Randolph dominated
the House. The alternations of militancy and
meekness, the indecision which had distinguished the
policy of our State Department towards France and England,
gave Randolph an advantage which he was quick to
turn to the annoyance of the Jefferson administration in
numerous ways. He became as vexatious to it as the
"terrible cornet of horse," William Pitt, whom he admired
so extravagantly, promised to be to Sir Robert Walpole.

And Adams might have added that the Jacksons and
Thomas Mann Randolphs of the Southern States could do
nothing with him either but arouse in him a spirit that
might readily have given them an opportunity to face him
on a field where their inferiority to him might not have
been so pronounced as it was upon the floor of Congress.

And then Senator Tallmadge adds the comment on the
wilted self-importance of Bidwell which we have already
quoted. A few weeks later, after a motion had been made
to postpone indefinitely the consideration of a resolution
offered by Randolph to remove the ban of secrecy resting
upon the members of the House in relation to the Spanish
Message of the President, Senator Tallmadge wrote again
to Dr. Cutler as follows: "This brought up Smilie, Findley,
Eppes, Bidwell, Early, etc., but Randolph silenced
them all."[56] Indeed, at times, the mouth-pieces of the Jefferson
administration in the House felt too harried to break
silence at all. "It is a matter of great astonishment to
me," were the words of Wilson Cary Nicholas to Jefferson
on one occasion, "that such a philippic as we have seen
could have been uttered in Congress and not one word
said in justification of the administration."[57] More than
once, in his utter indifference to the number of his antagonists,
when he was making his furious onslaughts on them,
Randolph indulged in a degree of license which caused
Sloan on the last day of the session to speak of him as "a
petted, vindictive school-boy," or, "a maniac in his
straight-jacket, accidentally broke out of his cell."[58] In his

labored, prolix arraignment, Sloan alleged that, on one
occasion, Randolph had invaded the Speaker's chair,
shut his fist, and, pointing directly to another member of
the House, in an imperious tone of voice not only ordered
him to sit down but to go down the back stairs; and that,
on another occasion, Randolph had called another member
an old, toothless driveller, superannuated, and in his second
dotage.[59] (a) Two days after the passage of Nicholson's
Non-Importation Bill, the House took up certain
resolutions offered by Randolph which asserted that a
contractor under the government was a civil officer and as
such incapable of holding a seat in the House, and stigmatized
as unconstitutional the union of civil and military
authority in the same person.[60] One of his fellow
members, Matthew Lyon, had entered into mail contracts
with the government, and John Smith, one of the Senators
from Ohio, was a contractor on a large scale for army
supplies; and General Wilkinson, whom John Randolph
was to loathe so ineffably, was exercising both civil and
military powers at St. Louis. Such resolutions, of course,
placed their Democratic victims in very much the same
situation as that of the prisoner in Poe's Tale, who could
not escape the pit in his gradually contracting prison without
coming into contact with the fiery walls that were
closing in on him, and could not escape these walls without
toppling over into the pit. If they voted against the
resolutions, they would be recreant to the fundamental
principles of the Democratic creed; if they voted for them,
they would be talking about halters in the house of the
thief. Crafty resolutions of this kind have been brought
to quite a pitch of perfection in the parliamentary practice
of modern times, but, in the early career of John Randolph,
they were perhaps not so common. The Democratic
majority had to gulp its principles to defeat the resolutions,
and Randolph forced it to gulp as well a bill which rendered
military and naval officers incompetent to hold any
civil offices.

On March 29, the Senate sent a bill to the House providing
for the settlement of the Yazoo claims which had
passed the Senate by a vote of 19 to 11,[61] after James
Jackson, who had again become a member of that body
had sunk into his grave. As soon as it lifted up its head in
the House, Randolph pounced upon it with all the old
vicious energy, and this time with an outspoken frankness
which not only did not spare the President, but took in
practically the entire House itself. "The whole weight
of the Executive government presses it on," he said. "We
cannot bear up against it. The whole Executive government
has had a bias to the Yazoo interest ever since I had
a seat here." The Yazoo business, he declared, was the
head of the divisions among the Republican party; it was
the secret and covert cause of the whole; and, if the bill
was postponed over Sunday, the secret mechanism which
everybody knew would be brought to bear on it so powerfully
that he would not give a farthing for the issue.
Gentlemen would come in with speeches ready cut-anddried
until a majority would dwindle to nothing.[62] Ordinarily,
such language could not fail to have a powerful
effect in turning the jealous pride of a legislative assembly
against the speaker, but, under the moral effect of Randolph's
righteous and disinterested wrath, "Yazoo" in his
mouth had become a word of irresistible potency. With
him was Milton's "strong siding champion, Conscience,"
addressing a stirring appeal not only to his own honorable
nature but to the moral instincts of the country at large;
and the bill was rejected by a vote of 62 to 54.[63] After the
vote was announced, Randolph arose and exultingly stated
that the feelings of the deceased Senator from Georgia,
James Jackson, had been so deeply involved in the fate of

the bill that its defeat might be regarded as his resurrection.[64]

Another triumph was secured by Randolph when the
injunction of secrecy, imposed upon the proceedings of the
House with respect to the Spanish Message, was removed.[65]
In accomplishing this object he was aided by the Federalists
and about 30 Republicans. When the Journal was
published, and he found that it did not contain the Spanish
Message, he moved that the Message too should be
given publicity, and narrated the history of his own interviews
with the President and the Secretary of State in
regard to its subject.[66] On this occasion, his language was
somewhat restrained, but, on a later day, he cut loose from
every consideration of reticence and broke finally with the
administration in these words:

Of Madison he had taken perpetual leave in his first
speech. After recalling the declaration that Madison had
made with reference to paying France for asserting her
influence over her minion, Spain, Randolph said:

Randolph went too far, however, when in one of his speeches
in this debate he accused Madison of attempting to procure
money from the Treasury for his negotiation with
France without awaiting an appropriation by Congress,
and declared that the documents "if published, would fix
a stain upon some men in the Government and high in
office which all the waters in the ocean would not wash
out."[69] This charge was disproved, though there had been
a suggestion by Jefferson which might readily have been
distorted by rumor into a specious foundation for it, and,
with other things that Randolph had said about Madison,
elicited from Mrs. Madison's brother-in-law, John G.
Jackson, an irate speech, which, with a slight difference
of wording, might have culminated in a duel. In the
course of this speech, he referred to Randolph as his
colleague, and was interrupted by the latter with the disdainful
interjection: "I am not the gentleman's colleague."
"Very well," replied Jackson, and continuing
referred to Randolph as "John Randolph" only to be
interrupted by the Speaker, who said it was out of order
to call gentlemen by name in the House. "Sir," answered
Jackson with a happy promptitude to which more than
one tingling scalp in the House gave a responsive assent,
"I know of no more appropriate appellation unless it is
`the descendant of Powhatan.' "[70]

The influence of Randolph was again felt a little later
when the annual appropriations for the Navy came along,
and, as he had a strong dislike for Robert Smith, the Secretary
of the Navy, and his brother Samuel Smith, one of the
Senators from Maryland, he was all the quicker to exert

it in this case. The Navy estimates were pared down to
very narrow limits, and, beyond an appropriation for a
considerable number of gunboats, the recommendations
of the President in relation to the upbuilding of the Navy
were disregarded. The theory of Randolph and the other
old Republicans in reference to the relations between
Great Britain and the United States was, as Randolph's
speeches on Gregg's Resolution showed, akin to that which
afterwards caused Bismarck to deprecate talk about a war
between Great Britain and Germany as talk about a war
between an elephant and a whale. How indefensible such
a theory was became apparent enough a few years later
during the War of 1812, when our fleet, small as it was,
won for itself a measure of naval glory which even the
victors of Trafalgar could not despise. In his remarks on
the Naval Appropriation bill, Randolph said that such a
bill was a mere matter of form; that the items might as
well be lumped together; that Robert Smith, the Secretary
of the Navy, would, if he chose, spend twice as much
money as he had done the year before, and that the
House would have to make up the deficiency. "A spendthrift,"
said he, "never could be supplied with money fast
enough to anticipate his wants."[71]

Another step by Randolph that brought embarrassment
to the administration was a bill introduced by him for
the repeal of the salt tax and the continuance of the
Mediterranean Fund; a special fund which Congress had
provided for the exigencies created by the piratical depredations
of the Barbary Powers.[72] It was hard, of course, for
any good Democrat not to unite in the repeal of a tax on
such a common necessity of life as salt. The bill was
passed by a vote of 84 to 11 and sent to the Senate,[73]
whence it returned to the House with the provisions relating
to the salt tax eliminated,[74] only to be met by the

insistence of the House upon the bill in its original form.
The result was a committee of conference, the refusal of the
Senate to recede, a motion by Randolph that the House
adhere to its own bill, and a situation that put the Mediterranean
Fund itself in jeopardy. Randolph's motion
did not prevail, but, by the time it was beaten by the close
vote of 47 to 40, the passions of the House were aglow to
such an extent that Randolph himself was compelled to
ask:

But these conciliatory words were totally lost upon
Thomas Mann Randolph, the son-in-law of Jefferson,
from whom Randolph had long been estranged. His
temper was as irascible as that of a Roanoke yellow-jacket,
and, too transported by anger to hear anything except
what his anger prompted, he rose from his seat, under the
honest but totally unfounded impression that the use of
the word "contumely" and other words by Randolph were
intended to have an offensive application to himself, and,
after acknowledging that in point of talents there was
between John Randolph and himself an immeasurable
distance, declared that he had long observed that John
Randolph was much more prudent of speech outside of the
House than when protected by the shield of its dignity.
Then, after uttering some other foolish things, he concluded
by proclaiming that he entertained the same
principles and sentiments with reference to points of honor

that John Randolph did, and that he had always thought
and always should think that lead and even steel made
very proper ingredients in serious quarrels.[76] As soon as
this explosion ended, James M. Garnett, a member of
Congress from Virginia, and one of John Randolph's intimate
friends, at the latter's request, waited upon Thomas
Mann Randolph and asked him whether his observations
were intended for John Randolph, and, upon being told
that they were, informed him that John Randolph expected
him to meet him; whereupon Thomas Mann Randolph
replied that he was ready to do so, but that, if John
Randolph would only say that he meant no allusion to
him, there was no apology which a man of honor could or
ought to make which he would not be ready to offer.
When these circumstances were communicated to John
Randolph, he observed that the course which his opponent
had chosen to pursue precluded any sort of declaration or
acknowledgment on his part, and that Thomas Mann
Randolph should choose some friend with whom Garnett
might converse further on the subject. This Thomas
Mann Randolph did in the person of Isaac A. Coles, of
Albemarle County, Virginia, who, after a short conversation
with his principal, gave the same assurance to Garnett
that his principal had already given to him. The reply of
Garnett was that he had no doubt that Thomas Mann
Randolph was laboring under an entire misconception as
to what his principal had said, but that, after what had
passed, his principal would make no statement whatever,
and that, if Thomas Mann Randolph could not reconcile
it to himself to make a suitable apology, John Randolph
would expect him to meet him either that night, "which he
preferred," or in the morning.[77] It is said that, when John
Randolph first applied to Garnett as his second, the latter
endeavored to dissuade him from asking an explanation
from Thomas Mann Randolph, but that John Randolph
replied that his resolution was irrevocably taken, that
perhaps he had cause on the whole to be obliged to Thomas
Mann Randolph, that he had long been a target for every
worthless scoundrel in the House to aim his shafts at, and
that Thomas Mann Randolph by this unprovoked and
studied outrage had given him an opportunity to answer
them all in the person of an adversary who would not
disgrace his contest, and under circumstances in which no
possible blame could attach to him.[78]

And this, gentle reader, is the circumspect individual
who, we are told by Henry Adams, "never pressed a quarrel
to the end," and, who, Adams insinuates, was always
careful to take the measure of his man before assuming an
aggressive port towards him.[79]

Fortunately, the inflexibly rigid attitude of Randolph
was never communicated to his adversary by Coles, because
when he looked up his principal he found that,
assured by friends whose tempers were not so delicately
suspended as his own that he had gone off at half-cock,
Thomas Mann Randolph was on his feet in the House
making the amende honorable to John Randolph. When
it was passed on to John Randolph, who was in another
part of the capitol, by Garnett, the former requested the
latter to state to Coles that he received Thomas Mann
Randolph's apology and had no further commands for
that gentleman; which Garnett did.[80] There is a French
saying, however, that it is not the pistols but the seconds
that kill; and subsequently it looked, for a time, as if the
controversy between the two Randolphs might prove an
illustration of its truth. The fire which it kindled, as often
happens in the case of other fire, started up anew from its
embers, and a series of statements on the subject in the
Richmond Enquirer, made by persons who had been connected
in one secondary way or another with the affair,

occasioned enough apprehension in the mind of Jefferson
to induce him to send a line of caution to his son-in-law.
This letter is mentioned in a letter from him to James
Ogilvie, in which he used these words, so highly characteristic
of the free movement of his mind in its relations to
every subject:

Randolph did not lose his position as Chairman of the
Committee of Ways and Means until after the end of the
9th Congress, but his formal leadership of the Democrats
in the House did not survive the first session of that Congress.
On July 5, 1806, in a letter to Bidwell, Jefferson
wrote that it was only speaking a truth to say that all
eyes looked to him as the future leader of the House.[82]

The causes which produced Randolph's estrangement
from the Jefferson Administration have been the subject
of much conjecture. By Sawyer, in his highly inaccurate,
but interesting, biography of Randolph (a), it has
been ascribed to the circumstance that Bidwell and not
Randolph was selected by Jefferson as the conduit for the
transmission to Congress of his secret intentions in regard
to the Florida purchase.[83] But this idea overlooks the
suggestion that there must have been already a serious
rift in the relations between Jefferson and Randolph for

Jefferson to have selected Bidwell at all. The estrangement
has also been ascribed to the fact that Jefferson had
refused the application of Christopher Clark and several
of his Virginia colleagues in the House, asking for the
appointment of Randolph to the English Mission. Randolph
had nothing to do with this application, and was
not privy to it when made, but the fact that it had been
made and rejected became known to him subsequently,
and must have had a more or less corrosive effect on a nature
so proud and resentful as his.[84] It is by no means
certain that he did not become cognizant of the application
after it had been made and before it was rejected; for
in a letter from Nancy Randolph to him which we shall
hereafter insert in these pages, she speaks of his elation,
after the termination of the Chase trial, with the prospect
of a foreign mission, and says: "Your expected voyage
enchanted you so much that you could not help talking of
it even to your dear nephew. `Soon, my boy, we shall be
sailing over the Atlantic.' " The reasons, given by George
Tucker in his Life of Jefferson for the refusal of Jefferson
to make the appointment, are concisely stated in these
words:

Tucker was an ardent Jeffersonian, but, even taking his
words at their full worth, do they not imply previous conditions
under which Randolph's shortcomings might have
already rendered his footing with the Jefferson administration
but a precarious one? It is true that on Feb. 22,

1805, Randolph wrote to St. George Tucker that he was
then on terms of the greatest friendship and intimacy
with Jefferson and Gallatin; though he was not therefore
the less independent in his sentiments and votes[86] ; but
this very letter was written to allay anxiety about the
effect of his Yazoo speeches on the mind of the administration.
There is evidence tending to prove that, shortly
after the first triumph of the Democratic party, Randolph
was restive under the commanding leadership of Jefferson,
and disposed to reserve for himself a degree of independence
and initiative incompatible with the measure of
deference due by a party leader in the House to a President
of the same party as himself. And there is also evidence
tending to prove that Jefferson early realized after
he became President that Randolph might at any time
kick over the traces. So far as Madison and Gallatin were
concerned, it is inconceivable that, after the Yazoo
speeches delivered by Randolph in the House, their good
will should not have been sensibly alienated from him, or
that Randolph should not have recognized that, in view
of the close intimacy between them and Jefferson, this
alienation was bound to have its effect upon Jefferson too.
Even so far back as Dec. 17, 1800, Randolph wrote to
Nicholson: "I need not say how much I would prefer J.
[Jefferson] to B. [Burr], but I am not like some of our party
who are as much devoted to him as the Feds were to General
Washington. I am not a monarchist in any sense. If
our salvation depends on a single man, 'tis not worth our
attention."[87] Nicholson evidently thought that this
smacked a little of disloyalty, and Randolph felt it necessary
to explain his meaning.

In the debates over the repeal of the Federal Judiciary
Act, when twitted by Bayard with being a mere tool of
Jefferson, Randolph was quick to pledge the support of
his friends and himself to any measure that Bayard might
bring forward to protect the independence of Congress
against the Executive influence, of which the Virginian
statesmen of Randolph's school had such a haunting
horror. And about the same time that he wrote to Judge
Tucker that he was on terms of the greatest friendship and
intimacy with Jefferson and Gallatin,[89] he used these ominous
words in a letter to Nicholson:

On Nov. 30, 1803, Randolph had occasion to write to
Jefferson, disclaiming any intent to apply certain remarks,
which he had made in the House, to him, and expressing
the veneration, in which he had always held and still held
Jefferson's character.[91] The reply was the kindly one which
might always be expected from Jefferson under such circumstances.
Nevertheless, it is not difficult to read a mild
admonition between some of the lines of his letter.

Nor was it long after the accession of the Democratic party
to power before it became apparent that Randolph was
dissatisfied with its failure to live up to the standards of
conduct which it had inculcated when it was in a minority.
By nature and training, he was a purist in public affairs,
though not a visionary or enthusiast; for that was not his
turn of mind at all. (a) Indeed, he was the advocate of
no principles of public conduct that ought not to be practically
attainable under popular institutions. (b) He was
innately too proud and self-respecting to tolerate readily
low standards of public behavior, and he was sprung from
a political aristocracy, based on freehold suffrage, which
sincerely believed it to be the highest of all distinctions to
serve the public and to serve it well, and which engaged in
the rivalries of politics subject to a strict code of honorable
conduct. There was a flavor of highbred simplicity and
integrity about his political creed, and his fastidious sense
of public obligation made it difficult for him to subordinate
his refined scruples to the drab, and often squalid, concessions
and compromises necessitated by the practical
exigencies of politics. He shrank from political intrigue;
he had nothing but scorn for the abuses of patronage.
Removed by the possession of a large estate, peculiarly
of a nature to foster pride of character, from one of the
sources of political subserviency, he found it difficult to
understand the prudential considerations which many
men in public life less happily circumstanced, in point of
fortune, were compelled to consult. It was these characteristics,

along with his eloquence and force of will, which
gave Randolph an ascendancy over his Virginia Colleagues
in the House, that even the imposing prestige and
great popularity of Jefferson and the influence of Executive
patronage were at times powerless to withstand;
which carried with him on the Yazoo question every one of
the Republicans in the House from Virginia (including
Eppes and Thomas Mann Randolph, the President's
sons-in-law) but two, and one of them, Jackson, Mrs.
Madison's brother-in-law,[93] and on the resolutions, relating
to the Florida purchase, in which Jefferson's control
over his party was directly involved, twelve out of the
twenty-two members of the House from Virginia.[94]

But Randolph's point of view was very different from that
of the Northern Democrats, though no more disinterested
and elevated than the point of view from which many
Federalists reached their conclusions. The Northern
Democrats were in every moral and intellectual respect
inferior to the Federalists. It is a hard, perhaps a too
hard, picture which Henry Adams draws of them as they
were in 1804; but it is far from being an absolutely overdrawn
one.

But prosaic and even sordid in some respects as these
Northern Democrats were, for the most part, Jefferson
could not conduct the Government, and Madison could
not be elected to the Presidency, without them; and it is
only just to them to say that their practical training and
hum-drum, Philistine outlook supplied in more than one
respect a wholesome corrective of the tendency of some of
the Southern public men of the time to lay too much
stress upon governmental theories and quixotic conceptions
of public responsibility. And Jefferson, who, like
the true apostle of Democracy that he was, prized a
Northern proselyte, if anything, more than a Southern
communicant, got along with the Northern Democrats
remarkably well. But, from first to last, Randolph and
the old Republicans found difficulty in working harmoniously
with them. As early as July 18, 1801, Randolph
wrote to Nicholson: "We think that the great work is
only begun, and that without a substantial reform we
shall have little reason to congratulate ourselves on the
mere change of men."[97] A few months later, he followed
up the same idea in a second letter to Nicholson: "There
is much want of concert and even of discordance of opinion
in the majority. The Eastern gentlemen generally
seem content with the change of men, and wish not to
pursue it much farther. We are for a change of important

principles."[98] And, a few days later, in a letter to St.
George Tucker, he brought out the division in the party
still more clearly:

With such a broad line of cleavage between the old and
the new Republicans as these letters indicate, the leadership
of Randolph in the House would, in any event, have
been very unstable; but, accompanied as his severe conceptions
of public duty and his doctrinaire notions of
State sovereignty were by an overbearing will, a pugnacious
temper, an impatient and intolerant disposition and a
sarcastic tongue, a breach sooner or later, between him
and his Northern followers, and, as a further result, between
him and Jefferson and Madison and even Gallatin,
for whom he entertained a great admiration, was inevitable.
In the eyes of the Northern, and especially the New
England, Democrats, he was a precisian and a theorist
whose scruples and dogmas were constantly interfering
with the smooth transaction of the public business, let
alone their own private objects, and the dictatorial offspring
of social distinctions even sharper than those which
usually separated them from the Federalists. Attracted

to the Democratic party in New England by their dislike
for clerical bigotry, and their leaning towards a common
social and political level, and in the Middle States by the
latter simply, they were not accustomed, and did not take
kindly, to hectoring habits of manner and speech which
they were quick to impute to impetuous and arbitrary
characteristics bred by the slave plantation. As time
passed they formed a stronger and stronger aversion to
Randolph. The result was that finally nothing but some
question, in which their selfish interests and fears and
Randolph's convictions and passions were deeply enlisted,
was needed to develop a positively mutinous spirit on their
part; and this question was found in the Yazoo debate of
1805. The only persons responsible for the suggestion or
support of the Yazoo compromise, whom Randolph did
not denounce in that debate, were Jefferson, Madison, and
Gallatin. In one of his speeches in the discussion he even
spoke of Jefferson, as we have seen, as a great and good
man; and, while expressing unutterable astonishment in
the same discussion that Madison and Gallatin should
have united in the report, recommending the compromise,
he referred also to them as men in whom he had had and
still had the highest confidence.[100] But he must have realized
and, if he did not, Jefferson, Madison, and Gallatin
surely did, that, if it was infamous to vote for the Yazoo
compromise, it was equally infamous to recommend it.
As to the Democrats, who voted for the compromise in the
House, all of them, even those who were not specifically
mentioned by Randolph, were, of course, caught up in the
scorching whirlwind of his fierce onset. That after the
miscarriage of the recommendatory report, if ever before,
Jefferson, Madison, or Gallatin could have felt, to say nothing
of their personal sensibilities, that Randolph had the
temper, the cool judgment, or the capacity for self-surrender
or teamwork, that parliamentary leadership requires, is
unimaginable; and that under the consuming lava-stream
of his invective any sequacious impulse in regard to him,
that had previously existed in the breasts of the Findleys,
Smilies, and Varnums, who voted in favor of the compromise,
could have survived, is equally so. A man can
sometimes drive other men by such language as Randolph
used in the Yazoo debates, but by such language he cannot
hope to lead them. Randolph may not have been quite
correct in saying that the Yazoo question was the source of
all the dissensions in the Republican party, because the
discord which it engendered was after all but symptomatic
of the natural divisions that existed in the bosom of the
party. Nor temperamentally unfit as he was for either
accepting the leadership of anyone else, or of patiently and
tactfully exercising the functions of leadership himself, can
the view be hazarded that but for the Yazoo business he
would not have been unhorsed. In some other manner, his
saddle was certain to be emptied in the end, but there can
be no doubt that his leadership was doomed from the time
that he delivered his brilliant but intemperate speeches in
the Yazoo debate of 1805, and that its loss was simply accelerated
by his disappointments over the Chase trial and
the English Mission; and the additional enmities that he
created among the Northern Democrats in the House by
his speech on Gregg's Resolution. It can hardly be denied,
as George Tucker has stated, that Randolph was better
qualified to be the leader of an opposition than of a dominant
party, and that, when the Democratic leader of the
House, he was more an object of fear than of affection to
many of his fellow-Democrats.[101] But it is equally undeniable
that, despite the disqualifications that rendered
permanent leadership for him a "starry hope that did't
arise but to be overcast," his leadership, while it lasted, was,
though reluctantly recognized by many Democratic members
of the house, an extraordinarily masterly and shining
one. Upon this point we have the testimony of a no less
competent witness than Jefferson himself. In a letter to
Monroe, he wrote as follows:

And with this letter should be read the moral, so applicable
to almost every man in American public life, who has ever
tried to free his limbs from the chafings of the party breeching,
which Jefferson at a later day drew from the early
career of Randolph. Writing to Col. Wm. Duane from
Monticello, he said: "The example of John Randolph is
a caution to all honest and prudent men to sacrifice a little
of self-confidence and to go with their friends, although
they may sometimes think they are going wrong."[103]

The height from which Randolph is supposed to have
fallen, when he did fall, may be measured by what Gallatin
said of him many years afterwards, in a private letter.
Enumerating the candidates for public honors, who were
regarded with favor by Jefferson, Madison, and himself,
he wrote:

Assuming that the Yazoo scandal was the real beginning
of the feud between Randolph and the Jefferson administration,
it seems to us that his revolt cannot reasonably be
visited with censure. That in the Yazoo discussion of
1805 he used language which exceeded the just limits of
parliamentary self-restraint may be admitted, but it should
not be forgotten that the colossal fraud which he pilloried
far exceeded the bounds of ordinary turpitude. Incensed
as he was by the knowledge of the transaction which he
had derived at first hand from his visit to Georgia at a
time when it was of recent occurrence, and was being
spewed out of the mouth of the people of Georgia, in a
frenzy of wrathful disgust, he could better say than most
members of Congress, as he did say in the Yazoo discussion:
"For this is one of the cases, which once being engaged
in, I can never desert or relinquish till I shall have
exercised every energy of mind and faculty of body I
possess in refuting so nefarious a project."[105] That the
conduct of Randolph in the Yazoo debates was also very
different from the cautious and sober deportment to which
a parliamentary leader must adhere or else forfeit his
leadership, may likewise be admitted. But why, when the
voice of individual duty is distinctly heard, should not
parliamentary leadership, as well as pecuniary ease, popularity,
or even life itself be foregone? Whatever may be
said about the heat or the imprudence of Randolph in the
Yazoo discussion, it is impossible to question his disinterestedness.

"He and his friends," Henry Adams admits in
his essay on John Randolph, "were remarkably free from
the meaner ambitions of political life; they neither begged
patronage, nor asked for any money, nor did they tolerate
jobbery in any form."[106] And the same writer also admits
that this group of Southern Republicans was conspicuously
free from servility to party or executive influence.[107] From
the point of view of his purely selfish interests, Randolph
had nothing to gain and everything to lose by going at the
Yazoo compromise with beak and claw as he did. He had
been on terms of great friendship and intimacy, to use his
own terms, with Jefferson and Gallatin. Down to that
time he had, so far as we are aware, cherished no animosity
towards Madison. Scathing as his Yazoo speeches were,
they were yet not lacking in a prudent desire on his part
to remain in amity with these three powerful individuals,
who held the keys to his political future. If any personal
motive entered into his onslaught upon the Yazoo
compromise, it must have been supplied by a deliberate
preference on his part for the moral authority and prestige
of a popular tribune, or redresser of public wrongs, rather
than for high place in the more material sense. If so, this
preference is too close to "the last infirmity of noble
minds" to be set down to any ignoble origin. Nor can we
see, as has been claimed, that Randolph was, to any
measurable extent, deflected by his hostility to the Jefferson
administration from the political creed which he had
always avowed. It is true that, in a bantering letter to
Gallatin, he had said with respect to a possible clash
between the United States and France: "After all the
vaporing I have no expectation of a serious war. Tant
pis pour nous!"[108] And it is also true that he is reported as
using this language on Dec. 6, 1804, when our peaceful
relations with Great Britain had become endangered by
British outrages on our coasts:

And these utterances have been cited in confirmation of
the idea that Randolph was moved merely by pique and
personal resentment in standing out against a war with
Great Britain, as he did in his speeches on Gregg's Resolution.
But it is obvious that the utterances which we
have quoted were simply passing ebullitions of the moment;
such as often bubble up in the human mind and
subside with the reflux of reflection and habitual convictions.
If there was one thing to which, before his speeches
on Gregg's resolution, Randolph was more positively
committed as an original Republican than to another, it
was hostility to large military and naval armaments and to
wars of any but a purely defensive nature; and to this
position he remained faithful throughout the whole of his
life. And it should be remembered, too, that Jefferson
himself was as inimical to Gregg's Resolution as Randolph
because of its tendency to bring on war. In a similar
manner, it has been charged that Randolph's attitude
towards the Florida purchase was also shaped by the same
enmity to the Jefferson administration, and was inconsistent
with the relations which he sustained as the leader
of the House to the Louisiana purchase, when a secret
message and a request for money, to be placed at the disposal
of Jefferson, had come down to him from Jefferson
in that case too. "But we never heard this," sneered

Jefferson himself in a letter to Bidwell, "while the declaimer
was himself a backstairs man."[110] But, at the time
of the Louisiana purchase, Jefferson was not asking the
House for money with which to bribe Spain to bully France
out of Louisiana, or shirking any responsibility that properly
rested upon the Executive. It may be conceded
that, if Randolph had been a more politic and less fastidious
man, he might have united with Jefferson and Madison
in bribing France to bully Spain out of her property,
as Randolph expressed it, and might still have contrived,
as they have done, to stand well with the Muse of History.
Spain at the time was a mere puppet of France, as Randolph
himself recognized, when he said on the floor of the
House that there were no longer any Pyrenees.[111] But,
while the points that Randolph made on Jefferson's message
relative to the Florida Purchase were in some respects
a little technical and overstrained, they were fundamentally
sound, and were true to a nature that was, in more
than one regard, more highly and admirably organized
than that of either Jefferson or Madison. The vacillation
which Jefferson had exhibited in the foreign relations of
the United States, laying down the sword at one time to
take up the olive branch, and laying down the olive branch
at another to take up the sword; allowing the functions of
his cabinet and himself to be exercised occasionally by
more or less irresponsible spokesmen on the floor of Congress,
and studiously endeavoring in the matter of the
Florida Purchase, to abdicate his own executive initiative
and secretly to shift the responsibility of his office, in a
case equivocal at best, to the shoulders of Congress, was
well calculated to disgust such a high-spirited man as
Randolph, and sufficient to furnish such a man with a
fully adequate motive for the course which was set forth
in the letters of "Decius."

It is supposed by Henry Adams that the effort of Randolph,
at the first session of the 9th Congress, to secure the
repeal of the salt duty was inspired by a desire to embarrass
the administration[112] ; but shortly afterwards the repeal
of this duty was recommended by Jefferson himself.[113] It has
also been charged that Randolph was guilty of inconsistency
in supporting the Louisiana purchase at all, as it
tended, in more than one way, to curtail the power of
State sovereignty, of which he was such a jealous guardian.
But what might be the ultimate tendencies of the purchase
in that respect, neither Randolph nor any other statesman
could at that time very clearly see. Certainly no transaction
in our history is enveloped with the dust of so many
shattered prophecies. Nor should it be forgotten that
Randolph did not share the view of Jefferson that the
purchase of Louisiana was an unconstitutional act; on the
contrary, he contended on the floor of Congress that it was
a constitutional one.[114] The Republican creed, it has been
happily said, was the Federalist creed spelled backwards,[115]
and, after spelling it backwards to a certain extent, as in
the repeal of the Internal Taxes, the reduction of the Army
and Navy, and the like, Jefferson and the new Republicans
under the influence of the love of power begotten by power,
and the over-riding necessities which render governmental
responsibility and minority opposition two such
very dissimilar things, began to spell the Federalist creed
forward again, and did not cease until they had done
almost everything that Jefferson and his original Republican
adherents had condemned the Federalists for doing—
not indeed until Randolph could wrathfully say that Jefferson
had not differed more from his predecessor than he had
from himself. But, in our judgment, they are right who
see in the political career of Randolph, from beginning to

end, a thread of continuous consistency which cannot be
said to have been really broken even during the period
when it was subject to the strain of the quarrel between
him and the Jefferson administration. No! If Randolph
is to be chided, it is not for clinging to the principles which
brought the Republicans into power, but for not deserting
these principles with Jefferson and Madison when those
statesmen found them too cramping and straightlaced for
the expanding growth and imperial destiny of our country.
Randolph forsook the Republican party and its leader, but
he never forsook its original principles. In fact, it can
with much more truth be affirmed that Jefferson abandoned
him than that he abandoned Jefferson. And it may
be said in his vindication, too, that, when his former party
associates turned their backs upon him, he did not go over
to the opposite party as Jefferson predicted that he would
do[116] and, as the renegade or turncoat is so apt to do, mouth
professions of allegiance to everything for which he had
previously expressed abhorrence, but, though encompassed
on every side by the sleepless machinations of
former friends, bent upon his political destruction, continued,
all but invulnerable in his own splendid talents
and in the admiration and affection of his constituents,
to uphold the convictions with which he had faced
Patrick Henry on the Court-Green at Charlotte Court
House. (a)

We might add that an informal, as well as a formal, explanation
was given by Randolph (with mock gravity) of
his rupture with Jefferson. It had its origin, he sometimes
said, in the fact that, on one occasion, he had beaten
Jefferson badly at a game of chess.[117] In speaking of Randolph
and his fellow schismatics, Jefferson was not always
as moderate as he was in his letters to Monroe. In a letter

to Wilson Cary Nicholas, he termed them "all tongue."[118]
But, when he used this term, he must have forgotten for
the moment that among the tongues that excited his derision
was one which gave no little point to the Turkish
proverb that the tongue has no bones but breaks bones.
It was impossible for many reasons for Randolph to form
quite as intense an antipathy to Jefferson as to Madison.
But, from the year 1806 until the last years of his life, he
rarely allowed an opportunity to decry or ridicule Jefferson
to escape him. In his Diary, his malice assumed the
form of cryptic memoranda based on contemporary gossip
in regard to Jefferson's private life; in his public utterances
either the form of jeremiads over the degradations inflicted
on the institutions and manners of Virginia by Jefferson's
levelling propensities or that of sarcastic references to
what Randolph conceived to be his speculative and visionary
futilities. The Virginia law of descents which was
drafted by Jefferson, and which abolished primogeniture
and entails, drew from him the exclamation to which the
fact that Jefferson had none but daughters gave its main
meaning: "Well might old George Mason exclaim that the
authors of that law never had a son!"[119] In a letter to one
of his friends, written in the last years of his life, he descanted
in this lugubrious fashion on the future of the Old
Virginia aristocracy:

One mode in which Randolph expressed his antagonism
to Madison, as a candidate for the Presidency, was to say
that he did not wish another philosopher to be President.[121]
In the course of a speech, which he delivered in the House
in 1817, he declared that he had rather that Jefferson
should keep on Monticello, play with his wind-mills and
make mouse-traps than meddle with the Constitution of
Virginia which he had tried to amend.[122] The year before
he died, the pilgrimages which were frequently made to
Monticello, brought forth from him, sunk as he was at
that time in misanthropy, these scornful words:

In a less morbid vein, were the satirical remarks which he
had made previously in the Virginia Constitutional Convention
of 1829-30 on one of Jefferson's inventions:

An effect of the speeches delivered by Randolph on
Gregg's resolution and other foreign topics, before the end
of the first session of the 9th Congress, was to make his
name widely known throughout Great Britain (a). One
of these speeches was printed in New York, and reprinted
in London with observations by James Stephen, the author
of the celebrated production, War in Disguise (b), and was
circulated generally in Great Britain. It was reviewed
besides by Henry Brougham in The Edinburgh Review.
"The speech of Mr. Randolph," said Brougham, "is certainly
the production of a vigorous mind. It abounds in
plain and striking statements, mixed with imagery by no
means destitute of merit, though directed by an exceedingly
coarse and vulgar taste."[125] This was high praise to
be accorded by an Englishman of that time to anything
American, and, if Randolph did not escape the reproach of
coarseness and vulgarity at the hands of the reviewer, that
was but the usual fate then of the American Yahoo, at the
hands, or rather hoofs, of the English Houyhnhnhm. The
sensibilities of the reviewer would perhaps have been still
more painfully shocked, could he have foreseen that

Randolph would be so little flattered by the condescension
shown him by the English author of War
in Disguise as to term James Stephen in his Diary "A
furious bigot."