University of Virginia Library

CHAPTER XI

Washington and the Roads between it and Roanoke

Before passing from the Congressional career of Randolph,
however, let us pause for a moment to say a word
about his mode of living and habits while he was a Congressman.
In 1801, when Jefferson became President, the
present site of Washington had been planned with remarkable
skill and foresight by Major Pierre Charles L'Enfant,
but was actually little more than a village in the heart of a
wild waste of woods. The hill, on which the Capitol now
stands, was then seamed with gullies and densely covered
with trees, underbrush and tangled grapevines; and, on its
crest, was being erected of white stone a capitol which was,
as yet, but two wings without a body; though of such
startling magnitude as to render it hopelessly incongruous
with its primitive surroundings. About this uncompleted
edifice, were seven or eight wooden boarding-houses, and
as many shops, hardly better than shanties and occupied
respectively by a tailor, a shoemaker, a printer, a washerwoman,
a grocer, a stationer, a dealer in dry goods and an
oyster vender.[1] Separating the hill on which the Capitol
was situated from the Executive Mansion, which stood in
a naked field, overlooking the Potomac, more than a mile
to the west, was a swamp; and, connecting the Capitol and
this Mansion, was a broad and straight clearing in the
forest which ran across the swamp, and was traversed from

east to west by a rude roadway, studded with deep mud
holes in winter. Flanking this roadway was a footway,
solidified only to a limited extent by stone. In the bed of
portions of the roadway, which were not in use, clumps of
alder bushes had recently been growing,[2] and in its
vicinity were pools of stagnant water which bred a host of
mosquitoes. Along the rough highway, were a few small
houses, some of brick and some of wood; and, near the
Executive Mansion, were four or five buildings of red
brick. Still further to the west, was Georgetown—a
small but pretentious town, which contained many
capacious and substantial residences of brick and stone;
in some instances not without architectural beauty.
East of the highway, that led from the Capitol to the
Executive Mansion, were openings in the forest improved
by a number of houses; some finished, and some unfinished.[3]
Scattered about over parts of the site of Washington,
were gravel pits and brick kilns which added to the
rawness of its infancy. The town was very unhealthy too.
In 1803, Rufus King thought that no one from the North
or from the hill country of the South could pass the
months of August and September there without incurring
the risk of being stricken down with some form of malarial
fever[4] ; and then also provisions were scarce and had to be
obtained mainly from Alexandria on the other side of the
Potomac.[5] The only two places of public worship in the
town were a small Catholic Church and a small Presbyterian
one.[6] A monotone of dissatisfaction, which
occasionally swells into disgust, runs through the comments
on Washington of almost every person who had to
reside there, at the beginning of the 19th century. Because
of the dearth of living facilities, public men at this
time rarely brought their wives with them to the place.
Most of the houses in it, Oliver Wolcott wrote to Mrs.
Wolcott, were "small, miserable huts."[7] As a living
place, Albert Gallatin declared in a letter to Mrs. Gallatin,
that it was "hateful."[8] In 1805, Senator Plumer, of New
Hampshire, described it as a "little village in the midst of
the woods."[9]

"My God! What have I done to reside in such a city?",
was the passionate exclamation of a French diplomat who
missed in Washington everything that had rendered life
agreeable to him in France.[10] Indeed, 15 or 18 years after
the beginning of the 19th century, the thoroughfares in
and about Washington were very little better than they
were at the time of Jefferson's inauguration. Pennsylvania
Avenue, which lay "straight as a gun-barrel" between the
Capitol and the White House, was either a bed of "tenacious
mud"[11] or of dust so deep and fine that when caught
up by the wind it rendered nearby objects invisible.
"The chuck-holes were not bad," said Harrison Gray Otis,
in describing his exit from Washington in 1815, "that is to
say, they were none of them much deeper than the hubs of
the hinder wheels."[12] Speaking of the main road from
Washington to Baltimore, which is now a splendidly paved
thoroughfare, over which thousands of motor cars pass in
the course of a week, Otis says in the same letter:

Later, in the same letter, Otis tells us that he arrived
safely at his first stage at Ross', after passing over the
intervening distance at a rate rather exceeding 2½ miles
per hour. In his Memoirs, John Quincy Adams says,
under date of April 4, 1818, that the streets, by which his
carriage came to a house, where he had been taking dinner,
were in such a condition that the vehicle was overset and
the harness broken; and that on his way home he was twice
on the point of oversetting; and, at the Treasury Office
corner, he was obliged to descend from the vehicle into the
mud. "It was a mercy," he adds, "that we all got home
with whole bones."[13]

In 1801, there were only some thirty-two hundred
human beings within the limits of Washington, and of
these at least six hundred were negro slaves.[14] Among the
persons, who made up the population of the town, were
many poor and vagrant individuals who, "so far as I can
judge," Oliver Wolcott wrote to his wife, "live like fishes
by eating each other."[15] Such a town, of course, could not
hope to escape the spitefulness of Thomas Moore when he
visited it in 1804:

One result of the transfer of the national capital from
Philadelphia to an up-start capital like this was, of course,

a distressing plethora of lodgers, so far as lodging accommodations
were concerned. The majority of the members of
Congress lodged in the boarding-houses near the Capitol,
and so over-crowded were they that two and sometimes
more individuals were compelled to share the same bedroom.
At Conrad and McMunn's boarding-house, where
Gallatin lodged when he was in the House, and Jefferson
until his inauguration, the charge was $15.00 a
week, which included attendance, wood, candles and
liquors.[16] Board at the Indian Queen cost $1.50 a day,
"brandy and whiskey being free."[17] The custom was for
all the boarders in one of these boarding-houses to take
their meals at one long table, like so many monks in a
refectory. At Conrad & McMunn's, some 24 to 30 men
were in the habit of sitting down to a meal at the same
time; and Jefferson is said to have had the lowest and coldest
place at the table; nor was a better seat offered him,
it is likewise said, on the day when he took the oath of
office as Chief Magistrate of the Republic.[18] And more
trying even than the lot of one of the boarders at one
of these boarding-houses was that of the individual who,
for special reasons of one kind or another, was compelled
to rent a house and to maintain an independent
establishment.[19]

Such was Washington during the period when Randolph
was the Democratic leader in the House. It was slow to
change. As late as Dec. 26, 1827, he wrote to Dr.
Brockenbrough: "The Pennsylvania Avenue is a long
lake of mud."[20] On one occasion, he termed it, "The
great Serbonian bog."[21] To the Abbé Correa, the Portugese

Minister, Washington was "the abomination of
desolation."[22]

In mentioning Washington, Randolph had a vocabulary
of his own. At times, he dubbed it "Babeltown"; at
other times, "Babylon." Writing to Nicholson from
Roanoke on Aug. 4, 1811, he said:

In another letter, written to Nicholson from Georgetown,
in the course of the succeeding year, Randolph spoke of
the "dreary and heartless life" that he led in Washington,
and added:

Randolph had his own language, too, when mentioning
the House of Representatives. He habitually called it
"Babel"; once, certainly, "Bedlam," and once, "the
Temple of Confusion." Another time he spoke of it as a
"human desert," and still another time as a "sink of
corruption and iniquity"; several times he pronounced it

a "bear garden." (a) But phrases of this kind must not
be taken too seriously. Between his sensitive body and
his vivid mind, Randolph found it hard to keep his voice
from rising above the lower register of human speech.

During the first session of the 6th Congress (1799-1800),
he boarded at Mirache's on North Fourth Street, in
Philadelphia, with John Langdon, of New Hampshire,
then a member of the Senate; Macon, Nicholson, and
other members of Congress. "Willis Alston," he says in
his Diary, "was one of the mess." "A paltry member of
it," he sniffs scornfully. In his letters, allusions to
"Mirache's Club" appear quite frequently; and, in one,
written from Bizarre to Nicholson, a few weeks before
Congress held its first session at Washington in 1800, he
asks: "Shall I send a qur cask [of Madeira imported by
a Virginian house] round pro bono? Will it not be preferable
to being poisoned à la Mirache's?"[25]

Subsequently, when in Congress, he lodged at various
places in Washington and Georgetown. Among his different
fellow-lodgers at one or the other of these places, were
Nicholson, Christie, Macon, Samuel Smith, Wilson Cary
Nicholas, Aaron Burr, Joseph Bryan, Wade Hampton,
Cæsar A. Rodney, the two Peales (the artists), Dr. Thomas,
Tudor Tucker, Crowninshield, John Taylor of Caroline,
Gen. Sumter, James M. Garnett, Beau Dawson, Dr. Bibb,
and Richard Stanford.[26]

With regard to one of his later lodging places, he wrote
to Tazewell: "I left Dawson's because of his misconduct.
The filth and discomfort were intolerable, the society
mixed, and ear-wigs in it."[27] He was so fastidious and
touchy that he hardly won as a boarder, we imagine, the
reputation of a benevolent autocrat of the breakfast table.
He had a quick temper which did not brook much delay or
inconvenience, as bear witness this story told in a letter

from Robert Baylor to R. M. T. Hunter, afterwards the
distinguished Senator from Virginia:

At all times when at Washington, Randolph lived in a
liberal way. In July, 1800, when he was looking ahead to
the removal of the national capital from Philadelphia to
Washington, he wrote to Nicholson:

But a few weeks later he decided to limit his retinue to a
single servant and a pair of horses.[30] At McLaughlin's,
Georgetown, in 1802, he secured two rooms and a private
table for himself, board for his servants, and livery for his
three horses at $28 a week. "I have never lived so well
or so cheap since," he smugly observes in his Diary.

Transit between the national capital and Georgetown,
when Randolph boarded at Georgetown, had its perils.

Not so much, however, that he could not recollect in the
same letter the sorrowful plight to which Don Quixote was
reduced when he attempted to alight from a horse and to
salute the Duchess. On another occasion, Randolph
might well have been involved in a still more dangerous
situation.

The next time that his bones were imperilled, it was not
by a highwayman, but by one of his own thoroughbreds.

The gush of penitence in this letter reminds us of the
sinner who was killed by a fall from his horse, but of
whom it could yet be said, in the ever-during mercy of
God,

Whenever Randolph came to Washington from Virginia,
he was usually attended by one or more of his "bird dogs,"
as they are termed in Virginia, and, in the earlier stages of
his career, he not infrequently shot quail and woodcock
near Washington. In one of his letters to Nicholson, he
speaks of a day of such shooting that he had had with
James M. Garnett[34] ; and in another of one that he expected
to have with Lloyd of Maryland and Mr. Lowndes.[35]
Garnett was usually his companion in the field, and their
shooting ground was in the District, a little to the north of
the Capitol, whence they generally returned with their
bags well filled.[36] But, on one occasion, at any rate, he did
not return with his bag full, unless he was determined to
bring it back full without regard to the quality of its
contents; for, in a letter to Theodore Dudley, he says:
"I went out late, having waited for Mr. Ridgely; and,
although Dido behaved to admiration, I killed nothing
except two unqualified sportsmen—a large owl and a
poaching cat."[37] When Randolph came to the House, one
or two pointers, as a rule, accompanied him, and, as soon
as he opened the door, that led into the House, they would
rush in and run about nosing the members; exercising
privileges, Sawyer complained, from which even respectable
strangers were excluded.[38]

From Sawyer, too, we derive no little information about
Randolph's habits and manners as a Congressman. He
used, Sawyer says, to enter the House booted and spurred,
with a whip in his hand, a few moments after it had come
to order, and appeared to be desirous of attracting the
attention of his fellow-members by the loud salutations,
with which he greeted his intimates, to the fact of his

presence. In the winter, he came with his body enveloped
in a long lion-skin surtout and his face buried in a fur cap.
Sometimes he would stop short in the middle aisle of the
House, and, in case he saw some one up, to whom he did
not care to listen, he would turn abruptly on his heel and
go out.[39] According to Sawyer, his great failing was affectation.
He had, Sawyer declares, two kinds of address; one
stiff and formal with a long running bow, a touch of the
hat, and an artificial smile for mere acquaintances or former
friends, towards whom he had grown cool, and a
cordial, long-continued hand-shake for his few bosom
friends. He had been seen to walk up to Macon in the
most ostentatious manner, while the House was in session,
and to shake his hand so long and forcibly as to throw him
into confusion. And, on another occasion, while shaking
Quincy's hand, when parting with him, on the eve of a
Congressional adjournment, he held his handkerchief to
his face, and turned his head aside, as if in the act of shedding
tears. Once his hand was not taken when offered.
Passing out of the House with Garnett, he met his former
enemy, Matthew Lyon, then a member of Congress from
Kentucky, and tendered it. Lyon drew back, observing
that he could not find it in his heart to shake hands with a
man who had called him a "damned old rascal." Randolph
then appealed to Garnett to state whether he had
ever done so, and Garnett replied that he had; whereupon
Randolph merely exclaimed, "It can't be helped!" and
walked on.[40] By Sawyer we are also told that Randolph
was very supercilious and magisterial in his treatment
of young men, who had delivered their maiden speeches
in behalf of administrations to which he was opposed.[41] Sawyer states that he would spring on their backs and ply
whip and spur, and, the more they reared and pitched and
plunged and capered, the more he clung to them, and
lashed them until he had reduced them to the condition of
well-broken political hacks. Some high-mettled and
blooded colts, however, Sawyer thought, proved unmanageable
and threw him; among them, McDuffie, of
South Carolina.[42]

Sawyer, in this instance, was referring to a collision in
the House which led to an interchange of hostile letters
between McDuffie and Randolph. It is hardly worth
while to go back to the origin of this correspondence. The
facts immediately surrounding it were these: On Feb.
28, 1822, Randolph sent a note to McDuffie, presenting his
compliments to him, and begging the favor of knowing
whether McDuffie intended to offer personal insult to him
in the debate on the preceding Saturday. In reply, McDuffie
presented his compliments to Randolph, and said
that his remarks were such as he should always feel bound
to make in relation to Randolph or any other gentleman
who should take as unwarrantable liberties as those which
gave rise to his remarks, and that, if his remarks were
insulting to Randolph, they were such as the occasion
demanded. Randolph rejoined by saying that, since
McDuffie had invested him with the character of the
aggressor, he was ready to respond, and that his friend,
Col. Thomas H. Benton, would receive the only communication
that could now pass between them. This letter
Benton delivered to McDuffie in the House, and, an hour or
so afterwards, McDuffie came to the Senate chamber where
Benton was, and offered the latter a sealed note, addressed
to Randolph; but Benton declined to receive it,
saying that he should take to Randolph only an answer of
the precise character called for by Randolph's letter, and
that he could take none without reading it to see whether
it came up to that character. McDuffie then broke the
seal of his note and handed it to Benton to read; which he
did. He found it not of the character required by Randolph's
letter, nor of a character anything like it, and he

said so to McDuffie and handed it back to him. McDuffie
too it and gave Benton no other, though he remained
in the Senate chamber until the adjournment of the Senate.
When Benton next met Randolph, it was at the dinner
table at Dawson's between 5 and 6 in the evening of the
same day. Company being present, he said to Randolph
in French as they passed to their chairs: "C'est fini et bien
fini."[43] Benton states that, before Randolph sent his
first note to McDuffie, he tried to convince him that the
circumstances did not require of him that kind of notice,
but that he persisted in his purpose.

A particularly interesting description of the daily advent
of Randolph in the House after his morning ride is given
to us by W. H. Sparks in his Memories of Fifty Years:

Randolph was a member of the House for so many
years that he finally became as much at home there as if
he were lounging with a group of his familiar friends at a
social club. Sawyer says that, during one of its night
sittings, Randolph, while making a motion to adjourn,
observed that one of his colleagues was resting his forehead,
which was the worse for drink, on his desk, and that
other members of the House were overcome with sleepiness,
after a long debate; and that Randolph exclaimed: "What
is the use of sitting here! The House is far from being
wide awake to the important question before it." He
then advanced to one of the slumberers, remarking,
"Here is one asleep," and shook him, telling him, as he
did so, that he had better be at home in bed; then approached
the remaining slumberers in succession, and
aroused them too in the same manner to the no small
amusement of the other members of the House.[45] (a)

Jabez D. Hammond also represents Randolph as seeming
to feel as self-possessed, and as much at home in the
House, as the schoolmaster in his school or the merchant
in his counting-room; and certainly nothing that we have
ever read of him gives us such a pointed impression of both
his intimacy with the House and his smoothly flowing
current of speech as the particular instance which Hammond
recalls in support of his assertion. One day, while
speaking, Randolph was standing in the alley of the House,
leaning on the back of a common chair, when the chair slid,
and he fell supine upon his back; but he promptly regained
his feet without ever having suspended a word or even a
syllable of his argument at any time during the mishap.
"Had a blind man," remarks Hammond, "been listening

to his speech, he could not have perceived that anything
unusual had occurred."[46]

But Randolph was not more familiar with the House
than he was with the highways which led from Bizarre or
Roanoke to Washington. In his day, the roads in every
portion of the United States were bad, but the Virginia
roads were reputed to be the worst of all.[47] In his vain
effort to find something better than the scene of his last
venture, Randolph seems to have tried at one time or
another all the routes by which Washington could be
reached from Bizarre or Roanoke; and the only thing, by
which their hardships, when the roads were in a sorry
plight from the weather, were mitigated, was the hospitality
that the houses of his friends along the way proffered
so willingly.

On Feb. 24, 1810, we find him setting out for Congress.
The night of that day, he spent at the home of George
Skipwith, one of the leading landowners of Cumberland
County; the next night, he spent at the home of Dr.
Bathurst Randolph, in Amelia, and, the next, at the home
of Harry Heth; after dining with Captain Murray on the
way. The next day, Heth accompanied him to the home
of Dr. Brockenbrough in Richmond, where he remained
until March 4th, when he set out for Todd's Bridge with
Ryland Randolph and Dr. Brockenbrough; dining on the
way at Newcastle, in Hanover County. The next day,
March 5th, he dined at the home of his friend, James M.
Garnett, in Essex County; Dr. Brockenbrough leaving
him and going on to Tappahannock, the home of the
Doctor's childhood. The next day, March 6th, Randolph
dined at Mt. Pleasant, the home of old Mrs. Garnett.
On March 7th, he proceeded to Hazelwood, the
home of John Taylor of Caroline, in Caroline County,
with James M. Garnett. On March 10th, he proceeded

by Port Royal, in Caroline County, and Hooes Ferry, on
the Potomac, to the home of John Campbell in Maryland,
and, on March 11th, by way of Port Tobacco and Piscataway,
in Maryland, to Georgetown. A very leisurely,
but certainly a very agreeable, mode of working, by
easy stages, back to "Babeltown"! with no lack, we
may be sure of generous hospitality or of race-track or
State-Rights talk.[48] Indeed, so agreeable did Randolph
find this itinerary that, when Congress adjourned in 1810,
he almost doubled upon his tracks on his return to
Bizarre.

The next time he set out for Congress, it was from
Roanoke in Jan., 1811. The first night, Jan. 5th, he spent
at the home of his friend, Thomas T. Boulding, in Charlotte
County, and, the next, at Moore's Ordinary. The next
day, Jan. 7th, he breakfasted at Miller's (doubtless to
escape breakfast at the ordinary), and slept at the home of
Daniel Hardaway, in Amelia County. On Jan. 8th, he
slept at the home of Mr. Watkins, in Chesterfield County;
thence, after spending several days with his friends,
Benjamin Watkins Leigh and William Leigh at Mr.
Watkins', and a day or so in Richmond, he went on, by
way of Hanover Court House, Hazelwood, Fredericksburg,
Dumfries and Alexandria to Washington, where, on the
very day of his arrival, Jan. 23, he caned Alston, and, in the
short space of four days afterwards, was challenged by
Eppes.[49] When he returned from this session of Congress,
it was via Occoquan; Fredericksburg, which he reached
the second day out from Washington; Bowling Green,
where he dined and spent the night with a party of gentlemen;
the White Chimneys, where he took a seat in the
stage from Fredericksburg, which had caught up with him
at that point, when he found that his friend William
Morton was in it; Richmond, where he washed his hands
of Monroe at a final interview with him; Harry Heth's;

Dr. Randolph's, which he reached, with the aid of Heth's
horse and chair, and where he "took a snack"; Sam
Farrar's, where he spent the night; and Peyton Randolph's;
arriving at Roanoke on March 20, 1811.[50]

On one occasion, we find Randolph reaching Richmond
from his home by way of the Manakin Town Ferry,[51] a
point on the James River some 17 miles west of Richmond.

Another route, from Washington to Roanoke, which he
sometimes took, was by way of Cartersville, on the James
River, forty-seven miles west of Richmond.

A third route, after the steamboat came into use, was by
way of steamboat from Washington to Potomac Creek,
thence 9 miles by stage to Fredericksburg, and thence by
horse and carriage to Richmond and Roanoke.

Still another was by steamboat to City Point, on the
James River, or Richmond, and thence by horse and
carriage to Roanoke.[52]

His usual route from Washington to Roanoke, however,
was across what he called "those nasty streams, Accotink,
Pohick, Neabsco, Quantico, Chappawamsic and Acquia"[53]
to Fredericksburg; thence by way of Bowling Green to
Richmond and on. In passing to and fro between Southside
Virginia and Washington, Randolph seems to have
adopted, on one occasion or another, every means of carriage
known to his day. Sometimes, he covered the entire
distance on horseback; and, on one occasion, he records in
his Diary the fact that he left Alexandria on July 10, 1812,
a very hot day, on Brunette, and arrived at Fredericksburg
the same day, a distance of some 50 miles, much
exhausted.[54] On July 12th, after spending a day with
John and Hugh Mercer, in Fredericksburg, he pushed on
to the Bowling Green, a distance of about 20 miles, and,

turning over Brunette to Jupiter, who had either accompanied
him to that point or met him there, he took the
stage and went on to Richmond.[55] On other occasions, he
made the journey in his gig with his faithful John or Juba
as his attendant. On one occasion, at any rate, he even
made it in his cumbrous coach drawn by four thoroughbreds
with John and Juba in attendance.[56]

What stage travel was over the roads between Richmond
and Washington, we well know from descriptions
which have come down to us from travellers of Randolph's
time. In 1790, it took Thomas Jefferson, when on his
way to the seat of the National Government at New York,
two days to journey from Richmond to Alexandria. Here
he was met by his carriage and horses, but an 18-inch
snow fell that night, and he decided to go on from Alexandria
by stage, and to have his horses led, and to ship his
carriage by water to New York. From Alexandria, his
progress through the snow and mud did not exceed 2 or 3
miles an hour by day or a mile an hour by night.
Occasionally, from sheer tedium, he would alight from the
stage, and ride along for some distance on his led saddle-horse.
The whole time consumed in his journey from
Richmond to New York amounted to no less than a fortnight.[57]

In 1802, Jefferson pronounced the road from Fredericksburg
to Washington, by way of Dumfries and Alexandria,
"the worst in the world."[58]

In March, 1813, Nathaniel Macon wrote to Nicholson
that the roads were then worse than usual, and that it took
fifty hours to traverse the distance of 50 miles between
Fredericksburg and Alexandria.[59]

In March, 1829, Randolph wrote to Dr. Brockenbrough
that he had been 7 hours making the 20 miles from

Mrs. Ward's, south of Washington, to Stafford Court
House.[60]

It is to be hoped that the hardships to which George
Ticknor was exposed on his way through Southern Maryland
from Washington to Port Tobacco, Maryland, in 1815,
were wholly exceptional:

Nor are we at a loss to know from other travellers what
travelling meant in Randolph's time on the route from
Washington to Richmond, by way of Dumfries,
Fredericksburg, and Bowling Green, and on the route between
the same termini by way of Potomac Creek, Fredericksburg
and Bowling Green.

In 1806, John Melish, a British traveller, on his way to
the South, left Alexandria in the stage a little before 5 A.
M., after having kept his seat in it since 4.30 A. M., and
"travelled by a pretty rough road 17 miles to Occoquhan
Creek," where the stage stopped for breakfast[62] ; thence,
through a hilly, and but partially cultivated, country to
Dumfries, a small town containing about 300 inhabitants,
a court house, a jail, etc., and thence, through a hilly, but
better improved, country, to Fredericksburg, where he
spent the night. At this time, Alexandria had a population
of 4096 free inhabitants and 875 slaves; Fredericksburg
a population of about 1600 inhabitants. The next
morning, Melish left Fredericksburg in the stage about 1
o'clock A. M., and passed through an uneven, but pretty
well-cultivated, country, to Bowling Green, and thence he
was conveyed over the Mattapony and Pamunkey Rivers
to Hanover Court House; and from that point to Richmond,
after traversing on the other side of Falling Creek
a country which he describes as "handsomely settled."[63] (a)

The roads were not so bad as to subdue the spirits of his
company in the stage, which was, he says, very jolly
and good-natured, singing songs and telling stories as
they went.[64]

The view that Thomas Moore took of stage travel along
the Atlantic Coast was not so amiable; for, when he visited
America, aversion to Republicanism happened to be his last
affectation. Writing to his mother, he says:

But nothing could give us a completer picture of
the Dumfries-Fredericksburg-Bowling Green route than
does a later narrative by Adam Hodgson, a British
traveller, written on Feb. 19, 1820.

When Capt. Basil Hall journeyed from Washington
to Richmond, he took the Potomac Creek route. From
Washington to Potomac Creek, about 60 miles, he
travelled by steamboat, and from Potomac Creek to
Fredericksburg, 9 miles, by stage.[67] The roads, over
which this stretch of distance extended, he says, were
cut to pieces by carriage wheels and torrents of rain; and
any other vehicle than a stout American stage, he declares,
must have been shaken to atoms.[68] Between Fredericksburg
and Richmond, the stage, in which the Captain was
borne, made "four miles an hour pleasantly enough."[69]
The whole travelling expense for each person and his party,
including the cost of a substantial breakfast and dinner,
between Washington and Fredericksburg was nearly three
pence half penny a mile.[70]

C. D. Arfwedson, who journeyed from Washington
southwards a little after Randolph's death, also took the
Potomac Creek route. He was soon reminded, he says, of
his entrance into the Southern States by the execrable
condition of the public roads; and it was the roads known
as "corduroy" roads (that is boggy roads with the trunks
of trees laid closely together across them to make a solid
roadway) which seemed to have especially attracted his
attention. He says that, if the pieces of timber had been
properly dressed and placed in position, they would have

answered the purposes of a well-constructed bridge; but
that, in some instances, they were laid down with their
small boughs still attached to them, which, becoming
entangled with the wheels of the stage, not infrequently
displaced the pieces to which they belonged, and naturally
raised the question as to which was the stronger—the
wheel or the boughs; but not in the mind of the driver; for
never did he check the speed of his horses for fear that the
coach might go to pieces; and this notwithstanding the
fact that the Southern portions of the United States were
still so thinly peopled that one might travel for miles and
miles through forests without discovering a human habitation
where assistance could be procured in case of necessity.
Accidents, too, often occurred, and, on such occasions,
if a carriage or team could not be found in the
neighborhood, the driver, impelled by the eagerness of his
employer to escape the penalty inflicted upon him by the
National Government, in case of his default in delivering
mail within the time fixed by his contract, took the mail
bags out of the stage, threw them upon a cart, and thus
continued his journey; leaving the unfortunate passengers
in the middle of the road, in a bog or in a forest many
miles from any habitation.[71] The worst part of the
direct route by Occoquan, Fredericksburg and Bowling
Green to Richmond was the part north of Fredericksburg,
where numerous tidal streams flowed into the Potomac
and obstructed the progress of the traveller with mire,
when it did not do so with water. After writing to
Theodore Dudley on one occasion that the road from
Bowling Green to Richmond had been reduced to a worse
condition by wretchedly bad weather than he had ever
before known it to be, Randolph inquired: "What must
the effect have been on the roads further north, which I
thought had already reached their ultimatum?"[72]

What the road from Fredericksburg to Cartersville was,
when heavy, Randolph himself has told us in a letter to
Nathan Loughborough:

Many a casualty and disappointment by flood or field
must have befallen Randolph over such roads as those
which lay between Charlotte County and Washington.
Of this we may be assured from some of the events which
he has happened to preserve for us. (a)

This is what overtook him when he struck off across
country from Fredericksburg to Cartersville on his way to
Bizarre:

Randolph, at least, had better luck on this occasion,
when he reached Cartersville, than Dr. James Waddell

Alexander had many years later. In one of his letters to
Dr. Hall, the latter tells him that he travelled all one cold
night in a stage alone, over such roads as he had never
seen, and then all the next day, and, when he arrived at
Cartersville, found that he could not cross the James
River because of its swollen state. "I slept on the
Goochland side, in the lock-keeper's house, `three in a bed,'
in an unfurnished house," he said.[75]

And here is a little scrap of dialogue which brings
home to us, with all the peculiar animation that belongs to
that form of composition, the perils of the amphibious
region which lies along the Potomac on the Virginia side,
south of Washington:

From the same pen, we have this lively little story told
to Randolph's friend, Nathan Loughborough, who loved a
horse as much as he did.

When the reader remembers that Randolph was at this
time in his 55th year, and is told that his kidneys were
probably the only organ in his body that was not gravely
diseased, he may well marvel at the indomitable spirit
with which he maintained the competition that he
describes in this letter. But then the reader will recollect
what Randolph wrote to his sea-captain friend: "But to
me a horse is what a ship is to you."

In the year 1802, he could write to Nicholson from
Bizarre: "I am just off a most cruel ride of 40 miles
in little more than 5 hours."[78] Several years later, he
wrote to the same correspondent from Bizarre, shortly
after his cross-country ride of 120 miles, in these words:

After active physical strength failed Randolph in almost
every other form, it still survived in his horsemanship.
The day, on which he wrote his letter to his sea-captain
friend, which was only some 5 years before he died, he had
completed on horseback the whole distance between
Washington and Cartersville; and had on that day covered
35 miles of this distance.[80] Bad as were the roads to Richmond

on both sides of the Potomac River, Randolph seems
to have preferred them to the water-lanes of the Potomac
and the James.

The steamboat, which plied between Washington and
Potomac Creek, was, we are told by John Randolph Bryan,
"one of the old-fashioned craft with her cabin all under
deck abaft the engine, without any state-rooms, [but
with] open berths over each other, with a plain calico
curtain."[81] Writing to Dr. Brockenbrough in 1827,
Randolph says: "Tazewell talks of going home (Norfolk),
and has asked me to go with him. If I could bear
the beastly abominations of a steamboat, I would do it;
for here I cannot stay."[82]

Randolph complained on one occasion that the only
place where one could escape curiosity was at an inn. It
is well that the inns between Washington and Roanoke
should have had at least this redeeming feature, because
some of them must have severely tried the delicate
stomach and fastidious spirit of Randolph. "I would as
lief die in my carriage, or on the road, at some wretched inn
between here and Washington, as anywhere," he said in
his celebrated speech delivered at Charlotte Court House
shortly after Andrew Jackson had issued his Nullification
Proclamation.[83] Powhatan Bouldin tells us that on one occasion,
when Randolph was at breakfast, he said: "Servant,
if this be coffee, give me tea; and, if it be tea, give me
coffee."[84] After all, however, the long journey between
Roanoke and Washington gave Randolph but little concern.
In one of his letters to Dr. Hall, the Rev. James
Waddell Alexander, after expressing the opinion that
Randolph was a great genius, an orator absolutely
unrivalled in America, a ripe scholar, and a consistent

politician said that yet he could not help thinking
him crazed, and added: "He arrived last night at his
residence (Roanoke) in this neighborhood, having travelled
from Washington on horseback in two days, and, after
looking at his multitude of horses, he set out about 8
o'clock on his return to Washington."[85] But, of course, the
horseback ride between Washington and Roanoke must
have consumed more than two days; for the distance is
some 206 miles.

In his Diary, Randolph not only made fun of Charlotte
County provincialisms of speech, but entered more
than one specimen of violence inflicted upon poor Priscian's
head by his fellow-congressmen, such as these:
"The people of the Southern States is of too laxative a
habit to enforce sitch a law." (Holland, of North Carolina.)
"Heterogenous" (a laugh), corrected to "heterogoneous."
(Sloan of New Jersey.) I will begin to follow the gentleman
exactly in the place in which he left off." (Alston,
of North Carolina.)