University of Virginia Library

PREFACE

The author believes that he need make no apology for
writing another biography of John Randolph of Roanoke.
The only book deserving of the name is the Life by Hugh
A. Garland, a native of Virginia, but, during his last years,
a member of the Bar of St. Louis. Garland was old enough
to have heard Randolph on the hustings in the latter part
of Randolph's career, and, as a student at Hampden-Sidney
College, and otherwise, he also enjoyed invaluable
opportunities for collecting material relating to his subject
from persons whose lives had been contemporaneous
with that of Randolph. Moreover, he had had access to
some important letters from Randolph to Randolph's intimate
friends, Francis Scott Key and Dr. John Brockenbrough,
which have now been lost or destroyed. Some
blemishes of overtaxed rhetoric, high-flown sentiment and
biographical infatuation aside, the praise can not be withheld
from Garland of having written a valuable book,
thoroughly patriotic in spirit, despite its extreme State-Rights
bias, luminous in its exposition of the political
issues of Randolph's time, though occasionally wandering
off too far into general history; and (to mention still another
consideration which, after all, determines the final
fate of every such book) distinctly readable. But Garland's
Life was published as long ago as 1850, and since
that time a great mass of material relating to Randolph,
which was either unknown or inaccessible to him, has come
to light, and has freely been used in the present work. Included

in this material, are the Diary and other journals
of Randolph, and numerous letters written by him to
St. George Tucker, his step-father; Fanny Bland Coalter,
his sister; Elizabeth T. Coalter, his niece; Joseph H.
Nicholson, James M. Garnett, Francis W. Gilmer, Nathan
Loughborough and Littleton Waller Tazewell, all intimate
friends of his; John Randolph Clay, his protégé; Andrew
Jackson, James Monroe and many other persons; to say
nothing of the great number of letters written to or about
Randolph which were also either unknown or inaccessible
to Garland. Indeed, apart from a few early letters, no
letters of any importance written by Randolph appear to
have been available to Garland for the purposes of his
task except the very valuable ones which Randolph wrote
to Key and Dr. Brockenbrough.

The biography (so-called) of Randolph by Lemuel
Sawyer is but a mere memoir; though by no means negligible,
because Sawyer served for many years in the House
of Representatives with Randolph, and, while sharing the
prejudice against him, felt by all the fervid Jeffersonians,
after the breach between him and Jefferson, was an ardent
but not an indiscriminate admirer of Randolph's genius;
and was an admirer, in many respects, of his character too.
But, even if Sawyer's book were a much more extensive
one, he had a failing which is enough to destroy, or all but
destroy, the value of any book, brief or otherwise; that is,
gross inaccuracy. He was, we are told by John Quincy
Adams, a writer of poems and plays, as well as a Congressman,
and no playwright or poet ever deliberately took
more license with historical facts than Sawyer did in the
loose statements of his memoir.

The Reminiscences of the Home Life of John Randolph
of Roanoke by Powhatan Bouldin contains much contemporary
testimony about Randolph of the highest importance,
but, as its title indicates, its scope is limited.
Moreover, its value is very much diminished by the circumstance

that its author lacked the requisite training
for sifting and weighing evidence, and wholly failed to
make any allowance for the fact that much of what he
details on the strength of country-side gossip about the
habits and conduct of Randolph is, even if true, referable
to a period when, in the judgment of a judicial tribunal,
Randolph was utterly insane.

The chapters on Randolph in James Parton's Famous
Americans are very agreeably written, as is everything
that Parton ever wrote; though deeply jaundiced by the
sectional feelings of the Civil War Period; but they constitute,
after all, only a critical essay.

The same thing is true of the chapters on Randolph in
J. G. Baldwin's Party Leaders and Prof. R. H. Dabney's
John Randolph, a Character Sketch. There are besides
some brief sketches of Randolph by other hands, but they
are so plainly outside of the field intended to be occupied
by this book that they need not be further mentioned
here.

The book about Randolph that probably has the widest
currency at this time, partly because it is one of the American
Statesmen Series of Houghton, Mifflin & Co., and
partly because it was written with the literary skill which
marks all the productions of its author, is the John Randolph
of Henry Adams. If this book is not simply the
essence of Garland's two volumes strained off, réchauffé,
and sprinkled with the usual contents of the Adams saltcellar
and pepper-box, it is only because Henry Adams
had at his command letters from Randolph to Gallatin,
Monroe and Nicholson which Garland did not. In its
pages, he has fully availed himself of the opportunity that
it afforded him to direct against the memory of Randolph
the thrice-refined venom in respect to its subject which had
filtered into his own veins from those of his great-grandfather,
grandfather and father. The book is really nothing
but a family pamphlet, saturated with the sectional

prejudices and antipathies of the year 1882; and why its
author should have been selected to write a biographical
essay on Randolph is one of those questions which it is
just as well not to ask in the year 1922.

We have spared no effort to make the present biography
complete, and, if there is any source of information about
Randolph, to which we have not resorted, it has not been
because of any lack of diligence on the part of the
author.

So far as we know, the only unpublished letters from the
hand of Randolph that have escaped us were a number
written by him to his friend, the Hon. Harmanus Bleecker,
of Albany, N. Y., which were sold about the year 1913 by
Pierce and Scope, the well-known dealers in such things,
59 Maiden Lane, Albany. These we have been unable to
trace, though we have made an earnest effort to do
so.

Our cordial acknowledgments for assistance in the
preparation of this book are due to the Rt. Rev. Beverley
D. Tucker, Norfolk, Va.; Hon. Henry St. George Tucker,
Lexington, Va.; Mr. George P. Coleman, Williamsburg,
Va.; Mr. John Stewart Bryan, and Dr. St. George Tucker
Grinnan, Richmond, Va.; Rev. C. Braxton Bryan, Petersburg,
Va.; Miss Nina S. Grinnan, Woodberry Forest, Va.;
Mr. J. C. Grinnan, Norfolk, Va.; Mr. Randolph Bryan
Grinnan, Norfolk, Va.; Dr. Randolph B. Carmichael,
Washington, D. C.; Miss Virginia Lucas, Charlestown,
W. Va.; all descendants of Judge St. George Tucker, and
kinsfolk of John Randolph, through the marriage of his
mother to her second husband, Judge Tucker; also, to the
Hon. Geo. J. Hundley and Mr. J. M. Lear, Farmville, Va.;
Dr. Lyon G. Tyler, Williamsburg, Va.; Miss Addie C.
Venable and Prof. A. J. Morrison, Hampden-Sidney, Va.;
Mr. R. Bolling Willcox and Mrs. J. Spooner Eppes, Petersburg,
Va.; Judge William Leigh, Danville, Va.; Mr. Wm.
Leigh, Houston, Halifax County, Va.; Mr. Malcolm G.

Bruce, Berry Hill, Halifax County, Va.; Mrs. Mary Watkins
Leigh Taliaferro, Clarksville, Va.; Mr. H. B. Chermside,
Charlotte Court House, Va.; Mr. A. T. Howard,
Cumberland County, Va.; Dr. C. A. Graves and Dr.
Philip A. Bruce, University of Virginia; Mr. J. H. Whitty,
Mr. H. J. Eckenrode, Mr. Langborne M. Williams, and
Mr. W. D. Scott, Richmond, Va.; Mr. Theodore S. Garnett,
Norfolk, Va.; Mr. John B. Harvie, Roxboro, N. C.; Mr.
Briscoe B. Bouldin, Greensboro, N. C.; Dr. James Douglas
Bruce, University of Tennessee; Mrs. Leigh Robinson, Miss
Caroline Loughborough, the Hon. Charles Morelle Bruce,
and Mr. Gaillard Hunt, Washington, D. C.; Mrs. Admiral
Edward Simpson, Mrs. Henry J. Bowdoin, Mrs. Norman
James, Mr. Littleton Waller Tazewell, Jr., Mr. J. Mercer
Garnett, Jr., Mr. McHenry Howard, Mr. Harold Randolph,
Mr. John Randolph Bland, and Mr. Blanchard
Randall, Baltimore, Md.; Dr. Wm. M. Dabney, Ruxton,
Md.; Mrs. John Ridgley, Hampton, Md.; Mr. C. Howard
Lloyd, Wye, Talbot County, Md.; Mr. William Beebee,
New York City; Mr. S. L. Parrish, Southampton,
L. I.; Dr. Wm. E. Dodd, University of Chicago; Mrs.
Gilbert S. Meem, Seattle, Washington, and Sir Grey
H. D'C. Skipwith, Honington Lodge, Warwickshire,
England.

We also owe our warmest thanks for aid rendered to us
in one form or another by Mr. Herbert R. McIlwaine,
Librarian of the Virginia State Library, Richmond, Va.;
Mr. Wm. G. Stanard, Corresponding Secretary of the
Virginia Historical Society, Richmond, Va.; Rev. Thomas
C. Johnson, Librarian of the Union Theological Seminary,
Richmond, Va.; Mr. Samuel E. Lafferty, of the Peabody
Library, Baltimore, Md.; the Manuscript Division of the
Library of Congress; the Philadelphia Library; Mr. H. M.
Lydenberg, Reference Librarian of the New York Public
Library; the New York Historical Society; Mr. Julius H.
Tuttle, Assistant Librarian of the Massachusetts Historical

Society; Mr. Clarence S. Brigham, Librarian of the
American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, Mass., and
Miss Evelyn Gilmore, Librarian of the Maine Historical
Society.