Part 17

The blood of this fine breed of men was also running low. Both the parents of John Randolph and both of his brothers died young, and he himself inherited weakness which early developed into disease. One of his half-brothers died a madman. "My whole name and race," he would say, "lie under a curse. I feel the curse clinging to me." He was a fair, delicate child, more like a girl than a boy, and more inclined, as a child, to the sports of girls than of boys. His mother, a fond, tender, gentle lady, nourished his softer qualities, powerless to govern him, and probably never attempting it. Nevertheless, he was no girl; he was a genuine son of the South. Such was the violence of his passions, that, before he was four years old, he sometimes in a fit of anger fell senseless upon the floor, and was restored only after much effort. His step-father, who was an honorable man, seems never to have attempted either to control his passions or develop his intellect. He grew up, as many boys of Virginia did, and do, unchecked, unguided, untrained. Turned loose in a miscellaneous library, nearly every book he read tended to intensify his feelings or inflame his imagination. His first book was Voltaire's Charles XII., and a better book for a boy has never been written. Then he fell upon the Spectator. Before he was twelve he had read the Arabian Nights, Orlando, Robinson Crusoe, Smollett's Works, Reynard the Fox, Don Quixote, Gil Bias, Tom Jones, Gulliver, Shakespeare, Plutarch's Lives, Pope's Homer, Goldsmith's Rome, Percy's Reliques, Thomson's Seasons, Young, Gray, and Chatterton,--a gallon of sack to a penny's worth of bread. A good steady drill in arithmetic, geography, and language might have given his understanding a chance; but this ill-starred boy never had a steady drill in anything. He never remained longer at any one school than a year, and he learned at school very little that he needed most to know. In the course of his desultory schooling he picked up some Latin, a little Greek, a good deal of French, and an inconceivable medley of odds and ends of knowledge, which his wonderful memory enabled him to use sometimes with startling effect.

Everywhere else, in the whole world, children are taught that virtue is self-control. In the Southern States, among these tobacco-lords, boys learned just the opposite lesson,--that virtue is self-indulgence. This particular youth, thin-skinned, full of talent, fire, and passion, the heir to a large estate, fatherless, would have been in danger anywhere of growing up untrained,--a wild beast in broadcloth. In the Virginia of that day, in the circle in which he lived, there was nothing for him in the way either of curb or spur. He did what he pleased, and nothing else. All that was noble in his life,--those bursts of really fine oratory, his flashes of good sense, his occasional generosities, his hatred of debt, and his eager haste to pay it,--all these things were due to the original excellence of his race. In the very dregs of good wine there is flavor. We cannot make even good vinegar out of a low quality of wine.

His gentle mother taught him all the political economy he ever took to heart. "Johnny," said she to him one day, when they had reached a point in their ride that commanded an extensive view,

"all this land belongs to you and your brother. It is your father's inheritance. When you get to be a man, you must not sell your land: it is the first step to ruin for a boy to part with his father's home. Be sure to keep it as long as you live. Keep your land, and your land will keep you."

There never came a time when his mind was mature and masculine enough to consider this advice. He clung to his land as Charles Stuart clung to his prerogative.

All the early life of this youth was wandering and desultory. At fourteen, we find him at Princeton College in New Jersey, where, we are told, he fought a duel, exchanged shots twice with his adversary, and put a ball into his body which he carried all his life. By this time, too, the precocious and ungovernable boy had become, as he flattered himself, a complete atheist. One of his favorite amusements at Princeton was to burlesque the precise and perhaps ungraceful Presbyterians of the place. The library of his Virginian home, it appears, was furnished with a great supply of what the French mildly call the literature of incredulity,--Helvetius, Voltaire, Rousseau, Diderot, D'Alembert, and the rest. The boy, in his rage for knowledge, had read vast quantities of this literature, and, of course, embraced the theory of the writers that pushed denial farthest. For twenty-two years, he says in one of his letters, he never entered a church. Great pleasure it gave him to show how superior the Mahometan religion was to the Christian, and to recite specimens of what he took delight in styling Hebrew jargon. The Psalms of David were his special aversion.

Almost all gifted and fearless lads that have lived in Christendom during the last hundred years have had a fit of this kind between fifteen and twenty-five. The strength of the tendency to question the grounds of belief must be great indeed to bear away with it a youth like this, formed by Nature to believe. John Randolph had no more intellectual right to be a sceptic, than he had a moral right to be a republican. A person whose imagination is quick and warm, whose feelings are acute, and whose intellect is wholly untrained, can find no comfort except in belief. His scepticism is a mere freak of vanity or self-will. Coming upon the stage of life when unbelief was fashionable in high drawing-rooms, he became a sceptic. But Nature will have her way with us all, and so this atheist at fifteen was an Evangelical at forty-five.

His first political bias was equally at war with his nature. John Randolph was wholly a tory; there was not in his whole composition one republican atom. But coming early under the direct personal influence of Thomas Jefferson, whose every fibre was republican, he, too, the sympathetic tory of genius, espoused the people's cause. He was less than twenty-two years, however, in recovering from this false tendency.

Summoned from Princeton, after only a few months' residence, by the death of his mother, he went next to Columbia College, in the city of New York, where for a year or two he read Greek with a tutor, especially Demosthenes. At New York he saw the first Congress under the new Constitution assemble, and was one of the concourse that witnessed the scene of General Washington's taking the oath on the balcony of the old City Hall. It seemed to this Virginia boy natural enough that a Virginian should be at the head of the government; not so, that a Yankee should hold the second place and preside over the Senate. Forty years after, he recalled with bitterness a trifling incident, which, trifling as it was, appears to have been the origin of his intense antipathy to all of the blood of John Adams. The coachman of the Vice-President, it seems, told the brother of this little republican tory to stand back; or, as the orator stated it, forty years after, "I remember the manner in which my brother was spurned by the coachman of the Vice-President for coming too near the arms emblazoned on the vice-regal carriage."

Boy as he was, he had already taken sides with those who opposed the Constitution. The real ground of his opposition to it was, that it reduced the importance of Virginia,--great Virginia! Under the new Constitution, there was a man on the Western Continent of more consequence than the Governor of Virginia, there were legislative bodies more powerful than the Legislature of Virginia. This was the secret of the disgust with which he heard it proposed to style the President "His Highness" and "His Majesty." This was the reason why it kindled his ire to read, in the newspapers of 1789, that "the most honorable Rufus King" had been elected Senator. It was only Jefferson and a very few other of the grand Virginians who objected for higher and larger reasons.

In March, 1790, Mr. Jefferson reached New York, after his return from France, and entered upon his new office of Secretary of State under General Washington. He was a distant relative of our precocious student, then seventeen years of age; and the two families had just been brought nearer together by the marriage of one of Mr. Jefferson's daughters to a Randolph. The reaction against republican principles was at full tide; and no one will ever know to what lengths it would have gone, had not Thomas Jefferson so opportunely come upon the scene. At his modest abode, No. 57 Maiden Lane, the two Randolph lads--John, seventeen, Theodorick, nineteen--were frequent visitors. Theodorick was a roistering blade, much opposed to his younger brother's reading habits, caring himself for nothing but pleasure. John was an eager politician. During the whole period of the reaction, first at New York, afterward at Philadelphia, finally in Virginia, John Randolph sat at the feet of the great Democrat of America, fascinated by his conversation, and generally convinced by his reasoning. It is a mistake, however, to suppose that he was a blind follower of Mr. Jefferson, even then. On the question of States' Rights, he was in the most perfect accord with him. But when, in 1791, the eyes of all intelligent America were fixed upon the two combatants, Edmund Burke and Thomas Paine, Burke condemning, Paine defending, the French Revolution, the inherited instincts of John Randolph asserted themselves, and he gave all his heart to Burke. Lord Chatham and Edmund Burke were the men who always held the first place in the esteem of this kindred spirit. Mr. Jefferson, of course, sympathized with the view of his friend Paine, and never wavered in his belief that the French Revolution was necessary and beneficial. A generous and gifted nation strangled, moved him to deeper compassion than a class proscribed. He dwelt more upon the long and bitter provocation, than upon the brief frenzy which was only one of its dire results. Louis XIV. and Louis XV., picturesque as they were, excited within him a profounder horror than ugly Marat and Robespierre. He pitied haggard, distracted France more than graceful and high-bred Marie Antoinette. In other words, he was not a tory.

There was a difference, too, between Mr. Jefferson and his young kinsman on the points upon which they agreed. Jefferson was a States' Rights man, and a strict constructionist, because he was a republican; Randolph, because he was a Virginian, Jefferson thought the government should be small, that the people might be great; John Randolph thought the government should be small, that Virginia might be great. Pride in Virginia was John Randolph's ruling passion, not less in 1790; than in 1828, The welfare and dignity of man were the darling objects of Thomas Jefferson's great soul, from youth to hoary age.

Here we have the explanation of the great puzzle of American politics,--the unnatural alliance, for sixty years, between the plantation lords of the South and the democracy of the North, both venerating the name of Jefferson, and both professing his principles. It was not, as many suppose, a compact of scurvy politicians for the sake of political victory. Every great party, whether religious' or political, that has held power long in a country, has been founded upon conviction,--disinterested conviction. Some of the cotton and tobacco lords, men of intellect and culture, were democrats and abolitionists, like Jefferson himself. Others took up with republicanism because it was the reigning affectation in their circle, as it was in the chateaux and drawing-rooms of France. But their State pride it was that bound them as a class to the early Republican party. The Southern aristocrat saw in Jefferson the defender of the sovereignty of his State: the "smutched artificer" of the North gloried in Jefferson as the champion of the rights of man. While the Republican party was in opposition, battling with unmanageable John Adams, with British Hamilton, and with a foe more powerful than both of those men together, Robespierre,--while it had to contend with Washington's all but irresistible influence, and with the nearly unanimous opposition of educated and orthodox New England,--this distinction was not felt. Many a tobacco aristocrat cut off his pig-tail and wore trousers down to his ankles, which were then the outward signs of the inward democratic grace. But time tries all. It is now apparent to every one that the strength of the original Democratic party in the South was the States' Rights portion of its platform, while in the North it was the sentiment of republicanism that kept the party together.

Young politicians should study this period of their country's history. If ever again a political party shall rule the United States for sixty years, or for twenty years, it will be, we think, a party resembling the original Republican party, as founded in America by Franklin, and organized under Jefferson. Its platform will be, perhaps, something like this: simple, economical government machinery; strict construction of the Constitution; the rights of the States scrupulously observed; the suffrage open to all, without regard to color or sex,--open to all, but conferred only upon men and women capable of exercising it.

John Randolph agreed upon another point with Mr. Jefferson: lie was an abolitionist. But for the English debt which he inherited, it is extremely probable that he would have followed the example of many of the best Virginians of his day, and emancipated his slaves. He would, perhaps, have done so when that debt was discharged, instead of waiting to do it by his last will, but for the forlorn condition of freedmen in a Slave State. His eldest brother wrote, upon the division of the estate, in 1794:

"I want not a single negro for any other purpose than his immediate emancipation. I shudder when I think that such an insignificant animal as I am is invested with this monstrous, this horrid power."

He told his guardian that he would give up all his land rather than own a slave. There was no moment in the whole life of John Randolph when he did not sympathize with this view of slavery, and he died expressing it. But though lie was, if possible, a more decided abolitionist than Jefferson, he never for a moment doubted the innate superiority of a Virginia gentleman to all the other inhabitants of America. He had not even the complaisance to take his hair out of queue, nor hide his thin legs in pantaloons. He was not endowed by nature with understanding enough to rise superior to the prejudices that had come down to him through generations of aristocrats. He was weak enough, indeed, to be extremely vain of the fact that a grandfather of his had married one of the great-granddaughters of Pocahontas, who, it was believed, performed the act that renders her famous at Point of Rocks on the Appomattox, within walking distance of one of the Randolph mansions. It is interesting to observe what an unquestioning, childlike faith he always had in the superiority of his caste, of his State, and of his section. He once got so far as to speak favorably of the talents of Daniel Webster; but he was obliged to conclude by saying that he was the best debater he had ever known north of the Potomac.

This singular being was twenty-six years of age before any one suspected, least of all himself, that he possessed any of the talents which command the attention of men. His life had been desultory and purposeless. He had studied law a little, attended a course or two of medical lectures, travelled somewhat, dipped into hundreds of books, read a few with passionate admiration, had lived much with the ablest men of that day,--a familiar guest at Jefferson's fireside, and no stranger at President Washington's stately table. Father, mother, and both brothers were dead. He was lonely, sad, and heavily burdened with property, with debt, and the care of many dependants. His appearance was even more singular than his situation. At twenty-three he had still the aspect of a boy. He actually grew half a head after he was twenty-three years of age.

"A tall, gawky-looking, flaxen-haired stripling, apparently of the age of sixteen or eighteen, with complexion of a good parchment color, beardless chin, and as much assumed self-consequence as any two-footed animal I ever saw."

So he was described by a Charleston bookseller, who saw him in his store in 1796, carelessly turning over books. "At length," continues this narrator,

"he hit upon something that struck his fancy; and never did I witness so sudden, so perfect a change of the human countenance. That which was before dull and heavy in a moment became animated, and flashed with the brightest beams of intellect. He stepped up to the old gray-headed gentleman (his companion), and giving him a thundering slap on the shoulder, said, 'Jack, look at this!'"

Thus was he described at twenty-three. At twenty-six he was half a head taller, and quite as slender as before. His light hair was then combed back into an elegant queue. His eye of hazel was bright and restless. His chin was still beardless. He wore a frock-coat of light blue cloth, yellow breeches, silk stockings, and top-boots. Great was the love he bore his horses, which were numerous, and as good as Virginia could boast. It is amusing to notice that the horse upon which this pattern aristocrat used to scamper across the country, in French-Revolution times, was named Jacobin!

It was in March, 1799, the year before the final victory of the Republicans over the Federal party, that the neighbors of John Randolph and John Randolph himself discovered, to their great astonishment, that he was an orator. He had been nominated for Representative in Congress. Patrick Henry, aged and infirm, had been so adroitly manipulated by the Federalists, that he had at length agreed to speak to the people in support of the hateful administration of John Adams. John Randolph, who had never in his life addressed an audience, nor, as he afterwards declared, had ever imagined that he could do so, suddenly determined, the very evening before the day named for the meeting, to reply to Patrick Henry. It was an open-air meeting. No structure in Virginia could have contained the multitude that thronged to hear the transcendent orator, silent for so many years, and now summoned from his retirement by General Washington himself to speak for a Union imperilled and a government assailed. He spoke with the power of other days? for he was really alarmed for his country; and when he had finished his impassioned harangue, he sunk back into the arms of his friends, as one of them said, "like the sun setting in his glory." For the moment he had all hearts with him. The sturdiest Republican in Virginia could scarcely resist the spell of that amazing oratory.

John Randolph rose to reply. His first sentences showed not only that he could speak, but that he knew the artifices of an old debater; for he began by giving eloquent expression to the veneration felt by his hearers for the aged patriot who had just addressed them. He spoke for three hours, it is said; and if we may judge from the imperfect outline of his speech that has come down to us, he spoke as well that day as ever he did. States' Rights was the burden of his speech. That the Alien and Sedition Law was an outrage upon human nature, he may have believed; but what he felt was, that it was an outrage upon the Commonwealth of Virginia. He may have thought it desirable that all governments should confine themselves to the simple business of compelling the faithful performance of contracts; but what he insisted upon was, that the exercise by the government of the United States of any power not expressly laid down in the letter of the Constitution was a wrong to Virginia. If John Adams is right, said he, in substance, then Virginia has gained nothing by the Revolution but a change of masters,--New England for Old England,--which he thought was not a change for the better.

It was unnecessary, in the Virginia of 1799, for the head of the house of Randolph to be an orator in order to secure an election to the House of Representatives. He was elected, of course. When he came forward to be sworn in, his appearance was so youthful, that the Clerk of the House asked him, with the utmost politeness, whether he had attained the legal age. His reply was eminently characteristic of the tobacco lord: "Go, sir, and ask my constituents: they sent me here." As there was no one present authorized by the Constitution to box the ears of impudent boys on the floor of the House, he was sworn without further question. It has often occurred to us that this anecdote, which John Randolph used to relate with much satisfaction, was typical of much that has since occurred. The excessive courtesy of the officer, the insolence of the Virginia tobacconist, the submission of the Clerk to that insolence,--who has not witnessed such scenes in the Capitol at Washington?

It was in December, 1799, that this fiery and erratic genius took his seat in the House of Representatives. John Adams had still sixteen months to serve as target for the sarcasm of the young talent of the nation. To calm readers of the present day, Mr. Adams does really seem a strange personage to preside over a government; but the cairn reader of the present day cannot realize the state of things in the year 1800. We cannot conceive what a fright the world had had in the excesses of the French Revolution, and the recent usurpation of General Bonaparte. France had made almost every timid man in Christendom a tory. Serious and respectable people, above forty, and enjoying a comfortable income, felt that there was only one thing left for a decent person to do,--to assist in preserving the authority of government. John Adams, by the constitution of his mind, was as much a tory as John Randolph; for he too possessed imagination and talent disproportioned to his understanding. To be a democrat it is necessary to have a little pure intellect; since your democrat is merely a person who can, occasionally, see things and men as they are. New England will always be democratic enough as long as her boys learn mental arithmetic; and Ireland will always be the haunt of tories as long as her children are brought up upon songs, legends, and ceremonies. To make a democratic people, it is only necessary to accustom them to use their minds.

Nothing throws such light upon the state of things in the United States in 1800, as the once famous collision between these two natural tories, John Adams and John Randolph, which gave instantaneous celebrity to the new member, and made him an idol of the Republican party. In his maiden speech, which was in opposition to a proposed increase of the army, he spoke disparagingly of the troops already serving, using the words ragamuffins and mercenaries. In this passage of his speech, the partisan spoke, not the man. John Randolph expressed the real feeling of his nature toward soldiers, when, a few years later, on the same floor, he said: "If I must have a master, let him be one with epaulets; something which I can look up to; but not a master with a quill behind his ear." In 1800, however, it pleased him to style the soldiers of the United States ragamuffins and mercenaries; which induced two young officers to push, hustle, and otherwise discommode and insult him at the theatre. Strange to relate, this hot Virginian, usually so prompt with a challenge to mortal combat, reported the misconduct of these officers to the President of the United States. This eminently proper act he did in an eminently proper manner, thanks to his transient connection with the Republican party. Having briefly stated the case, he concluded his letter to the President thus:

"The independence of the legislature has been attacked, and the majesty of the people, of which you are the principal representative, insulted, and your authority contemned. In their name, I demand that a provision commensurate with the evil be made, and which will be calculated to deter others from any future attempt to introduce the reign of terror into our country. In addressing you in this plain language of man, I give you, sir, the best proof I can afford of the estimation in which I hold your office and your understanding; and I assure you with truth, that I am, with respect, your fellow-citizen, John Randolph."