John Randolph of Roanoke
By David
Johnson
(LSU Press, 343 pages, $45 hardcover, $38
epub)
Russell Kirk described John Randolph (1773-1833) as “the most
singular great man in American history,” an eccentric of “poetic
fancy and wild temper… who lived like a knight-errant.” In The
Conservative Mind, Kirk paired Randolph with John C. Calhoun
as architects of Southern Conservatism and the intellectual heirs
to Edmund Burke. Their political views were rooted in the agrarian
South and they possessed — to paraphrase Victor Davis Hanson —
the chauvinism that comes from having both feet firmly planted in
ancestral ground. Kirk’s John Randolph of Roanoke
concentrated on Randolph’s principles and was biographical only to
the extent necessary to amplify his political ideals, an omission
Kirk readily acknowledged.
David Johnson has filled this gap with a meticulously researched
and sympathetic, but objective, biography that merges the personal
and political Randolph in a way that enhances both. William
Faulkner could not have conceived a more faceted character.
Randolph was, as Johnson notes, “a walking adjective” variously
portrayed by contemporaries as a “flowing gargoyle of
vituperation,” “pale, meager, ghostly,” “grotesque” and a
“phenomenon amongst men.” Hypersensitivity was obviously not the
order of the day.
Randolph’s oddly formed body, likely due to a genetic aberration
(Klinefelter syndrome), invited such descriptions. His high pitched
voice gave his acerbic wit a particularly cutting edge. He suffered
badly from a number of maladies and resorted to then accepted
medications — magnesia, mercury, alcohol, morphine and opium —
which animated his native eccentricities. His speeches and actions
demonstrated superior intellect, profound literacy, and, on
occasion, simply being high. Peeling through the layers of myth
surrounding Randolph was no small task for a biographer.
Randolph, at age 29, entered the political stage in the crisis
precipitated by Alien and Sedition Acts. During his run for a seat
in the 6th Congress, Randolph’s speech followed that of the
legendary Patrick Henry who, at age 63, was seeking return to
Virginia’s House of Delegates. George Washington had encouraged
Henry to run, hoping that his voice would mitigate the controversy
enflamed by James Madison’s and Thomas Jefferson’s Kentucky and
Virginia Resolutions. The party schism so feared by Washington was
clearly evident.
Both were both elected, but Henry died before returning to
Richmond. Their joint appearance neatly framed the generational
change taking place at the turn of the century. In his willingness
to aid the Federalists, Henry — the great voice of the Revolution
— had arguably gone wobbly. From that point forward and for the
remainder of his life, Randolph considered himself the champion of
republican liberty and defender of the true Spirit of ‘76. He
viewed the politics of interest and party as antithetical to
liberty and never backed down.
“I am aristocrat. I love liberty. I hate equality.” This is
perhaps Randolph’s most quotable pronouncement and made by the very
definition of First Family of Virginia. He was a descendant of
Pocahontas, and of William and Mary Isham Randolph, known to
genealogists as Virginia’s Adam & Eve. He counted among his
many cousins Thomas Jefferson, John Marshall, and Henry
“Light-Horse Harry” Lee. His widowed mother’s marriage to St.
George Tucker brought other connections. This heritage permitted a
disregard of convention and the ability to act with independence.
His relationship with extended family was complex, and Johnson
suggests that Jefferson and Randolph each possessed a “style and
temperament that bore little resemblance to that displayed by
kinsmen.”
The liberty advocated by Randolph was not that of Jefferson.
Liberty without order is chaos, and while all may have been created
equal, individual nature and stark reality guaranteed inequality.
Randolph’s was, according to Johnson, “an aristocracy of cultured
and civilized citizens who respected tradition, defended
established institutions, and adhered to duty.” A dedication to the
common good and devotion to republican principles separated
Virginia’s aristocracy from hereditary tyrants. Randolph found
Edmund Burke “an intellectual banquet of the richest rewards,”
though Johnson points out that his reading of Burke took place in
1814, and so merely confirmed those values Randolph already held
dear.
Randolph served in both houses of Congress and was involved in
most of the major issues of the first third of the 19th century,
from the Yazoo land controversy to the Embargo Act to the Bank of
the United States to the Missouri Compromise. He was the prosecutor
for the impeachment of Samuel Chase, indicter of Aaron Burr,
supported and then split with Jefferson, duelist with Henry Clay,
and had little use for either Madison or Calhoun. He did retain a
small cadre of friends and close relations and, except for one
election, held the loyalty of his constituency of freeholders.
Randolph was turned out of office only once, due to his
opposition to the War of 1812. He spoke of his fellow Congressmen
becoming “infatuated with standing armies, loans, taxes, navies and
war,” asking rhetorically “What Republicanism is this?” Ultimately
he had little use for either political party, confessing to being
an “irreclaimable heretic.” Johnson writes:
He had at long last become a party unto himself, a republican
purist who would sacrifice no principle for political success or
collegial acceptance. He was the “third something” of American
politics — a Tertium Quid.
A faction of one, Randolph spared no vitriol in denouncing the
foes of liberty in any of “their forms: tyranny, cant, idolatry,
abstract theories, party hacks, placeholders, and the whirl of
change,” as Johnson puts it. Conciliation, accommodation, and the
middle ground were unknown territories to Randolph. The pompous,
posturing and preening politician enjoyed no quarter from Randolph,
as he famously commented that Edward Livingston was “a man of
splendid abilities, but utterly corrupt. He shines and stinks like
a rotten mackerel by moonlight.”
“Change is not reform” and “the lust of innovation has been the
death of all republics.” Randolph’s last great public appearance in
his beloved Virginia was during the Constitutional Convention of
1829. Joined by a host of luminaries — Madison, Monroe and
Marshall in attendance — Randolph faced a final narrow defeat. The
forces of democracy and seemingly unlimited expansion sweeping the
nation were no less present in the Commonwealth. Population
disparity in legislative districts motivated the reformers, though
Randolph warned against the idea that “numbers, and numbers alone,
are to regulate all things in political society.” To him, deference
to tradition and established order was far better than living under
“King Numbers.”
The principled and disinterested aristocrat, who spoke his mind
without regard for the consequences, harkens to another age.
Today’s flaccid political discourse is reduced to debating who will
best preserve the petty public sinecures of individual
constituents. Randolph reminds us that when republican liberty
yields to democratic impulses, the result is centralized power and
spendthrift government. Maybe David Johnson’s restoration of John
Randolph to the public sphere is timely, after all.
