John Randolph of Roanoke

Via Ryan

$31.99

John Randolph of Roanoke—he added the “of Roanoke” to his name in his mid-30s while serving in Congress—was born into one of Virginia’s first families. As such he was a wealthy plantation owner with hundreds of slaves (whom he freed upon his death). He was also a leading “Quid” (from the Latin Tertium Quid—the third something), believing the “old Republican party is already ruined, past redemption.” The Quids were southern (typically Virginian) ex-Jeffersonians who had broken with Jefferson and the Republicans because they found the Jeffersonians too willing to make use of the federal government. The Quids wanted the federal government to shrink to close to nothing, believing only this could guarantee the survival of liberty. David Johnson’s John Randolph of Roanoke is the first biography of Randolph since an earlier one by another conservative, Russell Kirk.

Randolph was elected to the House of Representatives at the age of twenty-six and spent most of his active career in its chamber, being too effective a debater (with invective that makes moderns like Newt Gingrich look like amateurs), and for six years chair of the powerful Ways and Means Committee. He also briefly served as a Senator and minister to Russia.

Randolph’s break with Jefferson was initiated by Yazoo—the huge fraudulent land transaction by a bribed Georgia legislature in the mid-1790s (supposedly annulled by a subsequent legislature). With settlers entering Alabama and Mississippi, it became imperative to straighten out land titles, and the way to do so was with federal money to extinguish Georgia’s claims. Jefferson appointed James Madison, Albert Gallatin, and Levi Lincoln (the three leading cabinet members) to study the issue, and they recommended federal purchase. Randolph was outraged, believing the issue was entirely one of state sovereignty, and he split with the party, and managed to block the transaction for a decade (until he was defeated for Congress by a son-in-law of Jefferson). After Yazoo, Randolph seemingly opposed everything: Jefferson’s embargo, the declaration of war in 1812 (leading to his election defeat), rechartering the Bank of the United States, the Missouri Compromise.

If Randolph turned on Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe, he nevertheless maintained a thirty-year friendship with John Marshall who he considered “the first man of Virginia, if not in the Union.” While everyone (save Jefferson) liked the easy going Marshall, the Chief Justice was Randolph’s political polar opposite—the most successful nationalist of the Jeffersonian era. Marshall-Randolph were truly a political odd couple.

David Johnson amply backs up the summation of John Quincy Adams on Randolph: “Egotism, Virginia aristocracy, slave-scourging, liberty, religion, literature, science, wit, fancy, generous feeling, and malignant passions constitute a chaos in his mind, from which nothing orderly can flow.” This is what makes John Randolph of Roanoke a book worth reading; he was one of the most interesting figures of the Jeffersonian era who has been largely lost for years.