John Randolph of Roanoke - Career

Career

At the unusually young age of 26, Randolph was elected to the Sixth and to the six succeeding US Congresses (1799 to 1813). Federalist William Plumer of New Hampshire wrote in 1803 of his striking presence:

Mr. Randolph goes to the House booted and spurred, with his whip in hand, in imitation, it is said, of members of the British Parliament. He is a very slight man but of the common stature. At a little distance, he does not appear older than you are; but, upon a nearer approach, you perceive his wrinkles and grey hairs. He is, I believe, about thirty. He is a descendant in the right line from the celebrated Indian Princess, Pochahontas. The Federalists ridicule and affect to despise him; but a despised foe often proves a dangerous enemy. His talents are certainly far above mediocrity. As a popular speaker, he is not inferior to any man in the House. I admire his ingenuity and address; but I dislike his politics.

Randolph was chairman of the Committee on Ways and Means in the Seventh through the Ninth Congresses, acting as the Democratic-Republican party leader. After breaking with his cousin the President Thomas Jefferson in 1806, he founded the Tertium quids, a faction of the Democratic-Republican Party that called for a return to the Principles of 1798 and renounced what it saw as creeping nationalism.

Although he greatly admired the political ideals of the Revolutionary War generation, Randolph, influenced by Southern anti-Federalism, propounded a version of republicanism that called for the traditional patriarchal society of Virginia's elite gentry to preserve social stability with minimal government interference. Randolph was one of the Congressional managers who conducted the successful impeachment proceedings against John Pickering, judge of the United States District Court for New Hampshire, in January 1804. Critics complained that he mismanaged the failed impeachment effort in December of the same year against Samuel Chase, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States.

In June 1807 Randolph was the foreman of the Grand Jury in Richmond, which was considering the indictment of Aaron Burr and others for treason. By the end of the review he was angry with Thomas Jefferson for supporting General James Wilkinson, Burr's chief accuser. He considered Wilkinson less than a reputable and honorable person.

Defeated for re-election in 1812 due to his opposition to the War of 1812, Randolph was elected in 1814 and 1816. He skipped a term, then was re-elected and served from 1819 until his resignation in 1825. Randolph was appointed to the US Senate in December, 1825 to fill a vacancy, and served until 1827. Randolph was elected to the Congress in 1826, chairing the Committee on Ways and Means.

In 1825 he talked for several days in opposition to a series of measures proposed by President John Quincy Adams that he argued would advantage the emerging industrial powers of New England at the expense of the Southern states. This series of speeches was the first Senate filibuster.

Randolph was a member of the Virginia constitutional convention at Richmond in 1829. He was appointed United States Minister to Russia by President Andrew Jackson and served from May to September, 1830, when he resigned for health reasons.

Elected again in 1832, he served until his death in Philadelphia on May 24, 1833. He was never married.

John Greenleaf Whittier's poem "Randolph of Roanoke," although written after the Virginian had become a symbol of "slave power," captures his strange brilliance:

Mirth, sparkling like a diamond shower,

From lips of life-long sadness;

Clear picturings of majestic thought

Upon a ground of madness

While others hailed in distant skies

Our eagle's dusky pinion,

He only saw the mountain bird

Stoop o'er his Old Dominion!

All parties feared him; each in turn

Beheld its schemes disjointed,

At right or left his fatal glance

And spectral finger pointed