RANDOLPH, JOHN, of Roanoke (1773-1833), American statesman and orator, was born at -Cawsons, Va., on June 2, 1773. Through his father, John Randolph, and his mother, Frances Bland, he was related to the Randolphs of Turkey Island and the Blands of Westover, two of the most conspicu ous families of colonial Virginia; and, through an ancestress, Jane Bolling, he was a descendant of the Indian princess, Poca hontas. He received his collegiate education at Princeton, Colum bia and William and Mary colleges. In 1799, he was elected to the House of Representatives, after an historic debate with Patrick Henry. In the House, his rise was so rapid that, after the election, in 1801, of Jefferson to the presidency, he was made chairman of the House committee on ways and means, and became the leader of the House Republicans. Soon, however, he drifted away from Jefferson, and lost both chairmanship and leadership. Afterwards he was, for many years, a mere free lance; but, in 1820, his resolute resistance to the Missouri Com promise made him again a truly powerful figure in the House. After his first election in 1799, he was re-elected to the House, every two years, until 1829 except in 1813, when his opposition to the War of 1812 resulted in his defeat by John W. Eppes, and in 1817, when he declined to be a candidate. After re-election to the House in 1825, he was elected to the U.S. Senate; but he was defeated for re-election by John Tyler. In 1807, he was the foreman of the grand jury which indicted Aaron Burr for treason; and he was a prominent member of the famous Virginia Constitu tional Convention of 1829-30. In 1830, he was sent by Andrew Jackson on a special mission to Russia. In the succeeding year, he returned, and later denounced, in a series of speeches, the nullification proclamation of Andrew Jackson. He died at Phila delphia on May 24, 1833. Randolph was a passionate partisan of State sovereignty; and, therefore, opposed to a national bank, protection, and Federal internal improvements and interference with slavery; but he disliked slavery, and freed his slaves by his will. He filled with admirable efficiency the chairmanship of the House committee on ways and means. Jefferson said that his
"popular eloquence gave him such advantages as to place him unrivalled as the leader of the House." At the time of the Missouri Compromise, his influence was so great that Henry Clay afterwards declared in a speech: "His acts came near shaking this Union to the centre, and desolating this fair land." After his return to the House in 1827, it was again so great that the failure of John Quincy Adams to be re-elected to the presidency was largely due to it. "Wit and genius all allowed him," Thomas H. Benton tells us. "He has probably," declared Horace Binney, "spoken to more listeners than any other man of his day; having been unrivalled in the power of riveting the attention by the force and pungency of his language, the facility and beauty of his enunciation, and the point and emphasis of his most striking manner." Some of Randolph's speeches in Congress are found in every anthology of American eloquence. One of the most brilliant and disinterested, though by no means one of the most useful, of American public men; a captivat ing talker; a delightful letter-writer; a ripe scholar; a devotee of the horse, the dog and the gun; the scion of old and dis tinguished family stocks ; the lonely occupant, when at Roa noke, of two rude dwellings, in the heart of a primaeval f or est, and yet the possessor of a vast landed estate, a numerous retinue of slaves, a splendid stud of thoroughbreds, and a choice library; marked by startling peculiarities of voice, face and form which, once heard or seen, were never forgotten; always eccentric and sick, sometimes actually demented; a party to two duels and many quarrels ; dauntlessly intrepid ; intensely malig nant at times, and yet susceptible also to the tenderest impulses of love and pity, it is not surprising that John Randolph of Roanoke should occupy, in American history, a place that is likely forever to remain unique.
See Lemuel Sawyer, Biography of Randolph (1844) ; Hugh A. Gar land, Life of Randolph (1850) ; Henry Adams, John Randolph (1882) ; William Cabell Bruce, John Randolph (1922) ; G. W. Johnston, Randolph of Roanoke (1929). (W. C. Br