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178 never afterward a candidate for office, though he took an active part in California politics, and was a popular orator. William Walker fixed on Ran- dolph as the chancellor of his proposed Niearaguan empire. To what extent Randolph participated in that .-nterprise is not known, but his absence from California was brief. In the great Almaden mine case the advocacy of the claim of the United States devolved mainly on Randolph. Of this case Jere- miah Black says : " In the bulk of the record and the magnitude of the interest at stake, this is prob- ably the heaviest case ever heard before a judicial tribunal." On Randolph's argument, submitted after his death, the United States won the case. He was for four years engaged chiefly on this case, and his life was shortened by it. The government paid his widow $12,000 in addition to the $5,000 fee which her husband had received. Randolph was the author of "An Address on the History of California from the Discovery of the Country to the Year 1849," which was delivered before the So- ciety of California pioneers, at San Francisco, on 10 Sept., 1860 (San Francisco, 1860). His argument in the Almaden mine case has also been printed. William's great-grandson John, " of Roanoke," statesman, b. at Cawsons, Va., 2 June, 1773; d. in Philadelphia, Pa., 24 June, 1833, was seventh in descent from Pocahontas by her marriage with John Rolfe. Richard Randolph of Curies, father of John Randolph of Roanoke. died in 1775. In 788 his mother married St. George Tucker, who was a father to her four children, among whom were divided the large possessions of their father, in- cluding more than 40,000, acres. Ac- cording to an unpub- lished manuscript of his nephew, by mar- riage, John Ran- dolph Bryan, ' his advantages of edu- cation were neces- sarily limited by the [Revolutionary] exi- gencies of the times. Such as he had were furnished by his step-father. His mother was a lady of rare intelligence, and ' lit- tle Jack,' as he was always called, found in tier a parent and guide such as few children have. For her his love and admiration were unbounded. She wasa beautiful woman, with a charm of mannerand grace of person most captivating. In addition, she possessed a voice which had rare power. Jack was a beautiful boy, and the picture of the child and his mother was greatly admired. Randolph never spoke of her in after-life but with peculiar tenderness. From his mother he learned the power of tone in reciting, of which he made use in manhood." In his great speech in congress (1811) Randolph said : " Bred up in the principles of the Revolution, I can never palliate, much less defend [the outrages and injuries of England]. I well remember flying with my mot her and her new-born child from Arnold and Phillips ; and they had been driven by Tarleton and other British pandours from pillar to post while her husband was fighting the battles of his country." Although Randolph was argnmenta- tively pugnacious, he would appear to have im- bibed a hatred of war, which animated his dia- tribes against Napoleon and his resolute opposition to the war policy of Madison. The Randolph- Tucker library was well supplied with history and romance, of which the child made good use. After attending Walker Maury's school in Orange coun- ty for a time he was sent, in his twelfth year, to the grammar-school connected with William and Mary college. He did not mingle easily with other boys, but attached himself vehemently to one or two. In 1784 he went with his parents to the island of Bermuda, remaining eighteen months. In the autumn of 1787 he was sent to Princeton, but in 1788 his mother died, and in June of that year he went to Columbia college, New York, where he studied for a short time. On 30 April, 1789, he witnessed the first president's inauguration. " I saw Washington, but could not hear him take the oath to support the Federal constitution. I saw what Washington did not see ; but two other men in Virginia saw it George Mason and Patrick Henry the poison under its wings." When Edmund Randolph, a year later, entered on his duties as attorney-general, John, his second cousin, was sent to Philadelphia and studied law with him. Among his unpublished letters are several that indicate a temporary lapse into gambling and other dissipation about this time, and suggest an entanglement, if not indeed a marriage, in Philadelphia, as the explanation of the rupture of his engagement with the famous beauty, Maria Ward, whose marriage (to Peyton, only son of Edmund Randolph) completed the tragedy of his private life. While in Philadelphia he does not appear to have studied law exclusively, but availed himself of opportunities for hearing politiral debates, and attended lectures in anatomy and physiology. He had been a precocious skeptic, but passed into a state of emotional religion, under the influence of which he writes to a friend (24 Feb., 1791) : " I prefer a private to a public life, and domestic pleasure to the dazzling (the delusive) honors of popular esteem." At the beginning of the French revolution he -was filled with enthusiasm, and at the same time his idols were Jefferson and Burke. A strange combination of opposite natures was always visible in him. As his father before him had sold slaves to supply the cause of freedom with powder, so the son was at once aristocrat and democrat offending President Adams by addressing him without adding any title, and signing " Your Fellow-citizen." He built up a distinctively pro-slavery party, and wrote a will liberating his slaves on the ground that they were equally entitled to freedom with himself. In 1795 Randolph returned to Virginia and lived in the family of his brother Richard, to whom he was devoted. The death of this brother (1796), under the shadow of a painful scandal, was a heavy blow. At " Bizarre," the family mansion. Randolph now dwelt as head of a large household. In 1797 he writes to his friend, Henry Rutledge, of another calamity : " I have been deprived by the Federal court of more than half my fortune. 'Tis an iniquitous affair, and too lengthy to be related here. The loss affects me very little, since 1 have as yet a competence, but I am highly chagrined at being robbed in so villainous a manner. I have but little thought of practising law." Randolph's first speech was made in 1799, in answer to Patrick Henry. The power of expelling foreigners from the country without trial, conferred on the president by the alien and sedition acts, had been answered in Virginia by legislative denunciation of the acts as infractions of the constitution. The issue had arisen in Virginia as to the reversal of those resolutions. When Randolph stepped forth