And the grey shadows of that wondrous night,
Which ends in day eternal, fall on me.
[ECCENTRIC AMERICANS.]
By COLEMAN E. BISHOP.
III.—THE MORBID STATESMAN.
A study in morbid anatomy! John Randolph, of Roanoke, might have said, with Mrs. Gummidge, “everything goes contrary with me;” for not only every quality of his nature, but all the circumstances of his life conspired to create in him a sum of unhappiness not often concentrated upon one individual; and this, notwithstanding his opportunities for usefulness were exceptionally good, his career brilliant, his abilities of the highest order, and his motives in the main praiseworthy. To understand such untoward results flowing from such conditions we must as well know his surroundings as study his character.
John Randolph was born, near Petersburg, Va., June 2, 1773,—a subject of George III. He was descended on his father’s side from an old English family; on the other side from an older American family—a royal line, too, viz: that of Pocahontas, the Indian princess, by Captain Rolfe. In this fusion and confusion of blood can probably be found the cause of much disease in him, and of that decay of his family which brought such disappointment and disaster to his most cherished hopes. Indian blood showed itself in his swarthy complexion and straight black hair, in his placing one foot straight before the other in walking, and in his vengeful temper. The Randolphs led in the effort of Virginia planters to transplant the manners and institutions of the English aristocracy to the new country, with the very important difference that the American aristocracy was to be rooted in African slavery. This solecism was adhered to by the Randolphs after most of the other first families of Virginia had learned theories of government more American and more democratic. Such dreamers desired to have the English laws of entail and primogeniture reënacted by the Virginia legislature; defended slavery after it had become a burden and a loss to them, and had sunk Virginia from the first to the eighth rank among the states; and they advocated state-sovereignty to the last. Their conservatism became obstruction against all changes. Randolph condensed their theory of government into the famous aphorism, “a wise and masterly inactivity,” which his sympathetic biographer, as late as 1850, declared “embraces the whole duty of American statesmen.” So they were forced along with the progress of the country, backward—as the cattle went into the cave of Cacus—and with despairing gaze turned toward the receding past. “The country is ruined past redemption; it is ruined in the spirit and character of the people,” cried Randolph, when he found that the United States would not turn back, and he said he would leave the country if he could sell out and knew where to go. Hence, we find Randolph going through his varied political career, protesting like Hamlet: