Yet, in England, Randolph was thought very approachable and genial. An introduction was not necessary to an acquaintance at all. Perhaps the difference was largely in his health, which was better abroad.
John Randolph first came into prominence in politics in 1798, by the daring act of opposing on the stump the idol of Virginia, the venerable Patrick Henry. Henry took grounds against the State upon its nullification of the laws of the United States, although he had always been an extreme States-rights man. Young Randolph—then aged twenty-five—astounded everybody by daring to meet such a champion; but he had Henry’s former record in his favor, and he made a speech of such power that it carried him into the House of Representatives. Referring to these two men, the happy expression was used, “The Rising and the Setting Sun.” Henry died soon after.
Randolph took his seat in December, 1799. When he advanced to the Speaker’s desk to take the oath, the clerk, moved by his youthful and singular appearance, asked, “Are you old enough to be eligible?” “Ask my constituents,” was the only reply his State pride allowed him to make. In one month Randolph had become one of the best marked men of the nation. He broke with the administration of his party under Jefferson on “the Yazoo business”—a bit of early official corruption that rivals anything disclosed in later times. His opposition to the anti-English measures of Madison’s administration, and to the war of 1812, cost him his re-election, and he was retired. Henry Clay’s star was rising, and a new era was dawning. “The American system” of internal improvements, protection, manufactures, and Federal supremacy was taking shape. The irrepressible conflict of State versus Federal powers, had begun under Clay and Randolph—a conflict destined to lead to the duel between these two leaders, and ultimately to be appealed to the arbitrament of civil war.
Defeat cut John Randolph more deeply than it did David Crockett under similar circumstances. Randolph retired to his cabin and brooded; misanthropy gnawed like the vulture at the vitals of Prometheus bound. He longed for human sympathy, and was too proud to accept of it when proffered. It was during this season of disappointment and isolation that his severest religious discipline and the hope of conversion came; then also came the last sundering of his hopes of a lineal successor. “This business of living,” he said, “is dull work. I possess so little of pagan philosophy or of Christian patience as to be frequently driven to despair. * * I look forward without hope. * * I have been living in a world [in Washington] without souls, until my heart is dry as a chip, and cold as a dog’s nose.”
In 1815 Randolph rode into Congress again on the wave of reaction against the war and its burdens, and remained in the House until 1826, when he was elected to the Senate to fill a vacancy. His antagonism against Henry Clay reached a dangerous point in the struggle over the Missouri Compromise of 1820.
Randolph went to England in 1822. He took with him large quantities of books and magazines to be bound, as he would not “patronize our Yankee task-masters, who have caused such a heavy duty to be imposed on foreign books. I shall employ John Bull to bind my books until the time arrives when they can be properly done south of Mason and Dixon’s line.” He was received with much honor by all classes in England, where his stout championship of English ideas was well known. His singular appearance was heightened by his very great emaciation, and by a big fur cap with a long fore-piece which he wore. But the splendid intellect, fine manners, and brilliant conversational powers which shone out of this grotesqueness, made him even more noted.
The issue of the Presidential election of 1825 was the occasion of the Randolph-Clay duel. There had been no choice by the people, and the election went to the House of Representatives. Adams, Crawford, Clay and Jackson were the candidates. Clay’s friends threw the election to John Quincy Adams. When the latter made up his cabinet, Clay’s name appeared at the head, as Secretary of State. The disappointed friends of Jackson and Crawford immediately made charges of a bargain between Adams and Clay, but no one dwelt on it with such persistence and bitterness of invective as Randolph. In a speech in the Senate in 1826, he referred to Adams and Clay as “the coalition of Blifil and Black George—the combination, unheard of till then, of the Puritan with the blackleg.” He also charged Clay with forging or falsifying certain state documents which had been furnished the Senate. A challenge from Clay promptly followed, and was as promptly accepted, Randolph refusing to disclaim any personal meaning as to Clay.
“The night before the duel,” says General James Hamilton, of South Carolina, “Mr. Randolph sent for me. I found him calm, but in a singularly kind and confiding mood. He told me he had something on his mind to tell me. He then remarked, ‘Hamilton, I have determined to receive, without returning, Clay’s fire; nothing shall induce me to harm a hair of his head; I will not make his wife a widow, or his children orphans. Their tears would be shed over his grave; but when the sod of Virginia rests on my bosom, there is not in this wide world one individual to pay tribute upon mine.’ His eyes filled, and resting his head upon his hand, we remained some moments silent.”
All efforts to dissuade him from sacrificing himself were unavailing; but he appeared on the “field of honor” in a huge dressing-gown, in which the locale of his attenuated form was as well hidden as it would have been in a hogshead. Clay fired, and the ball passed through the gown where it was reasonable to suppose its wearer to be, but in fact was not. Randolph fired his shot in air, and then approaching Clay he vehemently called out in his shrill voice, “Mr. Clay, you owe me a cloak, sir, you owe me a cloak!” at the same time pointing to the hole in that wrap. Clay replied with much feeling, pointing to Randolph’s breast, “I am glad I am under no deeper obligation. I would not have harmed you for a thousand worlds.” This ended the encounter, but not the enmity, at least on Randolph’s part, as it was a matter of patriotic principle with him.
In 1827 he was again elected to the House, and immediately became the leader of the opposition, then called the Republican party. His speeches were numerous, and furnish some of the finest specimens of American eloquence. Many of his startling phrases became permanent additions to the list of Americanisms, as “bear-garden” (applied to the House of Representatives), and “dough-faces” (truckling Northern politicians). He was remarkable for eclecticism of words and careful accuracy of pronunciation.