The reason for this sudden decline of Randolph’s influence was not far to seek. He was undertaking to act without concert with the President. While he and his friends argued on the State-rights theory at one end of Pennsylvania Avenue, Jefferson at the other end said openly, to Federalists and Republicans alike, that such arguments were mere metaphysical subtleties which ought to have no weight.[134] The next subject in debate left no longer a doubt of the cleft opening between the old Republicans of 1798 and the Republicans of the future, with Jefferson and Madison at their head. That Randolph had determined to fight for control of the party and for the principles upon which it had come into office was clear; but the reason for the suddenness and violence of his emotion was found in the once famous story of the Yazoo Claims, which from his youth acted on his passionate temper with the force of a point of honor.
As already told, Congress seemed about to settle these claims as early as April, 1802, when the six commissioners made their Report.[135] John Randolph and his friends were then supreme. Dec. 30, 1803, a few days before the Federalists were startled by Randolph’s demand for the impeachment of Judge Chase, the Northern democrats and the friends of Madison were surprised by a Resolution offered by Randolph excluding claimants under the Georgia grants of 1795 from any share in the proposed settlement. A few weeks later, Feb. 20, 1804, Randolph withdrew this Resolution, in order to introduce a series of declaratory Resolves, which, after reciting the story of the Georgia grants, affirmed the right of Georgia to rescind them, and forbade the appropriation of money to the settlement of claims derived from them. March 7, 1804, he made a long and earnest speech on the subject; and after a sharp struggle in a House nearly equally divided, he succeeded in defeating action on the Bill. On the final vote of postponement, March 12, 1804, he carried fifteen members of the Virginia delegation with him. Of the three Republicans from Virginia who rejected his lead, one was John G. Jackson, brother-in-law of the Secretary of State.
From that moment Randolph’s energies quickened in sympathy with old Republican principles; and when he returned to Congress in November, 1804, he and his friends began at once to take extreme ground as champions of State-rights. He lost no chance of enforcing his theories, whether in regard to exemptions from taxes, or in denying to government power to improve navigation within the District of Columbia, or in reproving the people of Georgetown for proposing to lay a general tax on their property for the betterment of their river front. He found the Administration opposed to him. “Mere metaphysical subtleties,” said Jefferson. The influence of Madison was strong in favor of the Yazoo Compromise, and the Northern democrats supported the Secretary. A struggle for supremacy was imminent, and its consequences were soon felt. The impeachment of Judge Chase was Randolph’s measure, and received no support from Madison. The Yazoo Compromise was Madison’s measure, and its defeat was Randolph’s passionate wish.
The three branches of government were likely to be at variance on a point of deep concern. No one who knew Chief-Justice Marshall could doubt that he, and the Supreme Bench with him, would hold that the State of Georgia was bound by its contract with the Land Companies. The Administration had taken the ground that the State was not bound in law, but that the United States should nevertheless make an equitable compromise with the claimants. Randolph was bent on forcing Congress to assert that a State had the right to repudiate its own acts where it was evident that these acts were against common morality or public interest; and that its decision in such a case should be final. The conflict was embittered by the peculiarities of Randolph’s character. In his eyes, when such questions of honor were involved, every man who opposed him seemed base. Unfortunately the New England Mississippi Company secured the services of Gideon Granger, the Postmaster-General, as their agent; and Randolph’s anger became intense when, at the close of the year 1804, he saw the Postmaster-General on the floor of the House openly lobbying for the passage of the Bill.
At length, at the end of January, 1805, the House went into committee on the Georgia claims, and Randolph for the first time displayed the full violence of his temper. Hitherto as a leader he had been at times arrogant; but from this moment he began the long series of personal assaults which made him famous, as though he were the bully of a race course, dispensed from regarding ordinary rules of the ring, and ready at any sudden impulse to spring at his enemies, gouging, biting, tearing, and rending his victims with the ferocity of a rough-and-tumble fight. The spectacle was revolting, but terrific; and until these tactics lost their force by repetition, few men had the nerve and quickness to resist them with success.
“Past experience has shown,” he cried, “that this is one of those subjects which pollution has sanctified.” He treated the majority of the House as corruptionists, “As if animated by one spirit, they perform all their evolutions with the most exact discipline, and march in a firm phalanx directly up to their object. Is it that men combined to effect some evil purpose, acting on previous pledge to each other, are ever more in unison than those who, seeking only to discover truth, obey the impulse of that conscience which God has placed in their bosoms?” He fell upon Granger: “Millions of acres are easily digested by such stomachs. Goaded by avarice, they buy only to sell, and sell only to buy. The retail trade of fraud and imposture yields too small and slow a profit to gratify their cupidity. They buy and sell corruption in the gross.” He hinted that the Administration was to blame: “Is it come to this? Are heads of executive departments to be brought into this House, with all the influence and patronage attached to them, to extort from us now what was refused at the last session of Congress?” He closed by asserting that this was the spirit of Federalism, and that Republicans who yielded to it were false to their party: “Of what consequence is it that a man smiles in your face, holds out his hand, and declare himself the advocate of those political principles to which you are also attached, when you see him acting with your adversaries upon other principles which the voice of the nation has put down, and which I did hope were buried, never to rise again in this section of the globe?” He maintained that the Federalist administrations had done no act so corrupt: “If Congress shall determine to sanction this fraud upon the public, I trust in God we shall hear no more of the crimes and follies of the former Administration. For one, I promise that my lips upon this subject shall be closed in eternal silence. I should disdain to prate about the petty larcenies of our predecessors after having given my sanction to this atrocious public robbery.”
The tirade could have no other result than a personal quarrel and a party schism. Madison and the Administration had done nothing to deserve the attack, and of course could not trust Randolph again. The question whether the claimants had rights which the government would do well to compromise was for the law to decide, and was ultimately settled by Chief-Justice Marshall in their favor. The question of morality, in regard to sanctioning fraud, though a much wider issue, was not to be settled ex parte, but must abide by the answer to the question of law. Only the State-rights difficulty remained; and even on that delicate ground, although the right of Georgia to repudiate her own pledges under the plea of her own corruption were conceded, the State-rights theory could not insist that this act must bind other States, or affect any sovereignty except that which was directly involved. After the property in question had been sold to the United States government, Georgia need not prevent the purchaser from doing what it would with its own. Randolph could not make State-rights serve his whole purpose in the argument, and was obliged to rely on the charge of sanctioning corruption and fraud,—a charge irrelevant to the claim of innocent third parties like the New Englanders, unless he could prove their complicity, which was not in his power.
Randolph’s harangue struck at the credit of Madison; and the conduct of the Postmaster-General in acting as claim-agent cast a shadow of corruption over the whole government. Madison’s friends were obliged to take up the challenge; and his brother-in-law, John G. Jackson of Virginia, replied to Randolph in a speech which was thought to bear evident marks of Madison’s hand. Some of Jackson’s retorts carried a sting. Randolph had dwelt much on the silence and discipline of the majority. “When unprincipled men,” said he, “acquire the ascendency, they act in concert and are silent.” “Silence and concert, then,” retorted Jackson, “are to him proofs of corrupt motive. Is this always a correct position? Does the gentleman recollect that measures were adopted a few years past without discussion, by my political friends in conjunction with him, who were silent and united?” Throughout Jackson’s speech ran a tone of irritating disregard for his colleague, “whose influence in this House is equal to the rapacity of the speculator whose gigantic grasp has been described by him as extending from the shores of Lake Erie to the mouth of the Mobile.” Whether Madison meant it or not, an impression prevailed in the House that in Jackson’s speech the Secretary of State took up Randolph’s challenge with a defiance equally strong.
Randolph returned to his charges, attacking Granger bitterly, but not yet venturing to take the single step that remained to create a Virginia feud; he left Jackson and Madison alone. He bore with something like patience the retorts which his violence drew upon him, and his self-esteem made him proof to the insults of democrats like Matthew Lyon, who thanked his Creator “that he gave me the face of a man, not that of an ape or a monkey, and that he gave me the heart of a man also.” After a long and ill-tempered debate, Feb. 2, 1805, Randolph closed by an allusion to Madison and Gallatin which implied hesitation. “When I first read their Report, I was filled with unutterable astonishment, finding men in whom I had and still have the highest confidence recommend a measure which all the facts and all the reasons they had collected opposed and unequivocally condemned.” Prudence restrained him from making a final breach with Madison; and perhaps he was the more cautious because he felt the danger of pressing too far his influence over Virginia sentiment which to this point supported his opposition. When the House divided, a majority of sixty-three to fifty-eight sustained the compromise, and ordered the committee of claims to report a Bill; but in the minority Randolph found by his side every Republican member of the Virginia delegation except two, one of whom was Jackson. Even the two sons-in-law of President Jefferson voted against the Yazoo claims. So strong was the current of opinion in Virginia, that Senator Giles went about Washington[136] asserting that Jefferson himself would lose an election there if he were known to favor the compromise, and that Jackson would certainly be defeated. For the moment Randolph might fairly suppose that in a contest for supremacy with the Secretary of State, his own hold on Virginia was stronger than Madison’s. In spite of the majority against him, he succeeded in postponing action on the Bill.
Perhaps his temper was further restrained by another motive. The trial of Judge Chase was near at hand. Within a few days after the close of the Yazoo debate, Randolph was to open the case for the managers before the Senate; and he had reason to fear that the Northern democrats were beginning to doubt the wisdom of this Virginia scheme.