John Randolph of Roanoke.

the Constitution, and subversive of the rights of the States. Such of his speeches as were reported in the debates on the compromise, the protective tariff, the na tional bank, the American system with its internal improvements on the one hand and its Panama Mission on the other, are vigor ous, clear and powerful. He was acknowl edged to be without an equal in bold and sarcastic oratory. His attacks were directed only against what he considered presumptu ous, ignorant or dishonest; and when he rose, tall and cadaverous, in the House, and pointing his long forefinger at some one, denounced him in shrill, piercing tones, his appearance and language were well calcu lated to terrify any but a courageous, hon est heart. In some of these orations he foretold with marvellous sagacity the extreme over riding of the rights of the States and the people which have now become matters of history. He was not unfrequently con scious that his intense feeling and impetu ous temper had carried him beyond the bounds of decorum and kindness, and again and again in the House and in the Senate, asked pardon for having used excited and injurious language. Randolph's chief enmity was now directed against Mr. Clay as the author of most of the obnoxious plans for the country. In the election of 1825, Mr. Randolph was one of the tellers appointed by the House of Representatives to count the votes. John Quincy Adams was made President by Clay's throwing his influence in his favor, instead of giving it to Andrew Jackson, the southern candidate. Randolph disliked Adams and his views even more than he had done those of his father. He spoke of the connection between Adams and Clay as the " coalition of a Puritan and a Blackleg." For this insult Clay challenged him. The difficulty could not be adjusted, and the combatants met. Tradition says that Ran dolph came to the deadly field wearing a

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long flannel dressing-gown. Not heroic in appearance he had a hero's soul. He had no wish to kill or even wound Clay, and fired in the air. The duellists then shook hands and the quarrel was appeased. An absurd and unchristian way of satisfying a man's honor it seems to modern eyes. Amid all this turmoil and strife, Ran dolph's health grew constantly worse. After days and nights of agony he would appear in the House, ghostly and ghastly, and utter some scathing rebuke or passionate appeal in behalf of the rights and the people of the South. His prevision of the difficulties which confronted the nation, and his argu ments for their settlement brought into polit ical affiliation with him John C. Calhoun, who succeeded him as the champion of States rights with a spirit as pure and patri otic as Randolph's, but without his rancor and vindictiveness. When Andrew Jackson became President in 1829, John Randolph retired from public life, intending to spend his remaining years abroad. But his constituents elected him to represent them in the convention which met in Richmond that same year to amend the Constitution of Virginia. The most able men of the Commonwealth were in that convention, and Randolph was thrown again into companionship, and often into antagon ism, with his friends and political enemies of earlier days. There were Madison and Marshall and Monroe and Tazewell, Leigh, Taylor, Mercer, Giles and others of note. Men who had filled the highest offices in the nation and who differed widely in their politics, assembled to improve, if they could, the Constitution of their beloved State. No one of these distinguished men so much attracted public attention as did John Randolph. Numberless anecdotes were told of his courage, his wit, his sagacity, his eloquence, and his eccentricities. He had never swerved from the opinions of his youth. When his friends and his party had varied their course and their policy, he