the Episcopal Church. But although he ever after manifested an extreme
regard for religious things and persons, and would never permit either
to be spoken against in his presence without rebuke, he was very far
from edifying his brethren by a consistent walk. At Washington, in the
debates, he was as incisive and uncharitable as before. His
denunciations of the second President Adams's personal character were
as outrageous as his condemnation of parts of his policy was just. Mr.
Clay, though removed from the arena of debate by his appointment to
the Department of State, was still the object of his bitter sarcasm;
and at length he included the President and the Secretary in that
merciless philippic in which he accused Mr. Clay of forgery, and
styled the coalition of Adams and Clay as "the combination of the
Puritan and the Blackleg." He used language, too, in the course of
this speech, which was understood to be a defiance to mortal combat,
and it was so reported to Mr. Clay. The reporters, however,
misunderstood him, as it was not his intention nor his desire to
fight. Nevertheless, to the astonishment and sorrow of his religious
friends, he accepted Mr. Clay's challenge with the utmost possible
promptitude, and bore himself throughout the affair like (to use the
poor, lying, tory cant of the last generation) "a high-toned Virginia
gentleman." Colonel Benton tells us that Mr. Randolph invented an
ingenious excuse for the enormous inconsistency of his conduct on this
occasion. A duel, he maintained, was private war, and was justifiable
on the same ground as a war between two nations. Both were lamentable,
but both were allowable when there was no other way of getting redress
for insults and injuries. This was plausible, but it did not deceive
_him_. He knew very well that his offensive language respecting a man
whom he really esteemed was wholly devoid of excuse. He had the
courage requisite to expiate the offence by standing before Mr. Clay's
pistol; but he could not stand before his countrymen and confess that
his abominable antithesis was but the spurt of mingled ill-temper and
the vanity to shine. Any good tory can fight a duel with a respectable
degree of composure; but to own one's self, in the presence of a
nation, to have outraged the feelings of a brother-man, from the
desire to startle and amuse an audience, requires the kind of valor
which tories do not know. "Whig and tory," says Mr. Jefferson, "belong
to natural history." But then there is such a thing, we are told, as
the regeneration of the natural man; and we believe it, and cling to
it as a truth destined one day to be resuscitated and purified from
the mean interpretations which have made the very word sickening to
the intelligence of Christendom. Mr. Randolph had not achieved the
regeneration of his nature. He was a tory still. In the testing hour,
the "high-toned Virginia gentleman" carried the day, without a
struggle, over the communicant.
During the last years of his life, the monotony of his anguish was
relieved by an occasional visit to the Old World. It is interesting to
note how thoroughly at home he felt himself among the English gentry,
and how promptly they recognized him as a man and a brother. He was,
as we have remarked, _more_ English than an Englishman; for England
does advance, though slowly, from the insular to the universal. Dining
at a great house in London, one evening, he dwelt with pathetic
eloquence upon the decline of Virginia. Being asked what he thought
was the reason of her decay, he startled and pleased the lords and
ladies present by attributing it all to the repeal of the law of
primogeniture. One of the guests tells us that this was deemed "a
strange remark from a _Republican_" and that, before the party broke
up, the company had "almost taken him for an aristocrat." It happened
sometimes, when he was conversing with English politicians, that it
was the American who defended the English system against the attacks
of Englishmen; and so full of British prejudice was he, that, in
Paris, he protested that a decent dinner could not be bought for
money. Westminster Abbey woke all his veneration. He went into it, one
morning, just as service was about beginning, and took his place among
the worshippers. Those of our readers who have attended the morning
service at an English cathedral on a week-day cannot have forgotten
the ludicrous smallness of the congregation compared with the imposing
array of official assistants. A person who has a little tincture of
the Yankee in him may even find himself wondering how it can "pay" the
British empire to employ half a dozen reverend clergymen and a dozen
robust singers to aid seven or eight unimportant members of the
community in saying their prayers. But John Randolph of Roanoke had
not in him the least infusion of Yankee. Standing erect in the almost
vacant space, he uttered the responses in a tone that was in startling
contrast to the low mumble of the clergyman's voice, and that rose
above the melodious amens of the choir. He took it all in most serious
earnest. When the service was over, he said to his companion, after
lamenting the hasty and careless manner in which the service had been
performed, that he esteemed it an honor to have worshipped God in
Westminster Abbey. As he strolled among the tombs, he came, at last,
to the grave of two men who had often roused his enthusiasm. He
stopped, and spoke:
"I will not say, Take off your shoes, for the ground on
which you stand is holy; but, look, sir, do you see those
simple letters on the flagstones beneath your feet,--W.P.
and C.J.F. Here lie, side by side, the remains of the two
great rivals, Pitt and Fox, whose memory so completely lives
in history. No marble monuments are necessary to mark the
spot where _their_ bodies repose. There is more simple
grandeur in those few letters than in all the surrounding
monuments, sir."
How more than English was all this! England had been growing away from
and beyond Westminster Abbey, William Pitt, and Charles James Fox; but
this Virginia Englishman, living alone in his woods, with his slaves
and his overseers, severed from the progressive life of his race, was
living still in the days when a pair of dissolute young orators could
be deemed, and with some reason too, the most important persons in a
great empire. A friend asked him how he was pleased with England. He
answered with enthusiasm,--
"There never was such a country on the face of the earth as
England, and it is utterly impossible that there can be any
combination of circumstances hereafter to make such another
country as Old England now is!"
We ought not to have been surprised at the sympathy which the English
Tories felt during the late war for their brethren in the Southern
States of America. It was as natural as it was for the English
Protestants to welcome the banished Huguenots. It was as natural as it
was for Louis XIV. to give an asylum to the Stuarts. The traveller who
should have gone, seven years ago, straight from an English
agricultural county to a cotton district of South Carolina, or a
tobacco county of Virginia, would have felt that the differences
between the two places were merely external. The system in both places
and the spirit of both were strikingly similar. In the old parts of
Virginia, the Carolinas, Tennessee, and Kentucky, you had only to get
ten miles from a railroad to find yourself among people who were
English in their feelings, opinions, habits, and even in their accent.
New England differs from Old England, because New England has grown:
Virginia was English, because she had been stationary. Happening to be
somewhat familiar with the tone of feeling in the South,--the _real_
South, or, in other words, the South ten miles from a railroad,--we
were fully prepared for Mr. Russell's statement with regard to the
desire so frequently expressed in 1861 for one of the English princes
to come and reign over a nascent Confederacy. Sympathies and
antipathies are always mutual when they are natural; and never was
there a sympathy more in accordance with the nature of things, than
that which so quickly manifested itself between the struggling
Southern people and the majority of the ruling classes of Great
Britain.
Mr. Randolph took leave of public life, after thirty years of service,
not in the most dignified manner. He furnished another illustration of
the truth of a remark made by a certain queen of Denmark,--"The lady
doth protest too much." Like many other gentlemen in independent
circumstances, he had been particularly severe upon those of his
fellow-citizens who earned their subsistence by serving the public. It
pleased him to speak of members of the Cabinet as "the drudges of the
departments," and to hold gentlemen in the diplomatic service up to
contempt as forming "the tail of the _corps diplomatique_ in Europe."
He liked to declaim upon the enormous impossibility of _his_ ever
exchanging a seat in Congress for "the shabby splendors" of an office
in Washington, or in a foreign mission "to dance attendance abroad
instead of at home." When it was first buzzed about in Washington, in
1830, that General Jackson had tendered the Russian mission to John
Randolph, the rumor was not credited. An appointment so exquisitely
absurd was supposed to be beyond even Andrew Jackson's audacity. The
offer had been made, however. Mr. Randolph's brilliant defence of
General Jackson's bad spelling, together with Mr. Van Buren's
willingness to place an ocean between the new administration and a
master of sarcasm, to whom opposition had become an unchangeable
habit, had dictated an offer of the mission, couched in such seductive
language that Mr. Randolph yielded to it as readily as those ladies
accept an offer of marriage who have often announced their intention
never to marry. Having reached the scene of his diplomatic labors at
the beginning of August, he began to perform them with remarkable
energy. In a suit of black, the best, he declared, that London could
furnish, he was presented to the Emperor and to the Empress, having
first submitted his costume to competent inspection. Resolute to do
his whole duty, he was not content to send his card to the diplomatic
corps, but, having engaged a handsome coach and four, he called upon
each member of the diplomatic body, from the ambassadors to the
secretaries of legation. Having performed these labors, and having
discovered that a special object with which he was charged could not
then be accomplished, he had leisure to observe that St. Petersburg,
in the month of August, is not a pleasant residence to an invalid of
sixty. He describes the climate in these terms:--
"Heat, dust impalpable, pervading every part and pore ...
Insects of all nauseous descriptions, bugs, fleas,
mosquitoes, flies innumerable, gigantic as the empire they
inhabit, who will take no denial. This is the land of
Pharaoh and his plagues,--Egypt and its ophthalmia and
vermin, without its fertility,--Holland, without its wealth,
improvements, or cleanliness."
He endured St. Petersburg for the space of ten days, then sailed for
England, and never saw Russia again. When the appropriation bill was
before Congress at the next session, opposition members did not fail
to call in question the justice of requiring the people of the United
States to pay twenty thousand dollars for Mr. Randolph's ten days'
work, or, to speak more exactly, for Mr. Randolph's apology for the
President's bad spelling; but the item passed, nevertheless. During
the reign of Andrew Jackson, Congress was little more than a board of
registry for the formal recording of his edicts. There are those who
think, at the present moment, that what a President hath done, a
President may do again.
It was fortunate that John Randolph was in retirement when Calhoun
brought on his Nullification scheme. The presence in Congress of a man
so eloquent and so reckless, whose whole heart and mind were with the
Nullifiers, might have prevented the bloodless postponement of the
struggle. He was in constant correspondence with the South Carolina
leaders, and was fully convinced that it was the President of the
United States, not "the Hamiltons and Haynes" of South Carolina, who
ought to seize the first pretext to concede the point in dispute. No
citizen of South Carolina was more indignant than he at General
Jackson's Proclamation. He said that, if the people did not rouse
themselves to a sense of their condition, and "put down this wretched
old man," the country was irretrievably ruined; and he spoke of the
troops despatched to Charleston as "mercenaries," to whom he hoped "no
quarter would be given." The "wretched old man" whom the people were
to "put down" was Andrew Jackson, not John C. Calhoun.
We do not forget that, when John Randolph uttered these words, he was
scarcely an accountable being. Disease had reduced him to a skeleton,
and robbed him of almost every attribute of man except his capacity to
suffer. But even in his madness he was a representative man, and spoke
the latent feeling of his class. The diseases which sharpened his
temper unloosed his tongue; he revealed the tendency of the Southern
mind, as a petulant child reveals family secrets. In his good and in
his evil he was an exaggerated Southerner of the higher class. He was
like them, too, in this: they are not criminals to be punished, but
patients to be cured. Sometimes, of late, we have feared that they
resemble him also in being incurable.
As long as Americans take an interest in the history of their country,
they will read with interest the strange story of this sick and
suffering representative of sick and suffering Virginia. To the last,
old Virginia wore her ragged robes with a kind of grandeur which was
not altogether unbecoming, and which to the very last imposed upon
tory minds. Scarcely any one could live among the better Southern
people without liking them; and few will ever read Hugh Garland's Life
of John Randolph, without more than forgiving all his vagaries,
impetuosities, and foibles. How often, upon riding away from a
Southern home, have we been ready to exclaim, "What a pity such good
people should be so accursed!" Lord Russell well characterized the
evil to which we allude as "that fatal gift of the poisoned garment
which was flung around them from the first hour of their
establishment."
The last act of John Randolph's life, done when he lay dying at a
hotel in Philadelphia, in June, 1833, was to express once more his
sense of this blighting system. Some years before, he had made a will
by which all his slaves were to be freed at his death. He would
probably have given them their freedom before his death, but for the
fact, too evident, that freedom to a black man in a Slave State was
not a boon. The slaves freed by his brother, forty years' before, had
not done well, because (as he supposed) no land had been bequeathed
for their support. Accordingly, he left directions in his will that a
tract of land, which might be of four thousand acres, should be set
apart for the maintenance of his slaves, and that they should be
transported to it and established upon it at the expense of his
estate. "I give my slaves their freedom" said he in his will, "to
which my conscience tells me they are justly entitled." On the last
day of his life, surrounded by strangers, and attended by two of his
old servants, his chief concern was to make distinctly known to as
many persons as possible that it was really his will that his slaves
should be free. Knowing, as he did, the aversion which his
fellow-citizens had to the emancipation of slaves, and even to the
presence in the State of free blacks, he seemed desirous of taking
away every pretext for breaking his will. A few hours before his
death, he said to the physician in attendance: "I confirm every
disposition in my will, especially that concerning my slaves whom I
have manumitted, and for whom I have made provision." The doctor, soon
after, took leave of him, and was about to depart. "You must not go,"
said he, "you cannot, you shall not leave me." He told his servant not
to let the doctor go, and the man immediately locked the door and put
the key in his pocket. The doctor remonstrating, Mr. Randolph
explained, that, by the laws of Virginia, in order to manumit slaves
by will, it was requisite that the master should _declare_ his will in
that particular in the presence of a white witness, who, after hearing
the declaration, must never lose sight of the party until he is dead.
The doctor consented, at length, to remain, but urged that more
witnesses should be sent for. This was done. At ten in the morning,
four gentlemen were ranged in a semicircle round his bed. He was
propped up almost in a sitting posture, and a blanket was wrapped
round his head and shoulders. His face was yellow, and extremely
emaciated; he was very weak, and it required all the remaining energy
of his mind to endure the exertion he was about to make. It was
evident to all present that his whole soul was in the act, and his eye
gathered fire as he performed it. Pointing toward the witnesses with
that gesture which for so many years had been familiar to the House of
Representatives, he said, slowly and distinctly: "I confirm all the
directions in my will respecting my slaves, and direct them to be
enforced, particularly in regard to a provision for their support."
Then, raising his hand and placing it upon the shoulder of his
servant, he added, "Especially for this man." Having performed this
act, his mind appeared relieved, but his strength immediately left
him, and in two hours he breathed his last.
The last of the Randolphs, and one of the best representatives of the
original masters of Virginia, the high-toned Virginia gentleman, was
no more. Those men had their opportunity, but they had not strength of
character equal to it. They were tried and found wanting. The
universe, which loves not the high-toned, even in violins, disowned
them, and they perished. Cut off from the life-giving current of
thought and feeling which kept the rest of Christendom advancing, they
came to love stagnation, and looked out from their dismal, isolated
pool with lofty contempt at the gay and active life on the flowing
stream. They were not teachable, for they despised the men who could
have taught them. But we are bound always to consider that they were
subjected to a trial under which human virtue has always given way,
and will always. Sudden wealth is itself sufficient to spoil any but
the very best men,--those who can instantly set it at work for the
general good, and continue to earn an honest livelihood by faithful
labor. But those tobacco lords of Virginia, besides making large
fortunes in a few years, were the absolute, irresponsible masters of a
submissive race. And when these two potent causes of effeminacy and
pride had worked out their proper result in the character of the
masters, then, behold! their resources fail. Vicious agriculture
exhausts the soil, false political economy prevents the existence of a
middle class, and the presence of slaves repels emigration. Proud,
ignorant, indolent, dissolute, and in debt, the dominant families, one
after another, passed away, attesting to the last, by an occasional
vigorous shoot, the original virtue of the stock. All this poor John
Randolph represented and was.
Virginia remains. Better men will live in it than have ever yet lived
there; but it will not be in this century, and possibly not in the
next. It cannot be that so fair a province will not be one day
inhabited by a race of men who will work according to the laws of
nature, and whom, therefore, the laws of nature will co-operate with
and preserve. How superior will such Virginians be to what Dr. Francis
Lieber styles the "provincial egotism" of State sovereignty!
[Footnote 1: 1865-6.]
STEPHEN GIRARD AND HIS COLLEGE.
Within the memory of many persons still alive, "old Girard," as the
famous banker was usually styled, a short, stout, brisk old gentleman,
used to walk, in his swift, awkward way, the streets of the lower part
of Philadelphia. Though everything about him indicated that he had
very little in common with his fellow-citizens, he was the marked man
of the city for more than a generation. His aspect was rather
insignificant and quite unprepossessing. His dress was old-fashioned
and shabby; and he wore the pig-tail, the white neck-cloth, the
wide-brimmed hat, and the large-skirted coat of the last century. He
was blind of one eye; and though his bushy eyebrows gave some
character to his countenance, it was curiously devoid of expression.
He had also the absent look of a man who either had no thoughts or was
absorbed in thought; and he shuffled along on his enormous feet,
looking neither to the right nor to the left. There was always a
certain look of the old mariner about him, though he had been fifty
years an inhabitant of the town. When he rode it was in the plainest,
least comfortable gig in Philadelphia, drawn by an ancient and
ill-formed horse, driven always by the master's own hand at a good
pace. He chose still to live where he had lived for fifty years, in
Water Street, close to the wharves, in a small and inconvenient house,
darkened by tall storehouses, amid the bustle, the noise, and the
odors of commerce. His sole pleasure was to visit once a day a little
farm which he possessed a few miles out of town, where he was wont to
take off his coat, roll up his shirt-sleeves, and personally labor in
the field and in the barn, hoeing corn, pruning trees, tossing hay,
and not disdaining even to assist in butchering the animals which he
raised for market. It was no mere ornamental or experimental farm. He
made it pay. All of its produce was carefully, nay, scrupulously
husbanded, sold, recorded, and accounted for. He loved his grapes, his
plums, his pigs, and especially his rare breed of Canary-birds; but
the people of Philadelphia had the full benefit of their increase,--at
the highest market rates.
Many feared, many served, but none loved this singular and lonely old
man. If there was among the very few who habitually conversed with him
one who understood and esteemed him, there was but one; and he was a
man of such abounding charity, that, like Uncle Toby, if he had heard
that the Devil was hopelessly damned, he would have said, "I am sorry
for it." Never was there a person more destitute than Girard of the
qualities which win the affection of others. His temper was violent,
his presence forbidding, his usual manner ungracious, his will
inflexible, his heart untender, his imagination dead. He was odious to
many of his fellow-citizens, who considered him the hardest and
meanest of men. He had lived among them for half a century, but he was
no more a Philadelphian in 1830 than in 1776. He still spoke with a
French accent, and accompanied his words with a French shrug and
French gesticulation. Surrounded with Christian churches which he had
helped to build, he remained a sturdy unbeliever, and possessed the
complete works of only one man, Voltaire. He made it a point of duty
to labor on Sunday, as a good example to others. He made no secret of
the fact, that he considered the idleness of Sunday an injury to the
people, moral and economical. He would have opened his bank on
Sundays, if any one would have come to it. For his part, he required
no rest, and would have none. He never travelled. He never attended
public assemblies or amusements. He had no affections to gratify, no
friends to visit, no curiosity to appease, no tastes to indulge. What
he once said of himself appeared to be true, that he rose in the
morning with but a single object, and that was to labor so hard all
day as to be able to sleep all night. The world was absolutely nothing
to him but a working-place. He scorned and scouted the opinion, that
old men should cease to labor, and should spend the evening of their
days in tranquillity. "No," he would say, "labor is the price of life,
its happiness, its everything; to rest is to rust; every man should
labor to the last hour of his ability." Such was Stephen Girard, the
richest man who ever lived in Pennsylvania.