John Randolph of Roanoke
- Also Known As: John Randolph of Roanoke
American
The pet child of nature, the pampered child of fortune, he might have been the object of universal admiration and universal envy. The martyr of diseases of mind and body, he was the victim of destiny, inscrutable to himself and incomprehensible to others. Who would not have been John Randolph? Who would have been? - John Randolph's half-brother, Nathaniel Beverley Tucker
John Randolph of Roanoke, he himself, adopted the appendage, "of Roanoke." And so to this day - in spite of the fact that Randolph's successor at Roanoke was a distinguished member of the bench and bar and of the Virginia Convention of 1861; and further that this gentleman is buried on the plantation, while John Randolph's mortal remains have long since been removed to Hollywood Cemetery in Richmond - no one questions the identification of the man with his home and plantation.
With the exception of a single defeat, Randolph was returned to the House 6f Representatives each time he offered for the seat from 1799 through 1825. According to the aristocratic Randolph, the people of his Congressional District were "such constituents as man never had before; and never will again." For their part they returned him to the House with regularity; regarding him with sustained fascination, and evincing a deference already anachronistic by Jeffersonian times.
A man of rare integrity, Randolph. who had become Majority Leader in the House at the age of 28, sacrificed this position and gave up all claims to future party preferment or higher office when he broke with the Jefferson Administration over matters of principal. A decade later his vehement opposition to the War of 1812 caused his strongly-hawkish constituents to deny him reelection. He was elected to the Senate in 1825, losing that office in 1827, he moved back to the House. He served briefly as Minister to Russia and was a delegate--in the company of Madison and Marshall--to Virginia's Constitutional Convention of 1829-30. Three years later, he died at Philadelphia, having completed the first part of a journey that was to have carried him to England in a last, vain attempt to find peace of mind and body. His mortal remains were returned to Charlotte County and interred beside his "little cabin" at Roanoke. - NRHP