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John Randolph of Roanoke, 1773-1833
John Randolph, the eccentric congressman from Virginia (a seventh-generation descendant of Pocahontas), was the ultimate states'-rights man. "Asking a state to give up part of her sovereignty is like asking a lady to give up part of her chastity," he proclaimed.
Randolph's portrait shows him at a time when he stood in opposition to the Warhawks (as he dubbed them) from the South and West, who talked of taking Canada when "some of us were shuddering for safety at home" in fear of a slave insurrection. Randolph once remarked that the greatest orator he had ever heard was a woman. "She was a slave. She was a mother, and her rostrum was the auction block." But he added, "We must concern ourselves with what is, and slavery exists. We must preserve the rights of the States, as guaranteed by the Constitution."
John Wesley Jarvis, 1811 |