John Randolph of Roanoke: A Study in American Politics

I hadn't read much about this book before I got it. I thought it was going to be a biography. Instead, it's an analysis of Randolph's political philosophy, including his thoughts on slavery. Roughly 2/3 of the book contains Randolph's letters and speeches. They certainly are worth reading. This book, then, serves as something of a primary source. Kirk clearly admires his subject, who was a Republican's Republican--a guy who was true to his conservative values, whether or not doing so made him popular. Randolph, for instance, was opposed to the War of 1812 because he was an isolationist. Nor did he like the federal government meddling in the economy, even though he lived in a time when the federal government was relatively small. For Randolph, he was ever fearful of the country slipping into despotism. His was the spirit of the Stamp Act opponents: they thought a small measure by the government might mean impending tyranny. When it came to slavery, Randolph was in the gradual emancipation school. But unlike Jefferson, he freed his slaves, who then moved (per Virginia law) out of state. His servants migrated to Ohio, where they encountered hostile northerners who did not like free blacks in their neighborhood. Randolph was an unusual man, who remained politically consistent in a way a man who had little contact with the "common man" only could. He could never have risen much higher than Congressman, because he lacked the compromising spirit that makes for great executives. His persistent defensive stance toward change, however, made him a model for American conservatism. One can see much in Randolph that Pat Buchanan would admire. Reading this book, I couldn't help but think of Kierkegaard, a contemporary of Randolph's, though on opposite sides of "The Pond," who like Randolph had a misshapen body and a similarly conservative and puritanical view of the world. They were guys who spent too much time in their heads. Indeed, there's something very aristocratic and European about Randolph, who had great admiration for the British system and the writings of Burke, another great conservative. "I love liberty," Randolph once said, but added, "I hate equality." That's more American than it might first sound. Even though Jefferson said all men were created equal, that didn't mean it was best that they all were equal. Randolph was a man too strange not to have new biographies written about him. That might soon change. In the meantime, enjoy this well written thought piece.

Russell Kirk is particularly adept in pointing out the value in what he calls The Permanent Things in life. He expresses the tremendous value we have in that thread which connects us to our ancestors on the one hand and our posterity on the other. John Randolph understood the value of preserving the limitations placed on government by the Founding Fathers and the perils in surrendering state sovereignty to the national government.

~John Randolph of Roanoke: A Study in American Politics~ is a brilliant exposition of John Randolph's life and statesmanship. Russell Kirk classified Randolph as a "conservative statesmen" while the southern conservative Richard Weaver deemed Randolph a "conservative individualist" and another historian has characterised him as "aristocratic libertarian." Randolph was a Virginia planter from a prominent pedigree, and he served much of his adult life as a member of the Congress and the Senate. In one his earliest books, the conservative luminary Russell Kirk sketched a succinct biography of the late and great Virginia statesmen John Randolph of Roanoke. Kirk supplemented the biography with a poignant collection of speeches and letters capturing Randolph's illustrious statesmanship. Randolph was possessed of brilliant oratory skills and a subtle genius teetering on madness in his advanced years. He was tutored under his uncle Edmund Randolph, Washington's first Attorney General and was the adopted son of the Virginia jurist St. George Tucker. After a juvenile flirtation with the skepticism of Hume and Paine, Randolph became a stalwart Anglican and an avowed Christian in the prime of his life. He made quite an educational odyssey attending William and Mary, Princeton and Columbia, though Randolph maintains that he was largely self-educated from his Roanoke library. He was an avid reader and possessed a multitude of books including Aristotle, Blackstone, Burke, Hobbes, Locke, Machiavelli, Say, John Taylor as well as files of the Anti-Jacobin Review. First elected to the Congress at the age of twenty-six, his consistent principled republican statesmanship earned him the commendation of his friends and many enemies as well. He broke with the Francophilia of his adolescence and would latter earn the appellation of being "an ultra Anglomaniac" by some of his critics. Though, Randolph bitterly denounced John Calhoun (because of the protectionist and warhawk mold of his youth,) the South Carolinian Calhoun would come to praise the elder Randolph as he deepened his own conservatism with maturity. Calhoun came to accept many of Randolph's positions as his own and was no doubt deeply inspired by Randolph's statesmanship. Russell Kirk describes Randolph as an "American Burke." Randolph like Kirk is possessed of contempt for metaphysical abstractions of liberty and equality. Both men were students of Edmund Burke. Randolph found natural-rights theories from Locke to Rousseau rather loathsome, as well as the abstract Rights of Men that Jefferson lauded. Randolph insisted that liberty was prescriptive and not absolute. "Liberty was no absolute and abstract Right of Man, immutable and imprescriptible; but it was a privilege conferred upon men who obeyed the intent of God by placing a check upon will and appetite," declared Kirk in surmising Randolph's view. While Randolph acknowledged the laws of nature, he was aghast at acknowledging some absolute li

John Randolph of Roanoke, a distant cousin of Thomas Jefferson (whose mother was a Randolph), cut one of the outstanding figures in American politics in the first third of the nineteenth century. Virtually nothing in his life was uninteresting. From leader of the Republican Party in the House in Jefferson's first term as president, Randolph went to leader of a new opposition party after his notorious break with Jefferson. Later, his famous speaking style (the speeches here are worth the volume's price and more!) and acerbic wit made him the terror of administrations of both parties. His duel with Secretary of State Henry Clay is immortal, his imbroglios with the young John C. Calhoun are mesmerizing, and the story of his death fascinates. Not included here is the controversy over his will: in the end, one of Randolph's wills was probated and the other failed, with the result that Randolph freed more than 400 slaves! He also bought them land in "free" Ohio, where the natives ran them off; I don't know what became of the land (or of the Randolph money that had bought it for them). Randolph's long-standing insistence that the Yankees were hypocrites when it came to slavery and emancipation finds some support here, to say the least.Kirk, unfortunately, has a tendency to make every conservative he admires into a bygone Russell Kirk. Randolph, for one, was not nearly so religious as Kirk would have him, and what Christianity he had was -- as one might expect -- of an eccentric variety. Still, the text here is a nice entre' to Randolph's life, and the speeches and letters are priceless. We don't have politicians of this intellectual level, or with this grasp of the English language, anymore. Nor, alas, do we have any who are so consistently, insistently conservative.