USA > Virginia > The history of the Virginia federal convention of 1788, with some account of eminent Virginians of that era who were members of the body, Vol. I > Part 19
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We now come to the only severe personal quarrel to which the discussions of the Convention gave birth, which made a strong sensation at the time, and the details of which will be eagerly read by posterity. As soon as Lee took his seat, Ed- mund Randolph with evident emotion rose to reply to Henry. He began by saying that having consumed so much of the time . of the committee, he did not intend to trouble it so soon ; " but," he said, " I find myself attacked in the most illiberal manner by the honorable gentleman (Henry). I disdain his aspersions and his insinuations. His asperity is warranted by no principle of parliamentary decency, nor compatible with the least shadow of friendship. And if our friendship must fall, let it fall like Luci- fer, never to rise again. Let him remember that it is not to answer him, but to satisfy this respectable audience, that I now get up. He has accused me of inconsistency in this very respect- able assembly. Sir, if I do not stand on the bottom of integrity, and pure love for Virginia, as much as those who can be most clamorous, I wish to resign my existence. Consistency consists in actions, and not in empty specious words. Ever since the first entrance into that Federal business, I have been invariably governed by an invincible attachment to the happiness of the people of America. Federal measures had been before that time repudiated. The augmentation of Congressional powers was dreaded. The imbecility of the confederation was proved and acknowledged. When I had the honor of being deputed to the Federal Convention to revise the existing system, I was impressed with the necessity of a more energetic government, and thoroughly persuaded that the salvation of the people of America depended on an intimate and firm union. The honor- able gentlemen there 145 can say that when I went thither, no man was a stronger friend to such an union than myself. I informed you why I refused to sign. I understand not him who wishes to give full scope to licentiousness and dissipation, and who would advise me to reject the proposed plan, and plunge us into anarchy."
(Here His Excellency read the conclusion of his public letter,146
145 Meaning Mason, Wythe, Madison and John Blair, his colleagues in the general Federal Convention, and also members of the present Convention.
146 Addressed to the Speaker of the House of Delegates.
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wherein he says that notwithstanding his objections to the Con- stitution, he would adopt it rather than lose the Union), and proceeded to prove the consistency of his present opinion with his former conduct, when Henry rose and declared that he had no personal intention of offending anyone; that he did his duty, but that he did not mean to wound the feelings of any gentleman ; that he was sorry if he offended the honorable gen - tleman without intending it ; and that every gentleman had a right to maintain his opinion. Randolph then said that he was relieved by what the honorable gentleman had said; that were it not for the concession of that gentleman, he would have made some men's hair stand on end by the disclosure of certain facts. Henry then requested that if he had anything to say against him to disclose it. Randolph continued, that as there were some gentlemen there who might not be satisfied with the recantation of the honorable gentleman, without being informed, he should give them some information on the subject ; that his ambition had ever been to promote the Union ; that he was no more attached to it now than he ever had been ; and that he could in some degree prove it by the paper which he held in his hand, which was a letter which he had written to his constituents. After some further explanation of his course, he threw down the letter on the clerk's table, and declared that it might lie there for the inspection of the curious and the malicious.
With those who look impartially at this passage of arms be- tween these two eminent and accomplished statesmen, there cannot well be at this day but one opinion, and that opinion wholly adverse to the conduct of Randolph. In no respect had Henry overleaped the strictest rules of parliamentary decorum. He had exhibited what he regarded as inconsistency in the course of a public man, who had been charged by the Commonwealth with an important trust, and in the arguments which he had used on the subject of the adoption of the Constitution. There was not the slightest personal reflection or allusion in anything that he had said. And when Randolph recited his charge against Henry, it was mainly that he had accused him of incon- sistency before that very respectable assembly. Now there is not in the whole armory of forensic warfare a more legitimate weapon than that which is used to demonstrate the inconsistency of the arguments of an opponent with each other, or with other
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arguments urged by him in different stages of the same case. This process is sometimes very unpleasant to the person whose character is at stake, and not a little annoying ; but the only honorable mode of defence is a proper exposition of the alleged inconsistency, and a similar retaliation on the offending party. Indignation, hard names, and downright insult have here no more place than in any other mode of logical refutation. Henry had also used the word " herd" in a different sense from that in which Randolph had used it, but upon an explanation of the meaning passed to another topic. He had also quoted the remark of Randolph that "he was a child of the Revolution," and had used it argumentatively ; but such a quotation was neither inappropriate nor indecorous. Indeed, the only shadow of unfairness, if in truth it be as palpable as a shadow, was the use of the word "herd" on a single occasion after the explana- tion of Randolph, and when Henry may be supposed to have used it in its ordinary meaning; but if the use of this word afforded ground for animadversion, it was the least possible, and when regarded as a ground whereon to fasten a mortal quarrel upon an opponent, it was utterly contemptible. It is honorable to the temper of Henry that he did not interrupt Randolph in the harsh, unjust, and ungenerous remarks with which he began his speech ; and above all, it is honorable to his character that, in despite of such grievous provocation, he subsequently rose, disavowed in the strongest terms any personal allusion, and expressed his sorrow that he had unintentionally given offence to Randolph. He had thus made all the reparation which one gen- tleman can well receive from another. His course was in the highest degree magnanimous, and ought to have been in the highest degree satisfactory. Randolph, on the other hand, accepted the explanation of Henry, but in one and the same breath insulted Henry, not by showing any discrepancy in his arguments, not by attacking the inconsistencies of his public career, not by referring to any topic or incident that had occurred in any deliberative assembly of which Henry had been a member, but by uttering a threat to the effect that if the gentleman had not recanted-Henry having recanted nothing, having merely explained his original meaning-he would have made revelations which would not have merely affected him as a member of a public body, but would have blasted his reputation as a gentle-
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man and as a man. If anything could have enhanced this most wanton, this most unparliamentary, and wholly unjustifiable threat, it was the withholding from the instant demand of Henry those charges which would involve his character in infamy, and which he professed to be able to make, and which he would have made but for the explanation. Nor did Randolph cease to fling insult upon Henry with what he had thus far done. He gave a new, uncalled for, and most aggravated insult to Henry when, throwing down his own public letter on the table of the clerk, he declared that it should lie there for the inspection of the curious and the malicious. This taunting and somewhat theatrical remark could apply only to Henry, who now saw that the dis- pute had passed beyond the walls of the House. He saw that he was involved in an unpleasant predicament ; but he felt that he had been placed there by no fault of his own. His entire life had been free from personal quarrels. He was declining in the vale of life. He had passed his fifty-second year, had a young and dependent family, and was poor. Randolph was in the vigor of manhood, not having reached his thirty-seventh year, and had also a young family ; and, if not poor, his life, even in a pecu- niary view, was of the last importance to his family. A hostile meeting between two such men, whose lives were wrapped up in so many endearing domestic ties, whose distinguished talents, as they were the common property, so they were the pride of their country, and who had lived up to that time in the relations of friendship, would have appalled the public mind ; and accord- ingly when on Tuesday morning it was known that Col. William Cabell had the evening before, as the friend of Henry, waited on Randolph ; that the unpleasant affair had been settled with- out a resort to the field, and that a reconciliation between the parties had been effected,147 both the great divisions in the House were sensibly relieved.
147 The most direct personal charge of inconsistency that I have ever seen in a public body was that made in the Convention of 1829-30 by Colonel John B. George, of Tazewell, against General William F. Gor- don, of Albemarle. Colonel George rose directly from his seat to make the charge, made it in as few and as forcible words as he could utter, and instantly sate down. General Gordon, who saw at once what the occasion required, defended his course with eminent grace and skill, and gained eclät by the affair. When John Randolph, in the
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When the personal altercation was past, Randolph, as if re- lieved from a weight that hung heavily upon him, spoke with great freedom in defence of the Constitution, analyzed in detail the objections of Henry, and made one of the longest, most learned, and, at the same time, one of the most brilliant speeches of his life.148
He was followed by a member in the opposition, who had not yet engaged in the discussion, who was as yet a very young man, almost wholly unknown to many of the leading members of the House ; who had none of those outward advantages which stand in the stead of a letter of introduction ; but whose name, indis- solubly connected with the great events of the first third of a century of that government, the adoption of which he now rose to resist, is destined to survive the names of some whose fair reputations were then in full leaf, and to become a household word to succeeding generations. It was not in the roll of a re- mote ancestry, or in the splendor of patrimonial wealth, or even in the fostering care of those who enjoyed such advantages, that the youthful speaker looked for his titles to success in the world, and to the approbation of his country. So far from hav-
same body, marshalled what he deemed the inconsistencies of Chap- man Johnson in thick array against him, that great and good man took. the first opportunity of replying ; but no friend of Johnson dreamed that the affair ought to have been transferred elsewhere.
148 In a note on the preceding page I alluded to the subsequent con- nections of Lee and Henry. Those between Randolph and Henry were not so intimate. Randolph became the first Attorney-General under the new plan, and succeeded Mr. Jefferson as Secretary of State in the Cabinet of Washington. Henry went into opposition, as, in- deed, in a certain sense, was Randolph himself. Both were eager to obtain amendments, and were equally disappointed in their efforts. Randolph soon withdrew from the State department under the most painful circumstances, and went into full opposition. Henry, who had warmly opposed the British Treaty, became alarmed at what he deemed the rash measures of his old opponents in the Convention, who had assumed the name of republicans, and rallied in support of the admin- istration of Washington. And it happened singularly enough that when Randolph withdrew from the Cabinet, Henry was invited to take his seat. These topics will be discussed more at length when I come to treat of the general course of Henry and Randolph, as well as the nature of the charges which Randolph threatened to throw at the head of Henry. .
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ing been born in that elevated position in which he now stood- side by side with the most illustrious men to whom the State had given birth-he was the son of a Scotchman, or of Scotch descent, a carpenter, wno had settled in Westmoreland, and who was en- abled by his industry to gratify an honorable passion of the Scotch by affording to his son all the advantages of education within his reach. And in this praiseworthy purpose he was aided to the fullest extent by his son.
From the first, whether in the old-field school house, in the camp, in the college, which in his case instead of preceding suc. ceeded the camp, or in the council, or when, as it sometimes, though rarely, happened, he was in neither the one nor the other, James Monroe never lost an advantage. He had attended a country school with John Marshall, in company with whom he was to travel, in war and in peace, the trail of a long and honored career, and had spent a term in William and Mary ; but his elementary stock of knowledge was exceedingly small, and his real education was on the stage of busy life. In his eighteenth year he entered the army as a cadet, became in due time a lieutenant and captain, and alternately an aid to a general officer. From the beginning of the war to nearly its close he was in active service, and he numbered among the battles in which he was engaged those of Harlem Heights and White Plains, of Princeton and Trenton, in which last he was wounded in the shoulder, of Brandywine, Germantown and Monmouth. As a military commissioner of Virginia he visited the Southern army under De Kalb, and in 1782 he was returned from King George to the House of Delegates. At the age of twenty-four he was deputed to Congress, having been the youngest member which the Assembly had ever elected to that body, in which, as in the House of Delegates, and in many other high appointments, in the course of a long life, he had been preceded by Madison. He plunged at once into affairs, and displayed that firm purpose, that moral hardihood, which, attributed by Sydney Smith to Lord John Russell, would lead the English statesman, though ignorant of seamanship, to take command of the Channel fleet, which is one of the greatest qualities of a public man, and which even impelled Monroe to meet rather than avoid difficult topics, and to push them to a practical conclusion ; and which, we may add, is more nearly allied to wisdom than to folly, inasmuch as
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in the affairs of a nation the prompt settlement of a disputed question, however dangerous to the propects of the individual, is not unfrequently of far greater importance to the general wel- fare than the particular mode by which that settlement was effected. He was now thirty ; he was tall and erect in person ; his face with its high cheek bones betokening his Caledonian descent, and not uncomely ; his manners kind and affectionate, which had not yet lost their martial stiffness, and which, even in the midst of courts and cabinets, at home and abroad, never attained the easy freedom of a well-bred man. His demeanor was marked by a gravity, another trait of his Scotch extraction, which is not uncommon with those on whom the heavy responsi- bilities of life are early cast, and which concealed from the com- mon observer a warm and generous heart. These qualities were not more perceptible to the public than his intense application to business, the entire concentration of all his faculties to the case in hand, his sincerity of purpose, his truthfulness, his utter want of those accomplishments which amuse, instruct and adorn the social sphere, and perhaps his incapacity of appreciating them in another, his slowness in comprehending a subject, equalled only by the soundness of the conclusions which he ulti- mately reached,149 his faculties invigorated by the exercise to which they had been subjected, but neither very large nor very bright, nor highly cultivated by art, nor much enriched by learn- ing drawn from books, yet vigorous and eminently practical, were recognized by those who knew him well. Yet, in this unfriended, not half-educated, unpolished youth the elements of political success were mingled in an amazing degree. Inferior to Randolph in genius, in eloquence, in literature, and in that social position which made the wealth, the talents, and the influ- ence of a vast family connection ancillary to his views ; to Madi- son in the early culture of the faculties under the most favorable auspices, in acquirements, and in universality of intellectual power ; to Henry Lee in the extent and caste of domestic rela- tionship, in early and thorough instruction in military talents as well as in martial fame, and in a ready and striking elocution ; to Marshall in unbounded vigor of mind as well as in the knowl-
149 Patrick Henry always thought well of Monroe, and used to say of him " that he was slow, but give him time and he was sure."
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edge of the law to which they had served an apprenticeship to- gether, as they had done in the Northern army ; to Innes, another colleague in the Northern army, in classical literature, in general learning, and, above all, in a splendid eloquence ; to Grayson, another compatriot of the Northern armny, in fasci- nating manners, in humor, in wit, in a perfect mastery of the science of political economy, in an almost unrivalled play of the intellectual powers, and in that exquisite taste in letters, which imparts even to consummate statesmanship an attractive and ever living grace ; to George Nicholas in those subtle faculties and in that profound acquaintance with the law which enabled him to pass instantly from an opinion on a land warrant shingled three deep to the discussion of the most intricate questions in govern- ment and in the laws of nations ; to Corbin in habits of public speaking, in political research, and in elegant learning ; to Ralph Wormeley in a critical knowledge of the entire compass of Eng- lish literature as in that honorable lineage which as early as King Charles' time held the keys of the public treasure ; 150 inferior to these, and not to these only of that galaxy of genius and worth which then appeared on the Virginia horizon, and which our later statesmen, themselves now passed away, were wont to point at and to dwell upon with conscious pride, this remarkable young man succeeded in winning and wearing at his pleasure every honor which public office at home or abroad could bestow, from
150 The Wormeley family can be traced to 1312, when they were seated in Yorkshire, England. The first in Virginia was Captain Christopher Wormeley, Governor of Tortuga in 1632-5; was granted 1.420 acres of land in Charles River (York) county January 27, 1638; member of the Council; married, and had issue : Captain Ralph Wormeley of York county, member of the Council in 1640; patented land, and settled at "Rosegill," Middlesex county ; died before 1669, leaving issue : Ralph. His widow Agatha married secondly Sir Henry Chicheley, Governor of Virginia. Ralph Wormeley, second of the name, died 1700, leaving issue : John Wormeley, of "Rosegill," and Judith, married Colonel Mann Page, of "Rosewell." Of the issue of John was Ralph Worme- ley, of "Rosegill," married, 1736, Sarah Berkeley of " Barn Elms "; Bur- gess for Middlesex county 1748-1758; member of the Council 1756-1761. Of their issue was Ralph Wormeley. Jr., of the text, a scholar who pos- sessed one of the choicest libraries in Virginia ; married Eleanor Tay- loe, sister of Colonel John Tayloe, of "Mount Airy "; died January 19, 1806, in the 62nd year of his age .- ED.
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that of Governor of the Commonwealth and Senator of the United States, from repeated missions to the most distinguished courts of Europe, from a seat in the Department of War and in the Department of State, to that most exalted of all the honors to which an American citizen can aspire, the Presidency itself ; while of his early compatriots, as well as those who had already reached a high position as those who, like himself, were pluming their wings for the new scene soon to open upon them, some dropped almost immediately out of sight, or, enamoured of rural life, clung to the domestic hearth and declined public trusts, or devoted their time to State affairs, or were lost in the haze of a local celebrity, or soared for a time only in the fresh azure of a Federal sky, upborne on untiring wings, or voluntarily to de- scend after a season to the perch from which they had risen, or, stricken by the hostile arrow, to be precipitated with a disas- trous fall, and others who were content to accept from his hands those offices which they not only did not aspire to bestow, but were thankful to receive; three only of that entire number running continuously with him the long race of fifty years with equal though various distinction ; and of those three one only attaining to the first office of the nation. 151
The secret of this unparalleled success is difficult to find only because it lies on the surface. Industry, integrity, personal in- trepidity, whether it was to be exhibited amid the clashing of swords or the more fearful clashing of tongues, a satisfaction with small things, which kept him within the range of affairs till great things were ready, one by one, to fall into his lap, so that, though sometimes not in office, he may be said, in a certain sense, never to have been out of office-the great office of his life, strong common sense, which, though more than once begrimed by the fallacies and passion of interested partisans, enabled him at last to see things as they were, and to recover himself ere it was too late, and a firmness of purpose and a constancy of pursuit which kept the great object of his ambition steadily before his eyes. These were the means on which he relied, and in which he was not deceived. Nor was his career unmarked by fluctuations which even at this distance of time appear formidable. His re- call from the French mission by Washington, was one of those
151 Bushrod Washington, John Marshall, and James Madison.
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ominous incidents in his history which would have proved fatal to the ambition of a less-determined spirit than his own. And at a later day, when, on his return from the court of St. James, he found himself almost unconsciously at the head of a small but influential faction which had stolen off rather than broke off from the great party to which he had devoted his life, and which sought to put him forward for the succession. In ordinary times no eye would have detected sooner than his own the specious snare which was spread for his destruction; but his long absence from home, which had precluded him from a correct knowledge of affairs, the noise made by his advocates in public bodies, and especially in the social circles of Virginia, which he now made his residence, and some private griefs which, if they had been left alone, would have soon healed without a scar, but which, by the chirurgery of his new allies, were made to inflame and fester, obscured for a season his better judgment, and he lent for a while a not unwilling ear to the tempter. From the predicament, the most dangerous in his whole career, in which he was now placed, and which was regarded with unfeigned delight by his old ene- mies and with mortification by his old friends, he was rescued by one of those trivial incidents which are usually thought beneath the dignity of history, but which sometimes explain results other- wise beyond the keenest vision. But even here, in this fortunate reconciliation with his late and successful rival in the game of presidential honors, it was the distinctive peculiarity of his char- acter and the honesty of his nature which effected his deliver- ance.152
Our view of the character of Monroe would be incomplete, so far as our present theme is concerned, if it did not embrace his qualities as a public speaker. He had acquired the habit of de- bate in the House of Delegates and in the Congress of the Con- federation, but he had never studied the art of speech. Pronun- ciation, emphasis, gesture, in their full significancy, never crossed his mind as things deserving a moment's consideration ; and, as he did not value them himself, so he set a very slight value upon them in the speaking of others. Like a workman who, in choosing from the forest a shaft for his present purpose, heeds
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