RANDOLPHJohn (1773-1833), of Roanoke, American statesman, was descended from an influential and wealthy Virginian family, and was the third and youngest son of John Randolph of Cawsons, Chesterfield county, where he was born on 2d June 1773. His father having died in his infancy, his early years were passed under the care of his stepfather. He attended schools at Williamsburg and Princeton and for a short time studied at Columbia College, New York, but, although well read in modern works bearing on politics and philosophy, his own statement, “I am an ignorant man, sir,” was in other respects not inaccurate. Both his religious and his political views were radical and extreme. At an early period he imbibed deistical opinions, which he promulgated with extreme eagerness. He was also so strongly opposed to the new constitution of the United States that he could not bear to hear Washington take the oath to support it. In order to assist in asserting the right of resistance to national laws, and to withstand the “encroachments of the administration upon the indisputable rights” of Virginia, he was in 1799 elected as a democrat to Congress, where he sat, with the exception of two terms, till 1825. After the election of Jefferson as president in 1801 Randolph was elected chairman of the committee of ways and means. He took an active part in agitating for the reform of the judiciary, and in 1804 moved the impeachment of Judge Chase. The part he took in this matter tended to widen his breach with Jefferson, from whom he finally separated in 1806. Possessing considerable wit, great readiness, and a showy if somewhat bombastic eloquence, he would undoubtedly have risen to high influence but for his strong vein of eccentricity and his bitter and ungovernable temper. The ...