John Randolph of Roanoke

12. Dying, Sir, Dying

12 Dying, Sir, Dying Fold softly in thy long embrace That heart so worn and broken And cool its pulse of fire beneath Thy shadows old and oaken. Randolph took a meandering path home from new York. he lingered in Philadelphia until mid-January. While there, he ended speculation about his political future. “i have been requested in writing by more than one respectable freeholder,” he wrote, “to state explicitly whether or not ‘if the people choose to elect me, i will serve them.’ At all times, i should conceive it my duty so to do.”1 The letter announcing his availability gave notice that his brief retirement had not sanded his flinty disposition. “We shall be divided into two great but very unequal classes,” he wrote, “those who pay taxes and those who receive the proceeds of them.” he had “stood an eight years’ siege against the whole power and patronage of Government and the incessant roar of the artillery of the press” and was ready to do so again. “To fall in such a cause,” he concluded, “was no mean glory.”2 once committed to the race, he was confident of victory. “i have no doubt of success,” he wrote, “if i say the word.”3 While Randolph looked to electoral success, nancy Morris looked to retaliation . Randolph’s incendiary letter had been delivered to Gouverneur Morris, who passed it on to his wife. Morris’s mind and heart were reconciled to whatever had happened in virginia those many years ago, and the letter had not enraged him enough to file suit or issue a duel challenge.4 nancy was not as willing as her husband to let the matter drop. she decided to respond to Randolph, with the added touch of sending copies of the correspondence to his political opponents. “it is well that your former constituents should know the creature in whom they put their trust,” she wrote. “virginians, in general, whatever may be their defects, have a high sense of 165 166 John Randolph of Roanoke honor.”5 on January 16, 1815, nancy Morris poured out the spleen of twenty years. “When you entered this home, and when you left it,” she wrote, “you took me in your arms, you pressed me to your bosom, you impressed upon my lips a kiss which i received as a token of friendship from a near relation. Did you then believe that you held in your arms, that you pressed to your bosom, that you kissed the lips of a common prostitute, the murderess of her own child and of your brother?” if he did believe it, nancy told him to “tell this to the world that scorn be at no loss for an object.” if he did not believe it, “make out a certificate that ‘John Randolph of Roanoke’ is a base calumniator .”6 nancy asserted again that Randolph had sought to marry her, but she had been repulsed by his “mean selfishness [and] wretched appearance.” she was “betrothed to [Theodorick] and considered him as my husband in the presence of God. . . . We should have been married, if Death had not snatched him away.” she had confided all this to Richard, who had protected her reputation on his own volition. she was stunned that Randolph would charge his own brother with being an accomplice to infanticide. indeed, it was her view that of the Randolph brothers, he alone possessed a sufficiently perverted character to commit such a crime. “You,” she wrote acidly, “still have the heart of a savage.” Randolph’s letter, like his character, she wrote, was replete with “vainglorious boasting,” “malicious baseness,” and “downright falsehood.” she defied him to “substantiate by the testimony of any credible witness a single fact injurious to my reputation.” she painted Morris’s nephew David ogden in the darkest of colors, vigorously defended her husband, and recounted in excruciating detail the days of her “forlorn conditions.” Page after page, the letter was a full-throated expression of contempt. “Formerly Jack Randolph,” she taunted, “now, ‘John Randolph of Roanoke’ . . . the affectation of greatness must cover you with ridicule.” her conclusion matched Randolph at his acerbic best: “i trust you are by this time convinced that you have clumsily performed the part of ‘honest iago.’ happily for my life, and for my husband ’s peace, you did not find in him a headlong, rash othello. For a full and proper description of what you have written and spoken on this occasion, i...