#1585 Ten Things About John Randolph of Roanoke

Listening to America

History, Politics, Unitedstates, Society & Culture, American

4.6 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 6 February 2024

⏱️ 51 minutes

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Summary

Clay Jenkinson is joined by regular guest Dr. Lindsay Chervinsky to talk about one of the strangest and most extraordinary people of America’s Early National Period, John Randolph of Roanoke, Virginia. Randolph was a brilliant and flamboyant man, hairless with the voice of a soprano and locked physically in a pre-pubescent state. Yet he was a brilliant orator, an outstanding Congressional floor manager, with a wicked tongue and a vituperative spirit. Randolph was a radical Republican who broke with President Jefferson when the third President behaved like a pragmatist rather than an ideologue. We discuss a number of episodes from Randolph’s colorful life, including his manumission of more than 300 slaves and his role in the impeachment trial of Supreme Court Justice Samuel Chase.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello everyone and welcome to listening to America. Today ten things about
0:06.7	John Randolph of Roanoke. John Randolph of Roanoke one of the many many
0:10.9	Randolph 1773 to 1833 of Jefferson's general political
0:18.0	persuasion, but not always, and one of the most extraordinary and eccentric figures of the whole period that we're talking about.
0:25.6	Welcome, Lindsay Trevinsky.
0:27.4	Well, thank you for having me back.
0:29.2	This is certainly going to be a colorful episode because you are right. I'm not sure there is anyone more
0:35.6	eccentric and unique in this period than John Randall Phil Froinoke.
0:40.3	It's it's hard to get our brains around this fellow. So 1773 that means he's fully 30
0:47.5	years younger than Jefferson so he's really a second-generation early national
0:52.1	period person.
0:53.2	He spends a lot of time in Congress, mostly in the House,
0:55.6	but eventually in the Senate.
0:57.9	He's an old school, small, our Republican,
1:01.6	maybe even a, we'd call him a radical Republican or a purest Republican, and that of
1:06.6	course is going to put him on a collision course, particularly with Madison, but even with
1:10.9	Thomas Jefferson. You know, you've been working on the world of Massachusetts,
1:15.0	Quincy, Massachusetts, Braintree,
1:18.0	John Adams, John Quincy Adams for a long time.
1:21.0	What did he seem like to people like John Adams? What did someone like
1:24.8	John Adams make of this really strange man who who comes into the floor of
1:29.6	Congress with his dogs, his hunting dogs and his whip, and he dresses, over dresses, and he's always
	...

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