Rab-Ray: Rabun through Rayner

See below for annotated biographies of American abolitionists and anti-slavery activists. Sources include: Scribner’s Dictionary of American Biography and Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography.


RABUN, William, 1771-1819, Milledgeville, Georgia, political leader, former Governor of Georgia.  Member of the Milledgeville auxiliary of the American Colonization Society. 

(Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, p. 157; Staudenraus, P. J. The African Colonization Movement, 1816-1865. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961, p. 71)

Appletons’ Cyclopædia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, p. 157:

RABUN, William, statesman, born in Halifax county, North Carolina, 8 April, 1771; died at Powelton, Hancock county, Georgia, 24 October, 1819. To this place his father had removed from North Carolina when he was a youth. The son was frequently elected to the legislature. In 1817 he was president of the state senate, and as such became ex-officio governor of the state on the resignation of Governor Mitchell. In the following year he was elected to the same post by popular vote, and died in office. While he was governor he had a sharp correspondence with General Andrew Jackson growing, out of the Seminole war, then in progress. Governor Rabun’s devotion to the church of which he was a member was not surpassed by his fidelity as a civilian. While he was governor he performed the duties of chorister and clerk in the Baptist church at Powelton. Appletons’ Cyclopædia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, p. 157.


RALSTON, Gerald, London, Great Britain, Vice-President, American Colonization Society, 1840-1841.  Founder and officer of the Philadelphia Society of the American Colonization Society. 

(Staudenraus, P. J. The African Colonization Movement, 1816-1865. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961, pp. 125, 126, 182, 222)


RALSTON, Robert, 1761-1836, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, businessman, philanthropist, Director of the Bank of the United States.  Vice-President, 1833-37, and member of the Philadelphia auxiliary of the American Colonization Society.

(Rodriguez, Junius P., Slavery in the United States: A Social, Political, and Historical Encyclopedia, ABC-CLIO, 2007, p. 156; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, p. 164; Staudenraus, P. J. The African Colonization Movement, 1816-1865. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961, pp. 30, 39)


RAMSEY, Alexander, 1815-1903.  Republican U.S. Senator and governor from Minnesota.  Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery.  U.S. Congressman (Whig Party) elected 1842, serving until 1847, from Pennsylvania.  First Territorial Governor of Minnesota, 1849-1853.  Governor of state 1860-1863.  Elected U.S. Senator 1863, serving until 1875.  Appointed Secretary of War in 1879. 

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V., p. 168; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 8, Pt. 1, pp. 341-342; Biographical Dictionary of the U.S. Congress 1774-1927 (1928); Congressional Globe)

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 8, Pt. 1, pp. 341-342:

RAMSEY, ALEXANDER (September 8, 1815- April 22, 1903), governor of Minnesota, United States senator, secretary of war, was born near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, the son of Elizabeth Kelker and Thomas Ramsey. His ancestry was Scotch and German. As a youth Ramsey, who was orphaned at the age of ten, was employed in the store of a grand-uncle, was clerk in the office of register of deeds, and worked for a time as a carpenter, meanwhile pursuing his studies as best he could. At the age of eighteen he entered Lafayette College, but he left before completing his course to study law. After his admission to the bar in 1839 he practised law at Harrisburg and became a zealous worker in the interests of the Whig party. In 1840 he was secretary of the Pennsylvania electoral college, and the year following, chief clerk of the House of Representatives. From 1843 to 1847 he represented his district in Congress. In 1848; as chairman of the Whig central committee of Pennsylvania, he labored diligently for the election of Zachary Taylor, who, after his inauguration, rewarded Ramsey with a commission as governor of the newly organized territory of Minnesota. When Ramsey assumed his new duties, on June 1, 1849, he found himself governor of a large territory, of which only a small portion, containing a few thousand white inhabitants, was open to settlement, the remainder being Indian country. After declaring the territorial government established, he ordered an election and when the first legislature assembled in September he read a message abounding in practical suggestions for the benefit of the territory, many of which were later adopted. The outstanding event of his territorial administration was the negotiation in 1851 of treaties of cession with the Sioux, with Ramsey as one of the two government commissioners, which opened an immense area in southern Minnesota to settlement. He was later charged with fraud in the conduct of the negotiations; but the United States Senate, after an investigation, completely exonerated him (Senate Executive Document 61, 33 Congress, 1 Session). His territorial governorship ended in 1853, with the appointment of a Democratic governor under President Pierce, and he retired to private life in St. Paul, devoting much of his attention to judicious investments in real estate. He was mayor of St. Paul in 1855. In 1857 he was defeated by only a few votes as Republican candidate for governor of Minnesota, soon to be admitted as a state. Two years later, however, he was elected to that office by a decisive majority, and he was reelected in 1861. During his administration the legislature, following his recommendations, materially reduced state expenses, simplified county government, and took effective measures to safeguard the state's school lands against premature sale at low prices. Ramsey's official duties were greatly complicated by the responsibilities connected with the Sioux outbreak of 1862 and the Indian war following it and with providing troops for the Civil War. He was in Washington when Fort Sumter was fired on, and made the first offer of armed troops to Lincoln. Ramsey retired from the governorship in July 1863 to take his place in the United States Senate, to which he had been elected the preceding January. His senatorial career, which was extended by a reelection in 1869 to twelve years, was marked by the industry and practical ability that had characterized his administrations as governor. He served on several important committees, and as chairman of the committee on post offices and post roads he made important contributions to postal reform. From 1879 to 1881 he was secretary of war under President Hayes, and in 1882 he was made chairman of the commission to carry out the provisions of the Edmunds bill to suppress polygamy in Utah. Upon his resignation from the commission in 1886 he retired permanently to private life. He was president of the Minnesota Historical Society from 1849 to 1863 and from 1891 to 1903 and was the author of several papers in the Minnesota Historical Collections. On September 10, 1845, he married Anna Earl Jenks. They had three children, two of whom died in childhood. Ramsey is described by a contemporary as "the finest specimen of a physical man in the Northwest" (T. M. Newson, Pen Pictures of St. Paul,. 1886, p. 123). He was clear-headed, cautious, and judicious, above all a man of practical sense. He was a shrewd politician and an excellent judge of human nature, with a gift for making friends. Although he was not an orator, his public addresses were forceful and direct. One of the first counties established in Minnesota bears his name. [Sources include: J. H. Baker, Lives of the Governors of Minn. (1908); E. D. Neill, The History of Minn. (4th ed., 1882); J. F. Williams, A History of the City of St. Paul (1876); C. C. Andrews, History of St. Paul (1890), pt. 2; W.W. Folwell, A History of Minn., volumes I and II (1921-24); "Memorial Addresses in Honor of Governor Alexander Ramsey," Minn. Historical Society Colts., volume X, pt. 2 (1905); Minneapolis Journal, April 23, 1903. The Minn. Historical Society has a collection of Ramsey's papers.]

S.J. B.

Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, pp. 168: 

RAMSEY, Alexander, secretary of war, born near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, 8 September, 1815. He was educated at Lafayette college, and in 1828 became clerk in the register's office of his native county. He was secretary of the Electoral college of Pennsylvania in 1840, the next year was clerk of the state house of representatives, was elected to congress as a Whig in 1842, and served till 1847. He was chairman of the state central committee of Pennsylvania in 1848, and was appointed first territorial governor of Minnesota in 1849, holding office till 1853. During this service he negotiated a treaty at Mendota for the extinction of the title of the Sioux half-breeds to the lands on Lake Pepin, and two with the Sioux nation by which the U. S. government acquired all the lands in Minnesota west of Mississippi river, thus opening that state to colonization. He also made treaties with the Chippewa Indians on Red river in 1851 and 1853. He became mayor of St. Paul, Minn., in 1855, was governor of the state in 1860-'3, and in the latter year was elected to the U. S. senate as a Republican, holding his seat in 1863-'75, and serving as chairman of the committees on Revolutionary claims and pensions, on post-roads and on territories. He became secretary of war in 1879, succeeding George W. McCrary, and held office till the close of Hayes's administration. He was appointed by President Arthur, in 1882, a member of the Utah commission, under the act of congress known as the Edmunds bill (see EDMUNDS, GEORGE F.), continuing in that service till 1886. In 1887 he was a delegate to the centennial celebration of the adoption of the constitution of the United States. Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, pp. 168. 


RAND, Asa, 1783-1871, Massachusetts, clergyman, editor.  Vice president and founding member of the American Anti-Slavery Society, December 1833. 

(Abolitionist, Volume I, No. XII, December, 1833; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, p. 168). 

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, p. 168:

RAND, Asa, clergyman, born in Rindge, N. H., 6 August, 1783; died in Ashburnham, Massachusetts, 24 August, 1871. He was graduated at Dartmouth in 1806, and ordained as a minister of the Congregational church in January, 1809. After a pastorate of thirteen years' duration at Gorham, Maine, he edited the “Christian Mirror” at Portland, Maine, in 1822-'5, afterward conducted the “Recorder” and the “Youth's Companion” at Boston, and in 1833 established a book-store and printing-office at Lowell. He published the “Observer” at this place, lectured against slavery, and was then pastor of churches at Pompey and Peterborough, New York. He published “Teacher's Manual for Teaching in English Grammar” (Boston, 1832), and “The Slave-Catcher caught in the Meshes of the Eternal Law” (Cleveland 1852). Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, pp. 168.


RANDALL, Alexander Williams (October 31, 1819-July 26, 1872), lawyer, sixth governor of Wisconsin, 1858-1861, politician, administrator. Acting in 1848 with the Van Buren free-soil Democrats, and a little later with the "Barnburner" faction which in 1854 generally went "Free-soil," he was elected to the state Assembly. For a few months, under appointment by the first Republican governor, he filled an unexpired term as judge of the Milwaukee circuit. In 1857 Randall was elected governor, although Carl Schurz, Republican candidate for lieutenant governor, was defeated. He was reelected in 1859, and was in office when the Civil War began in 1861. Advocate for Black voting rights.  Raised troops for Union Army.  Postmaster General, 1866-1869. 

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 8, Pt. 1, pp. 344-345:

RANDALL, ALEXANDER WILLIAMS (October 31, 1819-July 26, 1872), lawyer, governor of Wisconsin, politician, administrator, was born at Ames, Montgomery County, New York, a son of Phineas Randall, a lawyer, native of Massachusetts, and Sarah (Beach) Randall, a native of New York state. Alexander received a thorough academic education at Cherry Valley Academy. After a period of legal study under his father, he removed in 1840 to the new village of Prairieville (afterward Waukesha), in Wisconsin Territory. There he practised law successfully but soon became absorbed in public affairs. At first, like his father, he bore the Whig label. Soon he showed Democratic leanings and in 1845 President Polk appointed him postmaster in his village, an office that paid a very low salary but offered important political advantages. The next year he was chosen a delegate to the state constitutional convention where he gained prominence through his successful championship of a resolution submitting separately the question of negro suffrage. This action, highly unpopular, kept him out of politics long enough to make him a seasoned lawyer and a sagacious leader. Acting in 1848 with the Van Buren free-soil Democrats, and a little later with the "Barnburner" faction which in 1854 generally went "Free-soil," he was elected to the state Assembly where he quickly gained a remarkable ascendancy. For a few months, under appointment by the first Republican governor, he filled an unexpired term as judge of the Milwaukee circuit. In 1857 he was elected governor, although Carl Schurz, Republican candidate for lieutenant governor, was defeated. Reelected in 1859, he was in office when the Civil War broke.

Randall proved one of the noted "war governors." In his message of January 10, 1861, he predicted a conflict and urged preparedness. After Lincoln's proclamation of April 15, he instantly enlisted a  regiment of militia, which was ready to go forward in six days. The executive office became the army headquarters for the state, the governor's fiery zeal and exceptional organizing ability serving to unite all loyal elements in enthusiastic support of the nation. Randall also contributed notably, along with the other leading governors, to Lincoln's plans for the prompt mobilization of the national resources. So energetically did he proceed in Wisconsin that when he left the executive office, nine months later, the state had already supplied nearly 25,000 troops. Like many other political leaders, Randall, having missed a senatorship, desired a military appointment, but Lincoln sent him as minister to Rome. The next year he was back, still intent upon a military appointment. Again he missed that objective, but being made first assistant postmaster general in 1863, he gave full sway to his genius for political organization in preparing the ground for Lincoln's triumphant reelection. Andrew Johnson received him into his cabinet as head of the Post-Office Department, where he remained till the close of that stormy administration, to the last one of Johnson's most ardent defenders. His friendship for the widely hated President sufficed to send him back to the practice of law. He preferred, however, not to return to Wisconsin, but settled in Elmira, New York. There he remained active in his profession for a time, but his death from cancer ended his career at the early age of fifty-two. He had married in 1842 Mary C. Van Vechten of New York state, who died in 1858. Five years later he married Helen M. Thomas of Elmira, New York, who survived him.

Randall was endowed with a sound, keen, and quick, though not profound, intelligence, and was handsome of face and figure. He was effective and even eloquent in address, and he always gave the impression of perfect adequacy in any situation. A consistent and orderly worker, he rose very early and performed the day's drudgery before office hours. That method provided leisure for conferences, visits, and the joviality of which he was exceptionally fond. He was a formidable opponent in the court room and on the hustings, yet kindly in disposition, rarely making personal enemies. From a party viewpoint he was extraordinarily "mobile," but although he was often charged with political opportunism, his party shiftings were determined more on principle than on expediency. He performed much useful work at Washington, but he will be longest remembered as Wisconsin's dynamic war governor.

[The best biographical sketch of Randall, albeit somewhat too laudatory, is that by Tenney, in H. A. Tenney and David Atwood's Memorial Record of the Fathers of Wisconsin (1880). See also: C. S. Matteson, The History of Wisconsin (1893); C. R. Tuttle, An Illustrated History of the State of Wisconsin (1875); "Reminiscences of Alex. W. Randall," Milwaukee Sentinel, November 14, 1897; and R. G. Thwaites, Civil War Messages and Proclamations of Wisconsin War Governors (1912). U.S. Ministers to the Papal States (1933), ed. by Leo F. Stock, contains Randall's correspondence as minister to Rome. Randall's manuscripts, letter copy books, and other papers, during the governorship, are in the State Historical Library]

J. S-r.


RANDALL, Daniel B., Hallowell, Maine, abolitionist, American Anti-Slavery Society, Manager, 1839-1840.


RANDALL, Richard, Dr., Washington, DC, physician.  Member of the Board of Directors of the American Colonization Society (ACS).  Randall replaced Jehudi Ashmun as Colonial Agent in Africa for the ACS.  Died in Africa in April 1829. 

(Campbell, Penelope. Maryland in Africa: The Maryland State Colonization Society, 1831-1857. Urbana, Illinois: University of Illinois Press, 1971,p. 11; Staudenraus, P. J. The African Colonization Movement, 1816-1865. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961, p. 162)


RANDALL, William H., Member of the U.S. House of Representatives, voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery.

(Biographical Dictionary of the U.S. Congress 1774-1927 (1928); Congressional Globe)


RANDOLPH, Edmund Jennings, 1753-1813, founding father, lawyer.  Governor of Virginia.  Second United States Secretary of State.  First United States Attorney General.  As a delegate from Virginia to the Continental Convention, Randolph wrote and introduced the Virginia Plan, which strongly opposed the importation of slaves. 

(Dumond, Dwight Lowell, Antislavery: The Crusade for Freedom in America, University of Michigan Press, 1961 Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 8, Pt. 1, p. 353-355). 

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 8, Pt. 1, p. 353-355:

RANDOLPH, EDMUND (August 10, 1753- September 12, 1813), attorney general, secretary of state, originally had the middle name Jenings (sometimes given as Jennings), but did not use it in public life. He was born at "Tazewell Hall," near Williamsburg, Virginia. His father, John Randolph, his uncle, Peyton Randolph, and his grandfather, Sir John Randolph [qq.v.], had been King's attorneys, and for generations members of the family had been prominent in the province. His mother was Ariana Jenings (William and Mary Quarterly, April 1900, p. 265), daughter of Edmund Jenings, at one time King's attorney of Maryland. In boyhood he had the fortunate opportunity of meeting in his home, at the family table, many of the most distinguished men of his time. He naturally attended the College of William and Mary, and he studied law under his father. The latter was a Loyalist and followed Lord Dunmore to England. Edmund was thereupon taken into the family of his distinguished uncle, Peyton Randolph. Bearing letters from prominent Virginians, he presented himself in August 1775 at Cambridge and received from Washington an appointment as aide-de-camp. His uncle having died, he returned to Williamsburg and at the age of twenty-three became the youngest member of the Virginia convention that adopted the first constitution for the state. Under the new state government he became attorney general. He was also mayor of Williamsburg. On August 29, 1776, he was married to Elizabeth Nicholas, daughter of Robert Carter Nicholas [q. v.], the state treasurer.

In the spring of 1779 he was elected to the Continental Congress, retaining however his position as attorney general of Virginia. He threw his influence in the state in favor of the import duty of five per cent. that was asked by Congress. On November 7, 1786, he was elected governor against Richard Henry Lee and Theodorick Bland. He was a delegate to the Annapolis Convention and to the Federal Convention of 1787. He probably had considerable influence in securing Washington's acceptance of membership in the latter body. Randolph was put forward in the Federal Convention to propose the famous Virginia Plan (Farrand, post, I, 20-22; III, 593-94), and also drew a draft, perhaps the first, of the work of the committee of detail, to which he was appointed on July 24, 1787 (Ibid., I, xxii; II, 137-51). In company with George Mason, he declined to sign the completed Constitution because he thought it insufficiently republican. He had stated that he regarded "a unity in the Executive magistracy" as "the foetus of monarchy" and had favored an executive department of three men (Speech of June 1, 1787, Ibid., I, 66). The single executive being accepted, he had advocated his being made ineligible for reelection (Ibid., II, 54, 145). Since the committee of detail worked from Randolph's draft, many of the features of the completed Constitution are similar to it. A second convention, after sufficient time for discussion, Randolph thought eminently desirable (Ibid., II, 479). He wrote a Letter ... on the Federal Constitution (1787), in criticism of the document. However, when the time came for Virginia to act upon it, in the state convention of 1788, despite bitter criticism of him for inconsistency, he stood with Madison and Marshall in advocating ratification, his reason being that "the accession of eight states reduced our deliberations to the single question of Union or no Union" (Jonathan Elliot, The Debates in the Several States, on the Adoption of the Federal Constitution, 1836, III, 652; see also, III, 62-86).

Under the new government, Washington, who had every reason to be familiar with the abilities and character of Randolph, appointed him attorney general. This position he filled with credit, but with embarrassment on account of the effort he made to be non-partisan in the conflict between Jefferson and Hamilton. When Jefferson retired as secretary of state, Randolph filled the office from January 2, 1794, to August 19, 1795. The position was extremely difficult. While Randolph endeavored to continue an independent role, Hamilton regarded himself as a kind of premier and took a keen interest and an active part in foreign affairs. These were in tangled condition and the people of the United States were divided in their opinions and affections as respected France and Great Britain. Randolph got rid of the offensive French minister, Edmond Charles Genet [q.v.], but protected him from arrest as requested by the French government. He approved of the recall of Gouverneur Morris [q.v.], minister to France, and the appointment of James Monroe [q.v.] as his successor. He ably upheld the interest of the United States in his correspondence with Fauchet, Genet's successor, and advised Monroe with reference to his negotiations with the French government, at times finding that Monroe went too far in his manifestations of affection for France.

In addition to infringing upon the rights of the United States as a neutral, Great Britain had failed to fulfil the terms of the treaty of 1783, retaining the western posts and failing to surrender negroes that had been carried off. The situation became so acute that, under the influence of Hamilton and his friends and with the approval of Randolph, Washington decided to send a special envoy to England. Randolph was opposed to the selection of Hamilton, the first choice of the group that were engineering the special mission, and though personally friendly to John Jay [q.v.], was opposed to him for this appointment. In addition to other grounds of opposition, Randolph personally objected to the appointment of a justice of the Supreme Court as a diplomatic agent and thought Jay should resign his judicial position. Randolph, with advice from Hamilton and others, drew the instructions to Jay. They covered the ground of the protection of American rights and authorized the negotiation of a commercial treaty. To this latter grant of power Randolph was opposed. His efforts to keep Jay in line with his own thinking were attended by great difficulty. The time required for communication, the lack of complete sympathy between the envoy a:nd the Secretary of State, and the persistent interference by Hamilton in foreign affairs, both in his dealings with Jay and with the British minister in America, Hammond, created a complicated and embarrassing situation for Randolph. Jay treated him with formal courtesy, but did not refrain from lecturing him. The treaty as negotiated by Jay came far short of carrying out the detailed instructions given him, and the Senate refused to accept the twelfth article, which pledged the United States not to export molasses, sugar, coffee, cocoa, or cotton. Randolph was favorable to the ratification of the treaty without this article, provided an Order in Council authorizing the seizure of ships laden with provisions should be withdrawn. Washington apparently supported Randolph's position up to the time when the Secretary of State came under serious criticism for his relations with the French minister, Fauchet.

While Randolph was having difficulty enough dealing with Jay, he was finding it hard to satisfy Monroe and France. Monroe was kept purposely in semi-darkness about the full purpose of Jay's mission. The French were naturally suspicious and, when the contents of Jay's Treaty were known, protested that it violated the treaty obligations of the United States to France. Randolph was compelled to maintain that it did not. Negotiations with Spain during his period of service resulted, soon after his retirement, in the Treaty of San Lorenzo, according to which the free navigation of the Mississippi from its source to its mouth was assured American citizens and the southern boundary was established according to the terms of the treaty of peace between the United States and Great Britain.

Randolph's retirement was brought about by revelations through the British minister of intercepted communications of the French minister, Fauchet, to his government. Fauchet had written a rambling account in which he seemed to imply that Randolph made improper revelations to him and indicated that French money would be welcome (Annual Report of the American Historical Association for the Year 1903, 1904, II, 414-15, 451). When called in question by Washington, under humiliating circumstances, Randolph resigned. Fauchet denied that he meant any reflections on his honor, and Randolph himself wrote an elaborate vindication (A Vindication of Mr. Randolph's Resignation, 1795; for Jefferson's comment, see P. L. Ford, The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, VII, 1896, pp. 41-42). Withdrawing to Richmond, Randolph entered again upon the practice of law and became a leading legal figure. His accounts with the government were called in question and settled, but were allowed to encumber the books of the Treasury Department and embarrass the friends of Randolph until 1889, when the criminal carelessness that had gone on for nearly a century was revealed in a report called for under a resolution offered by Senator Daniel of Virginia (Senate Executive Document No. 58, 50 Congress, a sess.).

His greatest prominence in later years was as senior counsel for Aaron Burr in the famous treason trial. He spent his leisure time in writing a history of Virginia, most of which was destroyed by fire, the rest being preserved in manuscript for posterity in the archives of the Virginia Historical Society. His devoted wife died in 1811. He succumbed to the family disease of paralysis, which some years before had overtaken him, on September 12, 1813. Among their four children, a son and three daughters, were Peyton (d. 1828), who married Maria Ward, once engaged to John Randolph of Roanoke, and Lucy, who married Peter V. Daniel [q.v.]. Peyton's son Edmund [q.v.] became a distinguished lawyer in California.

[The most recent account is D. R. Anderson, "Edmund Randolph," in S. F. Bemis, ed., The American Secretaries of State and Their Diplomacy, II (1927). M. D. Conway, Omitted Chapters of History, Disclosed in the Life and Papers of Edmund Randolph (1888), contains many personal papers elsewhere inaccessible. There are a few Randolph MSS. in the Library of Congress, and letters and other materials are in the published and unpublished writings of Washington, Jefferson, and Hamilton. A portion of his diplomatic correspondence is in American State Papers. Foreign Relations, I (1832); much unpublished material is in the archives of the Department of State. American Historical Review, April 1907, contains some Randolph material with reference to Jay's Treaty. See also W. P. Palmer, ed., Calendar of Virginia State Papers, IV (1884), for his governorship; Max Farrand; The Records of The Federal Convention of 1787 (3 volumes, 19JI); obituary in Enquirer (Richmond), September 17, 1813.)

D.R.A.

Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, pp. 176-177:

RANDOLPH, Edmund Jennings, statesman, born in Williamsburg, Virginia, 10 August, 1753; died in Clarke county, Virginia, 13 September, 1813. He was distinguished for scholarship and eloquence at William and Mary college, and at eighteen years of age was orator to commemorate the royal founders, the oration being printed by the faculty. After studying law with his father he was admitted to the bar. He was a favorite of Lord Dunmore, and when his parents left for England was only withheld from sailing with them by enthusiasm for the American cause. Washington took him into his family as aide-decamp, 15 August, 1775, and Randolph received the guests at headquarters; but on the sudden death of his uncle Peyton he returned to Williamsburg. In the Virginia convention of 1776 he assisted in framing the constitution and passing the bill of rights. He opposed the demand of Patrick Henry that the governor should have power of veto. At the close of the convention he was elected mayor of Williamsburg, and he was also the first attorney-general of Virginia under the new constitution. In 1779 he was elected to congress, but soon resigned. In 1780 he was re-elected, and remained in congress two years. There he was occupied with foreign affairs. He resigned his seat in 1782, and after his father's death in 1788 succeeded to the property of his uncle Peyton, which had become encumbered with claims against his father. These he might have met by selling the negroes, but, being conscientiously opposed to this, he had to work hard at his profession. He was one of the commissioners at the Annapolis convention which induced congress to summon the Constitutional convention of 1787. Being governor of Virginia (1786-'88), he largely influenced the choice of delegates, and it was due to his persuasion that Washington's resolution not to attend was overcome. As leader of the Virginia delegation he introduced the general plan of a constitution that had been agreed on among them as a basis for opening the convention. He also drafted a detailed scheme of his own, which was discovered in 1887 among the papers of George Mason. His career in the convention was brilliant, and elicited admiration from Benjamin Franklin, who generally voted with him. He earnestly opposed the single executive, the presidential re-eligibility and pardoning power, the vice-presidential office, and senatorial equality of states. He desired an executive commission chosen by the national legislature, and resembling that of the present Swiss republic. He favored a strong Federal government which was to have power of directly negativing state laws that should be decided to be unconstitutional by the supreme court. On his motion the word “slavery” was eliminated from the constitution. He refused to sign the document except on condition that a second National convention should be called after its provisions had been discussed in the country; but in the Virginia convention of 1788 he advocated its ratification on the ground that a ninth state was needed to secure the Union, and that within the Union amendments might be passed. The opposition, led by Patrick Henry, was powerful, ancl the ratification, even by a small majority (ten), was mainly due to Governor Randolph, whose inflexible independence of party was then and after described as, vacillation. He urged amendments; owing to his vigilance the clause of Art. VI., on religious tests for office, implying power over the general subject, was supplemented by the first article added to the constitution. He resigned the governorship in 1788, and secured a seat in the assembly for the purpose of working on the committee for making a codification of the state laws. The code published at Richmond in folio, 1794, was mainly his work. While so occupied he was appointed by the president (27 September, 1789) attorney-general of the United States. In response to a request of the house of representatives he wrote an extended report (1790) on the judiciary system. Among the many important cases arising under the first administrat ion of the constitution was Chisholm vs. Georgia, involving the right of an alien to sue a state. To the dismay of his southern friends, Randolph proved that right to the satisfaction of the court. His speech was widely circulated as a pamphlet, and was reprinted by legislative order in Massachusetts, while the alarm of debtors to England led to the 11th amendment. Early in 1795 Randolph issued, under the name of “Germanicus,” an effective pamphlet against the “Democratic societies,” which were charged with fomenting the whiskey rebellion at Pittsburg, and exciting an American Jacobinism. Randolph tried to pursue, as usual, a non-partisan course in foreign affairs with a leaning toward France, Washington doing the 1ike. Jefferson having retired, Randolph accepted, very reluctantly, 2 January, 1794, the office of secretary of state. His advice that an envoy should go to England, but not negotiate, was overruled. He advised the president to sign the Jay treaty only on condition that the “provision order” for the search of neutral ships were revoked. The Republicans were furious that the president and Randolph should think of signing the treaty apart from the “provision order”; but Washington, after the objectionable 12th article had been eliminated, was willing to overlook its other faults, but for the order issued to search American ships and seize the provisions on them. Meanwhile France was so enraged about the treaty that Monroe could hardly remain in Paris. During Jay's secret negotiations, the French minister, Fauchet, left Philadelphia in anger. The president had carried on through Randolph soothing diplomacy with France, and especially flattered the vanity of Fauchet, the French minister in Philadelphia, with an affectation of confidence. The Frenchman did not fail in despatches to his employers to make the most of this. Also, being impecunious, he hinted to his government that with “several thousand dollars” he could favorably influence American affairs, alleging a suggestion by Randolph to that effect. This despatch was intercepted by a British ship and forwarded to the English minister in Philadelphia (Hammond) just in time to determine the result of the struggle concerning the treaty. Washington had made up his mind not to sign the treaty until the “provision order” was revoked, and so informed the secretary of state in a letter from Mount Vernon, 22 July, 1795. The intercepted despatch of Fauchet altered this determination, and the treaty was signed without the condition. The only alternatives of the administration were to acknowledge the assurances diplomatically given to Fauchet, as egregiously falsified by him, or, now that they might be published, accept Randolph as scapegoat. It is difficult to see how Washington could have saved his friend, even if ready to share his fate. Randolph, having indignantly resigned his office, pursued Fauchet (now recalled) to Newport, and obtained from him a full retractation and exculpation. He then prepared his “Vindication.” After the intercepted letter was shown him, but withheld from the doomed secretary, Washington treated Randolph with exceptional affection, visiting his house, and twice giving him the place of honor at his table. It is maintained by Randolph's biographer (M. D. Conway) that this conduct, and his failure to send for the other despatches alluded to, indicate Washington's entire disbelief of the assertions of Fauchet, whose intrigues he well knew (despatch to Monroe, 29 July, 1795). Randolph had attended to Washington's law-business in Virginia, always heavy, steadily refusing payment, and could hardly have been suspected of venality. The main charge against Randolph was based on Fanchet's allegation of “précieuses confessions” made to him by the secretary. But that despatch was closely followed by another, discovered in 1888, at Paris, in which Fauchet announced that he had found them “fausses confidences.” The charge of intrigue and revea1ing secrets is thus finally disposed of. In addition to the “Vindication of Mr. Randolph's Resignation” (Philadelphia, 1795), the ex-secretary wrote a remarkable pamphlet, published the following year, “Political Truth, or Animadversions on the Past and Present State of Public Affairs.” After his resignation, Randolph was received with public demonstrations of admiration in Richmond, where he resumed the practice of law. The ruin of his fortunes was completed by an account made up against him of $49,000 for “moneys placed in his hands to defray the expenses of foreign intercourse.” Under the system of that period the secretary of state personally disbursed the funds provided for all foreign service, and if any money were lost through the accidents of war, or the failure of banks, he was held responsible. After repeated suits in which juries could not agree, Randolph, confident in the justice of his case, challenged an arbitration by the comptroller of the treasury, Gabriel Duval, who decided against him. Thereupon his lands, and the negroes so conscientiously kept from sale and dispersion, were made over to Hon. Wilson Cary Nicholas, by whom the debt was paid in bonds, from which the government gained $7,000 more than the debt and interest. Meanwhile Randolph had again taken his place at the head of the Virginia bar. He was one of the counsel of Aaron Burr on his trial for treason at Richmond. He also wrote an important “History of Virginia,” the greater part of which is now in possession of the Historical society of Virginia. Though much used by historians, it has never been published. In it there is an admirable sketch of the life and character of Washington, concerning whom no bitterness survived in his breast. For the fullest account of Edmund Randolph, and of his ancestors, see “Omitted Chapters of History, disclosed in the Life and Papers of Edmund Randolph,” by Moncure D. Conway (New York, 1888). Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, pp. 176-177.


RANDOLPH, John, born 1773, Virginia, statesman, US Congressman, charter member of the American Colonization Society in Washington, DC, December 1816. 

(Biographical Dictionary of the U.S. Congress 1774-1927 (1928); Longacre, James B. & James Herring, National Portrait Gallery of Distinguished Americans, Volume 4. Philadelphia: American Academy of Fine Arts, 1839)

Biography from National Portrait Gallery of Distinguished Americans:

THE interest excited by the first appearance in public life of John Randolph continued until he had passed away from among the living, and did not die with him. His aboriginal descent, extraordinary eloquence, and independent but eccentric course through life, seemed to unite in securing to every thing he said or did, an attention on the part of his countrymen, which has been given to but few of the great American family. He was born on the 2d of June, 1773, at Matoax, the seat of his father, three miles above Petersburg, in the state. of Virginia. His English ancestors were from Yorkshire, and he was descended, through his paternal grandmother Jane Bolling, in a direct line from the celebrated Pocahontas. Like Sir Walter Scott, and other celebrated men, he appears, from his own account, prepared in 1813 for a nephew who was desirous to "know something of his life," to have received a very irregular education. He was sent to a country school at an early age, where he learned the rudiments of the Latin language, and had mastered the Greek grammar perfectly, when the state of his health induced his mother to send him to Bermuda, where he remained more than a year, losing all his Greek, but reading with great avidity many of the best English authors. After his return to the United States, he was sent, with his brother Theodorick, to Princeton college, where they entered the grammar school in March, 1787. He there attracted the attention of Dr. Samuel Stanhope Smith, the president of the college, who thought that he found, in the Indian descent of his pupil, some support to a theory, which he gave to the world in an Essay more remarkable for its ingenuity than its accurate statement of facts. In the year 1788, after the death of his mother, he was sent to college in New York, but returned to Virginia in the summer of 1790; and in the autumn of that year came to Philadelphia, with the view of studying law under the direction of Edmund Randolph, then recently appointed attorney-general of the United States. Beyond almost the first book of Blackstone, he seems to have done nothing towards being admitted to the bar; and from that time till June, 1794, when he became of age, he appears to have led an irregular, desultory life, with scarcely a fixed residence, and no decided object of pursuit.

His reading, according to his own account given to a relative at a later period of his life, is so indicative of the man that any attempt to portray him would be defective without it. "I think you have never read Chaucer. Indeed, I have sometimes blamed myself for not cultivating your imagination when you were young. It is a dangerous quality, however, for the possessor. But if from my life were to be taken the pleasure derived from that faculty, very little would remain. Shakespeare and Milton, and Chaucer and Spencer, and Plutarch, and the Arabian Nights' Entertainments, and Don Quixote, and Gil Blas, and Tom Jones, and Gulliver, and Robinson Crusoe, 'and the tale of Troy divine,' have made up more than half my worldly enjoyment. To these ought to be added Ovid's Metamorphoses, Ariosto, Dryden, Beaumont and Fletcher, Southern, Otway, Pope's Rape and Eloisa, Addison, Young, Thomson, Gay, Goldsmith, Gray, Collins, Sheridan, Cowper, Byron, Aesop, La Fontaine, Voltaire's Charles XII, Mahomet and Zaire, Rousseau’s. Julie, Schiller, Madame de Stael-but above all, Burke. One of the first books I ever read was Voltaire's Charles XII; about the same time, 1780-1, I read the Spectator, and used to steal away to the closet containing them. The letters from his correspondents were my favorites. I read Humphry Clinker also, that is Win's and Tabby's letters, with great delight; for I could spell at that age pretty correctly. Reynard the Fox, came next, I think; then Tales of the Genii and Arabian Nights. This last, and Shakespeare, were my idols. I had read them, with Don Quixote, Gil Blas, Quintus Curtius, Plutarch, Pope's Homer, Robinson Crusoe, Gulliver, Tom Jones, Orlando Furioso, and Thomson's Seasons, before I was eleven years of age; also Goldsmith's Roman History, 2 vols. 8vo., and an old history of Braddock's War. At about eleven, (1784-5,) Percy's Reliques and Chaucer became great favorites, and Chatterton and Rowley. I then read Young and Gay, &c. Goldsmith I never saw till 1787."[1]

In 1799, he made his first appearance in public life as a candidate for a seat in congress, and was elected. He owed his success to his eloquence alone; for he possessed neither family influence nor connexion in the district, and was a mere boy in appearance. The all-absorbing political questions arising out of Mr. Madison's celebrated Virginia Resolutions of 1798, of which Mr. Randolph was a strenuous supporter, were then deeply agitating the country. Patrick Henry, accused of having abandoned his early principles, appeared at the same time, and for the last time in his life, as a candidate for the assembly, avowedly in opposition to the resolutions; for he approved of the alien and sedition laws as good measures. This state of affairs brought these two remarkable men before the people in mutual opposition; and tradition has handed down to us an anecdote characteristic of both. Mr. Randolph was addressing the people in answer to Colonel Henry, when a countryman said to the latter, "Come, colonel, let us go-it is not worth while to listen to that boy." "Stay, my friend," replied the veteran statesman, "there is an old man's head on that boy's shoulders."

Mr. Randolph found the party whose measures he supported in the minority when he entered congress. His fearless course, ready, sarcastic wit, and general power as a public speaker, soon placed him among the most distinguished of the opponents of the administration then in power, and attracted the attention and admiration of the party against which they were exerted, as well as of that of which he soon became the leader. The records of his exertions are widely spread and scanty, and he pronounced most of the sketches of his speeches to be inaccurate.[2]  No collection of American speeches, however, has been deemed complete without some of them; and, imperfectly as they have come to us, the impress of genius is upon them all.

With the party which supported the administration of Mr. Jefferson, Mr. Randolph, after a time, found himself in the majority, and he was for several sessions chairmen of the committee of ways and means. It has been suggested, that with the majority his efforts were less propitious to his reputation than those which arose from the excitement of opposition; that business habits and discipline of mind were wanting; and that the position of assailant best suited his peculiar disposition, and was his true element. In 1806, he joined the opposition, and is said to have declared that his own opposition to the then administration would be "perpetual." The journals indeed, of the house, from the period we have mentioned, exhibit him in the character of its industrious assailant; and the warfare which he carried on against it, in the shape of calls for information, in relation to toe well known allegations against General Wilkinson, will be long remembered.

About this period of his life a change came over him, the cause of which even his friends could not understand; he became moody, morose, capricious, suspicious of his friends, sarcastic and bitter towards those he loved best, and a riddle to all around him. This state of things was explained at last, in 1811, by a paroxysm of insanity, attributable to the ill health to which he had been subject almost from the time he arrived at manhood, and of which he seems to have had some lurking consciousness himself.[3] Of this malady he had frequent returns during his lifetime;[4] but upon political subjects his mind was clear; and many of his constituents seemed to think of him as the Mohammedans do of madmen, that on such subjects, at least, he was inspired, and they might commit their interests to his charge with safety. It will not be difficult to account, after what has been just stated, for the numerous instances of eccentricity which were made known to the world through every medium, and were used as materials for every sort of attack upon his principles and person.

On the 27th of February, 1808, Mr. Randolph united with his friend Joseph Clay, and fifteen other members of congress, in a protest against the nomination of Mr. Madison for the presidency. This proceeding, which may be considered as a declaration of war upon the administration which was to follow the nomination, gave an earnest of what his course would be; and he was true to the declaration. His speech on the 10th of December, 1811, was directed against the raising of an addition to the army, and against the war against Great Britain, which he saw approaching; and was strongly marked by the Anglo-mania which seems afterwards to have attended him to his last hour. He followed up his speech of the 10th of December, 1811, by moving a resolution, "that the president of the United States be authorized to employ the regular army of the United States when not engaged in actual service, and when in his judgment the public interest will not be thereby injured, in the construction of roads, canals, or other works of public utility." This resolution he supported in a few but very pungent remarks, which, however, brought to his aid but fourteen votes; the resolution, on the question being taken on its passage, being negatived by one hundred and two members voting against, and fifteen for it.

To the declaration of war itself he opposed all possible resistance. On the 29th of May, 1812, he offered a resolution, "That under existing circumstances it is inexpedient to resort to war against Great Britain." The remarks with which Mr. Randolph prefaced the introduction of this resolution led to an angry debate, principally upon the various questions of order which arose out of the subject matter of the remarks, produced difficulty between him and the speaker, Mr. Clay, whose decision against him on the points of order was sustained by the house. The prefatory remarks to which we have alluded, involved the then existing state of the public relations of the United States with France and Great Britain, exhibiting a strong leaning against the former, and which, after he had spoken about an hour and a half, were decided to be out of order, because a member was bound to submit his motion to the house previously to debating so much at large. Mr. RANDOLPH chose to consider the decision as al). "invention for stifling debate;" and he addressed, on the 30th of May 1812, an appeal to his constituents, the freeholders of Charlotte, Prince Edward, Buckingham, and Cumberland, which we give as affording the best specimen of his peculiar views and mode of reasoning, at the period of its publication.

To the Freeholders of Charlotte, Prince Edward, Buckingham, and Cumberland. FELLOW CITIZENS. -I dedicate to you the following fragment. That it appears in its present mutilated shape, is to be ascribed to the successful usurpation which has reduced the freedom of speech, in one branch of the American congress, to an empty name. It is now established for the first time, and in the person of your representative, that the house may, and will refuse to hear a member in his place, or even to receive a motion from him upon the most momentous subject that can be presented for legislative decision. A similar motion was brought forward by the republican minority in the year 1798,[5]  before these modern inventions for stifling freedom of debate were discovered. It was discussed as a matter of right, until it was abandoned by the mover in consequence of additional information (the correspondence of our envoy at Paris) laid before congress by the president; In the "reign of terror," the father of the sedition law had not the hardihood to proscribe the liberty of speech, much less the right of free debate on the floor of congress. This invasion of the public liberties was reserved for self-styled republicans, who hold your understandings in such contempt, as to flatter themselves that you will overlook their every outrage upon the great first principles of free government, in consideration of their professions of tender regard for the privileges of the people.

It is for you to decide whether they have formed a just estimate of your character, Yon do not require to be told that the violation of the rights of him whom you have deputed to represent you is an invasion of the rights of every man of you, of every individual in society If this abuse be suffered to pass unredressed-and the people alone are competent to apply the remedy-we must bid adieu to a free form of government forever!
Having learned from various sources that a 'declaration of war would be attempted or, Monday next, with closed doors, I deemed it my duty to endeavor, by an exercise of my constitutional functions, to arrest this heaviest of all possible calamities and avert it from our happy country. I accordingly made the effort of which I know give you the result, and of the success of which you will already have been informed before these pages can reach you. I pretend only to give you the substance of my unfinished argument.

The glowing words--the language of the heart-have passed away with the occasion that called them forth. They are no longer under my control. My design is simply to submit to you the views which have induced me to consider a war with England, under existing circumstances, as comporting neither with the INTEREST nor the HONOR of the American people, but as an idolatrous sacrifice of both, on the altar of FRENCH RAPACITY, PERFIDY, AND AMBITION!

France has for years past offered us terms of undefined commercial arrangement, as the price of a war with England, which hitherto we have not wanted firmness and virtue to reject. That price is now to be paid. We are tired of holding out, and following the example of the nations of continental Europe; entangled in the artifices, or awed by the power of the destroyer of mankind, we are prepared to become instrumental to his projects of universal dominion. Before these pages meet your eye, the last republic of the earth will have enlisted under the banners of the tyrant, and become a party to his cause. The blood of the American freemen must flow to cement his power, to aid in stifling the last struggles of afflicted and persecuted man; to deliver up into his hands the patriots of Spain and Portugal, to establish his empire over the ocean and over the land that gave our forefathers birth; to forge our own chains! And yet, my friends, we are told, as we were told in the days of Mr. Adams, " the finger of Heaven points to war." Yes, the finger of Heaven DOES point to war. It points to war, as it points to the mansions of eternal misery and torture; as a flaming beacon warning us of that vortex which we may not approach but with certain destruction. It points to desolated Europe, and warns us of the chastisement of those nations who have offended against the justice and almost beyond the mercy of Heaven. It announces the wrath to come upon those, who, ungrateful for the bounty of Providence, not satisfied with the peace, liberty, security, and plenty at home, fly, as it were, into the face of the Most High, and tempt his forbearance.

To you, in this place, I can speak with freedom, and it becomes me to do so: nor shall I be deterred by the cavils and the sneers of those who hold as "foolishness" all that savors not of worldly wisdom, from expressing fully and freely those sentiments which it has pleased God, in his mercy, to engrave upon my heart. 

These are no ordinary times. The state of the world is unexampled; the war of the present day is not like that of our Revolution, or any which preceded it, at least in modern times. It is a war against the liberty and happiness of mankind. It is a war in which the whole human race are the victims, to gratify the pride and lust of power of a single individual. I beseech you, put it to your own bosoms, how far it becomes you as freemen, as Christians, to give your aid and sanction to this impious and bloody warfare against your brethren of the human family. To such among you, if any such there be, who are insensible to motives not more dignified and manly than they are intrinsically wise, I would make a different appeal. I adjure you by the regard you have for your own security and property, for the liberty and inheritance of your children, by all that you hold dear and sacred, to interpose your constitutional powers to save your country and yourselves from the calamity, the issue of which it is not given to human foresight to divine.

Ask yourselves if you are willing to become the virtual allies of Bonaparte 1 Are you willing for the sake of annexing Canada to the northern states, to submit to that overgrowing system of taxation, which sends the European labourer supper less to bed  to maintain by the sweat of your brow, armies at whose hands you are to receive a future master 1 Suppose Canada ours; is there any one among you who would e:er be, in any respect, the better for it 1 the richer-the freer-the happier-the more secure? And is it for a boon like this, that yon would join in the warfare against the liberties of man in the other hemisphere, and put your own in jeopardy? Or is it for the nominal privilege of a licensed trade with France, that you would abandon your lucrative commerce with Great Britain, Spain, and Portugal, and their Asiatic, African, and American dependencies? In a word, with every region of those vast continents. That commerce which gives vent to your tobacco, grain, flour, cotton, in short, to all your native products, which are denied a market in France!

There are not wanting men so weak as to suppose that their approbation of warlike measures is a proof of personal gallantry, and that opposition to them indicates a want of that spirit which becomes a friend to his country; as if it required more courage and patriotism to join in the acclamation of the day, than steadily to oppose one's self to the mad infatuation to which every people and all governments have, at some time or other, given way. Let the history of Phocion, of Agis, and of the De Witts, answer this question. My friends, do you expect to find those who are now loudest in the clamor for war, foremost in the ranks of battle 1 Or is the honor of this nation indissolubly connected with the political reputation of a few individuals who tell you they have gone too far to recede, and that you must pay, with your ruin, the price of their consistency? My friends, I have discharged my duty towards you; lamely and inadequate I know, but to the best of my poor ability. The destiny of the American people is in their own hands. The net is spread for their destruction. You are enveloped in the toils of French duplicity; and if, which may Heaven in its mercy forbid, you and your posterity are to become hewers of wood and drawers of water, to the modern Pharaoh, it shall not be for the want of my best exertions to rescue you from the cruel and abject bondage. This sin, at least, shall not rest upon my soul. John Randolph of Roanoke. May 30th, 1812.

This appeal drew, on the 17th of June, 1812, from Mr. Clay, then speaker of the house of representatives, an answer addressed to the editor of the National Intelligencer,[6] the insertion of which is not within the views or limits of this sketch, but which, though nearly twenty years have diminished the interest of the occurrence to which it relates, may still be read with pleasure and advantage.

The health of Mr. Randolph was seriously affected in the year 1811; and he seems never to have recovered entirely from the effects of the attack which he then experienced; his life, subsequently, seems to have been " one long disease.", The idea of a restoration from change of air and scene, induced him to visit England in 1822. Of England, Ireland, and Scotland, he possessed, previously to having been there, the most minute and accurate local knowledge, derived, as he himself asserted, from books and conversation aided by a very retentive memory, and he sometimes amused himself not a little at the surprise it created. The attention he attracted upon his first appearance in London was very great, and many characteristic anecdotes of him reached this country. He went again to England in the spring of 1824, with the same hope of improving his health which led to his former voyage, and returned to the United States in the autumn of the same year. Disease, however, had taken such firm hold of him, that his subsequent public life received constant interruptions from its visitations.
In June, 1830, Mr. Randolph was appointed, by president Jackson, minister to Russia upon the recall of Mr. Middleton. He sailed shortly after his appointment, and arrived in London in July, from whence he reached St. Petersburg in September following. His stay in Russia was very short; the severity of the climate was ill adapted to the state of extreme infirmity under which he was suffering, and he returned to London, where, on the 26th of December, 1830, he delivered a speech at the lord mayor's dinner. Many rumors of the extraordinary conduct and behavior of the minister of the United States at the court of St. Petersburg reached this country soon after Mr. Randolph's arrival in Russia, were made public, and were seized upon with that avidity which affords such stringent proof of the predominance in human nature to enjoy whatever renders our neighbor less in general estimation. Mr. John Randolph Clay, the son of his old friend, who accompanied him as secretary of legation, deemed it right to repel the attacks which were made upon the strength of these rumors, by the publication of a letter, dated at St. Petersburg on the 17th of January, 1831, in which he asserted, distinctly, that the statements which had been given to the public on the subject of Mr. Randolph's behavior and conduct, had no foundation in truth. The appointment of Mr. Randolph called forth innumerable attacks upon the president, and upon himself; the most vehement of which were founded upon the allegation that he received the outfit, when he knew he could not discharge the duty of a minister; and an imposing parade of figures was made[7] upon the subject of the cost to the country of his mission. He returned to America in October, 1831, in a state of extreme exhaustion and weakness.

The tariff or "American system," as it has been sometimes termed, met with the most distinct opposition from Mr. Randolph. He seems to have held the doctrine, that the manufacturing interests were never, in any country, satisfied with the extent of the legislative protection granted to them; and he insisted that the tariff system was one which must end in the utter subversion of the rights of the states generally, and that it would be impossible for the slave-holding states to submit long to its oppression. His views are set forth in a letter dated November 22d, 1832, which he addressed to a writer in the Richmond Enquirer under the signature of a "Friend to Truth." On the 20th of May, 1833, Mr. Randolph arrived in Philadelphia, on his way to New York, where he intended to embark for Europe, again to try the effect of a voyage. He was in the last stage of a pulmonary disease; and, after lingering three days, he died at the City Hotel in Third street. Few individuals of modern times have attracted more notice in their own country than John Randolph; but it may be long before his true history and character will be portrayed; before the division of his life into periods shall furnish the materials even for a proper estimate of his views, feelings, and powers. It is conceded that among the orators of his own land, he was a star of the first magnitude, but that his aberrations rendered his lustre worse than useless. He drew an attentive audience together in congress more certainly than any other speaker; his sayings, in which the manner and occasion was often more than the matter, were in every man's mouth, and his fame extended throughout the union. But it has been said, that, while this was the case, he was brilliant, and nothing more; that he wanted sound, efficient sense, and useful knowledge. and was thus deficient in the most essential qualifications for the station he held in the councils of his country; that, like Cassandra, he was listened to, but never heeded; and was a living example that talent without wisdom leads to nothing. That with all the fame acquired by his eloquence, he was without any real influence, and that while assemblages were gathered together whenever he delivered one of his brilliant harangues, no man set the smallest value upon his opinion. It has been peremptorily denied that he was a statesman; though his career has exhibited him always in the front rank of whatever party he chose to ally himself to, his efforts have been deemed as injurious to his political friends as to their adversaries; and that his whole life was an exhibition of the futility of a mere man of genius, whose career was signalized by words, but left no deeds or great public acts to perpetuate his memory. Let us hope, however, that one day some one from among those who knew him best, may give us the truth in regard to one of the most remarkable of men, whose race was run, and whose voice was loudest in the council of the nation during some of the most difficult periods of existence; it seems almost impossible that such great and general interest and curiosity should have been excited by a mere talker, and that after a long and active life devoted almost exclusively to public affairs, he should have been gathered to his fathers having achieved nothing.

Source: Longacre, James B. & James Herring, National Portrait Gallery of Distinguished Americans.  Philadelphia: American Academy of Fine Arts, 1834-1839


RANDOLPH, Peter, c. 1825-1897, African American, former slave, clergyman, author, anti-slavery activist.

(Gates, Henry Louis, Jr., & Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, eds. African American National Biography. Oxford University Press, 2013, Volume 9, p. 331)


RANDOLPH, Thomas Jefferson, 1792-1875, anti-slavery advocate, Virginia, grandson of President Thomas Jefferson.  Co-founded Manumission Society of Tennessee in 1815 with Charles Osborne.  In 1832 Randolph made a memorable speech in the Assembly favoring the gradual emancipation of slaves. This was published that year as a pamphlet.

(Rodriguez, Junius P., Slavery in the United States: A Social, Political, and Historical Encyclopedia, ABC-CLIO, 2007, pp. 41, 496; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, pp. 173-174; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 8, Pt. 1, pp. 369-370). 

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 8, Pt. 1, pp. 369-370:

RANDOLF THOMAS JEFFERSON (September 11, 1792-October 7, 1875), author and financier, was the eldest son of Thomas Mann Randolph [q.v.] and Martha (Jefferson) Randolph. He was born at "Monticello" and became the favorite grandson of Thomas Jefferson. His early education was acquired locally, but at the age of fifteen he was sent to Philadelphia to pursue studies in botany, natural history, and anatomy. Jefferson took a keen interest in his plans and advised him to cultivate, above all things, good humor and good manners, and to abstain from arguments (A. A. Lipscomb, and A. E. Bergh, ed., The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, 1904, XI, 242-43; XII, 196-202). There can be no question but that he followed this advice and added careful industry to his list of virtues. So good a disciple did he become that in 1814 Jefferson, whose financial affairs were somewhat tangled, began turning over the management of his estate to his grandson. By 1816 young Randolph had assumed the whole financial burden and from that time forward carried it upon his shoulders (H. S. Randall, The Life of Thomas Jefferson, 1858, III, pp. 334, 433, 531). While most of his time was devoted to these private matters, he was developing other qualities, as is indicated by the fact that he made the welcoming address when Lafayette visited Charlottesville in 1824 (A. C. Gordon, William Fitzhugh Gordon, 1909, p. 142).

When Jefferson died in 1826, Randolph became the chief executor of his estate. He sold "Monticello" and the library to liquidate the indebtedness, but the assets were not equal to the liabilities, and he finally paid the balance with $40,000 from his own funds. Meanwhile, after considering removal to Louisiana, he with his mother and sisters quitted "Monticello" and took up their abode at "Edgehill," the old Randolph estate nearby (Virginia R. Trist to Ellen Coolidge, March 23, 1827, Jefferson Manuscripts, University of Virginia). Jane Nicholas, daughter of Governor Wilson Cary Nicholas [q.v.], became his wife (1815) and the large family lived here for the remainder of their lives. On taking up his permanent residence at "Edgehill" in 1828, Randolph moved the old frame house which had been built by his father, and erected the present brick structure on the original site. He was a good farmer and a careful manager, and we have his mother's testimony that they all lived comfortably and happily together (Martha J. Randolph to Ellen Coolidge, June 20, 1834, Jefferson Manuscripts).

In 1829 Randolph published his Memoir, Correspondence, and Miscellanies from the papers of Thomas Jefferson in four volumes, the first published collection of his grandfather's writings, and during the same year became a member of the Board of Visitors of the University of Virginia (Minutes of the Board, University of Virginia, II, 1). In this capacity he served for thirty-one years, and for seven years was rector of the University. In 1831 he was elected to the House of Delegates and served in that body for several years. He took a special interest in banking and finance, and in 1832 made a memorable speech in the Assembly favoring the gradual emancipation of slaves. This was published that year as a pamphlet. After several years, however, he dropped out of public life and held no further civil post except for membership in the Virginia constitutional convention of 1850-51 and the general convention of 1861. From the days of Andrew Jackson he was a Democrat in politics (H. H. Simms, The Rise of the Whigs in Virginia, 1929, pp. 94,111). During the Civil War he held a colonel's commission in the Confederate army, but was too old to take the field. In 1872 he was chairman of the National Democratic Convention. He died at "Edgehill" in 1875 and lies buried at "Monticello."

Most of his time had been devoted to the affairs of his family, of his community, and of the University of Virginia. He served as a magistrate, a member of the Albemarle Agricultural Society, before which he delivered An Essay (1842), and was president of the Farmers' Bank of Charlottesville (Edgar Woods, Albemarle County, 1901, p. 302). More successful in a financial way than either his famous grandfather or brilliant and erratic father, he apparently lacked their keen interest in matters of the intellect. An aversion to music would seem to mark him as having had that deficiency of imagination so common among practical men (Martha J. Randolph to Ellen Coolidge, November 26, 1826, Jefferson Manuscripts).

[Important facts are given in P. A. Bruce, History of the University of Virginia, III (1921), pp. 22-23, 183-84, 196- 97. There is a brief sketch in L. G. Tyler, Encyclopedia of Virginia Biography (1915), II, 210. See also W. B. Giles, To the Public (1828); A Memorial to Colonel Thomas J. Randolph (1875), from Charlottesville Chronicle, October 22, 1875; Richmond Dispatch, Richmond Enquirer, October 9, 1875.]

T. P. A.

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, pp. 173-174:

RANDOLPH, Thomas Jefferson, born at Monticello, 12 September, 1792; died at Edge Hill, Albemarle county, Virginia, 8 October, 1875, was Thomas Jefferson's oldest grandson, and was described by his grandfather as “the staff of his old age.” When six years of age he used to walk five miles to an “old-field school,” so called, and used to say that he had a watch in his pocket before he had shoes on his feet. He went to school in Philadelphia at fifteen, and afterward in Charlottesville. Virginia. In 1824 he married Jane Hollins, daughter of Governor Wilson Cary Nicholas. After the sale of Jefferson's property, debts to the extent of $40,000 remained, and these were paid by Randolph out of regard for his grandfather's honor. He also supported and educated his brothers and sisters. He had been appointed literary executor of Jefferson, and in 1829 published the “Life and Correspondence of Thomas Jefferson” (4 vols., Boston). Being in the Virginia legislature at the time of the Southampton negro insurrection in 1832, he introduced a bill for emancipation on what was called the “post-natal” plan, originally suggested by Jefferson. This was necessarily postponed to the following session, and then failed through the resentment excited by the harangues of George Thompson, who was regarded as an “abolition emissary” from Great Britain. Randolph was an eminent financier, and secured the passage of a tax-bill through the Virginia legislature in 1842 which placed the state finances on a sound basis. He wrote an able pamphlet, entitled “Sixty Years' Reminiscences of the Currency of the United States,” a copy of which was presented to every member of the legislature. It is still a document of historical interest. In 1851-'2 he was in the convention that revised the Virginia constitution. Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, pp. 173-174.     


RANKIN, Alexander, Claremont County, Ohio, Ohio Anti-Slavery Society, Manager, 1835-36, 1836-38.


RANKIN, John, 1793-1886, New York, clergyman, author, abolitionist leader.  Executive Committee, vice president, 1833-1835, and Treasurer, 1836-1840, of the American Anti-Slavery Society.  Anti-slavery agent.  Kentucky Abolition Society.  Wrote Letters on American Slavery in 1833.  Son-in-law of abolitionist Samuel Doak (1749-1830).  Pastor of the Presbyterian Church in Ripley, Ohio. Had and protected fugitive slaves in his home.  Rankin wrote:  “I consider involuntary slavery a never-failing fountain of the grossest immorality, and one of the deepest sources of human misery; it hangs like the mantle of night over our republic, and shrouds its rising glories.  I sincerely pity the man who tinges his hand in the unhallowed thing that is fraught with the tears, and sweat, and groans, and blood of hapless millions of innocent, unoffending people…  It is considered a crime for him [the slave] to aspire above the rank of the groveling beast.  He must content himself with being bought and sold, and driven in chains from State to State, as a capricious avarice may dictate.” 

(Dumond, Dwight Lowell, Antislavery: The Crusade for Freedom in America, University of Michigan Press, 1961, pp. 90, 91, 95, 134-136, 178, 186, 348; Filler, Louis. The Crusade Against Slavery, 1830-1860. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1960, pp. 17-18, 74, 261; Pease, William H., & Pease, Jane H. The Antislavery Argument. Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1965, pp. 73n, 102; Rodriguez, Junius P., Slavery in the United States: A Social, Political, and Historical Encyclopedia, ABC-CLIO, 2007, p. 42; Sorin, Gerald. The New York Abolitionists: A Case Study of Political Radicalism. Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Corporation, 1971, pp. 87-88, 118-123; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, p. 180; The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography, Volume II. New York: James T. White, 1892, p. 320)

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, p. 180:

RANKIN, John, clergyman, born near Dandridge, Jefferson county, Tennessee, 4 February, 1793; died in Ironton, Ohio, 18 March, 1886. From 1817 till 1821 he was pastor of two Presbyterian churches in Carlisle, Kentucky, and about 1818 founded an anti-slavery society. Removing to Ripley, Ohio, he was pastor of the 1st and 2d Presbyterian churches for forty-four years. He joined the Garrison anti-slavery movement, and was mobbed for his views more than twenty times. About 1824 he addressed letters to his brother in Middlebrook, Virginia, dissuading him from slave-holding, which were published in Ripley, in the “Liberator,” in 1832, and afterward in book-form in Boston and Newburyport, and ran through many editions. He assisted Eliza and her child, the originals of those characters in “Uncle Tom's Cabin,” to escape. He founded the American reform book and tract society of Cincinnati, and was the author of several books, including “The Covenant of Grace” (Pittsburg, 1869). See his life entitled “The Soldier, the Battle, and the Victory,” by Reverend Andrew Ritchie (Cincinnati, 1876). Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, pp. 180.


RANTOUL, Robert, Jr., 1805-1852, statesman, reformer, lawyer, writer, publisher, industrialist, U.S. Congressman.  Democratic and Free Soil Member of the U.S. House of Representatives.  Served one term, December 1851-1852.  Strong opponent of slavery and the Fugitive Slave laws.  Opposed extension of slavery into the new territories.  Served as defense counsel for escaped slave Thomas Simms in Massachusetts State Court. 

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, pp. 182-183; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 8, Pt. 1, p. 381; Biographical Dictionary of the U.S. Congress 1774-1927 (1928); Congressional Globe; Memoirs, ante; United States Magazine, and Democratic Review, October 1850; R. S. Rantoul, Personal Recollections (1916); North American Review, January 1854; Journal of the Executive Proceedings of the Senate … 1841 1845 (1887), Ibid .... 1845  ... 1848 (1887); C. L. Woodbury, "Some Personal Recollections of Robert Rantoul," Essex Institute Historical Coll., volume XXXIV (1898)

Biography from Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography:

RANTOUL, Robert, statesman, born in Beverly, Massachusetts, 13 August, 1805; died in Washington, D. C., 7 August, 1852, was graduated at Harvard in 1826, studied law, was admitted to the bar in 1829, and began practice in Salem, but transferred his practice in 1830 to South Reading, Massachusetts. In 1832 he moved to Gloucester. He was elected to the legislature in 1834, serving four years, and assuming at once a position as a leader of the Jacksonian Democracy, in which interest he established at Gloucester a weekly journal. In the legislature he formed a friendship with John G. Whittier, who wrote a poem in his memory. He sat upon the first commission to revise the laws of Massachusetts, and was an active member of the judiciary committee. He interested himself in the establishment of lyceums. In 1836-'8 he represented the state in the first board of directors of the Western Railroad, and in 1837 became a member of the Massachusetts board of education. In 1839 he established himself in Boston, and in 1840 he appeared in defence of the Journeymen bootmakers' organization, indicted for a conspiracy to raise wages, and procured their discharge on the ground that a combination of individuals to effect, by means not unlawful, that which each might legally do, was not a criminal conspiracy. He defended in Rhode Island two persons indicted for complicity in the Dorr Rebellion of 1842, Daniel Webster being the opposing counsel. He was appointed U. S. District attorney for Massachusetts in 1845, and held that office till 1849, when he resigned. He delivered in April, 1850, at Concord the address in commemoration of the outbreak of the Revolution. In 1850 he was the organizer and a corporator of the Illinois Central Railroad. Daniel Webster having withdrawn from the senate in 1850, on being appointed Secretary of State, and having been succeeded by Robert C. Winthrop, Mr. Rantoul was elected, serving nine days. He was chosen as an opponent of the extension of slavery by a coalition of Democrats and Free-Soilers to the National House of Representatives, and served from 1 December, 1851, till his death. In 1852 he was refused a seat in the National Democratic Convention on the ground that he and his constituents were disfranchised by their attitude toward slavery. He was an advocate of various reforms, and delivered lectures and speeches on the subject of educational advancement, several of which were published, and while a member of the Massachusetts legislature prepared a report in favor of the abolition of the death-penalty that was long quoted by the opponents of capital punishment. He took a prominent part in the agitation against the Fugitive-Slave Law. As counsel in 1851 for Thomas Simms, the first escaped slave delivered up by Massachusetts, he took the ground that slavery was a state institution, and that the general government had no power to return fugitives from justice, or runaway apprentices or slaves, but that such extradition was a matter for arrangement between the states. He lent his voice and pen to the movement against the use of stimulants, but protested against prohibitory legislation as an invasion of private rights. After leaving the legislature, where the variety of his learning, the power of his eloquence, and his ardent convictions against the protection of native industry and other enlargements of the sphere of government, and in favor of educational and moral reforms had attracted attention, he became a favorite lecturer and political speaker throughout New England, New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio. He edited a “Workingmen's Library,” that was issued by the lyceums and two series of a “Common School Library” that was published under the sanction of the Massachusetts board of education. See his “Memoirs, Speeches, and Writings,” edited by Luther Hamilton (Boston, 1854). Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, pp. 182-183.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 8, Pt. 1, p. 381:

RANTOUL, ROBERT (August 13, 1805-August 7, 1852), reformer, was born in Beverly, Massachusetts, and in his brief life did much to further the political and moral convictions of his parents, Joanna (Lovett) and Robert Rantoul, 1778-1858 [q.v.]. He was graduated from Phillips Academy at Andover in 1822 and from Harvard College in 1826. Members of the class at Harvard remembered him for his facility and rapidity of mental action, for his frankness and independence, and for his modest, scholarly tastes. To the practice of law, which he began in Salem in 1829, he brought erudition, skill in debate; and, above all, moral conviction. On August 3, 1831, he married Jane Elizabeth Woodbury. They had two children. After 1838 he practised in Boston, but he never identified himself with the wealth, power, and society of that city. Without directing the policy of the Democratic party in Massachusetts, he played an important part in it. Jackson's bank veto, the removal of the deposits, the independent treasury, and free trade found in him a vigorous and intelligent champion. He was given a recess appointment as collector of the customs for Boston in 1843, was rejected by the Senate in 1844, but on February 3, 1846, was confirmed in another recess appointment, as di strict attorney for Massachusetts.

He began his humanitarian struggles when, as a member of the judiciary committee of the state legislature, 1835-39, he advocated in a comprehensive and widely cited report the abolition of the death penalty on the grounds of expediency and humanitarianism (Memoirs, Speeches, and Writings of Robert Rantoul, Jr., ed. by Luther Hamilton, 1854, pp. 425-515-). After a notable legal contest, the Massachusetts supreme court upheld in 1842 his reasoning in the defense of the journeymen boot-makers, who had been charged with unlawfully conspiring to compel their employers to recognize collective bargaining (Commonwealth vs. Hunt and Others, 45 Massachusetts Reports, 137). That same year he also defended some of the Rhode Islanders indicted for revolutionary attempts in connection with the Dorr rebellion. A liberal Unitarian, he was a thorough-going advocate of religious tolerance and spoke in the legislature in support of a bill for the indemnification of the Ursuline convent in Charlestown, after it had been destroyed by a mob. He was also one of-the earliest advocates of the lyceum and tax-supported public schools. From 1837, when the Massachusetts state board of education was established, until 1842 he was one of its most effective members. By speeches and articles (for example see North American Review, October 1838, pp, 273- 318) he did much to popularize this cause, which he thought would elevate the people and insure them against unjust exploitation by aristocracy and wealth. Against the will of party leadership supported the fifteen-gallon liquor law and advocated the furtherance of temperance by education and moral suasion. He also favored the punishment of the retailer who sold liquor to persons known to make an improper use of it. In lectures and speeches, in newspaper articles, and on the floor of the legislature this reformer attacked special privileges for corporations. He insisted on the necessity of careful inquiries into charters and specific limitations on the powers they granted to their incorporators. Indeed, he never tired, during his entire career in the legislature, of denouncing corporations for stimulating over-speculation and the creation of fictitious wealth. His influence was largely responsible for defeating, in 1836, the petition of Boston bankers and merchants for the chartering of a ten -million-dollar bank. He also attacked the claims of Harvard College to an exclusive control of transportation over the Charles River bridge and insisted on the rights of the people to build and use freely their own bridges and highways.

He became interested, about 1845, in business enterprises in the Mississippi Valley. Although his project for a timber and mining corporation in Minnesota involved him in financial ruin (Personal Recollections, post, pp. 25-26) he successfully carried through the Illinois legislature a liberal charter, which he himself had drawn up, for the Illinois Central Railroad. If he was inconsistent in his attitude towards corporations, it was partly due to his enthusiastic belief that the welfare of the different sections of the country depended on the maximum free interchange of commerce, which would be accelerated by liberal favors to railroads (Letter to Robert Schuyler ... on the value of the Public Lands of Illinois, 1851).

Although his political career was sometimes hindered by his espousal of unpopular causes, it was his opposition to the extension of slavery that led to his election to the Senate in 1851 to fill Webster's unexpired term. In 1851 the coalition between the Free-Soilers and Democrats sent him to the federal House of Representatives. For his political independence and especially for his opposition, on constitutional grounds, to the Fugitive-slave Law he was unseated from the National Democratic Convention in 1852. His early death was a great loss to the anti-slavery Democrats and to the humanitarian causes in which he had interested himself. He achieved some notable victories for human rights and endeavored, without avail, to check the social irresponsibility of corporate wealth, the character and evils of which he only partly understood.

[Memoirs, ante; United States Magazine, and Democratic Review, October 1850; R. S. Rantoul, Personal Recollections (1916); North American Review, January 1854; Journal of the Executive Proceedings of the Senate … 1841 1845 (1887), Ibid .... 1845  ... 1848 (1887); C. L. Woodbury, "Some Personal Recollections of Robert Rantoul," Essex Institute Historical Coll., volume XXXIV (1898); G. S. Boutwell, Reminiscences (1902), volume I; Charles Sumner: his Complete Works (1900), volume III, ed. by G. F. Hoar; "Rantoul," The Complete Poetical Works of J. G. Whittier (1900), p. 188; Journal of Ralph Waldo Emerson, volume VIII (1912), p. 111, ed. by E.W. Emerson and W. E. Forbes; A. B. Darling, Political Changes in Massachusetts (1925); a portrait by Joseph Ames in state house at Boston; Biographical Dictionary of the U.S. Congress 1774-1927 (1928); Congressional Globe].

M. E. C.


RAPP, Wilhelm (July 14, 1828-March 1, 1907), German revolutionist, journalist. Rapp was in support of the carrying the fight against slavery and Know-Nothingism into the pro slavery south, and he waged his battle with vigor and characteristic courage.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 8, Pt. 1, pp. 391-392:

RAPP, WILHELM (July 14, 1828-March 1, 1907), German revolutionist, journalist, was born in Leonberg, Wurttemberg, Germany, the son of a Protestant minister, Georg Rapp, and his wife, Augusta Rapp. While a student at the University of Tubingen, he became an ardent supporter of the revolutionary movement of 1848, and was sent by the "Demokratischer Verein" of Tubingen as their delegate to the convention at Reutlingen in May 1849. There he advocated the union of the revolutionists of Wurttemberg and Baden in the cause of a politically free and united German nation. Joining the Tubingen volunteers, he took part in the Baden insurrection, and after the collapse sought refuge in Switzerland. At Ilanz in the Canton of Graubünden he taught in a private school, but while on a secret visit to his home in the Swabian highlands in January 1851 he was taken captive and transported to the prison of Hohenasperg, where he awaited trial for over a year. He was acquitted of the charge of high treason at Ludwigsburg and was set at liberty, but his refusal to recant deprived him of any chance of a career in his native land. He emigrated to the United States in 1852 and first attempted to support himself in Philadelphia at various odd jobs. In the following year he received an offer from the Turners, convening at Cleveland, Ohio, to edit their journal. As editor of the Turner-Zeitung, in Cincinnati from 1855 to 1856, and at the same time as president of the Turnerbund, the organized union of German-American athletic clubs in the North and West, he cast his political influence with the newly founded Republican party. He traveled extensively in the West and East and became widely known as a political speaker.

In 1857 he accepted the editorship of the German daily newspaper, Der Wecker, at that time the only newspaper in Baltimore supporting the Republican party. The Wecker had been founded a few years before by the Baden refugee Carl Heinrich Schnauffer [q.v.]. Rapp was attracted by the opportunity of carrying the fight against slavery and Know-Nothingism into the danger zone, and he waged his war with native vigor and characteristic courage. In the turbulent month of April 1861, a Baltimore mob invaded the office of the Wecker and drove the editor out of that city. He returned to his newspaper before the occupation of Baltimore by General Butler, but soon accepted an invitation to join the editorial staff of the Illinois Staats-Zeitung in Chicago, where he became one of the most effective supporters of the government and Union among the large German population of the Northwest. After the war he returned to Baltimore as editor and part owner of the Wecker from 1866 to 1872. He was married in that city in 1869 to Gesine Budelmann. The lure of a larger field of labor sent him again to Chicago, as editor and part owner of the Illinois Staats-Zeitung, on the invitation of the principal owner, A. C. Hesing, and his brilliant editor-in-chief, Hermann Raster. When Raster died in 1891, Rapp assumed sole charge and for seventeen years led the German press of Chicago through local and national issues and events. When he died "in the saddle," as he wished, having absented himself from his office only a few days before, he could well claim to be the Nestor among journalists of the German language press in the United States.

A number of his best speeches are contained in his Erinnerungen eines Deutsch-Amerikaners, which he published in 1890. His newspaper articles were written in plain and forceful language, and had great popular appeal. His style and personality were as one, sincere, virile, and successful of polish. His writing was not confined to editorials on political questions or topics of the day. He was a conscientious book reviewer and a discriminating critic on literary and scholarly subjects. In his youth it had been his ambition to follow in the footsteps of the -great Swabian poets, especially Schiller, Uhland, and Justinus Kerner, and while a student at Tubingen he had sent to the revered, aged poet, Kerner, a volume of his first lyrics. His youthful aspirations, however, were forgotten in his life-long daily struggle for united action for freedom and humanity both in his native and his adopted country.

[Who's Who in America, 1906--07; The Book of Chicagoans (1905); W. Rapp, Erinnerungen eines Deutsch-Amerikaners an das alte Vaterland (1890); W. Lang, biog. sketch in Biography Jahrbuch und Deutscher Nekrolog, 1907 (1909); E. Mannhardt, in Deutsch Amerikanische Geschichtsblatter, April 1907; W. Vocke, "Erinnerungen an Wilhelm Rapp," Die Glocke, May 1907; Illinois Staats-Zeitung, April 21, 1898; Chicago Daily Tribune, March 2, 1907.]

A. B. F.


RAUM, Green Berry, (December 3, 1829-December 18, 1909), soldier, politician. In 1856 he moved with his family to Kansas, and affiliated himself with the Free-state Party opposing slavery in the territory.

(Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, p. 186; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 8, Pt. 1, pp. 391-392; Raum's History of Illinois Republicanism (1900); Who's Who in America, 1908-09; F. C. Pierce; Field Genealogy (1901), volume II; Biographical Directory of the American Congress, 1774-1927 (1928)

Biography from Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography:

RAUM, Green Berry, commissioner of internal revenue, born in Golconda, Pope County, Illinois, 3 December, 1829. He received a common-school education, studied law, and was admitted to the bar in 1853. In 1856 he moved with his family to Kansas, and at once affiliated with the Free-state Party. Becoming obnoxious to the pro-slavery faction, he returned the following year to Illinois and settled at Harris. At the opening of the Civil War he made his first speech as a “war.” Democrat while he was attending court at Metropolis, Illinois. Subsequently he entered the army as major of the 56 Illinois Regiment, and was promoted lieutenant-colonel, colonel, and brevet brigadier-general. He was made brigadier-general of volunteers on 15 February, 1865, which commission he resigned on 6 May. He served under General William S. Rosecrans in the Mississippi Campaign of 1862. At the battle of Corinth he ordered and led the charge that broke the Confederate left and captured a battery. He was with General Grant at Vicksburg, and was wounded at the battle of Missionary Ridge in November, 1863. During the Atlanta Campaign he held the line of communication from Dalton to Acworth and from Kingston to Rome, Georgia. In October, 1864, he re-enforced Resaca, Georgia, and held it against General John B. Hood. In 1866 he obtained a charter for the Cairo and Vincennes Railroad Company, aided in securing its construction, and became its first president. He was then elected to Congress, and served from 4 March, 1867, till 3 March, 1869. In 1876 he was president of the Illinois Republican Convention, and in the same year he was a delegate to the National Convention of that party in Cincinnati. He was appointed commissioner of internal revenue, 2 August, 1876, and retained the office till 31 May, 1883. During this period he collected $850,000,000 and disburse $30,000,000 without loss. He wrote “Reports” of his bureau for seven successive years. He is also the author of “The Existing Conflict between Republican Government and Southern Oligarchy.” (Washington, 1884). He is at present (1888) practising law in Washington, D.C. Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, p. 186.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 8, Pt. 1, pp. 391-392:

RAUM, GREEN BERRY (December 3, 1829-December 18, 1909), soldier, politician, was born at Golconda, Illinois, the son of John and Juliet Cogswell (Field) Raum, and a descendant of Konradt Rahm, an Alsatian who emigrated to Pennsylvania in 1742. John Raum, who had served as an officer in the War of 1812, went to Illinois in 1823, was a brigade major in the Black Hawk War, member of the state Senate, and a clerk of the county and circuit courts. As a boy, Green Berry Raum studied art the public schools and with a tutor, worked on a farm and in a store, and made three trips to New Orleans on a flatboat. In 1853 he was admitted to the bar. He went to Kansas in 1856, but returned in two years to settle in. Harrisburg. In 1860 he was alternate delegate to the National Democratic Convention which nominated Douglas and like his leader he supported the administration on the outbreak of war. He was commissioned a major of the 56th Infantry, Illinois Volunteers, which he had helped organize, on September 28, 1861. He was promoted to the rank of lieutenant-colonel on June 26, 1862, colonel on August 31, 1862, and brigadier-general of volunteers on February 24, 1865. He participated in the siege of Corinth, the attack on Vicksburg, and the attack on Missionary Ridge, where he was seriously wounded in the thigh. Returning to the service on February 15, 1864, he took part in the Atlanta campaign, and was responsible for forestalling an attack by General Hood upon Resaca. The 56th Infantry proceeded on Sherman's march to the sea and the capture of Savannah, Georgia. Raum resigned from the service on May 6, 1865.

After the war he practised law in Harrisburg, Illinois. In 1866 he aided in securing the charter for the Cairo and Vincennes Railroad, and served as its first president. In 1867, now an ardent Republican, he was elected to the Fortieth Congress where he spoke chiefly on railroad measures and others concerning the commercial development of southern Illinois. He opposed Johnson's reconstruction program and voted for all the articles of impeachment. He was defeated for Congress in the next election, but remained active in the party. From 1876 to 1883 he was commissioner of internal revenue and did much to suppress illicit distilling and violence to revenue agents, partly by aiding in the establishment of legalized distilleries. From 1883 to 1889 he practised law in Washington, D. C., and was engaged in various business enterprises.

In 1889 he became commissioner of pensions. His efficiency was attested by the. secretary. of the interior, but Raum himself, his son, Green Jr,, chief clerk of a newly created division of appointments and the operations of the bureau, were investigated by two committees from the House of Representatives. The first committee, by a vote of three to two, exonerated Raum of the charge of using his office to further business interests; the second, by a vote of three to two, upheld similar charges, the minority laying the vote to the impending political campaign. After his retirement from office in 1893 he moved to Chicago, where he began to practise law. He wrote the following books, The Existing Conflict between Republican Government and Southern Oligarchy (1884), and the History of Illinois Republicanism (1900). He was married on October 16, 1851, to Maria Field. They had ten children, eight of which survived their father. Raum died in Chicago and was buried at Arlington National Cemetery.

[An autobiographical sketch is to be found in Raum's History of Illinois Republicanism (1900); see also, Who's Who in America, 1908-09; F. C. Pierce; Field Genealogy (1901), volume II; Biographical Directory of the American Congress, 1774-1927 (1928); Report of the Adj. General of the State of Illinois, volume IV (1901); House Document No. 3732, 51 Congress, 1 Session; House Document No. 1868, 52 Congress, 1 Session; Chicago Daily Tribune, December 19, 1909.]
T.C.P.


RAWLE, William, 1759-1836 (?), lawyer, educator, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.  President of the Free Produce Society of Pennsylvania, 1826.  Member of the Pennsylvania Abolition society, founded 1775, 1787.  In 1792 he accepted honorary membership in the Maryland Society for "promoting the abolition of slavery," and from 1818 to the close of his life he was the Society's president. In 1805 he argued against the constitutionality of slavery in the highest court of the state. Appointed U.S. District Attorney in Pennsylvania in 1791. 

(Basker, James G., gen. ed. Early American Abolitionists: A Collection of Anti-Slavery Writings, 1760-1820. New York: Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, 2005, pp. 92, 102, 223, 224-225, 227, 239; Bruns, Roger, ed. Am I Not a Man and a Brother: The Antislavery Crusade of Revolutionary America, 1688-1788. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1977, p. 514; Drake, 1950, p. 118; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, p. 189; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 8, Pt. 1, pp. 400-401). 

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 8, Pt. 1, pp. 400-401:

RAWLE, WILLIAM (April 28, 1759-April 12, 1836), lawyer and philanthropist, was born at Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the son of Francis Rawle II (1729-1761) and Rebecca (Warner) Rawle, and great-grandson of Francis Rawle [q.v.]. William attended the Friends' Academy at Philadelphia until the British evacuation in 1778. As the family were Loyalists, he followed his step-father, Samuel Shoemaker, who had been mayor of the city under the British military government, to New York City and there entered upon the study of law with John Tabor Kempe, a former attorney-general of the province. In 1781 he sailed for England, arriving in August, and enrolled as a student in the Middle Temple. While his primary purpose was to complete his legal studies under the most favorable auspices, it is probable that he intended, should the Revolution succeed, to remain there, and his letters afford a valuable source as to contemporary conditions, especially respecting Loyalists. After the Revolution he decided to return to his native city, though he admitted that the step was "in some degree humiliating." On a passport granted by Franklin on May 8, 1782, he returned to Philadelphia and was there admitted to the bar on September 15, 1783. On November 13 he married Sarah Coates Burge. They had twelve children, several of whom predeceased their parents. In 1786 he became a member of the American Philosophical Society and three years later he was elected to the state legislative assembly. When Benjamin Franklin organized the Society for Political Inquiries, Rawle was invited to join the group. President Washington, then having his official residence in Philadelphia, was one of the members, and probably in this way Rawle came to know him quite well. In 1791 the President appointed him United States attorney for Pennsylvania. He held the office for more than eight years, during which time the Whiskey Insurrections of 1794 and 1799 occurred, and it fell to him to prosecute the authors, for which purpose the court followed the military to the western part of the state.

Rawle's early professional progress was slow and he found time for many other activities, taking, to some extent, the place of the lamented Franklin. In 1792 he accepted honorary membership in the Maryland Society for "promoting the abolition of slavery," and from 1818 to the close of his life he was the Society's president. In 1805 he argued against the constitutionality of slavery in the highest court of the state. He was elected a trustee of the University of Pennsylvania in 1795 and held the position nearly forty years. In 1805 he joined the Philadelphia Society for Promoting Agriculture and in 1819 delivered the annual address before it. Also in 1805 he helped to found the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and addressed it in 1807. The same year he was elected an honorary member of the Linnaean Society and on several occasions he served as a director of the Library Company of Philadelphia. He was a founder in 1820 of the "Society for the Promotion of Legal Knowledge and Forensic Eloquence," which included the Law Academy, and before the latter in 1832 he delivered his "Discourse on the Nature and Study of the Law." In 1822 he became Chancellor of the Society of Associated Members of the Bar, before whom, within the next couple of years, he delivered two notable addresses which were published in 1824. His View of the Constitution of the United States appeared in the following year and was one of the earliest works on that much-discussed theme. Coming from one who had been a Loyalist at least in sympathy it soon attracted wide attention and was used as a textbook in various institutions, including the United States Military Academy. It passed through two editions and, shortly before the author's death, there was a demand for a third which he was unable to meet. Rawle was the first president of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, founded in 1825, and he contributed to it, besides his inaugural discourse, "A Vindication of the Reverend Mr. Heckewelder's History of the Indian Nations" (Memoirs of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, volume I, 1826); a "Biographical Sketch of Sir William Keith" (Ibid.); and "Sketch of the Life of Thomas Mifflin" (Ibid., volume II, pt. 2, 1830), the first commonwealth governor. He also ventured into the field of religion and left several manuscripts upon theological subjects. He retained until the last his connection with the Society of Friends, and he was known as one who lived his religion. Literature also claimed much of his attention. He wrote some poetry and made a partial translation of Plato's Phaedo. In 1830 he was appointed one of three commissioners "to revise, collate, and digest" the statutes of Pennsylvania, a task which consumed four years. His last decade was one of steadily failing health, culminating in death at his home in Philadelphia.

[The best account of Rawle is by his friend and associate on the code commission, Thos. I. Wharton. There are several editions of it, one appearing in the Memoirs of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, volume IV, pt. 1 (1840). D. P. Brown delivered a "Eulogium" on December 31, 1836, which was published in book form in 1837, and the same author contributed a sketch of Rawle to Henry Simpson's Lives of Eminent Philadelphians (1859). Other sources include, E. A. Jones, American Members of the Inns of Court (1924); John Hutchinson, A Catalog of Notable Middle Templars, with Brief Biog. Sketches (1902); T. A. Glenn, Some Colonial Mansions and Those who Lived in Them, 2 series (1900); J. W. Jordan, Colonial Families of Philadelphia (1911), volume I.]

C. S. L.

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, p. 189:

RAWLE, William, lawyer, born in Philadelphia, 28 April, 1759; died there, 12 April, 1836, was educated at the Friends' academy, and was yet a student when the war for independence was begun. His immediate relatives and connections were loyalists. On the evacuation of Philadelphia by the British, young Rawle accompanied his step-father, Samuel Shoemaker, who had been one of the civil magistrates of the city under Howe, to New York, and there began the study of the law. Mr. Rawle completed his studies in the Middle Temple, London, and returned to Philadelphia, where, in 1783, be was admitted to the bar. In 1791 he was appointed by President Washington U. S. district attorney for Pennsylvania. By direction of the president, Mr. Rawle accompanied the U. S. district judge and the military on the western expedition in 1794, and it became his duty to prosecute the offenders after the insurrections in that year and in 1798 had been put down. In 1792 be was offered by the president the office of judge of the U. S. district court for Pennsylvania, but declined it on account of his youth and professional prospects. He was for many years the attorney and counsel for the Bank of the United States. From 1786 till his death he was a member of the American philosophical society, and for twenty years he was one of its councillors. In 1789 he was chosen to the assembly. He was one of the original members of the Society for political inquiries, founded by Franklin, which held its weekly meetings at his house. From 1796 till his death he was a trustee of the University of Pennsylvania. He was the chancellor of the Associated members of the bar of Philadelphia, and when, in 1827, this in situation was merged in the Law association of Philadelphia, he became chancellor of the latter in 1822, and held the office till his death. He was chosen the first vice-president of the Law academy, was one of the founders of the Historical society of Pennsylvania in 1824, and its first president. He was also a member of the Agricultural, Humane, Linnaean, and Abolition societies, and was long president of the latter. For many years he was secretary and afterward a director of the Library company of Philadelphia. In 1830 he was appointed, with Thomas I. Wharton and Joel Jones, to revise the civil code of Pennsylvania, and he was the principal author of the reports of the commission, the results of whose labors are embodied in statutes that still remain in force. Among his published writings are “An Address before the Philadelphia Society for promoting Agriculture” (Philadelphia, 1819); “Two Addresses to the Associated Members of the Bar of Philadelphia” (1824); “A View of the Constitution of the United States” (1825); and “The Study of the Law” (1832). To the literature of the Historical society he contributed a “Vindication of the Reverend Mr. Heckewelder’s ‘History of the Indian Nations,’” a “Biographical Sketch of Sir William Keith,” and “A Sketch of the Life of Thomas Mifflin.” He left various manuscripts on theological matters, among them an “Essay on Angelic Influences,” and an argument on the evidences of Christianity. He was a fine classical scholar. He translated from the Greek the “Phaedo” of Plato, adding thereto a commentary thereon. These “would in themselves alone,” according to David Paul Brown, “suffice to protect his name against oblivion.” He received the degree of LL. D. from Princeton in 1827, and from Dartmouth in 1828. See a sketch of him by Thomas I. Wharton (Philadelphia, 1840). Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, pp. 189.   


RAY, Charles Bennett, 1807-1886, New York, African American, journalist, educator, clergyman, abolitionist leader.  American Missionary Association (AMA).  Newspaper owner and editor, The Colored American.  African American.  Executive Committee, American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society (AFAAS), 1847-1851, 1853-1855, Recording Secretary, 1849-1855.  Member of the anti-slavery Liberty Party.  One of the first African Americans to participate in abolitionist party on a national level.  Member and activist with the Underground Railroad.  Co-founder and director, New York Vigilance Committee, which aided and protected fugitive slaves.  Member of the American Anti-Slavery Society.

(Blue, Frederick J. No Taint of Compromise: Crusaders in Antislavery Politics. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2005, p. 98; Dumond, Dwight Lowell, Antislavery: The Crusade for Freedom in America, University of Michigan Press, 1961, pp. 268, 330, 333; Mabee, Carleton. Black Freedom: The Nonviolent Abolitionists from 1830 Through the Civil War. London: Macmillan, 1970, pp. 58, 59, 62, 95-97, 111, 134, 146, 181, 338, 339, 415n14; Rodriguez, Junius P., Slavery in the United States: A Social, Political, and Historical Encyclopedia, ABC-CLIO, 2007, pp. 48, 166; Sernett, Milton C. North Star Country: Upstate New York and the Crusade for African American Freedom. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2002, pp. 64, 116, 132, 199, 201; Sorin, Gerald. The New York Abolitionists: A Case Study of Political Radicalism. Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Corporation, 1971, pp. 93-94; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 8, Pt. 1, pp. 403-404; Annals of Congress; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 18, p. 201; Gates, Henry Louis, Jr., & Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, eds. African American National Biography. Oxford University Press, 2013, Volume 9, p. 353). 

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 8, Pt. 1, pp. 403-404:

RAY, Charles Bennett (December 25, 1807- August 15, 1886), negro journalist and clergyman, was born at Falmouth, Massachusetts. It was his boast that the blood of the aboriginal Indians, of the English white settlers, and of the first negroes brought to New England mingled in his veins. His parents were Joseph Aspinwall and Annis (Harrington) Ray. His mother was a great reader and very religious, while his father was for twenty-eight years mail carrier between Falmouth and Martha's Vineyard. The eldest of seven children, Ray was educated at the schools and academies of his native town.

His schooling completed, he worked for the next five years on his grandfather's farm at Westerly, Rhode Island. He next learned the shoemaker's trade at Vineyard Haven but in a short while made up his mind to prepare himself for the ministry. He studied at Wesleyan Seminary, Wilbraham, Massachusetts, and later attended Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut. After leaving there in 183i, he went to New York and opened a boot and shoe store. In 1833 he joined the American Anti-Slavery Society and through his connection with the Underground Railroad actively furthered the escape of runaway slaves with means furnished by Lewis Tappan [q.v.] and others. In 1843, after the formation of the committee of vigilance for the protection of those fleeing from bondage, he became its corresponding secretary; in 1850 he was made a member of the executive committee of the New York state vigilance committee.

In the meantime, 1837, he had been ordained as a Methodist minister. The same year he was appointed general agent of the Colored American, a recently established negro weekly and the second one of its kind to be published in the United States. He traveled extensively in the interest of this journal, lectured on its behalf in Eastern and Western cities, and contributed to its columns. In 1838 he became part, and subsequently sole, owner of this paper, and was its only editor from 1839 on. Although he conducted the publication ably and proved himself a terse and vigorous writer, it suspended publication in April 1842 after a checkered career. It served, however, as a prototype for later negro journals. In 1846 he was installed as pastor of the Bethesda Congregational Church, New York, and continued as such until 1868. From 1846 until his death he held the position of city missionary. He was also keenly interested in educational subjects, and in 1847-48 helped organize a number of temperance societies. He was married in 1834 to Henrietta, the daughter of Green Regulus; she died in 1836 as did the infant girl born of this union. In 1840 he married Charlotte Augusta, the daughter of Gustavus J. and Pacella (Cuthbert) Burroughs of Savannah, Georgia; she bore him seven children, of whom only three daughters were living at the time of his death. He was light in color, of small stature and wiry frame, and polished in manners. He had a gentle disposition, was modest in demeanor, and fair-minded and effective as a speaker.

[F. T. Ray, Sketch of the Life of Charles B. Ray (1887); I. G. Penn, The Afro-American Press (1891); Congregational Year Book, 1887.]

H. G. V.


RAYMOND, Asa, New York, abolitionist leader.

(Sorin, Gerald. The New York Abolitionists: A Case Study of Political Radicalism. Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Corporation, 1971)


RAYMOND, Henry Jarvis (January 24, 1820-June 18, 1869), editor, politician, U.S. congressman. His affiliation  was with the Free-soil group in the party led by William H. Seward and Thurlow Weed. Raymond played a considerable part in the Anti-Nebraska movement.  In February 1856 Raymond attended the Pittsburgh meeting that founded the national Republican party, and wrote its statement of principles. Raymond's lieutenant-governorship was an important factor in electing Abraham Lincoln president in 1860. Supported the abolition of slavery after July, 1861. In 1864 Raymond was one of the Republican leaders in the nation; he wrote most of the platform of the Republican convention at Baltimore and played the chief part in Andrew Johnson's nomination for vice-president, as Lincoln's agent. He voted for the Freedman's Bureau Bill and he opposed the Civil Rights Bill, but voted for its substance in the Fourteenth Amendment.

Biographical Dictionary of the U.S. Congress 1774-1927 (1928)

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 8, Pt. 1, pp. 408-412:

RAYMOND, HENRY JARVIS (January 24, 1820-June 18, 1869), editor, politician, was born at Lima, New York, the son of Jarvis and Lavinia (Brockway) Raymond. His father, whose ancestors had migrated in the previous century from Connecticut, where the family had long been settled (Samuel Raymond, Genealogies of the Raymond Families of New England, 1886), was a farmer, comfortably off; the son was educated at the Genesee Wesleyan Seminary and at the University of Vermont, where he graduated with high honors in 1840. Like most of his honors, they cost more than they were worth; he contracted at college the habit of overwork that contributed to his early death. He had taught a country school and had some idea of teaching in the South, but his rea l interest was already journalism. He went to New York, supported himself by free-lance writing, and presently got a regular job from Horace Greeley [q.v.], to whose weekly, the New Yorker, he had contributed while still in college.

Raymond's first employer was to be his bitterest rival throughout most of his life. The temperamental difference between the two is illustrated by their later judgment of the New Yorker: Greeley despised it as weak and ineffective; Raymond admired its "fair examination of both sides"- an exception in the journalism of the time, which was passionately partisan and was to become more so as the slavery question sharpened animosities. In the spring of 1841 Greeley founded the New York Tribune and took Raymond with him as his chief assistant. Here Raymond was thoroughly indoctrinated in the new journalism which the elder James Gordon Bennett [q.v.] had invented and Greeley adapted to the taste of the "moral element"; he became brilliantly successful, and a close friendship which he formed with George Jones, 1811-1891 [q.v. ], then in Greeley's business office, led the two to project a paper of their own.

They had no capital then, however; so Jones moved to Albany and Raymond went over in 1843 to James Watson Webb's Morning Courier and New-York Enquirer. His reputation grew, not only as a newspaperman but also as an orator and Whig politician; in 1849 he was elected to the state assembly and "leaped into prominence in the week he took his seat" (Alexander, post, 11, 159). He was reelected the next year and became speaker in January 1851. His alignment with the Free-soil group in the party led by William H. Seward and Thurlow Weed led to a break with his employer, General Webb, in the spring of that year. He was already managing editor of Harper's New Monthly Magazine, which had appeared in the previous June, but though he held this position till 1856 he never had much time to give to it. In 1848 he and Jones had almost succeeded in buying the Albany Evening Journal from Weed; now they prepared to establish the New York Daily Times (so-called until 1857) with Raymond as editor and Jones in charge of the business office.

The first issue of the Times (September 18, 1851) declared that " we do not mean to write as if we were in a passion,--unless that shall really be the case; and we shall make it a point to get into a passion as rarely as possible." This and similar statements were interpreted as a bid for the support of conservative Whigs, alienated from the Tribune by Greeley's political and social radicalism; but they also reflected Raymond's innate moderation of opinion and expression. In a period when the American press was given to intemperate personal controversy and usually to partisan distortion of the news, he longed for the time when men should be governed by cool reason and judgment instead of prejudice and passion. From this habit of mind sprang what his biographer Maverick calls "his unfortunate tendency to temporize, in all circumstances except those of pressing emergency" (Maverick, post, p. 170), which ultimately ruined him as a politician. But the same quality made his paper, as E. L. Godkin wrote in the Nation after his death (June 24, 1869, p. 490), "nearer the newspaper of the good time coming than any other in existence" in its impartiality of reporting and temperance of discussion.

The Times was immediately successful; it appealed not only to those who disliked violence and personalities, but also to the many who were repelled by the Herald's lack of "principle" and the Tribune's excess of it. Greeley fought the new competitor hard, calling Raymond a "little villain" when he got a state advertising contract that Greeley wanted; but within four years he confessed privately that the Times had more than twice the Tribune’s city circulation. Raymond's moderation, however, debarred him from any such influence as Greeley wielded, especially among the farmers, in an age when prejudice and passion were steadily getting the better of cool reason and judgment.

At the Whig national convention of 1852 Raymond won renown by a spectacular defiance of the Southern oligarchy, but the party's failure in the campaign of that year disgusted him and he wrote to Seward that he meant "to navigate the Da1ies into a position of independent thought and speech" (F. W. Seward, post, II, 196). But he could not bring himself to leave the organization; and  two years later, when the Kansas-Nebraska Bill upset political alignments, he argued that the Free Soilers should bore from within the Whig machine instead of founding a new party. They did this successfully in New York, where Raymond played a considerable part in the Anti-Nebraska movement that imposed its views on the Whig convention. But the paramount state issue that year was prohibition; Greeley had made it and expected the nomination for governor but Weed, who controlled the convention, passed him over in favor of an up-state nonentity. Greeley then begged for second place on the ticket but Weed, arguing that an up-state dry should be balanced by a city wet, gave Raymond the nomination for lieutenant-governor.

The strategy was sound as far as it went, but Weed elected his state ticket at the price of mortal offense to the most powerful editor of the time. "No other name," said Greeley, "could have been ... so bitterly humbling to me" (Weed and Barnes, Life of Thurlow Weed, II, 280); and the consequence was the break with Seward and Weed which ultimately brought Greeley to the Republican National Convention of 1860 ready to support any presidential candidate who might beat Seward. Raymond's lieutenant-governorship was accordingly an important factor in making Abraham Lincoln president; but in itself it was of small value to him or the paper, and it meant the breaking of a promise which Jones had prudently exacted when the Times was founded, that he would no longer seek office. He never had Greeley's ludicrous and pathetic lust for any office, however small; but, less fortunate than Greeley, when he tried for office he usually got it, in the end with disastrous consequences.

The Whig party was breaking up; in February 1856 Raymond attended the Pittsburgh meeting that founded the national Republican party, and wrote its statement of principles. Thereafter the Times was steadily Republican (though never abolitionist till war had begun) and Raymond's activity in the new party was interrupted only in 1859, when he went to Italy to report the Franco-Austrian War. In 1860 he worked hard for Seward at the Chicago convention but gave energetic support to Lincoln in the campaign. When the cotton states began to secede he supported the compromise proposals of the winter; at the same time, in a series of open letters to W. L. Yancey of Alabama (published as Disunion and Slavery, 1860), he attacked secession and subjected the issues of the time to an analysis that is still cogent.

The war once begun, the Times was Lincoln's most steadfast supporter in New York. Raymond could have been a general, but knew he had no military talent; twice drafted, he offered substitutes, but was often at the front as a newspaperman. He was again speaker of the Assembly in 1862 and unsuccessfully tried for the United States senatorship in the following year. The year 1864 saw him one of the Republican leaders in the nation; he wrote most of the platform of the Republican convention at Baltimore and played the chief part in Andrew Johnson's nomination for vice-president, apparently as Lincoln's agent (A. K. McClure, Abraham Lincoln and Men of War-Times, 1892, pp. 425 ff.). His skilful management in the convention earned him the chairmanship of the national committee, but the prospect was not bright. On August 22 he wrote to Lincoln that "the tide is setting strongly against us" on account of military reverses and a conviction that Lincoln would continue the war till slavery was abolished. Never in favor of abolition till July 1861, Raymond had always regarded it as subsidiary to the preservation of the Union; so he now proposed a peace offer "on the sole condition of acknowledging the supremacy of the Constitution,-all other questions to be settled in a convention of the people of all the states" (Nicolay and Hay, post, IX, 218-19). The purpose, unlike that of Greeley's contemporaneous peace efforts, was purely political; Raymond thought the offer would be rejected and Lincoln's position strengthened accordingly. But Lincoln saw that it would not do and talked him out of it. The victories of Sherman and Sheridan reelected Lincoln; and Raymond was elected to the House of Representatives.

"He entered Congress with a prestige rarely if ever equalled by a new member" (Alexander, post, III, p. 137); and his career there was the one great failure of his life. He had been close to Lincoln and was closer still to Johnson; when Congress reconvened in December 1865, with its Radical leaders bitterly hostile to Johnson's reconstruction policy, Raymond became the administration leader in the House. But a man who could see both sides and preferred accommodation to violence had no more chance against Thaddeus Stevens than Kerensky against Lenin. Blaine's comments (Twenty Years of Congress, 1886, II, 139) suggest that Raymond was further handicapped by overconfidence, and by the jealousy of veteran members for so highly advertised a newcomer. At any rate, he completely missed the significance of Stevens' proposal of the joint committee on reconstruction and offered no objection, either in the caucus or in the House; thereby losing "the only real opportunity he ever had of administering a severe blow, if not a defeat," to Stevens (B. B. Kendrick, The Journal of the Joint Committee of Fifteen on Reconstruction, 1914, p. 141). Even the exclusion of the Southern members on December 4 failed to rouse him, and the Times of the following day betrayed a complete lack of realization that Stevens was master of the reconstruction committee. Awakening too late, Raymond spoke in the House on December 21, attacking Stevens' secessionist doctrine as ably as he had once attacked Yancey's, and as ineffectually. When the test came (January 9) on the Voorhees resolution declaring secession an impossibility, only one other Republican (and that a personal friend) stood by Raymond. It may be that the stars in their courses had fought against him, but he had not given them much of a tussle. Thereafter he could not agree even with Johnson; he voted for the Freedman's Bureau Bill and had trouble explaining his support of the President's veto; he opposed the Civil Rights Bill, but voted for its substance in the Fourteenth Amendment. It was this course chiefly that made men call him a "trimmer"; and led Stevens to remark, when Raymond wanted a pair for some division in the House, that he would have no difficulty in pairing with himself.

Beaten in Congress, Johnson tried to organize against the Radicals a Union party of Conservative Republicans and War Democrats. Raymond, when he first heard of the projected National Union Convention, was afraid it would fall into the hands of "former Rebels and Copperheads"; but Weed, Seward, and the President talked him into attending it, and supporting it in the Times. As in 1854, he opposed the formation of a new party and called for support of all congressional candidates committed to the immediate admission of loyal Southerners. Unfortunately, most of the Republican nominations had already been captured by the Radicals, and many of the Democratic nominations by Copperheads.

At the Philadelphia convention (August 1866), which he reluctantly attended, the chairman of the Republican National Committee could not help being the most prominent figure; especially as he wrote the declaration of principles which the convention set before the country. It was a sound piece of constitutional reasoning, but prejudice and passion had got the upper hand. Raymond's program was too much for some, too little for others; it needed all his skill to keep harmony in the convention. "Let us set aside feeling and go to business," he begged a wrangling committee; but the country chose to set aside business and go to feeling. After Johnson's disastrous "swing around the circle" the Radical reaction set in, and Raymond was the first victim.

He was expelled (September 3) from the national committee; and two weeks later, declining renomination for Congress, admitted his "evident and signal failure" in rallying the Unionists (Maverick, post, p. 189). The gleeful Greeley called him a Judas and a Copperhead, and profited by his unpopularity. Raymond had never used the Times as an organ of personal advancement, an abnegation almost unparalleled in his day; but it suffered with him, losing (though only temporarily) thousands of readers to the Tribune. He and Weed still hoped to form a Union bloc in the state; but at the Albany convention of Conservatives and Democrats in September the Tammany delegation outgeneraled them, nominating John T. Hoffman for governor. The Conservatives were left out on a limb; Weed clung to it, supporting Hoffman, but Raymond soon dropped off. The first intimation that he would bolt the Albany ticket provoked the Democratic press to violent attacks, which Greeley reprinted under the heading, "Shocking Cruelty to a Fugitive Slave" (New-York Tribune, September 19, 1866). He bolted it none the less, and presently was complaining that the "President's party" had generally fallen into the hands of Copperheads. The country shared his view, and the fall election put an end to Raymond's dream of a moderate and Unionist Congress. A Times editorial from another hand, about that time, observed that, "Great changes in the fate of nations are never achieved by men of the juste milieu order" (September 16, 1866, p. 4). The reference was to the rise of Bismarck, but the man who wrote it must have had his mind on the fall of Raymond.

Raymond recognized a fait accompli and did little more kicking against the pricks. The Times finally broke with Johnson on financial issues and the campaign of 1868 saw the paper back in the party, but with an independence of spirit that commended it to such young men of the new generation as Henry Adams and John Hay. Raymond began to devote himself to less partisan issues; he commenced the attacks on the "Tweed ring" which his partner Jones later finished so brilliantly, and by his advocacy of tariff reduction, sound money, and civil-service reform set his paper in courses which it followed long after his death. Still young, and cured of his political ambitions, he seemed only on the threshold of greater achievement. His personal affairs, too, were going better; in 1869 he was reunited with his wife, Juliette Weaver of Winooski, Vermont, whom he had married on October 24, 1843, and who had been living in Europe for some years. But he had weakened himself by habitual overwork, and an emotional crisis brought on the cerebral hemorrhage that killed him. Of his seven children, two sons and two daughters survived him.

"Nobody has done more, we doubt if anybody has done as much, for the elevation of the profession," wrote Godkin after his death (Nation, June 24, 1869, p. 490). Raymond's contribution to journalism was the substitution of decency for personal invective and fairness for black-and-white partisanship. He had not Bennett's originality or Greeley's force, but he was a technical newspaperman of the first rank. He was one of the earliest and greatest of the great local reporters, with a prodigious speed and accuracy that became legendary; his eye-witness battle pictures of Solferino and Bull Run are models of clarity and vividness; his editorials were lucid and persuasive, but they usually lacked the smashing force that some of his contemporaries derived from conviction of their own utter rightness and the wickedness of those who held divergent views. He once said that when he wrote a sentence he could not help seeing before he got to the end how only partially true it was. This trait, and lack of a realistic appraisal of public opinion, were his fatal weaknesses as a politician. His misfortune was not only that he was a temperamental non-partisan in an age of bitter partisanship, but that he was a temperamental non-partisan incurably addicted to party politics.

The charm of his urbane, accomplished, and affable personality was felt by every one-except Gideon Welles, who calls Raymond a "whiffler" and "unscrupulous soldier of fortune," and the Times a "profligate and stipendiary sheet" (Diary of Gideon Welles, 1911, volume II, 87, 104, 523). This abuse, echoed by no other memoirs of the period, may be a reflection of Raymond's demand in 1861 for Welles’s removal on the ground of "indolence, indifference, and inadequacy." The obituaries in the New York papers reflect a deep feeling of personal loss among the men who had worked with him and against him. This is noteworthy in Greeley's editorial (Tribune, June 19, 1869). […].


RAYMOND, John Howard (March 7, 1814--August 14, 1878), college president. During the five years he was in Rochester, New York, 1850-55, antislavery was the burning question of the day, and his natural interest in the cause was increased by his friendship with such men as Henry Ward Beecher, William Henry Channing, and Frederick Douglass.

(Life and Letters of John Howard Raymond (1881), ed. by H. R. Lloyd).

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 8, Pt. 1, pp. 412-413:

RAYMOND, JOHN HOWARD (March 7, 1814--August 14, 1878), college president, was born in New York City, the son of Eliakim and Mary (Carrington) Raymond and the descendant of Richard Raymond who emigrated from England to Salem, Massachusetts, before 1634. He was a pupil in the classical school of Gould Brown [q.v.], and, though he left the school at the age of ten, he always spoke of Brown and his then well-known English grammar as the origin of his life-long enthusiasm for the study of language. At the age of fourteen he entered Columbia College, now Columbia University, New York City. Because of his immaturity and self-satisfaction at being ranked at the head of the class, he became indolent and insubordinate and in his junior year was expelled from the college. Admitted to Union College, Schenectady, New York, he was graduated from there in the class of 1832. After his graduation he studied law, first in New York and then in New Haven. A sermon by Leonard Bacon [q.v.] containing one searching question, "Is religion a delusion or is it not?" changed the whole course of his life. Giving up his purpose of becoming a lawyer, he entered the Baptist theological seminary in Madison University, now Colgate University, at Hamilton, New York, where he graduated in 1838 and remained as professor until 1850. On May 12, 1840, he married Cornelia Morse who bore him nine children and survived him twenty-seven years. In 1850 with a group of professors and students known as the Removal party he left Madison University to organize a university in Rochester, New York. At that time Madison was a struggling college with no endowment, but those left behind, indignant at the seeming disloyalty of the others, immediately raised a large amount of money and from one small college came two well-endowed institutions, Colgate and Rochester universities. During the five years he was in Rochester, 1850-55, antislavery was the burning question of the day, and his natural interest in the cause was increased by his friendship with such men as Henry Ward Beecher, William Henry Channing, and Frederick Douglass. In the summer of 1863 he was Beecher's companion in his European lecture tour and made one speech. Beecher afterward described it as a tropical tornado which electrified his lukewarm English audience (letter in Life and Letters, post, p. 179).

In 1855 he became the first president of the Brooklyn Collegiate and Polytechnic Institute, assuming responsibility for the plan of organization and policy of government. Because of his tact and understanding, the Polytechnic was one of the first large schools to rely wholly on a boy's sense of honor, and corporal punishment was not used. In 1861 he was appointed a member of the first board of trustees of Vassar College. When Milo P. Jewett [q.v.] resigned from the presidency in 1864, a year before the opening of the college, Raymond was invited to become his successor. This offer he accepted, though with some hesitation, as he had just resigned from the presidency of the Polytechnic because of lack of health. During the short administration of Jewett buildings had been erected, but on Raymond fell the entire responsibility of internal organization, including the selection of a faculty and making of a curriculum. To him in large measure is due the success of what was then felt to be a very doubtful experiment in the higher education of women. He defended vigorously the cultural aims of college education and was insistent upon high standards. His curriculum was notable for its natural science and modern language as well as for the classics and mathematics. His work continued through the first thirteen years of Vassar, ending with his death at the college. He was a man of strong convictions without a trace of bigotry. Possessing a keen sense of humor, he never lost his dignity. Because of his broad scholarship and culture on the one hand and his genuine love of all that was human on the other, he easily gained the friendship of men and women in all classes of society.

[Life and Letters of John Howard Raymond (1881), ed. by H. R. Lloyd; The Autobiography and Letters of Matthew Vassar (1916), ed. by E. H. Haight; J. M. Taylor and E. H. Haight, Vassar (1915); J. M. Taylor, Before Vassar Opened (1914); The First Half Century of Madison University (1872); Samuel Raymond, Genealogy. of the Raymond Families of New England (1886); date of death and other information from his daughter, Miss Cornelia M. Raymond, Poughkeepsie, New York]

H. N. M.


RAYNER, Mrs., Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society (BFASS), Boston, Massachusetts.

(Yellin, Jean Fagan and John C. Van Horne (Eds). The Abolitionist Sisterhood: Women’s Political Culture in Antebellum America. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994, p. 61)

[1] Letters to Dudley, p. 190. 2

[2] "The least inaccurate sketches of my speeches will be found in the 'Spirit of '76,' but they are extremely imperfect."-Letters to Dudley, p. 116.

[3] Speech of the 10th of December, 1811, in the house of representatives, on the second resolution of the committee of foreign relations, " that an additional force of ten thousand men ought to be raised," &c.

[4] Letters to Dudley, p. 203, August, 1818.

[5] This motion was drawn, it is believed, by Mr. Gallatin, but-moved by Mr. Sprigg, declaring it to be inexpedient at that time to resort to war against the French republic.

[6] Niles' Weekly Register, vol. ii, p. 266. 7

[7] Niles' Weekly Register, September 24th, 1831, p. 69, where the amount is stated at 107,000 dollars.

Sources:
Dictionary of American Biography, Volumes I-X, Edited by Dumas Malone, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1930.

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, Volumes I-VI, Edited by James Grant Wilson & John Fiske, New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1888-1889.