JOHN RANDOLPH, OF ROANOKE, was born at Cawsons in Chesterfield County, Virginia, June 2nd, 1773. He was descended from an ancient family, and boasted that the Indian princess, Pocahontas, was one of his ancestors. Educated at Princeton and Columbia Colleges, he embraced the profession of the law, and in 1799 was elected to Congress, where he became distinguished for his eloquence, wit, sarcasm, invective, and eccentricity, and for thirty years was more talked and written of than any American politician. Tall and meagre, peruliar in dress and manners, he was described as a strange mixture of the aristocrat and the Jacobin. He was the democratic leader of the House of Representatives, but quarreled with Jefferson, and opposed the war of 1812, and the Missouri Compromise, and stigmatized the Northern members who voted for it as "Dough-faces." In 1822 and 1824, he visited England, where his eccentricities attracted much notice. In 1825, he was chosen United States senator from Virginia, and in 1830 appointed Minister to Russia. By his will, hs manumitted 318 slaves, and provided for their maintenance in a free state. He died in Philadelphia, June 24, 1833.

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