John Randolph: A New Edition with Primary Documents and Introduction by Robert Mccolley

Henry Adams

Dec 1995 · M.E. Sharpe

About this ebook

America's foremost political eccentric of the early national era, the Virginian John Randolph of Roanoke (1773-1833), referred to John and John Quincy Adams as the American House of Stuart and opposed virtually all their political deeds and principles. Henry Adams, perhaps the most eccentric as well as brilliant American historian of the nineteenth century, avenged his grandfather and great-grandfather with this incisively negative biography. Its relative brevity makes it an ideal introduction to Henry Adams's thinking and writing about American history. Furthermore, however unbalanced and therefore unfair to its subject, Adams's Randolph leaves a compelling picture of a states' rights idealist who became, before he died, the prophet of the southern defense of slavery.

As greatly and deeply as Henry Adams disliked John Randolph of Roanoke, he had, almost in spite of himself, a deep bond of sympathy. Both were morally and culturally cut off from the booster-dominated, progressive, materialistic mainstream of United States culture. American aristocrats by birth, education, and wealth, both were insiders turned outsiders.
--From the Introduction Professor Robert McColley introduces the volume and includes several of Randolph's speeches and letters not in the original edition.

About the author

Henry Adams was born in Boston, Massachusetts on February 16, 1838, the son of American diplomat Charles Francis Adams and grandson of President John Quincy Adams. Educated at Harvard University, he worked in Washington, D.C., as his father's secretary before embarking on a career in journalism and later in teaching. A prominent American historian, he wrote several important historical works. His works include The Education of Henry Adams, Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres, Esther: A Novel, and Democracy: An American Novel. He died on March 27, 1918 at the age of 80.