THE AMAZING MR. RANDOLPH All Flash and No Fire

I agree with William Plummer’s 1803 assessment of John Randolph of Roanoke, Virginia; “I admire his ingenuity and address, but I dislike his politics.” Randolph represents the tap root of two great branches in American conservative politics, patrician conservatives and gay conservatives; because if John Randolph wasn’t gay, then neither was Roy Cohen.

Some biographies of Randolph insist that he suffered from a condition called “Klinefelter’s syndrome”, which only occurs in only 1 out of every 500 males, or 0.02% of the general population, while homosexuality is a genetic variation that occurs in (conservatively speaking) about 5 – 6% of the population, making it far more likely that Randolph was gay. And in any case, both conditions are genetic variations, having nothing to do with sin, intelligence, choice or morality. So, from a purely practical standpoint, it is just simpler to concede that Randolph was gay and move on.

Randolph was a slave-owning elegantly dressed ‘fashionista’, described by one author as “The most notorious American political curmudgeon of his time”. That may be putting it kindly. John Randolph specialized in what the Romans called the “Argumentum Ad Hominem” or the ‘argument against the man’. As a verbal tool it allows the speaker to change the subject, to argue the man not the issue, and thus to tar a political position with the alleged sins of one of its advocates, thus forcing advocates to defend themselves, not what they stand for. And if that method of attack sounds familiar, it is confirmation of the connection between Randolph’s ideological bloodline and its present day Republican practitioners.

John Quincy Adams borrowed from Ovid to describe John Randolph; “His face is ashen, gaunt his whole body, His breath is green with gall; His tongue drips poison.” It is a fair description of the “…abusive eloquence which he possessed in such abundance” (ibid)..

It is a shame that both of those distinguished blood lines are now being excised from the Republican Party in preference to the Donald Trump template. The idea that a dumb, uneducated heterosexual conservative is preferable to a smart homosexual conservative is akin to abandoning a talking dog because you don’t like the way he pronounces “Béarnaise sauce”.  The Trumpanisters remind me of the words of British Prime Minster Lloyd George who said of one opponent; “He has a retail mind in a wholesale business.” Or, to paraphrase John Selden, ignorance of the law may be no excuse, but ignorance in general is inexcusable.

Randolph’s first biographer, Lemuel Sawyer, described him this way; “As an orator he was more splendid than solid; as a politician he (lacked) the profound views of a great statesman...he was too intolerant." But John Randolph admitted to enjoying “That most delicious of all privileges – spending other people’s money.”  Its hard to condemn a man who admits his own sins so gleefully.

Randolph was elected to congress at 26 years of age in 1799, and served off and on in both houses (as well as in the Virginia State legislature) until his death. He never married, and admitted “I am an aristocrat. I love liberty, I hate equality." And in describing his chosen career Randolph observed that “If electioneering were allowed in heaven, it would corrupt the angels.”

As if to prove his point, in 1824 Randolph turned his cutting tongue loose in the defining speech of his life, on the floor of the U.S. Senate. It was described by one author as “rambling, sometimes incoherent, funny, insulting and devastating….filled with literary and classical allusions, among other odds and ends, and delivered with a delightful insouciance.”

Randolph attacked the Federalist position on the central issues of the day and said any compromise with Speaker of the House, Henry Clay of Kentucky, or with Secretary of State John Quincy Adams, would be anathema, as “…their friendship is a deadly distinction, their touch pollution”. And as to the very idea of a strong central Federal government, Randolph called it “That spirit which considers the many, as made only for a few, which sees in government nothing but a job, which is never so true to itself as when false to the nation.”

I’ve read that speech at least ten times and each time it makes less sense to me than it did before. At the time, however, it had a great effect on its audience. I guess you had to be there.

Then Randolph got down to the most troublesome part of his attack. He described Henry Clay as “…so brilliant yet so corrupt, like a rotten mackerel by moonlight, he shines and stinks.” Among southern aristocrats, being called a ‘stinking mackerel’ were fighting words. Henry Clay was willing to overlook the insult until, in 1826, the insult was repeated in print, in the newspaper "United States Telegraph". Clay could no longer pretend Randolph had not said the words, and after a properly stiff exchange of notes, Clay issued Randolph a challenge to what one witness described as the “…the last high-toned duel I ever saw”.

They met at about 4:30 p.m. on 8 April, 1826, just over the Little Falls Bridge from Georgetown, Virginia.  Randolph was resplendent in a bright yellow coat. Clay was coldly determined. The night before Thomas Hart Benton had paid Randolph a visit and pleaded with him not to go through with the duel, saying Clay had a young son and wife who would be left destitute if Clay were killed or seriously injured. Randolph seemed unmoved, but he had replied to Benton, “I shall do nothing to disturb the sleep of that child or the repose of the mother.” But I don’t think anybody told Clay he had nothing to worry about.

The men paced off ten steps apart (about 30 feet), and then as the countdown began Randolph’s gun misfired. The gun was reloaded and the countdown began again; “Ready, aim, fire.” Clay’s shot hit the dirt in front of Randolph, whose shot struck a stump behind Clay. The men then reloaded and the insanity began again. This time Clay got off the first shot, sending a ball through the hem of Randolph’s expensive yellow coat. Randolph held his fire, and then dramatically fired his shot into the air.

Then Randolph strode forward with his hand extended. The opponents shook hands in the center of the “field of honor”, and Randolph dryly said, “You owe me a coat, Mr. Clay.”

I don’t think Clay ever paid for the coat, because when John Randolph died in May of 1833, his will instructed that after his slaves were transported to Ohio and freed, his body was to buried in Virginia and he was to be planted facing west, so he could keep an eye on Kentucky’s Henry Clay. Now that is going a long way for an insult.  Oh, and the slaves were not freed, and Randolph knew they would not be freed. They were not humans, but property, and as such became the property of those who held John Randolph's IOU's. Of which there were a lot.

It could be said of John Randolph that he had opposed most if not all of the famous men and great causes of his time, that politically he gave as good as he got, and that he made the most of the talents that God gave him; not a bad legacy. Except, it must also be said that nothing he supported made the nation stronger, nor helped improve the lives of the the people of his state. A politician who chose the career of a speed bump cannot, in my opinion, be said to have used his talents for the public good.

Why he did not do so might be explained, at least in part, by a letter he wrote in the winter of 1833,  addressed "To the Honorable Waller Holladay, Esquire, of the county of Spotsylvania, of the State of Virginia, of the United States of America, of the Western Hemisphere,of the Globe." And amazingly, it was delivered. "I am sure you will be surprised and pained to hear that I was honored last night by a visit from no less a personage than His Satanic Majesty. His Majesty assured me that my only hope of much longer continuance of my mortal existence depended upon my subsisting entirely upon the milk of your fine Medley mare, which would restore health to my worn out body. Under these melancholy circumstances, I have no choice but to throw myself upon your friendly mercies and I implore you to let me have the mare without delay...that her milk may save the life of your sincere but suffering friend. Randolph of Roanoke"

Mr. Holladay read the letter but did not dispatch the mare. Instead he immediately filed the missive away without answering it, in the hope he said later that "the aberration was but temporary". It was not.  Randolph died in May of 1833. And the letter concerning Mr. Randolph's visit from Satan, was thought to be  proof of his insanity.  Or perhaps the visit was real, a sort of courtesy call, from one sly and merciless liar upon another.  

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PAST AS PROLOGUE -The Bremen School Shooting

I begin our story not where it began, nor, unfortunately, where it ended. Instead we begin just after eleven in the morning, Friday, 20 June, 1913, with 29 year old Heinz Jakob Friedrich Ernst Schmidt 
 bounding up a staircase, carrying a heavy briefcase in his left hand.  In his right hand he carried a new invention - a semi-automatic handgun.

The son of a Protestant pastor, Heinz had begun his life as a teacher until he suffered a "mental breakdown" in May of 1911.  He received 6 months treatment in a hospital for "persecution mania".  He was convinced of the existence of a Jesuit conspiracy seeking to dominate the world. In December of 1911 his doctors declared him "cured" and released him.  He then moved to the growing town of Bremen (above), and sought to resume his career, using forged documents to hide his medical records.  

But the forgeries were discovered and few would hire the "odd and shy man".  He worked at several jobs over the next year, never holding any for very long. Over March and April of 1913 he bought an arsenal of 10 hand guns, so many that the dealer notified the police.  Yesterday, Heinz had received a telegram informing him that his father had died after a long illness. This morning he had decided to go to the St. Mary's Catholic school (above). 

The first person Heinz met at the top of the stairs was Maria Pohl.  She had never seen him before but he looked agitated, so she started to ask what was wrong.  Without a word, Heinz pushed a Browning semi-automatic pistol into Maria's face. Instinctively Maria ducked, and when the gun went off it sent a .9mm lead pellet at 1,150 feet per second a quarter of an inch past her right ear.  Maria continued her ducking movement, pushing open the door of classroom 8a. She locked the door behind her. Frustrated, Heinz pushed on the unlocked door of classroom 8b. He burst in upon 60, five to eight year old girls, waiting in Mrs. Pohl's classroom.  He was the only adult in the room. He opened fire.

In 1884 French chemist Paul Vielle (above)  mixed nitrocellulose with a little ether and some paraffin and produced what he called pourdre blanche – white powder. It would not ignite unless compressed. But when ignited it was three times as powerful as black powder, gave off very little smoke, and left little residue behind to clog a gun's machinery.  Thousands of gunsmiths scrambled to take advantage of Vielle's smokeless powder, in particular a mechanical genius, the son of a gunsmith, living in Ogden, Utah: John Moses Browning.

In Mrs. Poole's classroom, on the mezzanine level of the St. Marien Shule (St. Mary's School) in the Bremen, Germany, the Catholic girls were screaming, diving under tables, and dieing.  One was heard to cry out, “Please, Uncle, don't shoot us.” But Heinz was not listening.  He fired until his gun was empty, then reloaded a new clip, and continued firing.   Two of the girls were shot dead on the spot, Anna Kubica and Elsa Maria Herrmann, both seven years old.  Fifteen other girls were wounded. When his gun jammed,  Heinz pulled from his bag yet another Browning model 1900 semi-automatic pistol. In the momentary lull, the girls rushed out of the classroom, trying to escape down the stairs.

John Moses Browning's Mormon father  had been a talented gunsmith.  And John was a better one, so famous he would eventually be known as “The Father of Automatic Fire.” He would hold, in the end, 128 patents and design 80 separate firearms.  One website contends, “It can be said without exaggeration that Browning’s guns made Winchester. And Colt. And Remington, Savage, and the Belgium firm, Fabrique Nationale (FN). Not to mention his own namesake company, Browning” John Browning developed the Browning Automatic Rifle (the BAR), used in two world wars, as well as both the thirty and “Ma-Deuce” fifty caliber machine guns still in use by the US military, almost century later, all of which he sold to the U.S. government for a fraction of their royalty value.   But in the beginning, his most profitable work was his invention of semi-automatic pistols.

Heinz ran after the girls, firing from his fresh pistol - he had eight more in the bag, and a thousand rounds of ammunition. Eight year old Maria Anna Rychlik died at the top of the stairs. In her panic, little seven year old, Sophie Gornisiewicz, tried to climb over the stairwell banister. She slipped and fell and when she landed, Sophie snapped her neck. Following the screaming children, fleeing for their lives, Heinz ran down the first flight of stairs to the landing.

John Browning never worked from blueprints. In his own words, “A good idea starts a celebration in the mind, and every nerve in the body seems to crowd up to see the fireworks.” John would sketch rough designs of the tools he would need to make his gun, to explain them for assistants and lathe operators. Between 1884 and 1887, he sold 20 new designs to Winchester firearms. Explained one of the men who worked with him, “He was a hands-on manager of the entire process of gun making, field-testing every experimental gun as a hunter and skilled marksman and supervising the manufacturing.  He was also a shrewd negotiator. He was the complete man: inventor, engineer and entrepreneur.”

On the landing, Heinz paused to lean out a window and fire at boys, who were running away from the building. He wounding five of them. A carpenter working on a nearby roof was hit in the arm. Several apartments in the line of fire were penetrated by shots from Heinz's Browning hand guns.  But as he paused to reload, the gunman was now interrupted when a school custodian named Butz landed on his back. The two struggled for a moment until Heinz shot the janitor in the face. Grabbing his brief case still heavy with guns and ammo, Heinz ran back up the stairs.

Browning's design philosophy on reliability was simple. “If anything can happen in a gun it probably will sooner or later.” In his new ingenious blow-back pistol, the breech which received the bullet's propelling explosion was locked in place by two screws. Instead, the “action” which converted the recoil was a reciprocating “slide”, attached front and rear to the gun's frame. When the gun was fired the barrel and slide recoiled together for two-tenths of an inch, and then the barrel disengaged from the slide. The barrel swung downward clearing the breech, so the spent shell casing could be ejected.

As Heinz reached the top of the stairs again, stepping over the bodies of the wounded girls, he was confronted by a male teacher, Hubert Mollmann (above). They struggled for a moment before Heinz shot him in the shoulder. Mollman fell, but the teacher still clawed at the shooter, tackling him and bringing him to the floor. Kicking free, Heinz sat up and shot Mollmann in the stomach. Heinz then stood over the moaning instructor, reloaded, picked up his brief case, and waked quickly down the stairs for a final time. Outside, a crowd of neighbors and parents had just reached the school.

The retreating slide compresses a recoil spring. Once fully compressed, this forces the slide back. As it does it strips a new round off the top of the magazine and rejoining the barrel, slides the new round against the breech. The gun is now ready to fire again. All that is required it to pull the trigger again. When the Belgium firm Fabrique Nationale tested a Browning prototype in 1896, it fired 500 consecutive rounds without a failure or a jam, far superior performance to any other gun then on the market. In July of 1897 FN signed a contract to manufacture the weapon, and over the next 11 years would sell almost one million of the small lightweight pistols to European military - and some 7,000 to civilians, such as Heinz Schmidt.

Cornered at last on the ground floor of the school, Heinz was swarmed by men, pummeling and beating him to the ground. The briefcase was wrenched from his grip, and the Browning pulled from his hand. The crowd dragged him outside and there the beating continued. It seems likely he would have been lynched, had not the police arrived to place him under arrest. As they dragged him off to jail, Schmidt called out, “This may be the beginning, but the end is yet to come.”

The United States Army liked the Browning 1900, and its improved model 1903. But they wanted more stopping power. So John Browning went back to his work bench and within a few months redesigned the weapon to fire a larger, forty-five caliber round. That weapon, the Browning model 1911 pistol, would be the standard American military pistol until it was replace by a 9mm weapon in 1985.  Interestingly, when John Browning died of heart failure at his work bench (above), on 26 November, 1926, the weapon he was designing would evolve into the gun that replaced the Browning 1911.   In his obituary, it was said of John Browning, “Even in the midst of acclaim, when the finest model shops in the world were at his disposal, he preferred his small shop in Ogden. Embarrassed by praise, indifferent to fame, he ended his career as humbly as it started.”

The attack on the St. Mary's School in Bremen lasted no more than fifteen minutes, from first shot to last. During that time, Heinz Schmidt had fired 35 rounds. Eighteen children had been wounded, and five adults. Three girls had died instantly of gunshot wounds. Little Sophie with the broken neck, died within a day.  The bloodbath made headlines around the world.  

Four days after the massacre, the four little girls were buried. Three thousand marched in their funeral procession (above). Four weeks later, the fifth victim, five year old Elfried Hoger, succumbed to her wounds and died. All that has changed since 1913 is the technology used to design , make and market guns.  Every technical advance in the rate of fire and velocity is rewarded with enormous wealth. And yet we continue to pretend that nothing has changed. And until we decide to do something, anything, nothing will.

“This may be the beginning, but the end is yet to come.”

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THE BATTLE OF BRISTOL - The Fight for Democracy

I can’t imagine anyone was surprised that Sir Charles Wetherell (above) eventually inspired a riot. This champion of the wealth and greed was “…half mad, eccentric, ingenious…a coarse, vulgar (of) mind, delighting in ribaldry and abuse …”  He was also rich and a bigot.  Remind you of Donald Trump, maybe? Except even a century ago the Conservative Party of England were not foolish enough to put him in charge of the entire nation.

Sir Charles was fired from his cabinet post in the Duke of Wellington’s government because he made a vicious anti-Catholic speech, exactly when the government was trying to decriminalization Catholicism. And when the government moved to reform the stifling limitations on the right to vote in Britain, Sir Charles opposed that, too. A colleague noted, “…no one spoke more than Sir Charles Wetherell; often to no good purpose.” 

The man who invented the London Bobby's,  Sir Robert Peel, watched his performance in the House of Commons and was not impressed. “This Wetherell unbuttoned his braces (suspenders) when he began to speak, and put his hands into the waistband of his breeches…Horace Twiss said he was very mad, and had but one brief lucid interval, which was between his breeches and his waistcoat.”

Sir Charles represented the tiny market town of Boroughbridge (above), 13 miles northwest of York and 187 miles northeast of London.  It was the very epitome of “a rotten borough”. 

The election districts of Parliament had not been redrawn in two hundred years, and fishing villages that had been washed out to sea, and hamlets long abandoned still had sent representatives to London. Meanwhile, newly industrialized population centers were underrepresented, In 1831, only 6,000 of the 104,000 citizens of Bristol could vote,

Meanwhile, in Boroughbridge, (above) a village of  947 people, only 65 of the 154 households were recognized as “entitlements”, meaning ownership or occupancy brought with it the right to vote. 

Yet this village with just 65 legal voters still qualified for two representatives in Parliament, Sir Matthias Attwood, and Sir Charles Wetherell (far left on the tetter-totter above). The public was desperate for reform of this system, and despite (or because) of Sir Charles’ opposition the Reform Bill carried the House of Commons by 345 to 239 votes. 

But Sir Charles was also a member of the cloistered red robed House of Lords (above), and as such was able to vote against the bill  twice. He helped to kill it "in the Lords” by 41 votes and became the public face of the opposition to democratic reforms.

There were riots and threats that fall in Manchester and Birmingham, and a half dozen other industrialized towns. But things came to head on Friday, 29 October, 1831, when the Courts were set to open in the west coast port city of Bristol. 

The Official Recorder for those courts, meaning the man in charge,  was none other than Sir Charles Wetherell,  He came parading into town in a carriage pulled by four magnificent matching grey horses, and it is hard to see how he could have chosen a worse time for a display of ostentation and privilege. Shops and markets had closed so no one would be dissuaded from joining the crowds gathering to “welcome” Sir Charles.

Expecting trouble three troops of Dragoons were stationed on the outskirts of Bristol. Sir Charles’ carriage was met by 300 “marshals”, especially hired for the occasion. The crowd called them Sir Charles' Bludgeon Men. Some 2,000 people packed the route, hissing and booing as Sir Charles passed. And when the carriage crossed the bridge over the River Bath, stones were thrown.

The procession reached the Guildhall at noon. There the town clerk, Mr. Ludlow, tried to make a speech praising the reform movement. But the crowded courtroom would not be placated, and the hissing drove poor Mr. Ludlow into retreat. From atop the bench Sir Charles (above) imperiously threatened to arrest anyone interfering with the court, and the catcalling became even louder. Eventually Sir Charles had to withdraw. Once he was gone, the crowd gave three cheers for the King.

A carriage took Sir Charles through the thick crowds to the Mansion-house on Queen Square (above), where he was to spend the night. But once he was safely inside several of the “Marshals”,  sallied into the crowd to arrest individuals they deemed troublemakers. This increased the anger of the crowd, who attacked the house with rocks. The shower of missiles drove the mayor and the town council up the staircase to the second floor. 

This attack was stopped by the timely arrival of Lieutenant-Colonel Thomas Brereton, with a single troop of dragoons. Despite Sir Charles’ demand that the troops open fire on the crowd, Brereton spoke to them instead and they dispersed willingly. At about three o’clock Col. Brereton returned with his troopers to their barracks. He immediately requested reinforcements, but he might have been more cautious had he known that while transporting their prisoners to jail, the Bludgeon Men were waylaid and the “troublemakers” were freed.

The Mayor and council spent the night boarding up the broken windows and doors, but all their work was for nought. Saturday afternoon some six hundred angry men and women smashed through the front door, driving the mayor to clamber over the back garden wall (above), while Sir Charles escaped across the roof, jumping into a neighboring house. 

Sir Charles was then spirited out of town dressed as a groom. The city council spread the news, in the hope his retreat would calm the mob. But Sir Charles Wetherell's work in Bristol was done.

The Mansion-house was trashed and burned, and its wine cellar looted. Several other buildings surrounding Queen Square were ransacked as well. 

Then the New jail was attacked, followed by the Gloucester Prison. The gates were rushed, the jailers beaten, and some 200 prisoners released.

The Custom’s House, the Excise Office, and some fifty private houses and warehouses were looted and burned. But it was a very selective riot. All the lost property belonged to those who had opposed the reform bill. And no one was killed or even seriously injured by the rioters.

The city was finally 'brought under control' when reinforcements arrived Monday afternoon and the dragoons were turned loose on the crowd. 

Several hundred were now killed. Total damages were estimated at between four and eight hundred thousand pounds sterling.

Sir Charles (above) was at first confused by what had happened. The night of his escape he confessed to an inn keeper, “I am not aware that I ever injured any individual in the city.” But by the time Parliament reconvened in December he was sure again.

He denounced the London press for laying the blame for the riot on him. He also demanded that he be allowed to sit as judge of the rioters. That request was denied. However a statue of Sir Charles was erected in Queen Square, to remind the citizens who had won the battle for Bristol.

In January of 1832 eighty-two people went on trial for crimes committed during the riot. Despite a petition for clemency signed by 10,000 citizens of Bristol, four men were hung over the gates of the new jail. The punishment drove the hangman to sob uncontrollably so that he almost fell off the scaffold. But the four were hung, nevertheless. 

A fifth man, James Ives, was judged insane and his death sentence was commuted to transportation to Australia for life. Seventy-four others were also exiled to Australia, while forty-three were sentenced to hard labor in England. Of those forty-three, one old woman, convicted of receiving silver plate looted from the Mansion-house, hung herself in prison. 

Colonel Brereton was court-martialed for refusing to fire on the crowds, and after a week of testimony at his court-martial (above), he shot him self in the heart. He left behind two small motherless children. His second in command was allowed to resign and sell his commission. 

Meanwhile, seven of those sentenced to transportation to Australia died of cholera before their ship even set sail. Another, Matthew Warry, jumped ship. While swimming to shore he was shot and killed by a sentry, as was James Ives, the man too insane to hang for his crimes against property. And that was the fate of the victims of Sir Charles Wetherell’s “…coarse and vulgar mind…”, all save one.

No one tried to defend any of these victims. Instead the champions of reform concentrated their efforts on passing the Reform bill in 1832.  One of the last to speak against the bill, again, was Sir Charles, who knew he had done much to ensure the elimination of his own “rotten borough.” He concluded his remarks by saying, “This is the last dying speech and confession of the member for Boroughbridge.” And it was. 

The new reforms did not not increase the size of Parlement, but based the districts on the most recent  census. When Sir Charles stood for election that fall for one of the “new” seats from Oxford University he received so few votes he withdrew his name as a candidate.  He died of a “concussion of the brain” caused by a carriage accident, on Monday, 17 August, 1846. He left behind no heirs. 

And in 1983 his statue was removed from Queens Square in Bristol, because, in the words of the City Council Engineer, “We are redesigning the garden for the 17th century period and Sir Charles will not blend in”. They hid it under an alcove behind the Red Lion Inn.  And that cleaned up for democracy in Great Britain for at least a century. 

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