America's Secret Aristocracy (14 page)

The consanguinity between Henry Beekman's daughter and Robert of Clermont's son could have been even closer if love had been allowed to take its course. Originally, Mr. Beekman had wanted to marry Philip and Robert of Clermont's sister Joanna, but Joanna's parents had rejected his suit. And so Beekman had countered by marrying Joanna's cousin Janet and got into the Livingston family anyway, through the back door, as it were. It seems that Robert and Alida Livingston objected to Beekman not because he had no money; he was very rich. But they didn't care for his looks. Henry Beekman had a prominent birthmark on his face, and the Livingstons branded him “disfigured.”

Still, galling though it must have been to the jealous Philip, there seemed no questioning the fact that if Judge Robert and Margaret Beekman Livingston had children, as indeed they would, the Robert of Clermont line of Livingston descent would be far richer than that of the poor manor lord.

But if Robert of Clermont allowed himself to gloat over having so far outdistanced his older brother, there is no record of it. In any case, Robert of Clermont was far too busy buying the Catskill Mountains.

10

Weak Blood

Among all the first American families, those of Scots descent show a certain dominance—families begotten by big, robust, hard-driving men of the earth or of the sea who showed no shyness about their ability to impregnate their womenfolk with gonglike regularity and to produce, from these couplings, that essential commodity for carrying on their enterprises and their name: sons. One of the most notable of these men was the single progenitor of what was to become the leading family of colonial Virginia, the Randolphs. Like the descendants of Robert Livingston, the descendants of William Randolph today number in the thousands, thanks largely to the fact that William Randolph sired seven sons and two daughters, who gave him a total of thirty-seven grandchildren, a feat that was even more astonishing considering the 50 percent infant mortality rate in the seventeenth century.

But then we have a mystery. Why is it that, in some families, an ability has been maintained to produce at least one or two men or women of distinction in each succeeding generation, while in others the blood has begun to run so thin that talent—for business or public service or whatever—seems to have all but disappeared? In every family, of course, there is a different answer or cluster of answers, and yet the comparison between the Livingstons of New York and the Randolphs of Virginia is interesting. A Livingston has been mayor of New York City and later served as minister to France and secretary of state in Andrew Jackson's cabinet. Another Livingston also served as minister to France and had a hand in negotiating the Louisiana Purchase, even though, as
we shall see, another Livingston scandal would somewhat taint that enterprise. New York City abounds in Livingston monuments, including B. Altman and Company, the St. Regis Hotel, the Hayden Planetarium, and the buildings that cover three of the four corners at Broad and Wall streets, all of which came from the drawing board of the architect Goodhue Livingston, who also designed the Mellon Bank in Pittsburgh, the Mitsui Bank in Tokyo, and the Palace Hotel in San Francisco. Robert Linlithgow Livingston, Jr., is a vigorous young congressman from Louisiana, while other distinguished Livingstons and Livingston relatives and relatives by marriage today include Carter Brown, director of the National Gallery of Art, S. Dillon Ripley, curator of the Smithsonian Institution, and John Jay Iselin, for many years the head of New York's Channel 13.

But the poor Randolphs, for all their numbers and for all their pride in being among the
first
of the first families of Virginia, have fared less well. Though the family started off with a great burst of procreational and entrepreneurial energy in the seventeenth century and continued strong well into the nineteenth century—through the fifth, sixth, and even seventh American generations—it is hard to think of a single twentieth-century Randolph who is distinguished for much more than a family heirloom or two and a great deal of family hubris. Perhaps this is because the Randolphs, as a family, did not encourage and abet such fierce competitiveness and rivalry among their male offspring as the Livingstons did. And perhaps that was because most of the early Randolphs had slaves to carry out their dirty work for them.

In many ways, the Randolphs and the Livingstons got off to quite similar starts. The first William Randolph arrived in Virginia in 1673, just a year before Robert Livingston's arrival in Massachusetts, and both men quickly demonstrated an ability to turn a confused local situation to their advantage. Since 1660, the Virginia colony had been governed by Sir William Berkeley, who had created what amounted to an oligarchy consisting of a few privileged families who had been given large plantations along the James River. One of these, called Bermuda Hundred, belonged to a planter named Henry Royall Isham, a descendant of Pocahontas and her English husband, John Rolfe. Another planter was an English aristocrat named Nathaniel Bacon, whose estates composed much of what is now the city of Richmond. As in New York,
a thriving fur trade with the Indians had been established, and with his Pocahontas connection Henry Royall Isham was one of the most successful of the Virginia fur merchants. At the same time, another lucrative product was being raised in Virginia—tobacco—and settlers were pressing westward into the fertile interior lowlands toward the borders of the colony to grow it.

The border colonists, however, found themselves frequently subjected to raids and massacres by the Indians, and these, they complained, were simply being ignored by Governor Berkeley, who was more interested in maintaining the Indian fur trade enjoyed by himself and his eastern shore friends than in assisting struggling tobacco farmers. In the years before William Randolph's arrival, a number of such Indian raids had occurred in the western part of the colony, resulting in the deaths of hundreds of white border farmers, and had gone unpunished by the governor. In 1676, a particularly bloody attack took place and, once again, Governor Berkeley made no attempt to come to the aid of his western colonists. This injustice was too much for Nathaniel Bacon, who, though he was betraying his class of plantation owners, organized an uprising—the famous Bacon's Rebellion—against the governor. In Bacon's Battle of Bloody Run, many Indians were killed.

It amounted to a small-scale Civil War, and before it was over Governor Berkeley had fled and Jamestown was burned. But then Nathaniel Bacon died of malaria and, with its leader gone, his cause fell into disarray. Berkeley took command of Jamestown again, and harsh reprisals were inflicted on all who had taken part in the revolt, including wholesale executions and confiscations of property. Among those properties confiscated, needless to say, were all those that had formerly belonged to Nathaniel Bacon.

But a confiscated estate needed someone to run it. Seeing a unique opportunity, William Randolph approached the governor and offered his services. Berkeley, who was eager to get his colony's affairs back to normal as quickly as possible, graciously accepted and awarded Randolph one of Bacon's former estates. Thus, almost overnight, William Randolph became a proprietor of a large Virginia plantation. At first, to be sure, his stewardship may have seemed a bit tenuous. Back in England, King Charles II had not been at all pleased with Governor Berkeley's handling of the rebellion and its
aftermath, and had summoned Berkeley to London to deliver an accounting of it and possibly to reprimand him or even dismiss him. But, in a sudden death that may have changed the course of colonial history, Sir William Berkeley died shortly after reaching London and before his meeting with the king.

Meanwhile, William Randolph moved quickly to secure his place as a member of the Virginia landed gentry. And he did this in the classic way. He married the daughter of Henry Royall Isham, thereby consolidating the former Bacon estate with Isham's Bermuda Hundred. Once that had been accomplished, there was no way that any succeeding governor could ever dislodge the Randolphs or their heirs and assigns.

“William Randolph,” writes H. J. Eckenrode, the otherwise affectionate family historian, “was essentially of the predatory type.… His great hawk nose indicated that he looked on mankind as his prey and knew how to make the most of his opportunities.” This is putting it mildly. Before he was through, he had acquired more than ten thousand acres of land for himself and established a plantation for each of his seven sons.

The Randolph plantations were run rather like feudal duchies, and the seven Randolph sons were known by the lands they ruled. They were William II of Turkey Island, Thomas of Tuckahoe, Isham of Dungeness, Richard of Curies, Henry of Chatsworth, Sir John of Tazewell Hall, and Edward of Bremo. This generation soon established what would become something of a Randolph family tradition or habit—that of marrying close relatives, even first cousins. And so it would not be long before Randolph blood coursed through the veins of all the great Virginians, including John Marshall and Robert E. Lee. Thomas Jefferson himself was more than half Randolph. His father, Peter Jefferson, was a Randolph connection, and his mother, the former Jane Randolph, was the daughter of Isham Randolph of Dungeness. Jefferson's daughter Martha, furthermore, would marry her first cousin, Thomas Mann Randolph I, the governor of Virginia. The Randolphs would also display a family preference for taking very young wives. For example, John Marshall's bride (another Randolph connection) was only fourteen.

Of all the sons of the first William Randolph, it was perhaps Sir John Randolph of Tazewell Hall who had the most distinguished, albeit brief, career and who established
the tradition that Randolphs should be given high political and diplomatic posts almost by virtue of being Randolphs. Educated at the College of William and Mary, he then went to England to study law at Gray's Inn, where his enrollment was recorded as “John Randolph, gent.,” indicating that even in England a second-generation American could be elevated to the squirearchy. Later, he returned to England as the delegate chosen by the Virginia Assembly to present its grievances over tobacco to the king. It was a touchy mission, but the king so admired John Randolph's legal and diplomatic skills that he thanked his adversary by knighting him—an honor rarely bestowed on any colonial anywhere.

Though Sir John died young, his son, Peyton Randolph, carried on in his father's footsteps, and in the decade preceding the Revolution served as presiding officer in nearly every Revolutionary assemblage in the Virginia colony. Peyton married the daughter of Colonel Benjamin Harrison—whose brother would later become President William Henry Harrison and whose great-nephew would become President Benjamin Harrison—adding another to the litany of important American names that would decorate the Randolph family tree and extending the influence of the family into the territory of Ohio.

And yet in Peyton Randolph's generation, there were already signs that the fabric of Randolph family unity was beginning to weaken. Though Peyton Randolph was a devout patriot and Revolutionary, his younger brother—another John—was an ardent Tory, and the two brothers became bitter enemies. When the Revolution came, John Randolph sided with the king and eventually fled with his wife and daughters to England, where he remained loyal to the monarchy to the end. Even so, his dying wish was that his body be returned to Virginia for burial, which it was.

This John Randolph's son, Edmund Randolph, had strong Revolutionary sympathies and refused to accompany the rest of his family to England, thus creating another lasting rift, between father and son. Edmund was therefore raised by his patriot uncle Peyton and at age twenty-three became the youngest member of the Virginia Convention, which was the first of the states to adopt a constitution. Later, as governor of Virginia, Edmund Randolph played an important role in getting Virginia to ratify the U.S. Constitution and was rewarded
by being made Washington's attorney general and, still later, secretary of state.

Edmund Randolph was unusual for a man of his social standing in the South in that he opposed slavery. He was also—because his Tory father had virtually disinherited him—one of the first poor Randolphs. When his uncle Peyton died, he was not rewarded with the comfortable inheritance he might have expected, but instead was saddled with all of his uncle Peyton's debts. These could have been settled by selling Uncle Peyton's slaves to another plantation owner. But this, as a matter of principle, Edmund refused to do. Instead, he kept his uncle's slaves on as his personal dependents, housing them, feeding them, and caring for them, even though this charitable course served only to plunge Edmund even more deeply into debt.

Then, in 1795, the first truly dark cloud fell across the Randolph landscape and a family belief that had developed, along with a certain hauteur and even arrogance, that Randolphs, being Randolphs, were beyond reproach. Edmund Randolph had by then been named secretary of state, succeeding his relative Thomas Jefferson. One of the most delicate diplomatic problems facing the new nation had become maintaining good relations with both the British and the French, who traditionally distrusted each other at almost every juncture. The French and English were always busily spying on each other, and thus it happened that a dispatch to Paris, sent by the French minister to the United States, Joseph Fauchet, was intercepted by a British man-of-war and sent back to the British minister in New York. In it, M. Fauchet accused Edmund Randolph of asking for money from France in return for trying to influence the American government against Great Britain. The Fauchet dispatch also hinted that Randolph was willing to sell American government secrets to France.

It was certainly a serious charge—blackmailing and espionage—and faced with it, Edmund Randolph immediately did the gentlemanly thing and resigned. Eventually, both charges were proven to be completely without foundation, and Edmund was able to secure a letter of apology and retraction from Fauchet. But the damage to Edmund's reputation had been done.