childhood and the bones of his ancestors to seek in the wilderness
the reward for his industry of which the policy of Congress had
deprived him. [Footnote: Register of Debates, VIII., pt. i., 80; cf.
Houston, Nullification in S.C., 46; McDuffie, in Register of
Debates, 18th Cong., 2 Sess., 253.]

The genius of the south expressed itself most clearly in the field
of politics. If the democratic middle region could show a multitude
of clever politicians, the aristocratic south possessed an abundance
of leaders bold in political initiative and masterful in their
ability to use the talents of their northern allies. When the
Missouri question was debated, John Quincy Adams remarked "that if
institutions are to be judged by their results in the composition of
the councils of this Union, the slave-holders are much more ably
represented than the simple freemen." [Footnote: Adams, Memoirs,
IV., 506.]

The southern statesmen fall into two classes. On the one side was
the Virginia group, now for the most part old men, rich in the
honors of the nation, still influential, but, except for Monroe, no
longer directing party policy. Jefferson and Madison were in
retirement in their old age; Marshall, as chief-justice, was
continuing his career as the expounder of the Constitution in
accordance with Federalist ideals; John Randolph, his old
eccentricities increased by disease and intemperance, remained to
proclaim the extreme doctrines of southern dissent and to impale his
adversaries with javelins of flashing wit. A maker of phrases which
stung and festered, he was still capable of influencing public
opinion somewhat in the same way as are the cartoonists of modern
times. But "his course through life had been like that of the arrow