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“Mr. R sent Mr. W. a challenge, thro’ Mr. B. / Mr. W. wrote an answer, to this challenge, and was prepared to send it, thro’ Genl Wool, of the Army. / This answer, is the one alluded to, or spoken of, in the newspaper publication, of which Genl. B. has a manuscript copy….

I destroyed my letter, according to agreement; & kept no copy.…  I have scrupulously fulfilled my part of the agreement, as to not authorizing any publications.”

John Randolph of Roanoke, Virginia, was infamous for his temper and language, which led him to challenge several contemporaries to duels. In 1816, Randolph, feeling scorned by Webster’s speech in a House debate over the sugar tax, first challenged Webster to a duel. Friends resolved the matter, and Randolph withdrew the challenge.

DANIEL WEBSTER. Autograph Manuscript, recording circumstances around John Randolph’s challenge to a duel, ca. 1826-1831. 3 pp., 8 x 10 in.

Inventory #24221       Price: $8,500

Complete Transcript
Mr. R sent Mr. W. a challenge, thro’ Mr. B.[1]

Mr. W. wrote an answer, to this challenge, and was prepared to send it, thr^o. Gen^l Wool, of the Army.[2]

This answer, is the one alluded to, or spoken of, in the newspaper publication, of which Gen^l B. has a manuscript Copy.

At this stage of the transaction, (whether brought about by the agency of third persons, or otherwise, I now can scarcely recollect) a private interview, &, indeed, more than one, took place between Mr W. & Mr. B. <2>

At these interviews, it was finally arranged;

1. That Mr. R. should withdraw the challenge.
2. That Mr. W. should destroy his answer, & keep no copy.
3. That, thereupon, Mr. B. should be at liberty to say that Mr. R. that Mr. W. did not intend, in what he said, to impeach Mr. R’s personal veracity.
4. That neither party should make, or authorise any publication, respecting the transaction.

Gen^l. Breckenridge[3]may be <3>assured that the forgoing is an accurate short statement of the Agreement. My copy of the writing is at Boston.

I destroyed my letter, according to agreement; & kept no copy. From that day to this; I do not know that I have spoken of its contents, to any friends. Its contents were known to Mr Lloyd, then Senator from Massachusetts,[4]Gen^l Wool, & one other Gentleman. I principally conferred, in relation to the whole transaction, in all its stages, with Mr Lloyd. I have scrupulously fulfilled my part of the agreement, as to not authorizing any publications.

Historical Background
In 1824, Congressman and newly appointed Minister to Mexico Ninian Edwards of Illinois alleged that Secretary of the Treasury William Crawford of Georgia had known of the impending failure of the Bank of Edwardsville (Illinois) in 1821, but had not withdrawn federal money from it. The House of Representatives appointed a committee of seven members to examine the charges, which included both Daniel Webster and John Randolph. Before the committee concluded its investigation, Randolph sailed for England but believed that he had persuaded the committee to give Crawford an opportunity to respond to the charges made by Edwards. The committee ultimately cleared Crawford of any wrongdoing.

In February 1825, Webster denied Randolph’s claim that the committee had decided to allow Crawford to answer the charges, and other members of the committee agreed. The only matter that called for explanation, Webster said on the floor of the House of Representatives, was whether Randolph intended to infer that the majority of the committee wished to deny Crawford the “the fullest opportunity to answer the charges against him.” Randolph reportedly responded, “I have stated as clearly as I could…the facts as they occurred.” In response to Webster’s statements and encouraged by members who said Randolph was a “disgraced and degraded man,” Randolph issued the challenge, insisting that Webster had “indulged…in liberties with my name (aspersing my veracity).”[5] Senator Thomas Hart Benton of Missouri delivered Randolph’s challenge to Webster on February 21, 1825, while the House was still in session. Mutual friends again intervened, attempting to resolve the matters as quietly as possible, and Randolph withdrew the challenge.

In 1838, the Democratic Boston Advocate published an article entitled, “What is Character?” It presented a list of Federalist/Whig leaders who had been involved in questionable actions, including Daniel Webster. The article declared, “Daniel Webster, who was challenged by John Randolph to fight a duel, who sent a reply to the challenge, always said to be an acceptance, but the purport of which was not made public, Col. Benton, the second of Mr. Randoph, having induced a withdrawal of the challenge, without opening Mr. Webster’s reply. We put it to Mr. Webster to say, on his honor, if that reply was not an acceptance of the challenge.”[6]

In 1907, Rev. Thomas B. Gregory (1854-1929), a minister, writer, and editor, published a story about the Webster-Randolph duel that included the texts of Randolph’s challenge, and Webster’s response. According to Gregory, Webster’s reply was, “Mr. Webster authorizes Mr. Benton to say to Mr. Randolph that he has no recollection of having said anything which can possibly be considered as affecting Mr. Randolph’s veracity, beyond what he said in the House of Representatives. If he has used other expressions, they must have been at or about the same time and of the same import. He does not now recollect them, and disclaims all of a different import. As to what Mr. Webster said in the House of Representatives, he meant only to state that Mr. Randolph was under an entire mistake or misapprehension as to the facts—he meant to say nothing more, and neither intended to make nor did make any imputation on the personal veracity of Mr. Randolph.”[7]

Daniel Webster (1782-1852) was born in New Hampshire, graduated from Dartmouth College in 1801, and was admitted to the bar in 1805. He represented New Hampshire in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1813 to 1817. As a preeminent attorney, he argued 223 cases before the U.S. Supreme Court, winning about half, and playing a key role in eight of the Court’s most important constitutional law cases decided between 1801 and 1824. (His arguments were accepted by Chief Justice John Marshall in Dartmouth College v. Woodward (1819), finding that a state’s grant of a business charter was a contract that the state could not impair; in McCulloch v. Maryland (1819), finding that a state could not tax a federal agency (specifically, a branch of the Bank of the United States), for the power to tax was a “power to destroy”; and in Gibbons v. Ogden (1824), finding that a state could not interfere with Congressional power to regulate interstate commerce). Webster represented Massachusetts in the House of Representatives from 1823 to 1827 and then in the Senate from 1827 to 1841 and again from 1845 to 1850. His 1830 reply to South Carolina’s Robert Y. Hayne is considered one of the greatest speeches ever delivered in the Senate. Webster’s oratorical abilities made him a powerful Whig leader, and he served as Secretary of State, first from 1841 to 1843 under Presidents William Henry Harrison and John Tyler, and again from 1850 to 1852 under President Millard Fillmore. His support of the Compromise of 1850 may have postponed a civil war, but it cost him politically in his increasingly abolitionist home state of Massachusetts.

John Randolph (1773-1833) was known as John Randolph of Roanoke to distinguish him from his kinsmen. He was a second cousin of Thomas Jefferson; both were great-grandsons of William Randolph (1650-1711), who settled in Virginia in the seventeenth century. A diminutive man of mercurial temperament, John Randolph engaged in several duels, including one with Henry Clay that arose out of Randolph’s calling the Kentuckian a “blackleg” for his role in the controversial 1824 presidential election. Randolph served intermittently in Congress from 1799 until his death, including as a manager of impeachment proceedings against Judge John Pickering and U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Chase. In 1806, Randolph broke with Jefferson and James Madison and headed an arch-conservative Congressional faction called “Tertium Quids,” Latin for “The Third Somethings.” The Quids insisted on strict adherence to the Constitution and other “Old Republican” principles and supported James Monroe over Madison in the 1808 presidential election. Randolph summarized Old Republican principles as “love of peace, hatred of offensive war, jealousy of the state governments toward the general government; a dread of standing armies; a loathing of public debts, taxes, and excises; tenderness for the liberty of the citizen; jealousy, [and] Argus-eyed jealousy of the patronage of the President.” Randolph was a member of the Virginia constitutional convention at Richmond in 1829, and he briefly served as Minister to Russia the following year.

Condition: Typical folds; some brittleness and minor tears; separation of the binding.