Product Code Database
Edmund Jennings Randolph (August 10, 1753 September 12, 1813) was a Founding Father of the United States, lawyer, and the seventh Governor of Virginia. As a delegate from Virginia, he attended the Constitutional Convention and helped to create the national constitution while serving on its Committee of Detail. He was appointed the first United States Attorney General by George Washington and subsequently served as the second Secretary of State during the Washington administration.
In 1775, with the start of the American Revolution, Randolph's father, an active Loyalist, fled with his family to United Kingdom. Son Edmund stayed in America, where he joined the Continental Army as an aide-de-camp to General officer George Washington.
Upon the death of his uncle Peyton Randolph in October 1775, Edmund Randolph returned to Virginia to act as executor of the estate and, while there, was elected as a representative to the Fourth Virginia Convention. He was later mayor of Williamsburg and then attorney general of Virginia, a post he held until 1786. He was married on August 29, 1776, to Elizabeth Nicholas, the daughter of Robert C. Nicholas, and had a total of six children, including Peyton Randolph, Governor of Virginia from 1811 to 1812.
Randolph was elected as Governor of Virginia in 1786. That year, he was a delegate to the Annapolis Convention. He had taken on the young John Marshall as a student and then law partner and transferred his lucrative law practice to Marshall when Randolph became governor since Virginia law barred executive officers from private practice in its courts.R. Kent Newmyer, John Marshall and the Heroic Age of the Supreme Court (Louisiana State University Press 2001) p. 79
Randolph was also a member of the "Committee of Detail," which was tasked with converting the Virginia Plan's 15 resolutions to a first draft of the Constitution.
Randolph ultimately refused to sign the final document, one of only three members who remained in the Constitutional Congress but refused to sign (the others were the fellow Virginian George Mason and Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts). Randolph thought the final document lacked sufficient checks and balances and published an account of his objections in October 1787. He thought that the federal judiciary would threaten state courts, and he considered the Senate too powerful and Congress's power too broad. He also objected to the lack of a provision for a second convention to act after the present instrument had been referred to the states.
Governor Randolph had written, "If after our best efforts for amendments, they cannot be obtained, I will adopt the constitution as it is." Ultimately, Randolph said he voted for ratification of the Constitution because by June 2, eight other states had already done so, and he did not want to see Virginia left out of the new national government. Randolph believed Virginia must choose between the stark alternatives of ratification and disunion. Randolph never doubted the union's advantages.
In the Richmond Ratification Convention, Randolph ultimately pointed the way to an understanding of ratification with which Virginia's leaders could be satisfied. He assured his fellow members of the Virginia political elite that the Constitution that it was being asked to ratify in the summer of 1788 would have minimal significance and that it would enter more a league of sovereign states than a consolidated union.
Randolph wrote that his tactics swayed five of the ten delegates whose views had been entirely unknown to vote for ratification. Ultimately, Virginia's Federalists secured the Constitution's ratification by precisely five votes.
When Jefferson resigned as Secretary of State in 1793, Randolph succeeded him. The primary diplomatic initiative of his term was the Jay Treaty with Britain in 1794. However, Hamilton devised the plan and wrote the instructions, leaving Randolph the minor role of signing the papers. Hostile to the resulting treaty, Randolph almost gained Washington's ear for his concerns but was overridden in the wake of the Fauchet scandal (see below). Near the end of his term as Secretary of State, negotiations for Pinckney's Treaty were finalized.
Washington immediately overruled Randolph's negative advice about the Jay Treaty. A few days later, Washington handed the minister's letter to Randolph in the presence of the entire cabinet and demanded an explanation. Randolph was speechless and immediately resigned. Chernow and Elkins concluded that France did not bribe Randolph but that he "was rather a pitiable figure, possessed of some talents and surprisingly little malice, but subject to self-absorbed silliness and lapses of good sense."
Randolph's published response, Vindication, illustrates his concerns about public and private perceptions of his charactersuch concerns for reputation holding great value in the 18th century. In the event, Randolph secured a published retraction from Fauchet.
After his resignation, Randolph was held personally responsible for losing a large sum of money during his administration of the state department. He was eventually adjudged to owe the government more than $49,000, which he paid.
"We were both born in the city of Williamsburg, within twelve hours of each other; myself on the 10th of August 1753, and she on the 11th. My aunt Randolph, who saw each of us soon after our birth, facetiously foretold that we should be united in marriage-a circumstance which, improbable at the time from the dissensions of our families, seemed daily to grow into an impossibility from their increasing rancor. In childhood we were taught the elements of reading at the same school... she won me by the best of all graces, cheerfulness, good sense, and benevolence. I do not recollect that I reflected much upon that range of qualities, which I afterwards found to be constituents of nuptial happiness; but Providence seemed to be kinder to me than my most deliberate judgment could have been... I desired nothing more than that she should sincerely persuade herself that she would be happy with me."
They married on August 29, 1776. Their marital relationship was close and so free of friction that his daughters could not forget one singular instance of misunderstandingMrs. Randolph having related some particular incident, and her husband hastily exclaimed: "That is mere gossip." The lady repaired to her room and did not answer her husband's gentle knock. Then Randolph said, "Betsey, I have urgent business in town, but I shall not leave this house until permitted to apologize to you." The door opened, and the unprecedented scene ended.
After Mrs. Randolph's death in 1810, the heartbroken husband wrote some account of her and their married life, which was addressed to his children as "the best witnesses of the truth of the brief history." In part, Randolph wrote, "My eyes are every moment beholding so many objects with which she was associated; I sometimes catch a sound which deludes me so much with the similitude of her voice; I carry about my heart and hold for a daily visit so many of her precious relics; and, above all, my present situation is so greatly contrasted by its vacancy, regrets, and anguish, with the purest and unchequered bliss, so far as it depended on her, for many years of varying fortune, that I have vowed at her grave daily to maintain with her a mental intercourse."
In 1791, Randolph was elected to the American Philosophical Society.
Randolph County, Virginia (now West Virginia) was formed in 1787 and named in Randolph's honor. Randolph County, Illinois was also named after him. Randolph, who was the governor of Virginia when the state ceded what was then sometimes called Illinois County, Virginia (a title disputed by Pennsylvania and others) to the new federal government, which created the Northwest Territory. Randolph County's motto is "where Illinois began" because it was one of the first two settled counties in the territory. It contains Kaskaskia, the first seat of Illinois County, which later became the Illinois Territory's capital and ultimately the state's first capital.
The town of Randolph, Vermont is also named after him.
The Edmund J. Randolph Award is the highest award given by the US Department of Justice to persons who make "outstanding contributions to the accomplishments of the Department's mission."
|-
|-
|
|
