Randolph, Edmund Jenings

RANDOLPH, EDMUND JENINGS. (1753–1813). Statesman, U.S. attorney general and secretary of state. Virginia. Born on 10 August 1753 in Williamsburg, Virginia, Randolph attended William and Mary College and studied law with his father. When the war started, his parents left immediately for England. Randolph did not share their politics and joined the Continental army at Cambridge, becoming Washington's aide-de-camp on 15 August 1775. With the sudden death of his uncle, Peyton Randolph, on 22 October 1775, Edmund Randolph left the army and returned to Williamsburg. The next year he sat in the Virginia Convention, serving on the committee that drafted the state's constitution and Declaration of Rights. He became the state's first attorney general the same year. Holding this office until 1786, Randolph went to the Continental Congress in 1779. He soon resigned, but returned to Congress for most of 1781, where he befriended James Madison. On 7 November 1786 he defeated Richard Henry Lee and Theodorick Bland to become governor, and he led his state's delegation to the Federal Convention in 1787. He joined George Mason in refusing to sign the completed Constitution, believing that it was not sufficiently republican, but he suddenly reversed his position at the start of Virginia's ratifying convention in 1788, arguing strenuously that if Virginia did not ratify the Constitution, the United States would cease to exist. Shortly after the Convention ratified the Constitution, Randolph resigned as governor to enter the state legislature and take part in revising the Virginia legal code.

Washington appointed Randolph the nation's first attorney general in 1789. Later, Randolph succeeded Jefferson as secretary of state, holding that post in 1794–1795. After serving creditably through the storms of "Citizen" Genet's and Gouverneur Morris's recalls and the negotiations that led to Jay's Treaty, Randolph resigned on 19 August 1795. He had been charged by French minister Fauchet, Genet's successor, with improper conduct in negotiating the treaty; the charges, contained in a letter from Fauchet to his government that had been intercepted and revealed by the British, were subsequently found to be false. Returning to law practice, he served as senior defense counsel in the treason trial of Aaron Burr. He died at one of his plantations near Millwood, Virginia, on 12 September 1813.

SEE ALSO Randolph, Peyton.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Reardon, John J. Edmund Randolph: A Biography. New York: Macmillan, 1974.

                           revised by Michael Bellesiles