Randolph, Edmund, 1753-1813

Edmund Jennings Randolph (August 10, 1753 – September 12, 1813) was an American attorney and politician. He was the 7th Governor of Virginia, and, 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 the first United States Attorney General (1789-1794) and the second Secretary of State (1794-1795) during George Washington's presidency.

Born in Williamsburg in the Colony of Virginia, Randolph graduated from the College of William and Mary before reading law under his father and uncle. During the American Revolutionary War, he served in the Revolutionary Army and was an aide-de-camp to George Washington. In 1776, Randolph served as attorney general of Virginia. He was selected as one of 11 delegates to represent Virginia at the Continental Congress in 1779 and served as a delegate that year, in 1781 and in 1782. Randolph also remained in private law practice, handling numerous legal issues for Washington and others. In 1786, he was elected as Governor of Virginia and served as a Delegate to the Annapolis Convention. As a delegate from Virginia to the Constitutional Convention, Randolph introduced the Virginia Plan as an outline for a new national government. Though refusing to sign the Constitution, Randolph nevertheless reversed his position at the Virginia Ratifying Convention in 1788 and guided the state to adopt the document.

As a reward for his support, President Washington appointed Randolph the first U.S. Attorney General in September 1789. In this role, he maintained the precarious neutrality in the feud between Thomas Jefferson (of whom Randolph was a second cousin) and Alexander Hamilton. When Jefferson resigned as Secretary of State in 1793, Randolph succeeded him to the position. The major diplomatic initiative of his term was the Jay Treaty with Britain in 1794 though it had been Hamilton who devised the plan, wrote the instructions, and left Randolph the nominal role of signing the papers. Randolph, hostile to the resulting treaty, almost gained Washington's ear but was overridden in the wake of a scandal that implicated him as having exposed the inner debates in the Washington cabinet to French minister Joseph Fauchet; the charges were subsequently found to be false. Near the end of Randolph's term as Secretary of State, negotiations for Pinckney's Treaty were finalized.

After leaving the federal cabinet, Randolph returned to Virginia to practice law, where he was a leader of the state bar. His most famous case was defending Aaron Burr at his trial for treason in 1807. Randolph lived his final years as a guest of his friend Nathaniel Burwell at Carter Hall, near Millwood, Virginia, in Clarke County, where he would die after suffering from paralysis in his final years. Randolph is buried nearby at the Burwell family cemetery.