38 Facts About Edmund Randolph

Edmund Jennings Randolph was a Founding Father of the United States, attorney, and the 7th Governor of Virginia.

Edmund Randolph was appointed the first United States Attorney General by George Washington and subsequently served as the second Secretary of State during the Washington administration.

Edmund Randolph was educated at the College of William and Mary.

In 1775, with the start of the American Revolution, Edmund Randolph's father remained a Loyalist and returned to Britain.

Edmund Randolph returned to America where he joined the Continental Army as an aide-de-camp to General George Washington.

Edmund Randolph 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.

Edmund Randolph was selected as one of 11 delegates to represent Virginia at the Continental Congress in 1779 and served as a delegate until 1782.

Edmund Randolph remained in private law practice, handling numerous legal issues for Washington and others.

Edmund Randolph 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.

Edmund Randolph argued against the importation of enslaved people and for a strong central government and advocated a plan for three chief executives from various parts of the country.

Edmund Randolph proposed and was supported unanimously by the convention's delegates "that a Nationally Judiciary be established".

Edmund Randolph was 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.

Edmund Randolph ultimately refused to sign the final document, one of only three members who remained in the Constitutional Congress but refused to sign.

Edmund Randolph thought that the federal judiciary would threaten state courts, and he considered the Senate too powerful and Congress's power too broad.

Edmund Randolph objected to the lack of a provision for a second convention to act after the present instrument had been referred to the states.

Edmund Randolph served a significant role in the drafting of the original constitution.

Edmund Randolph helped to propose the Virginia Plan as a delegate from Virginia.

However, Edmund Randolph did not sign the Constitution's final draft because he wanted increased protections for individuals and did not agree with all of the revisions made to the original Virginia Plan.

Edmund Randolph nevertheless reversed his position at the Virginia Ratifying Convention in 1788.

Edmund Randolph chaired the nearly equally-divided convention, and Mason greatly resented Randolph's change of position.

Edmund Randolph noted that he had seen several responses to the insistence that modifications were necessary before ratification.

In common with other advocates of amending the Constitution before ratification, Edmund Randolph insisted that it would be easier to amend the Constitution before its ratification when a majority might do so than to ratify an imperfect Constitution and then to assemble the votes of three-fourths of the states.

Edmund Randolph did not think the people should become accustomed to altering their constitution with any regularity once it was adopted.

Edmund Randolph believed Virginia must choose between the stark alternatives of ratification and disunion.

Edmund Randolph 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.

Edmund Randolph wrote that his tactics swayed five of the ten delegates whose views had been entirely unknown to vote for ratification.

Edmund Randolph maintained precarious neutrality in the feud between Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton.

Edmund Randolph continued to make important contributions to the new nation's structure and its relationship with the states.

Hostile to the resulting treaty, Edmund Randolph almost gained Washington's ear but was overridden in the wake of the Fauchet scandal.

My aunt Edmund 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.

Edmund Randolph had been tasked with maintaining friendly relations with France.

The letters implied that Edmund Randolph had exposed the inner debates in the cabinet to France and had told it that the administration was hostile to the country.

However, Edmund Randolph's published Vindication illustrates his concerns about public and private perceptions of his character, which held great value in the 18th century.

Edmund Randolph was eventually adjudged to owe the government more than $49,000, which he paid.

In 1791, Edmund Randolph was elected to the American Philosophical Society.

Edmund Randolph lived his final years as a guest of his friend Nathaniel Burwell at Carter Hall, near Millwood, Virginia, in Clarke County.

Edmund Randolph suffered from paralysis in his final years and died at 60 on September 12,1813.

Edmund Randolph, who was the governor of Virginia when the state ceded what was then sometimes called Illinois County, Virginia to the new federal government, which created the Northwest Territory.