Randolph, Edmund

Randolph, Edmund (Jenings or Jennings)

(1753–1813) lawyer, cabinet officer; born in Williamsburg, Va. (grandson of Sir John Randolph and descendant of Pocahontas). A lawyer and briefly an aide to Gen. George Washington (1775), he served in the Continental Congress (1779–82). As a delegate to the Constitutional Convention (1787), he proposed the Virginia (or Randolph) Plan (basing representation solely on population) and then refused to sign the final version of the Constitution because it was not "republican" enough; later, however, he advocated that Virginia ratify it. Washington named him the first attorney general (1789–94) and then the second secretary of state (1794–95). As the latter, he tried to hold to a neutral path but found himself challenged when Alexander Hamilton got John Jay to negotiate a treaty with the British (1794); intercepted letters from the French ambassador, Fauchet, intimated that Randolph was receptive to bribery; although both Fauchet and Randolph denied this, Randolph was forced to resign. He returned to his law practice and was Aaron Burr's chief counsel when he was tried for treason (1807).