Date of Award

1940

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts

Department

History

Abstract

In this paper I shall make no attempt to treat any portion of the private life of Mr. Randolph. His family and domestic affairs will be ignored completely. Only those portions of his life spent in the service of the Commonwealth of Virginia, or the Federal Union shall enter into the reader's ken. And that story alone is long enough and distinguished enough.

We first encounter Edmund Randolph in this paper when he enters the Continental Army as Aide-de-Camp to General Washington, and part from his as he sadly pens his resignation from the office of Secretary of State. I do no more than touch upon the skeleton facts of his dismissal. The question of right and wrong in that matter have been discussed pro and con for many, many years by wiser heads than I. That story has been told and retold, and I do not propose to repeat it here, for, not only would such a treatment be superfluous, but out of the scope of this paper. I am not writing about the man who penned vindication after vindication, but the man he was before the shadow of scandal drove him from the Year of Our Lord 1775 to 1795, a span of twenty years during which he was almost constantly in public life.

Download

Included in

History Commons

Share

COinS