George Wythe Randolph (March 10, 1818 – April 3, 1867) was a Virginia lawyer, planter, politician and Confederate general. After representing the City of Richmond during the Virginia Secession Convention in 1861, during eight months in 1862 he was the Confederate States Secretary of War during the American Civil War, then served in the Virginia Senate representing the City of Richmond until the war's end.
Early and family life
Born in 1818 at Monticello near Charlottesville, Virginia, to Martha Jefferson Randolph, the daughter of U.S. President Thomas Jefferson, and her husband (and future Virginia governor) Thomas Mann Randolph, Jr., the couple's youngest son could trace his descent to Pocahontas and had many relations among the First Families of Virginia. His name honored George Wythe, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, law professor of his grandfather Thomas Jefferson, and Virginia judge who opposed slavery (which position likely caused his murder). Randolph's relations also included Edmund Randolph (Virginia's second governor after statehood as well as the first Attorney General of the United States), colonist William Randolph, Isham Randolph of Dungeness, Richard Randolph and Thomas Randolph of Tuckahoe.
Following a private education appropriate for his class, Randolph briefly attended preparatory schools in Cambridge, Massachusetts (under the direction of his brother in law Joseph Coolidge) and Washington, D.C., where his mother sent him to give him distance from Virginia politics and family troubles. His father had incurred much debt, and creditors foreclosed after his term as Virginia's 21st governor ended. However, his elder brother Thomas Jefferson Randolph managed to buy the family's Edgehill plantation at a foreclosure auction in 1826. Meanwhile, G.W. Randolph became a midshipman in the United States Navy from 1831 to 1839, sailing on the USS John Adams and USS Constitution in the Mediterranean Sea as well as training at the Naval School in Norfolk, Virginia. Randolph also began attending the University of Virginia in Charlottesville near his home during his naval service in 1837, perhaps while recovering from tuberculosis contracted during his naval voyages (which went into a very long remission but which ultimately proved fatal).
Randolph read the law with an established lawyer, probably in part guided by George Tucker, who was a professor of moral philosophy at the University of Virginia (at which his eldest brother Thomas Jefferson Randolph was rector) and also wrote the first widely read biography of Thomas Jefferson (in 1837) and various treatises about economics and slavery before retiring from the faculty and moving to Philadelphia in 1845.
Marriage and family
On April 10, 1852, George W. Randolph married the young widow Mary Elizabeth (Adams) Pope (1830–1871). Like Randolph, she descended from the First Families of Virginia. However, they had no children. His wife Mary Randolph later became active in the Richmond Ladies Association, which organized welfare and relief for the Confederate war effort.
Slaveholdings
Several of the Randolphs, like Jefferson's teacher George Wythe, opposed slavery and freed slaves either during their lifetimes or in their wills. Following Nat Turner's Rebellion, his brother Thomas Jefferson Randolph introduced a gradual emancipation plan as a bill in the Virginia House of Delegates but it was soundly defeated. In the 1860 federal census, George Wythe Randolph owned one slave, a 78-year-old woman. However, like other plantations in Virginia, Edgehill plantation used enslaved labor.
Career
After admission to the bar in 1840, Randolph practiced law in Charlottesville, Virginia, and he and Mary lived at the family's Edgehill plantation. They moved to the capital of Richmond between 1849 and 1851. Randolph became active in the community as well as continued a law practice. He founded the Richmond Mechanics' Institute and was an officer in the Virginia Historical Society.
Following John Brown's raid at Harper's Ferry, rumors arose that abolitionist raiders would raid the jail at Charles Town to free him. Randolph responded by organizing the Richmond Howitzers, which were among the troops that Virginia Governor Henry A. Wise sent to secure the town until Brown's execution. On their return, they received the naval howitzers that gave their unit their name, and first paraded in Richmond on July 4, 1860. Late in 1860, they received the designation, Company H of the First Regiment of Volunteers in the Virginia militia.
