Page:EB1911 - Volume 22.djvu/903

Rh in a medieval monastery, which was restored in 1894-97. There is a statue to Steen S. Blicher (1782-1848), the national poet and novelist of Jutland.

Randers is best known in history as the scene of the assassination of Count Gerhard by Niels Ebbesön in 1340. In the middle ages it had six churches and four monastic establishments, the oldest a Benedictine nunnery (1170). The Grey Friars' building was turned into a castle (Dronningborg) after the Reformation; its church was burned down in 1698.

RANDOLPH, EDMUND [JENNINGS] (1753-1813), American statesman, was born on the 10th of August 1753, at Tazewell Hall, Williamsburg, Virginia, the family seat of his grandfather, Sir John Randolph (1693-I 73 7), and his father, John Randolph (1727-84), who (like his uncle Peyton Randolph) were king's attorneys for Virginia. Edmund graduated at the College of William and Mary, and studied law with his father, who felt bound by his oath to the king and went to England in 1775. In August-October 1775 Edmund was aide-de-camp to General Washington. In 1776 he was a member of the Virginia Convention, and was on its committee to draft a constitution. In the same year he became the first attorney-general of the state (serving until 1786). He served in the Continental Congress in 1779 and again in 1780-82. He had a large private practice, including much legal business for General Washington. In 1786 he was a delegate to the “Annapolis convention,” and in 1787-88 was governor of Virginia. He was a delegate to the Constitutional Convention of 1787, and on the 29th of May presented the “Virginia plan” (sometimes called the “Randolph plan”). The plan was not drafted by Randolph, but he presented it because he was governor. It called for a legislature of two branches, one chosen by the people and based on free population (or on wealth) and the other chosen by the first out of candidates nominated by the state legislatures; a majority vote only was required in each house; and Congress was to have a negative on such state legislation as seemed to the Congress to contravene the articles of the Union. There was to be, under this plan, an executive chosen by the national legislature, to be ineligible for a second term, to have general authority to execute the national laws and to have the executive rights vested in Congress by the Confederation; and the executive with a convenient number of the national judiciary was to compose a Council of Revision, with a veto power on acts of the national legislature and on the national legislature's vetoes of acts of state legislatures――but the national legislature might pass bills (or vetoes of state legislation) over the action of the Council of Revision. The plan provided for a Federal judiciary, the judges to be appointed by the national legislature, to hold office during good behaviour, and to have jurisdiction over cases in admiralty and cases in which foreigners or citizens of different states were parties. The Virginia plan was opposed by the smaller states, Connecticut, New jersey, Delaware and Maryland, which demanded equal representation in the legislature. It was too radically different from the Articles of Confederation. A draft of a constitution in Randolph's handwriting, discovered in 1887, seems to have been the report (6th August) of a Committee of Detail of five members (John Rutledge, Edmund Randolph, Nathaniel Gorham, Oliver Ellsworth and James Wilson). It is reproduced in facsimile in W. M. Meigs's The Growth of the Constitution (Philadelphia, 1900). Conway, who discovered it, exaggerated its importance and thought it had been drawn by Randolph alone and before the Convention.

In the Convention Randolph advocated a strongly centralized government, the prohibition of the importation of slaves, and a plural executive, suggesting that there should be three executives from different parts of the country, and refused to sign the constitution because too much power over commerce was granted to a mere majority in Congress, and because no provision was made for a second convention to act after the present instrument had been referred to the states. In October 1787 he published an attack on the Constitution; but in the Virginia convention he urged its ratification, arguing that it was too late to attempt to amend it without endangering the Union, and thinking that Virginia's assent would be that of the necessary ninth state. In 1788 he refused re-election as governor, and entered the House of Delegates to work on the revision and codification of the state laws (published in 1794). In September 1789 he was appointed by President Washington first attorney-general of the United States. He worked for a revision of Ellsworth's judiciary act of 1789, and especially to relieve justices of the supreme court of the duties of circuit judges, and advocated a Federal code; in 1791 he considered Hamilton's scheme for a national bank unconstitutional; and in 1792-93, in the case Chisolm v. Georgia before the supreme court, argued that a state might be sued by a citizen of another state. On the 2nd of January 1794 he succeeded Thomas Jefferson as secretary of state. In 1795 he wrote thirteen letters (signed "Germanicus") defending the President in his attack on the American Jacobin or democratic societies. He was the only cabinet member who opposed the ratification of the Jay treaty (his letters to the President on the subject are reprinted in The American Historical Review, vol. xii. pp. 587-599), and before it was ratified the delicate task of keeping up friendly diplomatic relations with France fell to him. Home dispatches of the French minister, Joseph Fauchet, intercepted by a British man-of-war and sent to the British minister to the United States, accused Randolph of asking for money from France to influence the administration against Great Britain. Although this charge was demonstrably false, Randolph when confronted With it immediately resigned, and subsequently secured a retractation from Fauchet; he published A Vindication of Mr Randolph's Resignation (1795) and Political Truth, or Animadversions on the Past and Present State of Public Affairs (1796). He was held personally responsible for the loss of a large sum of money during his administration of the state department, and after years of litigation was judged by an arbitrator to be indebted to the government for more than $49,000, which he paid at great sacrifice to himself. He removed to Richmond in 1803, and during his last years was a leader of the Virginia bar; in 1807 he was one of Aaron Burr's counsel. He died at Carter Hall, Millwood, Clarke county, Virginia, on the 12th of September 1813.

Moncure D. Conway, in his Omitted Chapters of History disclosed in the Life and Papers of Edmund Randolph (New York, 1888; 2nd ed., 1889) greatly exaggerates Randolph's work in the Constitutional Convention; the commoner view underrates him and makes him a “hair-splitter," and a man of no decision of character.

RANDOLPH, JOHN (1773–1833), of Roanoke, American statesman. He was a member of an influential and wealthy Virginian family, and was the third and youngest son of John Randolph of Cawsons, Chesterfield county, where he was born on the 2nd of June 1773. He was a descendant of John Rolfe and his wife Pocahontas. His father having died in 1775, his early years were passed under the care of his mother and his stepfather, Mr St George Tucker, from whom, however, he eventually became estranged, as he did from almost every one with whom he was intimately associated. He attended a school at Williamsburg, Virginia, and for a short time studied at Princeton and at Columbia; but, although well read in modern works bearing on politics and philosophy, his own statement, &ldquo;I am an ignorant man, sir,&rdquo; was in other respects not inaccurate. Both his religious and his political views were radical and extreme. At an early period he imbibed deistical opinions, which he promulgated with eagerness. He was also, though a mere boy when the new Federal government was organized in 1789, strongly opposed to the new Constitution of the United States. In order to assist in asserting the right of resistance to national laws, and to withstand the &ldquo;encroachments of the administration upon the indisputable rights&rdquo; of Virginia, he was in 1799 elected as a Republican to the national House of Representatives, of which he was a member, with the exception of two terms (1813–15 and 1817–19), until 1825, and again in 1827–29. After the accession of Jefferson to the presidency in 1801, Randolph was appointed chairman of the Committee of Ways and Means, and as such was naturally the leader of the Republican majority in the House. He took an active part in agitating for the reform of the judiciary, and in 1804 moved the impeachment of (q.v.), acting as the leader of prosecution in the trial before the Senate. Though an avowed Republican, he was far from being subservient to his party, and for several years after 1805 led a small faction, called &ldquo;Quids,&rdquo; which sharply criticized Jefferson and attempted to prevent the selection of Madison as the