Edmund Jennings Randolph (August 10, 1753 – September 12, 1813) was a Founding Father of the United States, attorney, and the seventh Governor of Virginia.

The Virginia Plan also proposed a bicameral legislature, both houses of which would have delegates chosen based on state population.

Randolph was also 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.

[8] Randolph thought the final document lacked sufficient checks and balances and published an account of his objections in October 1787.

However, 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.

He chaired the nearly equally-divided convention, and Mason (as one of the leaders of the opposition, along with Patrick Henry) greatly resented Randolph's change of position.

"[citation needed] Ultimately, Randolph said he voted for ratification of the Constitution because by June 2, eight other states had already done so, and he did not want to see Virginia left out of the new national government.

He 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.

Serving in Washington's cabinet, as in the ratification dispute of 1787–88, Randolph tried to bring people together rather than contest with others in pursuit of self-righteous ideological purity.

Hostile to the resulting treaty, Randolph almost gained Washington's ear for his concerns but was overridden in the wake of the Fauchet scandal (see below).

[1] The British Navy had intercepted and turned over to President Washington correspondence from Joseph Fauchet, the French ambassador to the United States, to his superiors.

Chernow and Elkins[9][10] concluded that France did not bribe Randolph but that he "was rather a pitiable figure, possessed of some talents and surprisingly little malice, but subject to self-absorbed silliness and lapses of good sense."

[11] After his resignation, Randolph was held personally responsible for losing a large sum of money during his administration of the state department.

My aunt 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.

I do not recollect that I reflected much upon that range of qualities, which I afterwards found to be constituents of nuptial happiness; but Providence seemed to be kinder to me than my most deliberate judgment could have been...

After Mrs. Randolph's death in 1810, the heartbroken husband wrote some account of her and their married life, which was addressed to his children as "the best witnesses of the truth of the brief history.

"[13] In part, Randolph wrote, "My eyes are every moment beholding so many objects with which she was associated; I sometimes catch a sound which deludes me so much with the similitude of her voice; I carry about my heart and hold for a daily visit so many of her precious relics; and, above all, my present situation is so greatly contrasted by its vacancy, regrets, and anguish, with the purest and unchequered bliss, so far as it depended on her, for many years of varying fortune, that I have vowed at her grave daily to maintain with her a mental intercourse.

"[13] After leaving the federal cabinet, Randolph returned to Virginia to practice law, where he was a leader of the state bar.

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