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).

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)[2] and Washington, D.C., where his mother sent him to give him distance from Virginia politics and family troubles.

[1] 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.

[3] His wife Mary Randolph later became active in the Richmond Ladies Association, which organized welfare and relief for the Confederate war effort.

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.

Richmond voters elected Randolph and fellow attorneys William H. McFarland and Marmaduke Johnson (Lawyer and Soldier) as their representatives to the Virginia Secession Convention of 1861.

Stuart, traveled to Washington, D.C. where they met newly inaugurated President Abraham Lincoln on April 12, 1861, the same day that South Carolina artillery militia fired at Fort Sumter.

They were then sent to barracks established at Richmond Baptist College under Col. John B. Magruder, who had fought as an artillery officer in the Mexican War and who requested ten cadets from the Virginia Military Institute as drill instructors.

When enlistments proved heavy, the unit expanded into a battalion at the suggestion of Col. Edward Porter Alexander (who would later become CSA General Longstreet's artillery commander).

On May 13, the battalion left the college and encamped on the Mechanicsville Turnpike for a while until moving to Chimborazo Hill, where they posted their guns overlooking the James River at Rockett's Landing, where many slaves disembarked.

On June 10 Randolph's Howitzers fought the Battle of Big Bethel near Yorktown, their only engagement as a battalion during the war, and in which three men were wounded.

[1] On September 13, 1861, General Magruder organized ten artillery companies (including the Richmond Howitzers) into a regiment, with Major Randolph promoted to colonel.