A VINDICATION OF EDMUND RANDOLPH, WRITTEN BY HIMSELF, AND PUBLISHED IN 1795. NEW EDITION, WITH A PREFACE BY P.V. DANIEL, JR.
1855 · Richmond
by Randolph, Edmund
Richmond: Charles H. Wynne, 1855. Disbound, lightly worn. pp xi, 82. Good+.
Daniel, son of the United States Supreme Court Justice and the grandson of Randolph, passionately defends him. "THIS MAN is suddenly stricken down, condemned, and disgraced, so far as such a man can be disgraced-- and for what cause, and on what evidence of guilt or unworthiness?" he asks rhetorically. The Vindication is printed in full here, along with Washington's anti-France Message of December 1793, his nomination of John Jay as our envoy to England, and Randolph's letter of August 1794 to Washington on the foreign policy implications of the Whisky Rebellion.
Pickering and other Anglophiles suspected that Secretary of State Randolph-- one of President Washington's closest friends-- had urged rejection of the Jay Treaty "in order to foment a war with England that would throw the United States into the hands of such Jacobins as they suspected Randolph secretly was." Flexner, Washington The Indispensable Man 332. Charged with leaking secrets to the French, Randolph felt abandoned and betrayed; he resigned. "The long and confused pamphlet Randolph published bristled with anger against Washington...(T)he picture of Washington that emerged from the 103 closely printed pages carried strong implications of weakness and indecision...He also stated nastily, for the whole nation to see, what Washington himself suspected and feared: that the President was losing his mental powers." Id. 337.
Howes R55. Haynes 14788. Swem 4467. (Inventory #: 6813)
Daniel, son of the United States Supreme Court Justice and the grandson of Randolph, passionately defends him. "THIS MAN is suddenly stricken down, condemned, and disgraced, so far as such a man can be disgraced-- and for what cause, and on what evidence of guilt or unworthiness?" he asks rhetorically. The Vindication is printed in full here, along with Washington's anti-France Message of December 1793, his nomination of John Jay as our envoy to England, and Randolph's letter of August 1794 to Washington on the foreign policy implications of the Whisky Rebellion.
Pickering and other Anglophiles suspected that Secretary of State Randolph-- one of President Washington's closest friends-- had urged rejection of the Jay Treaty "in order to foment a war with England that would throw the United States into the hands of such Jacobins as they suspected Randolph secretly was." Flexner, Washington The Indispensable Man 332. Charged with leaking secrets to the French, Randolph felt abandoned and betrayed; he resigned. "The long and confused pamphlet Randolph published bristled with anger against Washington...(T)he picture of Washington that emerged from the 103 closely printed pages carried strong implications of weakness and indecision...He also stated nastily, for the whole nation to see, what Washington himself suspected and feared: that the President was losing his mental powers." Id. 337.
Howes R55. Haynes 14788. Swem 4467. (Inventory #: 6813)