Brig. General George Wythe Randolph, (CSA)

Brig. General George Wythe Randolph, CSA

• General George Wythe Randolph's Wikipedia Page
• Find A Grave Memorial ID # 11056

Randolph was a lawyer and the Confederate States Secretary of War during the American Civil War. He was also Thomas Jefferson's grandson.

Randolph was born at Monticello in Charlottesville, Virginia, to Thomas Mann Randolph Jr., a descendant of Pocahontas, and Martha Jefferson Randolph, the daughter of U.S. President Thomas Jefferson. Named in honor of George Wythe, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, he was a relative of Edmund Randolph, who served in George Washington's cabinet as the first Attorney General of the United States, as well as colonist William Randolph through both his mother and father's sides of the family.

Randolph briefly attended school in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and served as a midshipman in the United States Navy. He attended the University of Virginia before moving to Richmond and becoming a lawyer. On April 10, 1852, he married Mary Elizabeth Adams (1830–1871).

As the Confederacy was established and the United States divided into two hostile camps, both sides moved steadily toward open conflict. A special delegation, composed of Randolph, William B. Preston and Alexander H.H. Stuart, travelled to Washington, D.C. where they met President Abraham Lincoln on April 12, 1861. Finding the President firm in his resolve to hold the Federal forts then in the South, the three men returned to Richmond, Virginia on April 15. He joined the Confederate army, serving as a major in the Battle of Big Bethel, and was promoted to brigadier general on February 12, 1862. Randolph was appointed by Jefferson Davis as Secretary of War on March 18, 1862, and he took office on March 24, 1862, but resigned on November 17, 1862.

Randolph chose exile in Europe after the Confederacy fell. He later returned to Virginia where he died two years later in 1867 from pneumonia. He is buried in the Jefferson family graveyard at Monticello.

He is pictured on the $100 bill of the Confederate States of America.

Randolph was born in 1818 at Monticello near Charlottesville, Virginia, to Martha Jefferson Randolph, the daughter of U.S. President Thomas Jefferson, and Thomas Mann Randolph, Jr., a descendant of Pocahontas and John Rolfe' son, Thomas Rolfe. Their youngest son, he was named in honor of George Wythe, a signer of the Declaration of Independence and law professor of his grandfather Thomas Jefferson. He was also related to the seventh governor of Virginia, Edmund Randolph, who served in George Washington's cabinet as the first Attorney General of the United States, as well as colonist William Randolph through both his mother and father's sides of the family.

Randolph briefly attended preparatory schools in Cambridge, Massachusetts and Washington, DC, where his mother sent him to distance him from family troubles. His father had incurred much debt. He served as a midshipman in the United States Navy from 1831 to 1839 and began attending the University of Virginia while in the service.

On April 10, 1852, he married the young widow Mary Elizabeth Adams Pope (1830–1867). They had no children.

After studying at the University of Virginia, Randolph "read the law" with an established firm and was admitted to the bar in 1840. He practiced law in Charlottesville, Virginia, and he and Mary lived at his plantation of Edgehill. They moved to the capital of Richmond in 1849. He became active in the community as well as having his law practice. He founded the Richmond Mechanics' Institute and was an officer in the Virginia Historical Society.

As the Confederacy formed after southern states' secession, the United States divided into two hostile camps and the sections moved toward open conflict. A special delegation, composed of Randolph, William B. Preston and Alexander H.H. Stuart, traveled to Washington, D.C. where they met President Abraham Lincoln on April 12, 1861. Finding the President firm in his resolve to hold the Federal forts in the South, the three men returned to Richmond on April 15.

George W. Randolph depicted on a 1863 Confederate $100 banknote (with Lucy Pickens).

Randolph was commissioned a major in the Confederate Army, and later served as a colonel of the artillery in the Battle of Big Bethel. He was promoted to brigadier general on February 12, 1862. Mary Randolph was active in the Richmond Ladies Association, which organized welfare and relief for the war effort.

Randolph was appointed by Jefferson Davis as Secretary of War on March 18, 1862, and he took office on March 24, 1862. He helped reform the department, improving procurement and writing a conscription law similar to one he had created for Virginia. He was most well known for his strengthening the Confederacy's western and southern defenses, but came into conflict with Jefferson Davis over this. With weakening health due to tuberculosis (TB), he resigned on November 17, 1862.

In 1864, Randolph took his family to exile in Europe, staying in England and France. They returned to Virginia in 1866. He died of tuberculosis in March 1867 at his Edgehill plantation. He is buried at Monticello in the Jefferson family graveyard.
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https://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Randolph_George_Wythe_1818-1867

George Wythe Randolph was a lawyer, Confederate general, and, briefly, Confederate secretary of war during the American Civil War (1861–1865). The grandson of former U.S. president Thomas Jefferson, Randolph hailed from an elite Virginia family but largely shunned public life until John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry in 1859. He supported secession, founded the Richmond Howitzers, joined the Confederate army, and fought at the Battle of Big Bethel (1861). Appointed the Confederacy's third secretary of war in March 1862, he helped to reform the War Department at a time when the Confederate capital at Richmond was threatened by Union general George B. McClellan's Peninsula Campaign (1862). Randolph helped to improve procurement and authored the Confederacy's first conscription law, having already done the same for Virginia. His independence and focus on the strategic importance of the West put him into conflict with Confederate president Jefferson Davis, and he resigned in November 1862, his health failing. He died of tuberculosis in 1867.

Early Life

George Wythe Randolph was born at Monticello in Albemarle County on March 10, 1818, the son of the soon-to-be Virginia governor Thomas Mann Randolph Jr. and Martha Jefferson Randolph. Named for George Wythe, a Virginia delegate to the Second Continental Congress and a signer of the Declaration of Independence, Randolph was the youngest of twelve children. His father accrued large debts that ultimately wrecked the family's financial and social standing. Wanting to shield her son from the family's misfortunes, Martha Randolph sent her son to preparatory schools in Boston and Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Washington, D.C. At age thirteen, he enlisted as a midshipman in the United States Navy, sailing on the USS John Adams and USS Constitution to the Mediterranean Sea. (He contracted tuberculosis while at sea, but the disease went into a long remission.) Returning to the United States at the age of nineteen, Randolph trained at the Naval School in Norfolk, Virginia.

While still in the navy, he attended the school his grandfather founded, the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, at a time when the institution was dogged by student drunkenness and gambling. Finding a mentor in George Tucker—a former congressman, a novelist, and an essayist—Randolph studied economics, history, and political science. After two years, he resigned from the navy and read the law. On October 12, 1840, he was admitted to the Albemarle County bar, practicing in Charlottesville until just prior to 1850, when he grew tired of small-town life and moved to Richmond. There he became a civic leader, founding the Richmond Mechanics' Institute and serving as an officer of the Virginia Historical Society. He also met the widow Mary Elizabeth Adams Pope, whom he married in New Orleans, Louisiana, on April 10, 1852.

Civil War

Randolph had largely shunned politics, but John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry in October 1859 inflamed sectional tensions and served to radicalize Randolph. He organized the Richmond Howitzers, a light-artillery unit armed with short-range howitzers converted from naval use, and marched it to Charles Town, Virginia (now West Virginia). There the unit contributed to prison security during Brown's trial and, in December, his execution. Randolph was elected as a delegate to the Virginia Convention of 1861, which met in Richmond in February and for two and half months hotly debated the question of secession.

On April 12, Randolph and two other Virginia delegates—William B. Preston and Alexander H. H. Stuart—met in Washington, D.C., with the newly elected U.S. president, Abraham Lincoln, hoping to dissuade him from forcefully resupplying the federal garrison at Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor, South Carolina, and thereby provoking war. Lincoln vowed to meet force with force, however, and that night Confederates fired on Sumter. On April 17, after Lincoln responded with a call for 75,000 volunteers, the Virginia convention voted to secede. In the meantime, Randolph served on the convention's military committee and helped to organize the state's defenses and draft a conscription law based on European models.

Randolph was commissioned a major in the Virginia militia and his Richmond Howitzers were placed under the command of John Bankhead Magruder. Quickly promoted to colonel, Randolph was chief of artillery with Magruder's Army of the Peninsula at the Battle of Big Bethel in York County and Hampton on June 10, 1861. Virginia's first full-scale battle of the war resulted in a Confederate victory and praise for Randolph, who went on to design the fortifications at Yorktown, anticipating Union general George B. McClellan's amphibious invasion of the peninsula the following spring. On February 12, 1862, Randolph was promoted to brigadier general and assigned to command the defenses at Suffolk.

Secretary of War

Randolph was not in Suffolk long. On March 18, 1862, Confederate president Jefferson Davis appointed him secretary of war to replace the outgoing Judah P. Benjamin, who had been censured by the Confederate Congress after the loss of Roanoke Island, North Carolina. Responsibilities at the War Department could be overwhelming. The Confederate army needed to be fed, equipped, and transported. Additional soldiers needed to be recruited. Issues of long-term strategy needed to be hashed out and coordinated between the Eastern and Western theaters. The egos and ambitions of generals, congressmen, and the president needed to be coddled.

His most immediate concern, perhaps, was McClellan's march up the peninsula between the York and James rivers, a campaign that threatened Richmond. Working with Davis, his adviser Robert E. Lee, and the commander in the field, Joseph E. Johnston, Randolph helped to administrate the Confederate response. After Johnston's wounding at the Battle of Seven Pines–Fair Oaks, Lee took over and defeated McClellan in the Seven Days' Battles. McClellan's immediate threat neutralized, the secretary of war began an unusual program of centralized economic planning, in which he proposed to feed and supply his troops by exchanging cotton with the North for food and other supplies. The plan failed, but in a successful effort to provide the Confederate armies with fresh recruits, he also helped to author a conscription law much like the one he had written for Virginia in 1861.

Randolph was known most for his insistence on strengthening the Confederacy's military position in the southern and western parts of the country. Believing the Confederacy could not hold its territories if it left its chief ports in jeopardy, Randolph, in conjunction with Davis, drew up preliminary plans to retake New Orleans, which had fallen to the Union in April 1862. Plans remained just plans, however, and Randolph became increasingly frustrated with Davis's Virginia-centric approach to the war. He also chafed at the president's well-known habit of micromanaging his subordinates. (Before the war, when Davis was U.S. secretary of war, he had fought titanic battles with the army's commanding general, Winfield Scott, over the miniscule details of expense reports.) His tuberculosis back and his health growing more fragile, Randolph resigned on November 15, 1862.

Later Years

After briefly considering a return to field command, Randolph instead resigned from the army. He lived in Richmond during the bread riot on April 1, 1863, and advocated for the plight of workers. Randolph's wife, Mary Randolph, meanwhile, was president of the Richmond Ladies' Association. One of Richmond's most prestigious organizations, it included as members the wives of various government officials, including the famous diarist Mary Boykin Chesnut. As noted by the historian Caroline E. Janney, Mary Randolph—perhaps echoing her husband's quasi-socialist inclinations—suggested to the group that it divide its donated goods equally among both Union and Confederate wounded and prisoners, an idea not met with universal approval among the women. "Some shrieked in wrath at the bare idea of putting our noble soldiers on par with Yankees—living, dying, or dead," Chesnut wrote. In the end, the association stuck to serving the needs of Confederate soldiers only.

In November 1864, Randolph and his wife evaded the Union blockade and spent the rest of the war in England and France, returning to the United States in September 1866. He died on April 3, 1867, at Edgehill, a family estate in Albemarle County. He is buried at Monticello.

Time Line

March 10, 1818 - George Wythe Randolph is born at Monticello, in Albemarle County, the twelfth surviving child of Thomas Mann Randolph and Martha Jefferson Randolph.

March 31, 1831 - George Wythe Randolph enlists at the age of thirteen in the U.S. Navy. He spends the next six years abroad and contracts tuberculosis while at sea.

May 1837 - George Wythe Randolph takes leave from the navy. Autumn 1837 - George Wythe Randolph enrolls at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, where he studies economics, history, and political science.

1839 - George Wythe Randolph resigns from the U.S. Navy to study law at the University of Virginia.

October 12, 1840 - George Wythe Randolph is admitted as a member of the Albemarle County bar, and sets up a small law practice in Charlottesville.

April 10, 1852 - George Wythe Randolph marries the widow Mary Elizabeth Adams Pope in New Orleans, Louisiana.

November 9, 1859 - George Wythe Randolph founds the Richmond Howitzers, a light artillery unit, and is elected captain. The Howitzers march to Charles Town to help guard John Brown during his trial and subsequent execution.

April 13, 1861 - George Wythe Randolph, William B. Preston, and Alexander H. H. Stuart meet with President Abraham Lincoln to discuss the secession crisis. Lincoln vows to meet force with force and soon after, Virginia secedes.

June 10, 1861 - Colonel George Wythe Randolph, chief of artillery for the Confederate Army of the Peninsula, participates in the Confederate victory at the Battle of Big Bethel in York County and Hampton.

February 12, 1862 - George Wythe Randolph is promoted to brigadier general and assigned to command Confederate forces at Suffolk.

March 18, 1862 - Confederate president Jefferson Davis appoints George Wythe Randolph secretary of war to replace the outgoing Judah P. Benjamin.

November 15, 1862 - His health failing and frustrated by Confederate president Jefferson Davis's micromanagement of the War Department, George Wythe Randolph resigns as secretary of war.

November 1864 - George Wythe Randolph and his wife, Mary Randolph, evade the Union blockade and spend the rest of the war in England and France.

September 1866 - George Wythe Randolph and his wife, Mary Randolph, return to the United States from Europe.

April 3, 1867 - After a long bout with tuberculosis, George Wythe Randolph dies at Edgehill, a family estate in Albemarle County. He is buried at Monticello.

• Military service: Served in United States Navy - From 1831 To 1839
  • Reference: MyHeritage Family Trees - SmartCopy: Nov 13 2022, 1:52:02 UTC