Unwise Passions: A True Story of a Remarkable Woman and the First Great Scandal of Eighteenth-Century America » (Reprint)

Alan Pell Crawford is the author of Thunder on the Right: The "New Right" and the Politics of Resentment, which The New Republic called "a significant work of political and intellectual history." He lives in Richmond, Virginia, with his wife, Sally Curran, and their two sons, Ned and Tim.

In the spring of 1793, eighteen-year-old Nancy Randolph, the fetching daughter of one of the greatest of the great Virginia tobacco planters, was accused, along with her brother-in-law, of killing her newborn son. Once one of the most sought-after young women in Virginia society, she was denounced as a ruined Jezebel, and the great orator Patrick Henry and future Supreme Court justice John Marshall were retained to defend her in a sensational trial. This gripping account of murder, infanticide, prostitution charges, moral decline, and heroism that played out in the intimate lives of the nation's Founding Fathers is as riveting and revealing as any current scandal -- in or out of Washington.

Publishers Weekly

In 1792, 18-year-old Nancy Randolph of Virginia, a supremely eligible and sought-after beauty, gave birth to a baby rumored to have been fathered and subsequently killed by her sister Judith's husband, Richard Randolph. Although no body was found (supposedly, slaves had seen a dead white baby lying atop a trash heap) and Richard was acquitted, Judith and her husband's brother Jack never forgave Nancy. Indeed, they went out of their way to make her life miserable, aided by the fact that no southern gentleman would now have her. Nevertheless, like a true-life Scarlett O'Hara, Nancy willfully declared, "I shall rally again," and she did. While her vengeful relatives fell into ruin (the heady days of the southern tobacco-dominated economy and the lavish lifestyle of the plantation owners were dwindling decidedly and irreversibly), she headed north, married the wealthy Gouoverneur Morris, who had hired her to run his household, and lived happily ever after. Crawford's (Thunder on the Right) account has the makings of a great story of intrigue, passion, greed, honor and lust set in the South, replete with an extraordinary supporting cast that includes Thomas Jefferson, a long-time family friend and relative; Francis Scott Key and Patrick Henry, who served as Richard's legal defense. But despite extensive research, Crawford, a former U.S. Senate speechwriter, fails to bring Nancy's character to full life and never seems to dish up the meat of his story, leaving it merely an interesting tale for those who like their history light and with a whiff of scandal. Maps and illus. (Nov.) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.