George Wythe

Biography

George Wythe was born in 1726 on a Virginia plantation to a slaveholding family. His father died when he was young and his older brother, Thomas, became his guardian. Wythe received little formal education, although his mother had taught him Latin and Greek, and he likely attended a grammar school run by The College of William and Mary. As a teenager, George was sent to read law with an uncle, and at the age of 20, he was admitted to the Virginia bar. At 21, he married his law partner’s sister, Ann Lewis, but his young wife died the following year.

In 1755, Wythe’s brother Thomas died, and the family estate came to George. Rather than living on the plantation, however, Wythe decided to make his home in Virginia’s capital, Williamsburg. Now a wealthy man, he made his entrance into politics by winning a seat in the House of Burgesses, the lower house of Virginia’s government. He served until 1775. In 1768, he also took on the role of Mayor of Williamsburg, and in 1769, added a seat on the governing board of the College. During these busy years, Wythe made time to direct the legal studies of younger men, including Thomas Jefferson. The two men formed a bond and became political allies.

Wythe’s journey toward support for independence began in 1764 with his concern about Parliament’s plan to impose a Stamp Act on the colonists. He drafted an opposition paper so intense that his colleagues in the House of Burgesses thought it best to modify it. But Wythe could not accept the new policies that were likely to follow, and early on, he embraced the possibility of a colonial separation from the Mother Country. In 1776, his fellow members of the Continental Congress came to share his view that independence was necessary.

In 1776, Wythe was joined by his former student Jefferson and Wythe’s courtroom rival Edmund Pendleton in a project to revise Virginia’s legal code. Two years later, Wythe was chosen to be one of three judges of the newly created Virginia high court of chancery. Wythe served for 28 years, and during his long career on the bench, he shaped the course of the state’s jurisprudence.

Wythe’s mentoring of young lawyers demonstrated his love of teaching. In 1779, Jefferson and other members of the governing body at The College of William and Mary created the first chair in law in an American college and appointed George Wythe to hold it. As a professor of law, Wythe educated future leaders like John Marshall and James Monroe.

It came as no surprise to any Virginian that the 61-year old Wythe would be chosen as a delegate to the Constitutional Convention. William Pierce, who wrote brief sketches of all the delegates, showed his admiration for Wythe, “the famous Professor of Law” who was well known as “one of the most learned legal Characters of the present age.” Pierce went on to praise Wythe for acquiring “a compleat knowledge of the dead languages and all the sciences,” and for his “exemplary life.” He declared, “No Man it is said understands the history of Government better than Mr. Wythe,– nor any one who understands the fluctuating condition to which all societies are liable better than he.” Even so, Pierce believed Wythe lacked the cynicism needed to be a great politician.

In fact, Wythe contributed little to the debates swirling around him at the Convention, and he left Philadelphia before the delegates’ work was finished. Thus, his signature was absent from the Constitution. Perhaps Wythe participated more comfortably in Virginia’s political world, for he was a leader in the Federalist push to ratify the constitution.

In 1791, at the age of 65, George Wythe resigned his professorship and moved to Richmond, the state capital since 1780, in order to more easily perform his duties on the chancery court. Reluctant to abandon teaching completely, he opened a private law school there. Henry Clay was one of his last students.

At the age of 80, Wythe died under mysterious circumstances. Wythe’s grandnephew and would-be heir, George Wythe Sweeney, allegedly poisoned him, putting arsenic in Wythe’s morning coffee on May 25, 1806. Wythe, his housekeeper, and Michael Brown, a free African American, all became violently ill after drinking the coffee. After a week, Brown died, and a search of Sweeney’s room turned up the arsenic. It is possible that Brown was a target as well as Wythe since Wythe had left part of his fortune to Brown in his will. Realizing what Sweeney had done, and that his own death was imminent, Wythe had revised his will, revoking all bequests to Sweeney. Sweeney was tried for murder, but the jury acquitted him because both Brown and Wythe’s autopsies were mishandled, and Lydia Broadnax was not allowed to testify because of her race. Sweeney fled Virginia, never to be seen there again.

News of Wythe’s death spread, carried by newspapers across the country.Thomas Jefferson, Wythe’s former student, friend, and political colleague, wrote a brief sketch of Wythe as his own life was nearing its end. Jefferson offered this epitaph: “No man ever left behind him a character more venerated than G. Wythe.”