 George
Wythe, the second of Thomas and Margaret Wythe's three children, was
born in 1726 on his family's plantation on the Back River in
Elizabeth City County, VA. Both parents died when Wythe was young,
and he grew up under the guardianship of his older brother, Thomas.
Though Wythe was to become an eminent jurist and teacher, he
received very little formal education. He learned Latin and Greek
from his well-educated mother, and he probably attended for a time a
grammar school operated by the College of William and Mary.
Wythe's brother later sent him to Prince George
County to read law under an uncle. In 1746, at age 20, he joined the
bar, moved to Spotsylvania County, and became associated with a
lawyer there. In 1747 he married his partner's sister, Ann Lewis,
but she died the next year. In 1754 Lt. Gov. Robert Dinwiddie
appointed him as acting colonial attorney general, a position that
he held for only a few months. The next year, Wythe's brother died
and he inherited the family estate. He chose, however, to live in
Williamsburg in the house that his new father-in-law, an architect,
designed and built for him and his wife, Elizabeth Taliaferro. They
married in 1755, and their only child died in infancy.
At Williamsburg, Wythe immersed himself in
further study of the classics and the law and achieved accreditation
by the colonial supreme court. He served in the House of Burgesses
from the mid-1750s until 1775, first as delegate and after 1769 as
clerk. In 1768 he became mayor of Williamsburg, and the next year he
sat on the board of visitors of the College of William and Mary.
During these years he also directed the legal studies of young
scholars, notably Thomas Jefferson. Wythe and Jefferson maintained a
lifelong friendship, first as mentor and pupil and later as
political allies.
Wythe first exhibited revolutionary leanings in
1764 when Parliament hinted to the colonies that it might impose a
stamp tax. By then an experienced legislator, he drafted for the
House of Burgesses a remonstrance to Parliament so strident that his
fellow delegates modified it before adoption. Wythe was one of the
first to express the concept of separate nationhood for the colonies
within the British empire.
When war broke out, Wythe volunteered for the
army but was sent to the Continental Congress. Although present from
1775 through 1776, Wythe exerted little influence and signed the
Declaration of Independence after the formal signing in August 1776.
That same year, Wythe, Jefferson, and Edmund Pendleton undertook a
3-year project to revise Virginia's legal code. In 1777 Wythe also
presided as speaker of the Virginia House of Delegates.
An appointment as one of the three judges of
the newly created Virginia high court of chancery followed in 1778.
For 28 years, during 13 of which he was the only chancellor, Wythe
charted the course of Virginia jurisprudence. In addition, he was an
ex officio member of the state superior court.
Wythe's real love was teaching. In 1779
Jefferson and other officials of the College of William and Mary
created the first chair of law in a U.S. institution of higher
learning and appointed Wythe to fill it. In that position, he
educated America's earliest college-trained lawyers, among them John
Marshall and James Monroe. In 1787 he attended the Constitutional
Convention but played an insignificant role. He left the proceedings
early and did not sign the Constitution. The following year,
however, he was one of the Federalist leaders at the Virginia
ratifying convention. There he presided over the Committee of the
Whole and offered the resolution for ratification.
In 1791, the year after Wythe resigned his
professorship, his chancery duties caused him to move to Richmond,
the state capital. He was reluctant to give up his teaching,
however, and opened a private law school. One of his last and most
promising pupils was young Henry Clay.
In 1806, in his eightieth year, Wythe died at
Richmond under mysterious circumstances, probably of poison
administered by his grandnephew and heir, George Wythe Sweeney.
Reflecting a lifelong aversion to slavery, Wythe emancipated his
slaves in his will. His grave is in the yard of St. John's Episcopal
Church in Richmond. |
