Wythe, George

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Wythe, George

WYTHE, GEORGE. (1726?–1806). Signer, statesman, jurist, law professor. Virginia. Born on the family plantation in Elizabeth City County, Virginia, perhaps in 1726, Wythe was educated by his mother. After studying law with his uncle, he was admitted to the bar in 1746. In 1753 he replaced Peyton Randolph as Virginia's attorney general. After receiving only one vote when he ran for the Burgesses from his home county, Wythe moved to Williamsburg, representing the town in the assembly in 1754–1755.

Wythe's brilliant career was closely related to those of several exceptional men who were his intimate friends or, later, students. In 1758, after being admitted to the bar of the General Court, he started a profitable friendship with the new lieutenant governor, Francis Fauquier. Another close friend at this time was William Small, professor of mathematics and natural philosophy at William and Mary. Later he was to be a friend and teacher of Thomas Jefferson, James Monroe, and Henry Clay.

During the years leading up to the break with England, Wythe was a representative in the House of Burgesses (1754–1755, 1758–1768), clerk of that body, 1769–1775, and mayor of Williamsburg (1768). In the controversy leading to Patrick Henry's triumph in the Parson's Cause, Wythe presided over the court that upheld Virginia's action against the claim of the Reverend Thomas Warrington for damages. In 1764 he drafted a protest to the Stamp Act (1765) that so far exceeded most of his colleagues' ideas of permissible candor that they toned it down considerably before adoption. In 1774 he served on the Williamsburg committee that enforced the nonimportation agreements.

In 1775 Wythe showed a wisdom surpassing that of the political majority when he recommended that Virginia organize a regular army and not a militia. As a delegate to the Continental Congress in 1775–1776, he ably supported Richard Henry Lee's resolution for independence and signed the Declaration. With Jefferson and Edmund Pendleton, he accomplished the monumental task of revising the laws of Virginia; their committee reported 126 bills in 1779, though the assembly rejected many of them. Meanwhile, Wythe was speaker in the House of Delegates in 1777 and the next year assumed the title of chancellor when he became one of three judges in the state's high court of chancery. Like most states, Virginia had a bicameral assembly, the House of Delegates and the Senate, the names they still use today. On 4 December 1779 he was named to a chair of law at William and Mary, the first chair of law established in an American college. He held the position until 1790.

Though elected to the Constitutional Convention in 1787, Wythe had to resign his seat and return home due to the fatal illness of his wife. The following year he was elected to Virginia's ratifying convention, even though he did not run for the office. His influence at the convention in favor of the Constitution is often credited with swaying many votes. His opinion that slavery violated the Virginia bill of rights received a less favorable hearing.

His death was tragic and bizarre. Wythe had moved to Richmond in 1791. In his will he left most of his estate to his only sister's grandson, George Wythe Sweeney, with a legacy for a servant that was to pass to Sweeney if the servant died. In 1806, tired of waiting for his inheritance, Sweeney poisoned some coffee with arsenic in order to kill both the servant and Wythe. The servant died first, but Wythe lived long enough to disinherit Sweeney. The latter escaped conviction for murder since the testimony of the principal witness, Wythe's freedwoman cook, was not admissible in court since she was black.