Difference between revisions of "George Wythe, America's First Law Professor"

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Title page from Hemphill's 1933 M.A. thesis, "George Wythe, America's First Law Professor and the Teacher of Jefferson, Marshall, and Clay."

"George Wythe, America's First Law Professor" is a thesis by W. Edwin Hemphill (1912 – 1983), for a Master of Arts degree from Emory University.^[1] Hemphill was an archivist, historian, and editor, and contributed greatly to George Wythe scholarship, among his other historical pursuits. In 1937, he received a Ph.D. from the University of Virginia, with a dissertation also on George Wythe."^[2]

The goal of Hemphill's thesis is to establish Wythe as the first professor of law in America, providing interpretation of the historical and documentary evidence for Wythe's education and legal experience, and his instruction of Thomas Jefferson, John Marshall, and Henry Clay.

Cover page

Approved for the Committee:

Theodore H. Jack

Date May 25, 1933

Accepted:

Goodrich C. White

Dean of the Graduate School

Date June 7, 1933

Title page

Preface

It is a surprising circumstance that no biography of George Wythe -- not even a small "Life" -- has ever been published. Such a treatise would be worthwhile and valuable (to mention only one reason) for the light which it would throw on the history of American education in the latter half of the eighteenth century.

The study is a preliminary step, perhaps, in that direction. Its aim is to prevent a factual and interpretative account of George Wythe's legal professsorship and of his relationships with his three greatest pupils. An adequate consideration of the influence upon American history which he exerted directly through them could not be confirmed within the present scope, but in the three chapters devoted to them we have suggested at least the main trends which future thought on the subject will follow.

The most complete edition of the writings of Jefferson, that published by the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Association, has been used throughout whenever possible; its lacunae must be filled from a number of sources.

Table of contents

Chapter I

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Posterity has come to think of George Wythe (1726-1806), when indeed it thinks at all of him, as a Virginian eminent in three distinct respects: as a patriot and statesman, as a lawyer and judge, and as a teacher. It is without doubt true that his name deserves a considerable measure of recognition for his services in each of these phases of his career. Much disagreement might be aroused by raising a hypothetical question as to the relative importance of the three. This shall not now be done.

It is pertinent, however, to call attention to the noticeable shifting of emphasis among the three which the thought of a century or more has developed. In his own day and for half a century after his death George Wythe seemed notable primarily for his work in the political and legal fields. As the perspective has enlarged through the last fifty years, interest in Wythe has centered largely on his contribution to these prominent activities through his services as the instructor of many of their foremost leaders.¹

1. A review of the earlier biographical sketches, contrasting them with the more recently published viewpoints of S. C. Mitchell and D. R. Anderson, should suffice to indicate the justice of this conclusion.

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In his formal professorship of law or informally in his law office or through the medium of private tuition, George Wythe was the teacher of nearly all the able public men from

Virginia who were trained during the last half of the eighteenth century, -- a glorious period in national life. How large his influence on American History one can only guess, when one runs over the long list of men who gained from him the inspiration and training for their leadership in American political thought.¹

Such a list of those who are known to have been taught by Wythe should include Thomas Jefferson, John Marshall, Henry Clay, James Monroe, Spencer Roane, Henry St. George Tucker, John Wickham, Daniel Call, William Munford, William Branch Giles, James Innis, Archibald Stuart, George Nicholas, James Breckinridge, Ludwell Lee, Peter Carr, John Brown, John Coalter, Buckner Thurston [sic], and Littleton Waller Tazewell.² Frequently have speculations been made that the painter's canvas might immortalize such a group in the classical manner; for example, a verbiose Virginian, having spoken of Wythe as "instilling into the minds of his pupils those principles which implied them to imitate his virtues

1. Dice Robins Anderson, "The Teacher of Jefferson and Marshall." South Atlantic Quarterly, XV, 327.

2. Cf. esp. Lyon Gardiner Tyler, "George Wythe." Great American Lawyers, I, 71-72. This enumeration of a score of Wythe's more prominent pupils is presented, without comment, for whatever the bare names may mean. It should be stated that an occasional claim, not sufficiently corroborated by the present investigation to be accepted, has been found that James Madison and Edmund Randolph might be included in the list.

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and even to eclipse the splendor of his fame," exclaims in a footnote, "What a patriotic cartoon -- a School of Virginia greater than the School of Athens -- might the brush of the Virginia artist depict in Wythe laying down the law"¹ in the midst of such pupils!

There is only one extant indication from Wythe's pen that he considered the training of publicists to be an important phase of his activities. Renewing acquaintance by correspondence with an intimate associate in the Continen- tal Congress he wrote:

A letter will meet with me in Williamsburg where I have again settled, assisting, as professor of law and police in the university there, to form such characters as may be fit to succede those which have been ornamental and useful in the national councils of America.²

A less direct testimony to the same fact comes from the pen of Wythe's favorite pupil. Directing from abroad the education of his nephew, Peter Carr, Thomas Jefferson counted it the highest possible blessing that his relative could be under his master's tutelage. In answer to Wythe's report of Carr's studies under other William and Mary professors and under his own private tuition,³ Jefferson

1. Hugh Blair Grigsby, The Virginia Convention of 1776, 123.

2. George Wythe to John Adams, December 5, 1783, reproduced in facsimile in Charles Francis Adams, The Works of John Adams, III, facing 384.

3. Cf. George Wythe to Thomas Jefferson, December 13, 1786. William and Mary College Quarterly Historical Magazine, XX, 213. This publication will hereafter be cited as W. & M. Coll. Quar.

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wrote:

I return to you a thousand thanks for your goodness to my nephew. After my debt to you for whatever I am myself, it is increasing it too much to interest yourself for his future fortune. But I know, that to you, a consciousness of doing good is a luxury ineffable. You have enjoyed it already, beyond all human measure, and that you may long live to enjoy it, and to bless your country and friends, is... [my] sincere prayer....¹

What a compliment and what affection these sentences convey!

Wythe's instructions, it might well be noted, were not limited to law. He once inserted in the local newspaper this advertisement:

I propose in October, when the next course in law and police will commence, to open a school for reading some of the higher Latin and Greek classics and of the approved English poets and prose writers, and also for exercises in Arithmetic. [Signed.] George Wythe.²

This self-imposed addition to his already numerous duties as a state chancellor and law professor was undertaken without thought of financial compensation from those who availed themselves of his active philanthropy.³ Later, in Richmond, he continued teaching as a diverting avocation. William Munford, whom Wythe had befriended in an unusually

1. Thomas Jefferson to George Wythe, September 16, 1787, Thomas Jefferson, The Writings of Thomas Jefferson (ed. by Albert Ellery Bergh), VI, 300. This edition of Jefferson will be cited henceforth as Jefferson, Writings, without reference to its editorship.

2. W. & M. Coll. Quar., X, 274, quoting (Williamsburg) Virginia Gazette, July, 1787.

3. Tyler, loc. cit., 70.

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intimate way¹, cited this characteristic of his mentor, in the oration which he delivered at the learned chancellor's funeral:

But the most remarkable instance of his genuine patriotism, to which I confess I am rendered most partial perhaps by my own experience of its effects, was his zeal for the education of youth. Harassed as he was with business; enveloped with perplexing papers, and intricate suits in chancery, he yet found time for many years, to keep a private school for the instruction of a few young men at a time, always with very little, and often demanding no compensation.²

Some years earlier, writing of the possibility that he might be taken under Wythe's guidance, Munford had expressed the opinion that, if the plan reached consummation, his fortune would be made:

Nothing could advance me faster in the world than the reputation of having been educated by Mr. Wythe, for such a man as he casts a light upon all around him.³

There is an interesting anecdote told by Beverley Tucker⁴ which serves in part to suggest that George Wythe had the qualities which go into the making of a genius for

1. See, e. g., George Wythe Munford, The Two Parsons, 363-364.

2. The (Richmond) Enquirer, June 13, 1806.

3. William Munford to John Coalter, June 13, 1790, W. & M. Coll. Quar., VIII, 154.

4. Nathaniel Beverley Tucker, son of Henry St. George Tucker, was, like his father, one of Wythe's successors in the chair of law at William and Mary.

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teaching:

I have still in my mind's eye, the tall, pale, extenuated old man, that I used to see walking silent and alone before the door, and whom we boys always beheld with a feeling akin to superstitious awe. I recollect that once meeting me alone, he surprised me by patting me on the head, speaking kindly to me; and then putting his long bony finger into my hand, leading me up into his chamber, and showing me a swarm of bees at work in a hive which he had fitted against one of the panes of his window.¹

To a thoughtful educator of contemporary times the study of the services of George Wythe as an educator suggests some interesting connotations:

In this day, when... the college teacher's position, like that of the clergyman, is being robbed of some of its relative power by the absorption of our generation in the task of the changers of money -- when, indeed, the very physical limitations imposed by too meagre financial resources on the teacher in a modern college make impossible to him the utilization of many privileges that adorn and develop the spirit an lend influence to character, -- at such a time one re-reads for inspiration the story of a struggling college president like Robert E. Lee of Washington College, and the story of a distinguished statesmen and jurist like Wythe, whose chief pleasure was the training of young men. Men like Wythe and Lee have lent a luster to the professor's labors which men like Henry Van Dyke and Woodrow Wilson have tried to keep bright.²

1. Beverley Tucker to B. B. Minor, date unknown, quoted in part by B. B. Minor, "Memoir of the Author." George Wythe, Decisions of Cases in Virginia, by the High Court of Chancery (2nd edition, ed. by B. B. Minor), XXX.

2. Anderson, loc. cit., 339.

Chapter II

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There are two salient facts in the education of George Wythe; first, that he made himself, almost solely by his own exertions, one of the best versed scholars of his day in general learning, having no peer among contemporary Virginians in the realm of classical languages and literature; second, that there occurred in his legal study an event which may have given bent to his ability to foster the development of a student's talents.

Born in Elizabeth City County, Virginia, in the year 1726, he was the second son among three children of a respectable and wealthy parentage. His father's estate was, upon his death in 1729, transferred by the law of primogeniture to George's elder brother; and for some indeterminable reason none, or at best only a very little, of this wealth was applied to the education of the future scholar.¹ He attended the common schools, it is reported, only long enough to learn to read and write and to apply the very simplest rules of arithmetic², after which his mother took over the responsibility of his education. By

1. Tyler, loc. cit., 54.

2. The American Law Journal (ed. by John E. Hall), III 93.

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her he was initiated into the Latin language¹, and with her assistance, though she did not know the language, he acquired the elements of Greek.² It is said that, while he was reading the Greek Testament, she held an English one nearby to assist him as best she could in the translations.³

Wythe was for a time a student at William and Mary in Williamsburg, but the loss of the college's records forestalls the possibility of gaining any accurate knowledge of his schooling there. Neither the time of his attendance nor the length of his stay can be determined. In regard to the former, he is variously reported to have been a student at the historic college in 1740,⁴ in 1735,⁵ and, more indefinitely, sometime between 1720 and 1735.⁶ It cannot even be ascertained whether Wythe pursued collegiate studies or was enrolled in the grammar school which was an integral part of the college; one authority apparently

1. William Wirt, Sketches of the Life and Character of Patrick Henry, 65.

2. Anderson, loc. cit., 329.

3. Jefferson, Writings, I, 167.

4. George Morgan, The Life of James Monroe, 24.

5. The History of the College of William and Mary, 84.

6. New England Historical and Genealogical Register, XLII, 359.

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presumes without hesitation or misgiving that he was in the college,¹ while another (who is better qualified to judge accurately on this point) affirms that he was probably a grammar schools scholar.²

Thus, George Wythe's early educational advantages were not nearly proportional to those which sight have been expected. They were equally unrepresentative of his later attainments in the acquisition of knowledge. From this point onward the direction of his progress devolved almost solely upon himself, and to himself must be given the credit for his accomplishments.³

Beginning his preparation for the bar, Wythe spent about two years, after the manner of the time, in the law office of an uncle, Stephen Dewey, of Prince George County, near Petersburg. This period was probably significant in developing his genius for the training of legal aspirants. The narrative and exposition of this episode should not be paraphrased:

With this limited scholastic education, he was sent [perhaps about 1743] to study law with his uncle-in-law, Mr. Dewey, a lawyer of distinction in the

1. Anderson, loc. cit., 329.

2. Tyler, loc. cit., 54-55.

3. Cf., e.g., Jefferson, Writings, 166-167; and Thomas Jefferson to Louis Hue Girardin, January 15, 1815, Writings, XIV, 231.

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County of Prince George. Here not much pains was bestowed upon him; his time was chiefly devoted to what is termed the drudgery of a lawyer's office. He apparently made very little progress in his legal studies. Yet it might be very fallacious to infer that that drudgery had no connection with or influence upon his future success. The profession of law requires labors and sacrifices of its rotaries; and some who have been, at the outset, drudges, have by the very patience, perseverance, accuracy, and closeness of observation which so called drudgery necessarily engenders and inculcates, become its greatest luminaries.

But the labors and toils of the student may be lightened by the attention and judicious encouragement of the preceptor; and no doubt Mr. Wythe profited by his own experience under Mr. Dewey, when in after years he so zealously devoted himself to the guidance and instruction of candidates for the bar.¹

No hint that the young law student ever took such a philosophic view of these two years of tedium is giving in the report that he referred in the later times to the "neglect" with which he had been treated.²

Returning to his native section of the colony. Wythe was licensed to practice law in minor courts on June 18, 1745, at the age of twenty. However, he moved against soon thereafter to Spottsylvania County, near the town of Orange, in order that he might place his legal career under the patronage of an eminent practitioner, John Lewis by name. This association continued about eight

1. Minor, loc. cit., xii.

2. Tyler, loc. cit., 55.

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years, during which he married Lewis' daughter or sister, Ann, in December, 1747, only to be parted from her by her death in August of the following year. The death of his brother, intestate, in 1755, fixed upon him the family's estate and called him back to the tidewater region. Settling in Williamsburg, he was admitted at the age of thirty to the brilliant bar of the General Court. Beginning especially in the year, 1756, he applied himself with indefatigable assiduity to the broad studies (ranging from the classic literature of several languages through mathematics, philosophy, and the liberal sciences to a most profound knowledge of law) which were, as the years went by, to give him an unrivalled reputation for erudition.¹

The educational peak to which George Wythe thus lifted himself, as it were, by his own boot-straps was indeed remarkable. It is

certain that he . . . raised upon the original foundation, whencesoever acquired, a superstructure of ancient literature which has been rarely equalled in this country. He was perfectly familiar with the authors of Greece and Rome; read them with the same ease, and quoted them with the same promptitude that he could the authors in his native tongue.²

His application to law produced an equally notable store of knowledge:

1. The facts reported in this paragraph are best summarized by Tyler, loc. cit., 55-57.

2. Wirt, Patrick Henry, 66. St. George Tucker, among others, approved Wirt's portrait of Wythe: W. & M. Coll. Quar., XXII, 251, 256.

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Wythe, above all early statesmen, was deeply learned in the laws; had traced all its doctrines to their fountain heads, delighted in the year book, from doomsday down; had Glanville, Bracton, Britton, and Fleta bound in collects; had all the British Statutes at full length, and was writing elaborate decisions every day, in which, to the amazement of country court lawyers, Horace and Aulus Gellius were sometimes quoted as authorities.¹

In the language of Wythe's contemporaries his erudition produced emphatic references to himself as "the walking library";² when translated into the phraseology of a present-day popular biography it becomes:

His head was largely filled with law, and what space law left was enriched by the wisdom of the ages. Out of his archaic mouth came quaint locutions pat to the hour.³

It was this well-rounded culture, combined with the bond of a sympathetic liberality of opinion,⁴ which drew Dr. William Small, the scholarly Scotch scientist, to Wythe and the two of them to the sociable and accomplished royal governor, Sir Francis Fauquier, in the friendship immortalized by Jefferson's pen.⁵ And it was this comprehensive learning which laid the foundation for Wythe's career as a teacher.

1. Charles Warren, A History of the American Bar, 344, quoting from Hugh Blair Grigsby, Discourse on the Life and Character of Littleton Waller Tazewell.

2. Anonymous "Communication" published in The Enquirer, June 10, 1806.

3. George Morgan, Patrick Henry, 82.

4. Francis W. Hirst, Life and Letters of Thomas Jefferson, 31.

5. Cf. post, 19 et seq.

Chapter III

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An intimation of the latent interest in a study of Thomas Jefferson's education may be gleamed from a letter of advice written by him to a grandson who was sent away to school at a tender age:

When I recollect that at fourteen years of age, the whole care and direction of myself was thrown on myself entirely . . . and recollect the various sorts of bad company with which I associated from time to time, I am astonished I did not turn off with some of them, and become as worthless to society as they were. I had the good fortune to become acquainted very early with some characters of very high standing, and to feel the incessant wish that I could ever become what they were. Under temptation and difficulties, I would ask myself what . . . will insure me their approbation? I am certain that this mode of deciding on my conduct, tended more to correctness than any reasoning powers I possessed.¹

George Wythe was one of the estimable gentlemen who exerted such a wholesome influence on the youthful Jefferson.

Thomas Jefferson, it may be stated in somewhat the conventional way, was born near the present town of Charlottesville, Virginia, on April 2, 1745, on the land which he later inherited and which was always his home.² My father "placed me", says Jefferson in reminiscence of his early education:

1. Thomas Jefferson to Thomas Jefferson Randolph, November 24, 1808, Writings, XIX, 197. The entire first paragraph of this letter, only partially quoted, is timely.

2. His father's frontier residence was known as Shadwell.

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at the English school at five years of age; and at the Latin at nine, where I continued until his death [in 1757]. My teacher, Mr. Douglas, a clergyman from Scotland, with the rudiments of the Latin and Greek languages, taught me the French; and on the death of my father, I went to the Reverend Mr. Maury [of "Parson's Cause" fame], a correct classical scholar, with whom I continued two year; and then, to wit, in the spring of 1760, went to William and Mary college, where I continued two years.¹

And with his entrance at William and Mary there began the portion of his education which really fitted him for the eminent leadership which he was to show in many fields of activity during the remaining sixty-six years of his life.

Weighing the possible advantages of continuing his studies in Williamsburg, the youth foretold that "by going to the College, I shall get a more universal Acquaintance, which may hereafter be serviceable to me"², but he could not possibly have foreseen the nature of the friendships which awaited his and the extent of the influence which they, and notably one of them, exercised upon the entire course of his subsequent career.

The honor of being first in the list of friends who gave bent to Jefferson's mind cannot be claimed by George Wythe. William Small, a gentleman "who had brought over

1. Jefferson, Writings, I, 3.

2. Thomas Jefferson to John Harvey, January 15, 1760, quoted by Henry S. Randall, The Life of Thomas Jefferson, I, 19. This letter, the earliest extant from his pen, is also specially printed in Jefferson, Writings, XX, just back of the index.

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from his native Scotland an uncommon share of the learning which had conferred such celebrity on its universities"¹ and who was now a professor in the Virginia college, left an indelible impress upon the new student. Relatively little is known concerning Small. He is looked upon as a remarkable figure "not only for his knowledge of the sciences, rare in Virginia at that time, but also for his ability to impart it."² He had been an intimate friend of Erasmus Darwin, the English scientist who was Charles Darwin's grandfather, and of Watt, the inventor of the steam engine.³ To William and Mary he made two notable contributions: he introduced the lecture system of instruction, being thus the first educator to adopt lectures in lieu of the formal recitation from textbooks in an American college,⁴ and he popularized for the first time in the study of natural science, making a trip to England especially for the purpose of purchasing for the college an extensive scientific apparatus.⁵ To the

1. Phillip Alexander Bruce, History of the University of Virginia, I, 28.

2. Ibid.

3. Tyler, loc. cit., 66.

4. Cornelius J. Heatwole, A History of Education in Virginia, 91.

5. Tyler, loc. cit., 67.

See also

• Examinations of George Wythe Swinney for Forgery and Murder
• George Wythe Courts the Muses
• George Wythe, the Colonial Briton: A Biographical Study of the Pre-Revolutionary Era in Virginia
• Wythe the Teacher

References

1. ↑ Hemphill, William Edwin, "George Wythe: America's First Law Professor and the Teacher of Jefferson, Marshall and Clay," MA thesis, Emory University, 1933.
2. ↑ Hemphill, "George Wythe the Colonial Briton: A Biographical Study of the Pre-Revolutionary Era in Virginia," PhD diss., University of Virginia, 1937.