George Wythe

George Wythe

George Wythe (* 1726 in Elizabeth City County, today: Hampton , Colony Virginia ; † June 8, 1806 in Richmond , Virginia ) was one of the founding fathers of the United States and is considered the "father of American law". The lawyer and plantation owner was a member of Virginia at the Second Continental Congress and was one of the signatories of the United States' Declaration of Independence in 1776 . He also represented his home state at the 1787 Philadelphia Convention , where he helped draft the United States Constitution .

Life

Origin and education

George Wythe was born on his father's plantation in what was then Elizabeth City County. He was the second of three children from Thomas and Margaret Wythe. His mother, a very educated woman, taught him some Latin and Greek. Otherwise, the later legal scholar does not seem to have enjoyed a regular school education in his childhood. At times he appears to have attended a high school run by the College of William & Mary, one of the oldest universities in America. Both parents died early and Wythe grew up under the care of his older brother Thomas. This later sent him to an uncle in Prince George County , who made him familiar with jurisprudence. In 1746, at the age of 20, George Wythe was admitted to the bar.

Lawyer and Legal Scholar

He settled in Spotsylvania County , where he opened a joint legal practice with a partner. The following year he married his sister, Ann Lewis, who died in 1748. In 1754, the Royal Governor of Virginia, Robert Dinwiddie , appointed Wythe as attorney general for the colony. He only held this office for a few months, however, as his brother died in 1755 and he inherited the family property. Wythe moved to Williamsburg , where he married his second wife, Elizabeth Taliaferro, that same year. The couple's only child died before reaching adulthood.

In Williamsburg, Wythe deepened his studies of classics and law and was admitted to the Colony's Supreme Court. From the mid-1750s to 1775 he was active in the colonial parliament of Virginia, the House of Burgesses , first as a member of parliament, and since 1769 as secretary. From 1768 to 1769 Wythe also held the office of Mayor of Williamsburg. At the same time he worked as a law teacher at the College of William & Mary there. His students included Thomas Jefferson , Henry Clay , James Monroe, and John Marshall . In particular on Jefferson, the later author of the Declaration of Independence, it had a lasting effect. He later referred to his teacher as his "second father". Wythe, in turn, left his library to Jefferson. In 1779 Wythe was appointed to the newly created chair of law at the College of William & Mary, the first of its kind in the United States. This brought Wythe the nickname "Father of American Law".

Proponents of the revolution

Signing the declaration of independence. In John Trumbull's painting, George Wyte's profile can be seen on the far left of the picture.

Though personal friends with British Governors Francis Fauquier and Norborne Berkeley , Wythe was one of the earliest proponents of the American Revolution . In 1764 he was elected to the Petitions Committee of the Colonial Parliament, which was supposed to take action against the planned stamp law of the British House of Commons . When the controversial law was passed in 1765, Wythe was instrumental in drafting a protest resolution. Elected to the Continental Congress in 1775 , he advocated the separation of the 13 colonies from the British Crown. He was the first representative of Virginia to sign the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776.

Serving Virginia and the United States

After the Declaration of Independence, Wythe helped build the new Republican government of Virginia. In 1777 he was elected speaker of the Virginia House of Delegates , the second chamber of the state parliament. This commissioned him, Thomas Jefferson, Edmund Pendleton , George Mason and Thomas Ludwell Lee with the revision and codification of the laws of Virginia, which were freed from feudal legal practices on this occasion.

In 1789 Wythe became a judge at the Chancery Court of Virginia , one of the state's four highest courts. He was later also a member of the Supreme Court of Appeals , the state's highest court of appeal. The current state seal of Virginia with the motto "Sic Semper Tyrannis" goes back to a design by Wythes.

In addition to the legal practice in Virginia, Wythe also shaped that of the newly formed United States, and not only through his influence, which he exercised as a law teacher on many members of the founding generation of the USA. He also advocated the principle still valid in the USA and all liberal democracies today that it is the right of the courts to review the constitutionality of the actions of the other state powers - especially those of the government and the legislature . In 1787, George Washington entrusted Wythe, along with Alexander Hamilton and Charles Pinckney, with drafting the rules of procedure for the Constitutional Convention, which met in Philadelphia that same year . Wythe took part in it as a deputy from Virginia, but left the convention before it was formally terminated, so that the US constitution - although he helped to create it - does not have his signature.

assassination

Wythes grave in Richmond

Like Jefferson, Washington and other members of the Virginia planter aristocracy, George Wythe was a slave owner. However, he turned into an opponent of slavery , released slaves and then supported them financially. In addition, he considered some African-Americans in his will, such as his freed cook Lydia Broadnax and the freeborn Michael Brown, who some biographers believe to be the illegitimate son of the politician with Lydia Broadnax. Wyhe's main heir, his great-nephew George Wythe Sweney, saw it as a reduction in his future property. In addition, Sweney, who had lived in Wyhe's house since 1805, had committed a number of thefts and embezzlements. For fear of discovery or to get rid of his co-heir Brown, he poisoned his coffee with arsenic. Both Lydia Broadnax and Michael Brown and George Wythe drank the coffee. While the cook was recovering from the attack, the two men died a few days later.

During this time, however, Sweney's embezzlement came to light, so that Wythe still found time to arrange his own autopsy, disinherit his great-nephew and in his will to order the release of all remaining slaves. There was a sensational trial in which the cook was the only eyewitness to testify against Sweney. Other African Americans had seen Sweney toss a paper-wrapped substance from a prison window that turned out to be rat poison. The killer was acquitted for formal reasons, however, as the Virginia courts at the time did not allow statements by African Americans in proceedings against whites.

literature

• Joyce Blackburn, George Wythe of Williamsburg , New York, Harper & Row, 1975.
• Imogene E. Brown, American Aristides. A Biography of George Wythe , Rutherford, Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1981.
• Alonzo Thomas Dill, George Wythe, Teacher Of Liberty , Williamsburg, Virginia Independence Bicentennial Commission, 1979.
• Robert Bevier Kirtland, George Wythe. Lawyer, Revolutionary, Judge , New York, Garland, 1986.

Web links

• George Wythe in the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress (English)
• George Wythe in the database of Find a Grave (English)
• George Wythe biography on colonialhall.com