University of Virginia Library

GEORGE WYTHE.

"The honor of his own, and the model of future times," was the
eulogy pronounced upon George Wythe at his death, by Thomas Jefferson,
who in youth had been his pupil at law, and in later years his
coadjutor in Congress, and a warm personal friend.

George Wythe was born in 1726, in Elizabeth City county, Colony
of Virginia. His father was a Virginia gentleman of the old school,
amiable, courteous, a lover of his family, a good manager of his large
estate, but with more fondness for outdoor life than for his study, and
a better acquaintance with the denizens of field and forest than with
his classics. From his mother, George Wythe inherited his intellectual
tastes and mental vigor. She was a woman of great strength of
mind, and was possessed of singular learning for her day, among her
accomplishments reckoning a thorough knowledge of Latin.

Under the tuition of his mother, George Wythe attained an excellent
education, pursuing with her the study of grammar, rhetoric and
logic, mathematics, natural and moral philosophy, civil law, Latin and
Greek. Of the latter tongue Mrs. Wythe had no knowledge, but she
assisted her son in his acquisition of it by reading an English version
of the works which he studied, and so testing the accuracy of his
translations.

This devoted mother died before her son attained the years
of manhood, and his father dying about the same time, George
Wythe entered upon the possession of a large fortune. For some
time he abandoned study, and led a life of dissipation. He was
thirty years of age when he shook off youthful follies, and entered
upon the life of honor and usefulness which has perpetuated
his name. Thenceforth, for fifty years, it was his privilege

to pursue, with unremitting ardor, all the noble purposes of life, but
at its close he looked back upon the wasted years of his young manhood
with deep regret.

Under the instructions of Mr. John Lewis, a noted practitioner in the
Virginia courts, George Wythe read law and fitted himself for practice.
His success in his chosen profession was equal to his desert. As a pleader
at the bar his extensive learning, fine elocution, and logical style of argument,
made him irresistible. But his distinguishing characteristic was
his rigid justice. The dignity of his profession was never prostituted to
the support of an unjust cause. In this rule he was so inflexible that if
he entertained doubts of his client's rights, he required of him an oath as to
the truth of his statements before he undertook his cause, and if deception
were in any manner practiced upon him, he would return the fee and
abandon the case. Such a stand as this early called attention to Mr.
Wythe's fitness for administering justice in important causes, and ultimately
led to his appointment as chancellor of Virginia, the important duties of
which position he discharged with the most exact justice until the day of
his death.

Early in life Mr. Wythe was elected to represent Elizabeth City county
in the House of Burgesses, a position he filled for many years. November
14, 1764, he was appointed a member of a committee of the House to
prepare a petition to the king, a memorial to the House of Lords, and a
remonstrance to the House of Commons, on the "Stamp Act," then a
measure before Parliament.

The paper was drawn by Mr. Wythe, but its language was so vigorous
and his utterances so abounding in plain truths that must give offense to
his majesty, that the draft was considered treasonable by his hesitating
colleagues, and was materially modified before the report was accepted.

The "Stamp Act" was passed, and the news was received in the
House of Burgesses of Virginia, as an intimation on the part of king and
Parliament that the rights of the colonists were to be deliberately disregarded.
Before the session of 1765 closed, in May, Patrick Henry
offered resolutions of defiance that received the cordial support of Mr.
Wythe, and, after a stormy debate and some alterations, were carried,
although so close was the contest that the fifth, and strongest resolution,
only passed by a single vote, and the following day, during Henry's absence
from the convention, this resolution was expunged from the journal. The
repeal of the "Stamp Act," and other conciliatory measures on the part
of England, now left a few years of quiet legislation, during which Mr.
Wythe attended to his professional duties. But his stand was taken upon
the justness of the demands of the colonies, and when events tended
toward independence, he early favored the movement, and exerted his
influence among his colleagues in that direction. In these efforts he had
the assistance of Thomas Jefferson; and the two, who had been preceptor

and pupil, now stood friends and counselors, noble examples of self-sacrificing
patriots, in the very front of danger.

In 1775, Wythe joined a corps of volunteers, believing a resort to arms
the only hope of the colonists. But his services as a statesman were of more
importance, and he left the army in August, 1775, to attend the Continental
Congress as one of the delegates of Virginia. He held this position until
after the Declaration of Independence had become a matter of record, with
his name as one of its fifty-six attesting witnesses.

November 5, 1776, he was one of a committee of five appointed by the
State Legislature to revise the laws of Virginia. Of this committee two
members, George Mason and Thomas Ludwell Lee, were prevented from
serving, and the remaining three, Wythe, Jefferson and Edmond Pendleton,
worked so industriously and so ably that on the 18th of June, 1779,
they reported to the General Assembly one hundred and twenty-six bills.

In 1777, Mr. Wythe was chosen speaker of the House of Burgesses. In
the same year he was appointed one of the three judges of the high court
of chancery of Virginia, and on a change in the form of the court was constituted
sole chancellor.

In December, 1786, he was one of the committee who prepared the constitution
of the United States, and in 1787 was a member of the Virginia
convention which ratified the constitution on behalf of that State. He
was subsequently twice a member of the electoral college of Virginia.

His political record now closes, unless to it is added his indirect influence
exerted through the distinguished pupils whom he trained for the bar and
for public life. Some of the most noted sons of Virginia at the bar
and in the Senate were his pupils, and in the list we find one chief justice
and two presidents of the United States.

The death of George Wythe is the saddest record of these pages.
Already past his eightieth year, and with his days still filled with useful
and benevolent deeds, he died the victim of poison, administered, it seems
but too evident, by the hand of one who was a near kindred, and who
should have been bound to him by the ties of gratitude for daily kindnesses
and tokens of love.

In the midst of the lingering hours of agony produced by the slow action
of his death potion, Wythe thought of others and not of himself. As long
as he retained his senses, he gave his mind to the study of the cases pending
in his court, and his last regret was that his fatal illness would cause
delay and added expense to those who had appeared before him.

Mr. Wythe had been twice married, but had no living children, and at
his death his estate passed to the children of a sister, his last act of justice
being to add, upon his deathbed, a codicil to his will which revoked all
benefits which would have accrued to the nephew who had hastened his
death.

He expired on the morning of the 8th of June, 1806.

Like many great minds who cannot accept of a formulated creed, Mr.
Wythe was considered an infidel by his cotemporaries. The student of
to-day will, however, more willingly believe of such a life that, in the
words of Jefferson, "while neither troubling nor perhaps trusting any one
with his religious creed, he left to the world the conclusion that that religion
must be good which could produce a life of such exemplary virtue."