This essay considers George Wythe’s essential role in creating American civic education. Wythe is most well-known for his influence on American Law; he was the first teacher of law in America and he wrote pivotal opinions on Virginia’s High Court of Chancery. Nevertheless, his influence on American education and the American Revolution was just as essential to the American Founding. Recovering Wythe’s role in shaping civic education in America is important today, given recent lawmaking decisions to fund civic centers within various states. Wythe and Thomas Jefferson—Wythe’s first student—shaped the College of William & Mary. Inventing American civic education was their aim. This paper explains Wythe’s role as a teacher who created the legal and moral frameworks for American civic education in America. I argue that Wythe’s contributions to American education were just as essential to maintaining self-government as the Revolutionary War was in rendering the colonies independent from Britain.
Samuel Postell (Wed,) studied this question.