I Am Murdered

Bruce Chadwick

Description

"A good story, well told, of a sliver of life in Richmond, a small, elite-driven capital city in the young nation's most influential state."
—Publishers Weekly

George Wythe clung to the mahogany banister as he inched down the staircase of his comfortable Richmond, Virginia, home. Doubled over in agony, he stumbled to the kitchen in search of help. There he found his maid, Lydia Broadnax, and his young protegé, Michael Brown, who were also writhing in distress. Hours later, when help arrived, Wythe was quick to tell anyone who would listen, "I am murdered." Over the next two weeks, as Wythe suffered a long and painful death, insults would be added to his mortal injury.

I Am Murdered tells the bizarre true story of Wythe's death and the subsequent trial of his grandnephew and namesake, George Wythe Sweeney, for the crime—unquestionably the most sensational and talked-about court case of the era. Hinging on hit-and-miss forensics, the unreliability of medical autopsies, the prevalence of poisoning, race relations, slavery, and the law, Sweeney's trial serves as a window into early nineteenth-century America. Its particular focus is on Richmond, part elegant state capital and part chaotic boomtown riddled with vice, opportunism, and crime.

As Wythe lay dying, his doctors insisted that he had not been poisoned, and Sweeney had the nerve to beg him for bail money. In I Am Murdered, this signer of the Declaration of Independence, mentor to Thomas Jefferson, and "Father of American Jurisprudence" finally gets the justice he deserved.

Sujets

• 19th Century
• Histoire
• History of the United States
• United States
• Virginia
• History
• George Wythe
• Richmond

Informations

• Publié par: Turner Publishing Company
• Date de parution: 01 janvier 2009
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781620458822
• Langue: English

Extrait

I Am Murdered
George Wythe, Thomas Jefferson, and the Killing That Shocked a New Nation
B RUCE C HADWICK

John Wiley Sons, Inc.
This book is printed on acid-free paper.
Copyright 2009 by Bruce Chadwick. All rights reserved
Published by John Wiley Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey Published simultaneously in Canada
Illustration credits: pages 4, 84, 150, 162, 172, 173 (top and bottom), and 220 courtesy of the Virginia Historical Society; pages 5, 41, 47, 49, 51, 65, 70, 71 (top and bottom), 74, 75 and 79 courtesy of the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation; pages 7, 8, 58 and 134 courtesy of Independence Hall National Historic Park; pages 190, 199 (top and bottom), and 200 courtesy of the Wellcome Library, London.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise, except as permitted under Section 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior written permission of the Publisher, or authorization through payment of the appropriate per-copy fee to the Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, [phone], fax [phone], or on the web at www.copyright.com . Requests to the Publisher for permission should be addressed to the Permissions Department, John Wiley Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030, [phone], fax [phone], or online at http://www.wiley.com/go/permissions .
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:
Chadwick, Bruce.
I am murdered : George Wythe, Thomas Jefferson, and the killing that shocked a new nation / Bruce Chadwick.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-470-18551-3 (cloth)
1. Poisoning-Virginia-Richmond-History-19th century-Case studies.
2. Murder-Virginia-Richmond-History-19th century-Case studies. 3. Criminal investigation-Virginia-Richmond-History-19th century-Case studies. 4. Wythe, George, 1726-1806-Death and burial. 5. Jefferson, Thomas, 1743-1826-Friends and associates. 6. Richmond (Va.)-History-19th century. I. Title.
HV6555.U62R42 2009
364.152-3092-dc22
2008015111
Printed in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For Margie and Rory
He directed my studies in the law, led me into business, and continued, until death, my most affectionate friend.
- Thomas Jefferson on George Wythe
Contents
P ART O NE : T HE M URDER
1. I Am Murdered
2. The Funeral
3. Homicide: The Investigation, Part I
4. Williamsburg: George Wythe and Thomas Jefferson
5. Jefferson and Wythe Remake Virginia
6. Richmond: Boomtown and the Decadent Nightlife of George Wythe Sweeney
7. The Dying George Wythe Changes His Will
8. Moving Day: A Second Life in Richmond and the Return of George Wythe

P ART T WO : T HE I NVESTIGATION
9. The Arrest
10. The Investigation, Part II
11. For the Defense: William Wirt
12. For the Defense: Edmund Randolph
13. Mourning at the Executive Mansion

P ART T HREE : T HE T RIAL
14. The Forensics Nightmare, Part I: Arsenic, the Poison of Choice
15. The Forensics Nightmare, Part II: The Autopsy
16. Lydia Broadnax: The Eyewitness
17. The Black and White Legal Codes
18. Washington, October 1806
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
Notes
Bibliography
Index
P ART O NE
The Murder
1
I Am Murdered
G eorge Wythe, the eighty-year-old high chancellor of the Virginia Chancery Court and one of the nation s founding fathers, sat up in bed on Sunday, May 25, 1806, and rubbed his eyes with his thin fingers. He yawned, tossed back his rumpled sheets, and rose just before 5 A.M., as he did each morning. He had just awakened in his elegant home on Shockoe Hill, the neighborhood where the wealthy resided in Richmond, Virginia s capital. It was a Sunday that seemed like any other. But on that quiet spring morning Wythe, the mentor and close friend of President Thomas Jefferson, and everyone in his household, would be poisoned, in one of the most shocking murders in the young nation s history.
Wythe had moved to Richmond in 1791. His bright yellow, well-appointed two-story home with a sturdy hip roof was located on the southeast corner of Fifth and Grace streets, near the very top of the hill. The house was one of the most elegant in the city and sat at the edge of a square surrounded by fine homes, including that of the mayor of Richmond, William DuVal. Also in this neighborhood were the dwellings of the city s and the state s most prominent lawyers, physicians, and politicians, as well as its richest merchants. 1 It was a subdued, pleasant part of town where men, women, and children greeted the dignified Wythe with friendly smiles when they saw him walking down the street.
The house on the steep hill, one of many hills within the city limits, had an unobstructed view of the slow-rolling James River below. From this height, one could also see the river s pretty, thickly forested small islands and the tiny village of Manchester on its southern bank. 2 Because the rapidly growing city, founded in 1737, had been built on the hills that overlooked the James, comparisons to ancient Rome were inevitable. The aristocratic city of Richmond prided itself on being like Rome, built on seven hills, wrote the local sculptor Moses Ezekiel. 3
We believe [it is] one of the most beautiful [cities] in the Union, wrote a Richmond Enquirer reporter. The situation of the city and the scenery surrounding it combines in a high degree the elements of grandeur and beauty. The river, winding among verdant hills, which rise with graceful swells and undulations, is interrupted by numerous islands and granite rocks, among which it tumbles and foams for a distance of several miles. 4
The judge s house overlooked Richmond, which had become a raging American boomtown, an exploding urban mecca with something for everyone. There were dozens of raucous taverns where entertainment ranged from fiddlers to singers to exotic elephant acts. There were churches of every major sect; the city was home to the first Jewish synagogue in the South. The literati enjoyed two of the largest bookstores in Virginia. Three different respected theaters featured local groups plus traveling troupes from England with Britain s most honored actors. Well-stocked general stores offered everything from imported wines and rums to tickets for passage to Europe on the huge oceangoing ships that docked in the city s Rocketts section. The James River was lined with spacious wooden-and-brick tobacco warehouses and was jammed with dozens of tall, majestic tri-masted merchant ships. The vessels were either just in from, or bound for, exotic ports around the world, carrying shipments of Virginia s tobacco, the crop that made the state so rich.

In this painting, the Richmond of 1806, topped by Jefferson s capitol building, is viewed from Manchester, just south of the James River.

George Wythe lived in one of the finest homes in Williamsburg, or in all of the South, for most of his life. The two-story brick home overlooked one of the two village greens in town.
Justice Wythe, for years a familiar figure as he walked about town, was one of the few remaining signers of the Declaration of Independence and architects of the U.S. Constitution. For decades, he had enjoyed his role as a guardian of the establishment, the wise old sage living among all the tough young lions of bustling Richmond. He was still regarded as one of the most prominent men in the United States, especially now in 1806, the thirtieth anniversary of the signing of the Declaration, He was beloved by all of the middle-aged men in town who had fought in the Revolution, some of them limping and still bearing the scars of war, yet he was just as admired by the well-dressed young lawyers and court employees. All of the students he taught liked the old judge, too. They saw him as a vibrant twenty-five-year-old man in an eighty-year-old body. His cheerful conversations, in which he repeatedly quoted Homer and Cicero, compared current events to the besieging of Rome by Carthage, or made references to the speeches of Pericles and his Greek antagonists, regaled all. 5 Searching for a title for the distinguished octogenarian, who was still as feisty as ever, someone had nicknamed him the American Aristides after Aristides the Just, the greatly respected ancient Athenian soldier and statesman. An intelligent man who spoke five languages, the judge had earned the nickname with his well-rounded sophistication.
Wythe, a wisp of a man, had mastered Greek and Latin as a teenager, graduated college at nineteen, and was admitted to the bar as a lawyer at twenty. He was elected to the prestigious House of Burgesses, the Virginia state legislature, in his thirties, and was chosen by his peers there to be a delegate to the Continental Congress in 1774 and again in 1775. 6 He was an invaluable member of the delegation be