One of the most interesting (if only to me) criminal cases in American history to involve race in the slavery era South is pretty widely known but I’ll mention in case anybody’s not aware of it (since the most well read of us still has gaps in their knowledge): the George Wythe murder.
George Wythe(pronounced with) was one of the most important of the largely forgotten (i.e. not a household name) Founding Fathers and was a father-figure to Thomas Jefferson.* He was a law professor , to whom (along with James Madison and other famous figures) he was law professor at William and Mary (where the law school bears his name) and his students included Jefferson, James Madison, and other famous names of the era.
A slaveowner from childhood, Wythe had grown to view slavery as barbaric and like John Adams and to a degree Jefferson and others he even predicted it would one day cause a civil war if not ended. Unlike Adams he owned slaves but unlike Jefferson he reached a degree of solvency that allowed him to begin manumitting them which he did, and by the time he was an old man he had freed all of his younger slaves and several of his older ones.**
By 1806 Wythe had outlived two wives and his children [at least his legitimate ones] and he had no grandchildren. He lived in his Williamsburg housewith his housekeeper Lydia Broadnax, one of the slaves he had freed, and some other servants, and with a young mulatto boy named Michael Brown who was not a servant but a ward and of whom he was very fond.*** Unfortunately he also had a great-nephew, George [Wythe] Sweeney, who was his legal ward.
Sweeney was a Snidely Whiplash quality cardboard “Booooo! Hissss!” villain right out of a play within a play by Shakespeare. He was a drunk, a gambler, a total wastrel, a disgrace and a black sheep and a source of constant and expensive irritation to his great-uncle. He stole from his great-uncle, had forged a check on his uncle’s accounts on at least one occasion, and there just wasn’t a lot to recommend him, but he was smart enough to know that his great-uncle- who was loaded (and unlike most Virginia aristocracy Wythe wasn’t land rich/cash poor- he had a lot of land but he also had a lot of liquid assets) was getting to or possibly beyond the point of being fed up with him.
It is believed that somehow Sweeney came across a copy of his great-uncle’s will, in which he still inherited a substantial amount of the estate but so did Michael Brown and Lydia Broadnax, which probably would have made him furious. Sweeney was also in major trouble with his creditors (legal and illegal- he had gambling debts as well as debts to merchants) and had just forged a large check on his great-uncle’s accounts again, which when it came to light could well mean that he would be disinherited altogether and may have a prison sentence in his future. However, if his great-uncle should die suddenly
1- He was 80 years old, so not a lot of suspicion should be aroused so long as it was done discreetly
2- He would never learn about the new forgery
3- Sweeney would instantly have plenty of money to pay his debts and then some
Had Sweeney been smart as well as a sociopath he might have just gone to visit his often sick old uncle in his room and smothered him with a pillow, but either he wasn’t smart or his greed and racism got the better of him: he decided to take Lydia and Michael out as well, because in the will if they predeceased Wythe their shares of the estate went to Sweeney (plus even though Wythe was wealthy and Sweeney his main heir the estate had lots of other heirs, so he wasn’t down for the entire estate or anywhere near, so Brown and Broadnax’s share would help a compulsive gambler and ne’er do well like Sweeney).
In May 1806 Sweeney came into the kitchen(reconstruction in Williamsburg with a Lydia Broadnax actress) where Lydia Broadnax was preparing breakfast for the household and, in full view of Lydia Broadnax, he opened a small packet of white powder and dumped it into the food. (I’ve read that he put it in the coffee and I’ve read he put it into the porridge- not sure which is correct, but perhaps they both are.) When Broadnax asked what he had done he told her it was a gift to them- some savory spices he had purchased that were supposed to be delicious- a sort of thank you and apology for all the times he’d needed and received their help. It was, of course, arsenic.
Lydia, Michael, and Wythe all ate or drank the poison and were immediately affected by it. This is where Sweeney’s ‘cunning little scheme’ fell apart.
Poor Michael- who probably had the hardiest appetite (he was about 20 years old)- probably ate/drank the most poison. He died.
Lydia became violently ill, but within a few days she made a complete recovery. Wythe, who was old and feeble, probably had little appetite, but he consumed enough of the poison to become violently ill and go into a coma. Unfortunately for Sweeney he was soon out of the coma and he figured out immediately what had happened. He inquired about Michael and was told he had died, and he was absolutely devastated. He himself died a few days later, but he had enough of a period of clarity and consciousness to change his will in front of witnesses, completely disinheriting Sweeney, giving a portion of what he had left Michael to Lydia, and to accuse Sweeney of poisoning him.
Sweeney was immediately arrested and charged with murder. Everybody in Williamsburg knew he did it: he was a known degenerate with a criminal history already, he had ample motive and ample means to kill his uncle and Brown and Broadnax, the autopsy on Brown and Wythe proved it was arsenic poisoning and Broadnax had personally witnessed him putting arsenic on the food.
So Lydia was botn an eyewitness to and a victim of the crime. She was also an eyewitness to many arguments between her former master and his nephew and to Sweeney’s erratic behavior of that day and the preceding few days (when his debts and forgery had him extremely agitated). Add to this that Lydia was not a slave but a free woman, that she was literate- she could read and write, for Wythe was one of the slaveowners who encouraged literacy. She was also even a property owner, for Wythe had bequeathed her a house and a pension in his will, and while she was not wealthy she was better off than many white people in the community (many of whom were illiterate as well).
Add to this that Wythe was a beloved and revered figure and that Sweeney was a detested reprobate whose guilt nobody had a grain of doubt about. Add to this that everybody knew damned good and well what had happened in that house.
Unfortunately Lydia was not allowed to testify. There were hearings galore and any number of attempts by the prosecution to find loopholes, but none could be found regarding the right of a black woman- even a free/property owning/literate/law abiding/church attending black woman known to be of good character- to testify to what she had personally seen, heard, and experienced. Appeals and pleas were made to Supreme Court justices (who at this time still had more direct involvement with the states- not as much as in the first days when each justice had a district, but more than today), to James Madison (as a Wythe student and lawyer and, you might say, a Constitutional scholar of sorts) and even to Thomas Jefferson (executor of Wythe’s will in addition to being his former student and at the time of the murder President of the United States), who had been devastated by the news of Wythe’s death, for any type of intervention or advice or even just public outcry they could offer, but none could or would find a loophole or exception or precedent on which Lydia’s testimony could be admitted.****
So Sweeney was acquitted. The jurors were required to completely disregard Broadnax’s accounts as hearsay and all of the rest of the evidence was circumstantial. Virginia, one of the most arrogant and proud states in the Union allowed a piece of shit poor relation to kill one of their most important/respected/leading citizens and walk from the court room a free man rather than allow a respectable property owning intelligent black eyewitness to give testimony, one of the biggest incidents (but God knows far from one of the only incidents) of a southern state willingly clinching it’s teeth and shooting itself in the foot rather than act sensibly on the subject of race.
The only justice in the case was coincidental. Sweeney was free but he was hated so he didn’t stay in Virginia long, and no attorney was willing to challenge Wythe’s will for him so he got nothing in the estate, so he was left absolutely destitute. He disappears from the historical record, but it can be pretty reasonably assumed he did not end up well at all- most likely he died in a gutter somewhere or was killed for holding a 5th ace, either way hopefully he suffered.
Lydia Broadnax corresponded with Jefferson periodically over the rest of their life but it was always terse matter of fact messages over money as Jefferson was manager of her trust fund. She died about the same time as Jefferson and left her own handwritten will disposing of her house and livestock and property and requesting burial in her back yard (don’t know if that was honored).
Anyway, interesting case if you’re not familiar, and you can read primary sources and narratives all over the Internet and in books. It’s always amazing to me just how far people will go to avoid changing their world view.
*Jefferson’s father, Peter, died when Thomas was 14. Some biographers believe that, like George Washington, Jefferson had a strained relationship with his mother- impossible to know much about the relationship since he burned her letters to him and his to her when she died (he did the same thing with his letters to/from his wife). In his few mentions of her, even when informing a relative of her death, he is very matter of fact about her, but he went into deep mourning for Wythe.
**It may seem apologist or naive to say that freeing older slaves was not always a kindness, but it’s true: even if they had permission to remain in Virginia (which was not given pro forma) they had no literacy, had never managed money, and were in an unenviable “neither fish nor fowl” legal status when freed, and so some compassionate masters like Wythe really did feel- with some justification- it was kinder to keep such slaves enslaved and make arrangements to assure for their well being (i.e. that they would never be sold away from their loved ones and would always have a home) than to manumit them.
***The controversial (but with Sally Hemings at least vindicated) historian Fawn Brodie takes for granted in her book on Jefferson that Brown was Wythe’s son and that Lydia Broadnax was his mother, but there is no evidence for either and it is almost certain that Lydia was not his mother. (She would have been well over 40 when he was born, which while not impossible is unlikely considering she had no other children, and more convincing is that nowhere in the court documents was she ever referred to as his mother and this almost certainly would have been mentioned.) It is more likely that Wythe was his father and this would certainly explain the attachment, but there is neither proof nor even more than the flimsiest of circumstantial evidence for this. One book on gay U.S. history makes more pederastic implications, which again is not impossible but there’s no compelling evidence at all. He could have just had compassion on an orphaned child- he would not have been the first or the last white person to raise a black child in a parent-child relationship (George Washington Carver was an orphan raised by his former master as a foster son), but whatever the case the simple matter is that we don’t know and it’s not worth exhuming their remains to do testing. While it would not surprise me to learn that Wythe was his father, all that’s really known and all that’s really important is that for some reason he raised a mulatto boy of whom he was extremely fond.
****While the PotUS doesn’t have a lot of power over a criminal court proceeding he certainly has other types of influence and muscle he could use such as the power of the press- his statement would reverberate loudly- or the ability to lean on the right person perhaps, but Jefferson would not make any comment or get involved in any way other than to mourn and eulogize Wythe. He made no comment about Brown even though in his will prior to Brown’s death it was known that Wythe had specifically asked Jefferson to oversee Brown’s education and upbringing in the event he was a minor when Wythe died.
If Brodie was correct and Brown was indeed Wythe’s biological son (which would pretty surely have been known even if not directly mentioned by the people of Williamsburg [as Mary Chesnut observed, the paternity and family resemblances of mulatto children was widely known and a favorite subject of gossip everywhere] it could perhaps explain why Jefferson, both as president and as man, was silent on the issue. The trial was in 1806; 4 years earlier James Callendar had broken the tales of “dusky Sally” and the “white slaves of Monticello” in his editorials and they had become a major source of gleaming gossip both in America and abroad, and in 1806 they had just begun to die down. Had Jefferson intervened [again, there’s not a lot he could have done officially, but he could have flexed some serious unofficial muscle] it would likely have fanned the embers into a flame even hotter than before.
