Tapping Reeve and The Litchfield Law School
Written 7/5/21
Tapping Reeve’s Litchfield Law School taught the law to hundreds of America’s early leaders.
Tapping Reeve
As a young man, Tapping Reeve received an education at the College of New Jersey.
He began tutoring several children at the neighboring common school, including the College President’s two children...Sally and (future Vice President) Aaron Burr.
Upon graduation, Reeve moved to Connecticut where he studied and began practicing law.
Early Career
After several years in Connecticut, Tapping married his former pupil, Sally.
Reeve also took on his now-brother-in-law Aaron Burr as a law student, the first time he gave out the type of legal education he would make a career of..
This was about the time the Revolutionary War broke out and, though he supported the Patriots, Tapping had very little participation in the hostilities.
He was briefly commissioned as an officer, but his often sick spouse took too much of his attention to be away from home too long.
Freedom in Massachusetts
By 1781, Reeve had become respected enough as a lawyer to accept a request for help in Massachusetts.
He joined the legal team of Theodore Sedgwick in the case of Elizabeth Freeman, a slave who was suing for freedom.
Tapping helped prove that the 1780 Massachusetts Constitution had ALREADY abolished slavery in the State, liberating all enslaved persons therein.
Litchfield Law School
The success of his work in the Freeman case, coupled with his experience as a mentor, led to Reeve becoming a desired educator in the legal field.
He had so many requests from prospective students that he built a second building on his property for this purpose.
The resulting campus became known as Litchfield Law School.
It would run until 1833, with Reeve taking a step back in 1798 when he was chosen as an Associate Justice (later Chief Justice) of Connecticut’s Supreme Court.
Tapping eventually handed it off to his employee James Gould a few years before his death.
During its lifetime, the Litchfield Law School educated over a thousand lawyers who went on to do great things including two Vice Presidents (Burr and John C. Calhoun), 28 Senators, 101 Congressmen, 3 Supreme Court Justices and dozens of State Governors, State Supreme Court Justices, business leaders, university presidents, artists and any other profession imaginable.
Though little known today, Tapping Reeve’s work had a profound influence on legal thought in the first decades of the Early Republic.
Here are some other Founders who were INFLUENTIAL EDUCATORS:
Samuel Finley and the West Nottingham Academy
The Students of Edward Holyoke
Tapping Reeve has just one modern biography I know of, it was written in the 1980’s and goes in depth on the law school he created.
If you’d like a copy you can get one through the Amazon affiliate link below (you’ll support this site, but don’t worry, Amazon pays me while your price stays the same).
