"Just a year after the American Revolution ended, a lawyer named Tapping Reeve built a small schoolhouse next to his home in Litchfield, Connecticut. The Litchfield Law School was arguably the United States' first. Paul DeForest Hicks leaves no doubt that it was the most important law school before the Civil War. This gracefully written book tells the story of this tiny institution with national reach through the experiences of its alumni. Hicks finds Litchfield students seemingly everywhere in the young nation, and convincingly shows how they influenced the development of American politics, proslavery and antislavery ideas, capitalism, and law." -- Mark Boonshoft, Professor of History, Norwich University