William Wirt (November 8, 1772 – February 18, 1834) was an American lawyer, politician and author who is credited with turning the position of United States Attorney General into one of influence. The longest-serving attorney general in U.S. history, Wirt also served in the Virginia House of Delegates and was the Anti-Masonic nominee for president in the 1832 election.

Orphaned as a child, Wirt grew up in Maryland but initially pursued a legal career in Virginia, passing the Virginia bar in 1792. After holding various positions, he served as the prosecutor in Aaron Burr's trial for treason. Wirt won election to the Virginia House of Delegates in 1808 and was appointed as a United States Attorney in 1816. The following year, President James Monroe appointed him to the position of United States Attorney General. Wirt remained in that office for the next twelve years, serving under Monroe and John Quincy Adams. He continued his law career after leaving office, primarily in Maryland, and may be best known for representing the Cherokee in Cherokee Nation v. Georgia.

Though Wirt was a former Freemason, the Anti-Masonic Party nominated him for president in 1832. Wirt did not actively campaign for office and refused to publicly speak against Masonry. Nonetheless, the ticket of Wirt and Amos Ellmaker carried the state of Vermont, becoming the first third party presidential ticket to win a state. After the election, Wirt continued to practice law until his death in 1834.

Early life and education

William Wirt was born in Bladensburg, Maryland, to a German mother, Henrietta, and a Swiss German father, Jacob Wirt. He had a sister, Catherine, who would marry James Johnston, and their daughter would marry Dabney Minor, a Virginia planter and politician. Meanwhile, both parents died before Wirt was eight years old, so their uncle, Jasper Wirt, became their guardian. Between his seventh and his eleventh year Wirt was sent to several classical schools and finally to one kept by the Reverend James Hunt in Montgomery County, where he received over the course of four years the chief part of his education. For two years he boarded with Hunt, in whose library he spent much of his time, reading with a keen and indiscriminate appetite. In his 15th year the school was disbanded, by which time Wirt's inheritance was nearly exhausted.

Ninian Edwards (later governor of Illinois) had been Wirt's schoolmate, and Edwards's father, Benjamin Edwards (later a member of Congress from Maryland), thought Wirt had more than ordinary natural ability and invited him to reside with his family as tutor to Ninian and two nephews, offering him also the use of his library for his own studies. Wirt accepted the offer and stayed twenty months, teaching, pursuing his own classical and historical studies, writing, and preparing for the bar.

In 1795, he married Mildred, daughter of Dr. George Gilmer, a friend of Thomas Jefferson (as well as his physician and a planter in his own right). They moved to Pen Park, where Gilmer lived near Charlottesville. Wirt renamed the plantation "Rose Hill" (one of several Virginia plantations of the same name), and also had a law office in Charlottesville. Wirt socialized with many of Jefferson's other associates, including James Monroe. For a time, Wirt took advantage of the hospitality of the country gentlemen and the convivial habits of the members of the bar so that he was regarded by other attorneys as a bon vivant, a fascinating, cheerful, and lively companion, rather than as an ambitious lawyer. His principal speech, four hours in length, was characterized by eloquent appeal, polished wit, and logical reasoning. It greatly extended his fame. The passage in which he depicted in glowing colors the home of Harman Blennerhassett and "the wife of his bosom, whom he lately permitted not the winds of summer 'to visit too roughly'", as "shivering at midnight on the wintry banks of the Ohio, and mingling her tears with the torrents that froze as they fell", was for many years a favorite piece for academic declamation.

thumb|alt= |Engraving of Wirt between by James Barton Longacre.

Virginia politician

In 1808, Richmond voters elected Wirt as their representative to the Virginia House of Delegates (a part-time position). In 1814, he sought election to the U.S. Senate, but Virginia legislators instead elected James Barbour. In 1816, Wirt accepted an appointment as U.S. Attorney for the District of Virginia.

U.S. Attorney General

In 1817 President James Monroe named Wirt as the ninth Attorney General of the United States, and after confirmation by the U.S. Senate, Wirt held that position for more than 11 years, through the administration of John Quincy Adams, until 1829. William Wirt has the record for the longest tenure in history of any U.S. attorney general. Although the Gibbons Court declined to decide the question, 140 years later the Supreme Court confirmed Wirt's view in Sears, Roebuck & Co. v. Stiffel Co.

Supreme Court cases involving Cherokee Nation

After leaving his position as attorney general, Wirt settled in Baltimore, Maryland, which had been the core of his legal practice.

In June 1830, a delegation of Cherokee led by Chief John Ross selected Wirt on the urging of Senators Webster and Frelinghuysen to defend Cherokee rights before the U.S. Supreme Court. Wirt argued, in Cherokee Nation v. Georgia, that the Cherokee Nation was "a foreign nation in the sense of our constitution and law" and was therefore not subject to Georgia's jurisdiction. Wirt asked the Supreme Court to void all Georgia laws extended over Cherokee territory on the grounds that they violated the U.S. Constitution, United States–Cherokee treaties, and United States intercourse laws. Although the Court determined that it did not have original jurisdiction in this case, the Court held open the possibility that it yet might rule in favor of the Cherokee. Wirt therefore waited for a test case to again resolve the constitutionality of the laws of Georgia. On March 1, 1831, Georgia passed a law aimed at evicting missionaries, who were perceived as encouraging the Cherokee resistance to removal from Cherokee lands. The American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, an interdenominational missionary organization, hired Wirt to challenge the new law. On March 3, 1832, the decision in Worcester v. Georgia, authored by Chief Justice John Marshall, held that the Cherokee Nation was "a distinct community, occupying its own territory, with boundaries accurately described, in which the laws of Georgia can have no force, and which the citizens of Georgia have no right to enter but with the assent of the Cherokees themselves or in conformity with treaties and with the acts of Congress".

Anti-Masonic Party presidential nomination

Wirt became a candidate for president in 1832, nominated by the Anti-Masonic Party. This party held the first ever national nominating convention in U.S. history on September 11, 1830, in Philadelphia establishing the tradition. The date was chosen to commemorate the fourth anniversary of the Morgan Affair. However, no candidate was agreed upon. The actual nomination occurred a year later during the second convention in Baltimore. On September 28, 1831, Wirt became a presidential candidate after the fifth ballot.

Wirt was, in fact, a former Freemason. Wirt wrote in his acceptance letter to the nominating convention that he found Freemasonry unobjectionable and that in his experience many Masons were "intelligent men of high and honourable character" who would never choose Freemasonry above "their duties to their God and country".

Historian William Vaughn wrote, "Wirt was possibly the most reluctant and most unwilling presidential candidate ever nominated by an American party.'

Societies

During the 1820s, Wirt was a member of the Columbian Institute for the Promotion of Arts and Sciences, which included as members former presidents Andrew Jackson and John Quincy Adams and many prominent men of the day, including well-known representatives of the military, government service, medical and other professions. A devout Presbyterian, Wirt was also president for many years of the Maryland Bible Society.

Wirt was also an honorary member of the American Whig–Cliosophic Society and associated with the Delphian Club.

Personal life

As mentioned above, Wirt married twice. His first wife, the former Mildred Gilmer, died in 1799, prompting his move to Richmond. In 1802 he married his second wife (and widow), the former Elizabeth Washington Gamble (1784–1857). She later published a book about flowers and died in Annapolis, Maryland at the home of her son in law, then was ultimately buried beside Wirt in the Congressional Cemetery. Wirt fathered twelve children. Of their three sons who survived to adulthood, two became medical doctors, including his namesake Dr. William Wirt (Jr.)(1815–1899; who married and practiced in Westmoreland County, Virginia) and Dr. Henry Grattan Wirt (1818–1850; who moved to Jefferson County, Florida). The middle son, Dabney Carr Wirt (1817–1893), trained as a lawyer, but spent most of his life as a farmer in Westmoreland County, naming his plantation "Wirtland" and briefly serving as a corporal in the Confederate States Army, and ultimately dying while visiting Tampa, Florida.

According to the federal census, Wirt owned 5 enslaved people when he lived in Washington D.C. in 1820. A decade later, Wirt, by then living in Baltimore and supporting 21 other people in his household, owned 10 enslaved people.

Death and legacy

Wirt suffered several infirmities but continued to practice law, making Baltimore, Maryland the base of his operations during the last decade of his life, although he did not formally move into the city until 1832. On February 8, 1834, while attending the proceedings of the Supreme Court in Washington, D.C., Wirt fell ill. His biographer John P. Kennedy wrote that the early diagnosis of a cold was followed by identifying the symptoms of erysipelas (sometimes known as St. Anthony's fire). He died on February 18, 1834.

Wirt's last rites were attended by President Jackson and members of his cabinet; John Quincy Adams read a eulogy address in the House of Representatives. William Wirt was buried in Congressional Cemetery in Washington, D.C.

Many of his letters are held by the Library of Virginia.

Historic house

The house Wirt occupied in Richmond from 1816 to 1818, known as the Hancock-Wirt-Caskie House, was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1970.

Grave robbery

In the early 2000s, after a series of mysterious phone calls to Congressional Cemetery in Washington D.C., it was discovered that in the 1970s someone had broken into the Wirt Tomb and stolen Wirt's skull. After the skull was recovered from the house of a historical memorabilia collector, Robert L. White, it spent time in D.C. Council member Jim Graham's office while he tried to get it returned to its rightful crypt. Finally in 2005 investigators from the Smithsonian Institution were able to determine the skull (which had gold block letters saying "Hon. Wm. Wirt" painted on the tin box containing it) was indeed his and had it returned.

Published works

thumb|left|William Wirt Monument, Congressional Cemetery, Washington D.C.

Wirt's earliest work was Letters of the British Spy, which he first contributed to the Richmond Argus in 1803, and which won immediate popularity. The letters are chiefly studies of eloquence and eloquent men, are written in a vivid and luxuriant style, and may be regarded, in spite of the exceptional excellence of "The Blind Preacher", as rather a prophecy of literary skill than its fulfilment. They were soon afterward issued in book form (Richmond, 1803; 10th ed., with a biographical sketch of the author by Peter H. Cruse, New York, 1832). These papers treat of female education, Virginian manners, the fine arts, and especially oratory. An essay from this collection, "Eloquence of the Pulpit", a vigorous and passionate protest against coldness in this genre, has been singled out for praise. This work has been severely criticized both for its hero worship and its style, the subject of the biography having been regarded by many as a creation of Wirt rather than Patrick Henry.