[1772-1834]

ARMISTEAD M. DOBIE

WILLIAM WIRT was born at Bladensburg, Maryland, Novem

ber 8, 1772, the youngest of the six children of Jacob and Henrietta Wirt. Young Wirt's early education was received at various private classical academies of the type that thrived in the latter part of the Eighteenth Century. Of his various schoolmasters, the Rev. James Hunt, a man of somewhat unusual culture, seems to have made the most profound impression upon him.

For two years Wirt lived in the Hunt household, in which he had access to an excellent general library. Here he was able to gratify a strong taste for reading, which, though indiscriminate and desultory, served yet to lay strong and true the foundations of a culture which was to constitute one of the most marked characteristics of the man. When the Hunt school was disbanded, in Wirt's fifteenth year, he accepted a position as tutor in the family of Benjamin Edwards. Again he was fortunate in being offered the use of a fine library. By this time he had selected the law as his profession, so toward that end, during the twenty months he spent under the Edwards' roof, he made all his reading and studies converge.

Accordingly, after a brief legal apprenticeship, in 1792, at the early age of twenty, Wirt began his professional career at Culpeper Court-House, Virginia.

In 1795 Wirt married Mildred, the daughter of Dr. George Gilmer, and removed to Pen Park, the latter's country seat in Albemarle County. This step played a wonderful part in determining his whole future. Pen Park, the typical home of a Virginia gentleman of means and education, was the meeting place of a group of men whose social brilliance was only eclipsed by their still more brilliant achievements in the varied fields of law, letters, and politics. Through Dr. Gilmer he became closely associated with three future presidents of the United States-Jefferson, Madison and Monroe. To the friendships thus formed, which continued without abatement, he owed in no small measure the political preferment which later became his.

Wirt's engaging manners, his polished and witty conversation, added to an unusually prepossessing face and figure, speedily made him a great social favorite. Indeed, the gay social life exercised so

strong a fascination for him that for a time it threatened seriously to wean him from more serious pursuits. Perceiving, however, a growing tendency among many of his neighbors to regard him as a fascinating companion rather than as an ambitious lawyer, he realized his peril in time to forsake the primrose path, in order to devote himself to the labors of his profession. His practice and reputation then grew apace. After the death of his wife, in 1799, he accepted the position of Clerk of the Virginia House of Delegates -at that time an office of no inconsiderable dignity. This he held until 1802, when, at the early age of twenty-nine, he was appointed by the Legislature Chancellor of the Eastern District of Virginia.

The industry and ability with which he presided over his court, whose jurisdiction frequently involved important interests, added no little to his already considerable renown. Finding his salary inadequate after his marriage (his second wife being Elizabeth Gamble), he resigned the Chancellorship and removed, at the instance of Mr. Tazewell, to Norfolk, where he resumed the practice of the law, remaining there until 1806, when, desiring a wider field for his talents, he again took up his residence in Richmond. Up to this time Wirt's fame, though secure and steadily increasing, had been largely confined to the bounds of his adopted State. But in 1807 occurred an event which afforded him the opportunity for which he had long been seeking and raised him at a single bound to the front rank of American advocates. This event was the trial of Aaron Burr. The heinousness of the crime charged, the prominence of the defendant, the eminence of the presiding judge (Chief Justice Marshall) and of the counsel on both sides marked the occasion as one of tremendous political and dramatic import.

At the instance of President Jefferson, Wirt was retained to aid the United States Attorney in the prosecution. His principal speech, occupying more than four hours in its delivery, extended his fame throughout the entire length and breadth of the land. That part of it describing the entry of Burr into the home of Blennerhassett is second in popularity for schoolboy declamation only to Patrick Henry's "Give me liberty or give me death."

In 1808 Wirt was elected a member of the Virginia House of Delegates. Though taking a prominent part in the deliberations of that body, he soon resumed his law practice, receiving in 1816 from President Madison the appointment as United States District Attorney. In the following year President Monroe appointed him to the high office of Attorney-general of the United States.

Wirt held this office during the Administrations of Monroe and the younger Adams, for twelve years, longer than it has ever been held by any other man. His tenure of this office, which brought

him into contact with the keenest legal minds of his time, brought to him richer laurels than he had heretofore won. Hardly any of his predecessors in this office had lived in Washington, nor do they seem to have been regarded as members of the Cabinet, but rather as mere legal advisers to the Administration. None of them had left behind any written or printed opinions or precedents. When Wirt retired from the office, the Attorney-general ranked fully as a Cabinet officer both in dignity and importance. He first preserved in print all his official opinions (of which there were a great many), thereby establishing a precedent which has since been scrupulously followed. The opinions of the Attorney-general relate to matters of prime importance to the country; they involve the most delicate and difficult questions of constitutional and international law; they accomplish much in making smooth the always uncertain path of the occupants of that office; and finally they form an excellent collection of materials for writing the constitutional and legal history of the country.

Harvard conferred on Wirt the degree of Doctor of Laws in 1824. In 1826, while Jefferson was Rector of the University of Virginia, and Madison a member of its governing body, Wirt was appointed President* of the University and Professor of Law; but he declined the offer, preferring to serve out his term as Attorney-general. At the close of Adams's Administration, Wirt removed to Baltimore, where he had little trouble in soon building up an extensive law practice.

In this day and generation it seems strange that a political party should be based on overt opposition to the institution of Masonry, but such was the case in 1832, when the anti-Masonic party offered to Wirt, then sixty years old, the nomination for President of the United States. He accepted it, and in the election that ensued actually received the seven electoral votes of the State of Vermont as well as a popular vote of 33,108.

While in Washington, attending the term of the United States Supreme Court, Wirt died, February 18, 1834. The announcement of his death was received throughout the entire nation with unaffected sorrow. The funeral was attended by the President and Vice-president of the United States, the Diplomatic Corps and the Supreme Court; while both houses of Congress adjourned-an honor which had never before been accorded save to deceased members of Congress or the Senate.

Of Wirt's personal charm mention has already been made. He won and held without compromise the friendship of the really great

*Against the office of president of the University of Virginia, Jefferson filed a formal protest.-Ed.

men of his day. With the masses, he was little short of an idol. Possessed of unusual social graces, courteous to a marked degree, he embodied the highest virtues of the Colonial gentleman with none of his vices. In conversation he was quick, resourceful in classic allusions, forceful, but never tedious or prosaic. He seems, by almost unerring instinct, to have escaped the political animosities of his age, dying, as he had lived, with no bitter enemies to assail his

name.

He was religious without being a bigot, exemplifying his beliefs in all the varied activities of his life. Secure in a calm, serene faith, he yielded to none in his love of friends, family, country, or God.

The fame of Wirt as a literary man rests chiefly on 'The Letters of a British Spy,' contributed to the Richmond Argus in 1803, 'The Old Bachelor,' published in 1812, and 'The Life of Patrick Henry,' published in 1817.

'The Letters of a British Spy,' written at a time when American literature was at a low ebb, achieved an immediate and wonderful popularity. They purport to be letters written by an English traveler in Virginia to a British Member of Parliament. The book contains some glowing sketches of great men of that period, some scientific observations of little value, together with a brief discussion of various kinds of eloquence. The most popular sketch was the letter, of real literary excellence, dealing with The Blind Preacher. The work is chiefly remembered now on account of its delineation of the life and people of that region and period; or as a welcome oasis in the then arid desert of American literature.

'The Old Bachelor' contains a series of essays in the Addisonian manner. Wirt was the chief author, Dabney Carr, George Tucker and others also being contributors. Wirt's contributions were marked by graceful literary form, subtle humor, and the play of a nimble. fancy. In spite of the encomiums of Mr. Kennedy, however, the book contains hardly more than the germ of literary greatness.

The best known of his works is his 'Life of Patrick Henry.' Wirt never had seen the great orator, but gathered his material at first hand from many who had heard him and to whom Henry was almost a god. The narrative is forceful and pleasing, though florid, and at times inaccurate. Wirt lacked historical perspective, with the result that he was extravagantly eulogistic. The Henry of his pages lived rather in the perfervid imagination of his biographer than in the stern realities of actual fact. Still, the work is valuable as the only contemporary life of the great orator, remaining after the lapse of years one of the most popular of American biographies. Wirt's literary labors were those of prophecy and promise, rather than of fulfilment. Literature was to him never more than an avocation to

which he gave only his leisure hours. His literary abilities were brilliant but not solid, his imagination was prolific rather than discriminating; his fancy luxuriant and creative rather than chaste and

correct.

It is upon his career as a lawyer that Wirt's fame must ultimately rest. Few men more than he realized how jealous a mistress the law is; and single-minded devotion to the high ideals of his profession was ever his most marked characteristic; to that end he devoted his early reading. He never accepted public office save in the direct line of his professional career.

In the term of the United States Supreme Court of 1819 two cases were decided which are easily among the ten most important cases ever passed upon by that great court. In each of them Wirt materially increased his national reputation as a lawyer. The first of these was McCulloch v. The State of Maryland, 4 Wheaton 316; the second, The Trustees of Dartmouth College v. Woodward, 4 Wheaton 518.

In McCulloch v. Maryland, the question of the constitutionality of the Act creating the United States Bank was first presented to the Supreme Court. Associated with Wirt, for the plaintiff, were Webster and Pinkney; against him, for the defendant, were Martin, Jones, and Hopkinson. Surely a marvelous array of counsel! The argument of Wirt was in every respect worthy of the cause and the best traditions of the Court. His contention was upheld by the Court, and the constitutionality of the Bank sustained.

The Dartmouth College case was even more famous. Wirt, with Mr. Holmes as his associate, was opposed by Webster and Hopkin

son.

His argument in this case was so overshadowed by that of Webster, who, pleading for his own alma mater, made perhaps the ablest legal argument of his career, that great injustice has been done to Wirt's conduct of the case. Webster was successful and the principle was fastened on our jurisprudence that the charter of a private corporation is a contract within the meaning of that clause of the United States Constitution which prohibits any state from making any law impairing the obligation of contracts.

Besides the Burr trial, the other best known cases of Wirt's career are Gibbons v. Ogden, 9 Wheaton 1, in which the Supreme Court, following Wirt, held as unconstitutional and void the acts of the New York Legislature giving exclusive rights of navigation in the waters of that State to Livingston and Fulton; The Cherokee Nation v. The State of Georgia, 5 Peters 1, decided against the Indians, represented by Wirt, on the ground of lack of jurisdiction; and the impeachment of Judge Peck before the United States Senate, in which he triumphantly secured his client's acquittal.