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.
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.
Wirt was admitted to the Virginia bar in 1792, and he began practice at Culpeper Courthouse. Wirt had the advantages of a vigorous constitution and a good carriage, but the drawbacks of meager legal equipment, constitutional shyness, and brusque and indistinct speech.
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.
In 1799 his wife died, and Wirt moved to Richmond, where he became clerk of the Virginia House of Delegates. Legislators elected him as chancellor for the Eastern District of Virginia, although he resigned after six months. In 1800 Wirt also was one of the co-counsel defending James Callender, a Jefferson associate and later critic, who was prosecuted under the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798. In 1802, Wirt married Elizabeth Washington Gamble, the daughter of Colonel Robert Gamble of Richmond. In the winter of 1803/04, Wirt moved to Norfolk, but in 1806, wishing for a wider field of practice, returned to Richmond.
In 1807, President Thomas Jefferson asked Wirt to serve as the prosecutor in Aaron Burr's trial for treason. 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. Wirt was nicknamed the "Whip Syllabub Genius" by his enemies for the frothy, over-the-top nature of his oratory.
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.
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.
In 1824, Attorney General Wirt argued for the United States against Daniel Webster in Gibbons v. Ogden that the federal patent laws preempted New York State's patent grant to steamboat inventor Robert Fulton's successor, Aaron Ogden, of the exclusive right to operate a steamboat between New York and New Jersey in the Hudson River. Wirt argued "that a power in the States to grant exclusive patents, is utterly inconsistent with the power given to the national government to grant such exclusive patents: and hence, that the power given to Congress is one which is exclusive from its nature." 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".