University of Virginia Library

WILLIAM WIRT.

Perhaps there was no individual in our country more
highly endowed with intellectual gifts than the late William
Wirt, the greatest public blunder of whose whole career
was that late in life, and at the eleventh political hour
he suffered himself to be announced as a candidate for
the Presidency, by a party with whom he had not before
acted. But be this as it may, all must admit, who knew
him, that whatever Mr. Wirt did he did conscientiously.
We all know and feel that “to err is human,” and we
have yet to learn that error is a proof of selfishness.
The Roman Cato when he found that

field to suicide. He might have shunned the deed, and
outlived Cæsar, as Mr. Wirt did the excitement which
made him a Presidential candidate, and still like him
have served his country. “The post of honor is a private
station” oftener than politicians are aware of, but
still without guile they have often quit it to return to it
without reproach. Until this event, Mr. Wirt pursued
the even tenor of his profession through a long life, dignifying
it with the official statesmanship of Attorney
General of the United States, and not as a mere lawyer,
who like a drudge-horse can only go in the gears of a
particular vehicle, but adorning and illustrating it with
literature and science. His knowledge of history, and
of the ancient and modern classics was as profound as
his legal acquirements, while his political information
and sagacity kept pace with his other improvements.
His genius was of the first order, and he improved it
with the most sedulous care. He exerted his mind at
times as an author, then as an orator, and daily as a
lawyer, while his efforts in each department improved
his general powers, and gave him that variety of information
and knowledge, which, when combined with genius,
makes what Mr. Wirt really was, a truly great man
Not great only in politics, literature or law, but great in
each and all, like Lord Brougham. Many of his countrymen
were his superiors in some departments of learning,
as they may be said to be his superiors in some
natural endowments, but for universality and variety of
talent perhaps he was not surpassed.

Mr. Wirt had none of the adventitious aids of high
birth, fortune and connexions, to assist him up the steep
of Fame. He was compelled to force his own way, unaided
and unfriended; and like many other great men
of our country, he taught school for a maintenance
while he studied law. It was during that time, while he
was a student, or immediately after he was admitted to
the practice, that he wrote the letters of the “British
Spy.” The description of the novi homines, the new
men, which he so eloquently gives in one of those letters
applied aptly to himself. The eloquence with
which he describes the elevated purposes of oratory, exhibited
his own devotion to the art, while it showed his
capability of excelling in it.

It may be said to be almost the peculiar privilege of
an American to win his own way by the gifts which natude
has given him, with the certainty that success will
wait on merit. Wealth and family influence, it is true,
have great weight in the start of a young man; but in
the long run, superior talents will gain the prize, no

matter what may have been the early disadvantages of
their possessor, provided the resolution to be true to
himself comes not too late. The history of almost every
departed, as well as of almost every living worthy
of our country, proves this remark, and it is right
that it should be so. Perhaps this, more than any other
feature in a Republic, tends to its durability, while it
renders it glorious. The great mass of the people are
seldom wrong in their judgments, and therefore it is
that with them talents meet with a just appreciation
whenever they become known, at least talents for oratory.

Mr. Wirt had all the qualifications for obtaining the
popular good will. He possessed a fine person, remarkable
amenity of manners, colloquial qualities of the first
order, wit at will, and he abounded in anecdotes, which
he related with remarkable pleasantness and tact. A
stranger, on entering an assemblage where Mr. Wirt
was, would immediately on perceiving him, have supposed
him a superior man. His person was above the
middle height, with an inclination to corpulency, his
countenance was “sicklied o'er with the pale cast of
thought;” his mouth was finely formed, and a physiognomist
would have noted that the compression of his
lips denoted firmness, and his smile good humored
irony. He had a Roman nose, an eye of cerulean
blue, with a remarkably arch expression when he was
animated, and of calm thoughtfulness when his features
were in repose. His forehead was not high, but it was
broad with the phrenological developments strongly
marked, particularly the poetic and perceptive faculties.
His hair was sandy, and his head bald on the top,
which, with a Byronian anxiety, he tried to hide by
combing the hair over the baldness—and it was much

his custom, when engaged in an oratorical display, to
preserve its adjustment by passing his hands over it.
He was much more careful in this regard than is the eloquent
and chivalric Preston, who, though he wears a
wig, seems not only indifferent as to who knows it, but
of the wig itself; for in the sturdy breeze which blew
over the Canton course, at the Baltimore convention, it
nearly left him—he the while apparently unconscious
as he fulminated to the vast and wrapt multitude.
Well! the Carolinian may not love the laurel as Cæsar
did, because it hid his baldness; but he deserved to
have it voted to him long ago for his eloquence.

General Harrison used to tell—peace to his ashes,
and a nation's living gratitude to his name and fame—
as he gladdened the hearth at the Bend with stories of
the past and present, how he remembered to have seen
Patrick Henry, in the heat of his glorious declamation,
twist the back of his wig until it covered his brow, and
any one who has heard the Senator from Carolina, would
say that the resemblance between himself and his illustrious
relative, extended from great things to small
ones.

At the first glance at Mr. Wirt's countenance when
he was not engaged in conversation or business, the observer
would have been struck with the true dignity of
the man, whose mind seemed to hold all its energies in
perfect control. His self-possession was perfect. When
he rose to address the court or jury, there was no hurry,
no agitation about him, as we perceive in many
men. On the contrary, he stood collected, while his
enunciation was deliberate and slow. He stated his
proposition with great simplicity; in fact it was generally
a self-evident one, the applicability of which to the
case, if it were intricate and doubtful, the hearer might

in vain endeavor to trace; but when he heard the orator
to the conclusion, he would wonder that he had fancied
any uncertainty about it. For Mr. Wirt would lead him
on by the gentlest gradations until he was convinced.
It may be mentioned, too, that Mr. Wirt, like Mr. Clay,
was a great taker of snuff, and he handled his box with
a grace which would have rivalled even that of the Senator
from Kentucky. Lord Chatham, it was said, made
his crutch a weapon of oratory:

“You talk of conquering America, sir,” said he, “I
might as well attempt to drive them before me with this
crutch.”

And so Mr. Wirt made, and Mr. Clay makes, his snuff-box
an oratorical weapon. Mr. Wirt's language was,
at times, almost oriental—his figures being of the boldest,
and his diction correspondent. His speeches in
Burr's trial show this, though latterly he chastened
somewhat his diction and his thoughts. He sustained
himself well in the highest flight of eloquence, his hearers
having no fear that he would fall from his eminence,
like him in the fable, with the waxen wings. On the
contrary, the hearer felt confident of his intellectual
strength, and yielded his whole feelings to him without
that drawback we experience in listening to some of the
ablest speakers, who often have a glaring imperfection,
which is continually destroying their eloquence. Mr. Wirt
studied oratory with Ciceronian care, and in the recklessness
with which he let fly the arrows of his wit, he
much resembled the Roman. The power of ridiculing
his adversary was Mr. Wirt's forte. The appropriate
manner in which he applied an anecdote was admirable.
After he had demonstrated the absurdity of his opponent's
arguments, with a clearness that the most critical
logician would have admired; after he had illustrated

his position with all the lights of law, that law whose
seat Hooker said, “is the bosom of God, and whose
voice is the harmony of the world” (and when Mr.
Wirt had a strong case he explored every field of literature
and science, bringing their joint sanction to his purposes;)
after he had called up the truths of philosophy,
the experience of history, and the beauties of poetry,
all coming like spirits thronging to his call; after he had
expatiated upon the cause with such reflections as you
would suppose Barrow or Tillotson to have used when
speaking of the “oppressor's wrong;” after he had done
all this, Mr. Wirt would, if the opposite party deserved
the infliction, pour forth upon him a lava-like ridicule,
which flamed while it burned, and which was at once
terrible and beautiful—terrible from its severity and
truth, and beautiful from the chaste language in which it
was conveyed.

Mr. Wirt always struck me as being very much like
the late Prime Minister of England, Canning, in his
mind. Canning wanted, and Wirt, in a degree, the
power of calling up and controlling the stronger and
deeper passions of our nature. He had not that withering
scorn which Brougham possesses so strongly, nor
could he rise above the tempest of popular commotion,
as he tells us Patrick Henry could, and soar with “supreme
dominion.” He wanted deep passion. Comparing
him with the leading orators of our country, it
would be said that Clay far surpassed him in the power
of controlling a miscellaneous assemblage, when the
public mind was deeply agitated; that Pinckney on a
question of feudal lore, Webster in profundity and on
constitutional law, and that Preston, in the glow of vehement
declamation, would have had the advantage
over him; but before an auditory who loved to mingle

wit with argument and elegance with strength, who
would make truth more beautiful by the adornments of
poetry, and poetry useful as the handmaid of truth,
adding to all those exterior graces which make oratory
so captivating—before such an auditory, it may be said,
without great hesitation, that Mr. Wirt would have surpassed
either of them in general effect. Mr. Wirt's
gestures, too, that of which the Grecian thought so much,
were in keeping with his other excellencies. The fault
was that they were studied—and yet the art with which
he concealed his art was consummate. It was only by
the closest observation that it could be detected.

For a long time, Mr. Wirt's chief opponent at the Baltimore
bar, was Mr. Taney, the present Chief Justice of
the United States. Mr. Taney removed to Baltimore,
from Frederick, on the death of Pinckney, and there
Mr. Wirt and himself were the great forensic rivals.
No two men of the same profession could be more different
in their intellectual gifts than were these gentlemen.
They were as unlike in these regards as they were in
their personal appearance. Mr. Taney was then slim
to feebleness, (he looks now improved in health,) he
stooped, and his voice was weak, and such was the precarious
condition of his health, that he had to station
himself immediately before and near the jury to make
himself heard by them. Mr. Wirt always placed himself
on the side of the trial table, opposite the jury, in
oratorical position. Mr. Taney's manner of speaking
was slow and firm—never using the least rhetorical
ornament, but pressing into the heart of the case, with
powerful arguments, like a great leader, with unbroken
phalanx, into the heart of a besieged city. His style was
plain, unadorned, and so forcible and direct, that it might
be called palpable. With his snuff-box—for the Chief

Justice then, too, used snuff—compressed in his closed
hands, he reasoned for hours without the least attempt at
wit or eloquence. And yet, at times, he was truly eloquent
from his deep, yet subdued, earnestness. In a
question of bail in the case of a youth who had shot at
his teacher, I remember, though then a youthful student,
that a crowded auditory were suffused in tears.
It was the fervor of his own feelings, speaking right out,
that made him eloquent. He did not appear to know
that he was eloquent himself. It was an inspiration
that came to him, if it came at all, unbidden—and
which would no more answer to his call than Glendowers'

One of the most interesting cases ever witnessed at
the Baltimore bar, was a trial in a Mandamus case, in
which the right of a church was contested. Mr. Duncan
had been established in the ministry in Baltimore
by a number of Scotch Presbyterians, in an obscure
edifice. His talents drew such a congregation that it
soon became necessary to build a larger one. It was
done; and, in the progress of events, the pastor preached
a more liberal doctrine than he had at first inculcated.
His early supporters remained, not only unchanged
in their faith, but they resolved to have it preached
to them by one with whom they could entirely agree
upon religious matters. The majority of the congregation
agreed with Mr. Duncan. A deep schism arose in
the divided flock which could not be healed, and which
was eventually, by a writ of mandamus, carried before
a legal tribunal. Mr. Taney was counsel for the old
school side, and Mr. Wirt for the defendants. The
court room, during the trial, was crowded with the beauty
and fashion of the monumental city. It was such a

display of eloquence, and a full appreciation of it, as is
seldom witnessed. Mr. Wirt was always happy in making
a quotation, and in concluding this cause he made
one of his happiest. After alluding to the old school
members, who, it has been said, were Scotchmen, and
after dwelling upon the tragedy of Macbeth, the scenes of
which are laid in Scotland, he described their preacher
as being in the condition of Macbeth's guest, and said,
after a stern rebuke upon them, that though they should
succeed in their cause, which he felt confident they
would not, that they would feel like the guilty thane.

This quotation was made with such oratorical effect.
that there was a deep silence when Mr. Wirt took his
seat, which was succeeded by repeated outbreaks of
applause. Mr. Wirt gained the case.

As an author Mr. Wirt's merits are very high. His
“British Spy” contains sketches of some of our first
men, drawn with a graphic power which makes us regret
that he did not oftener direct his fine mind to the
delineation of character. He was eminently calculated
for a biographer. His high tone of moral feeling would
have prevented him from becoming the apologist of
vice, no matter how high were its endowments; while
his great admiration of virtue and talent, would have
made him the enthusiastic eulogist of those qualifications
which render biography so attractive and so useful.
The great fault of his life of Patrick Henry is exaggeration.
His mind became heated and inflated as
he contemplated the excellencies of Henry as an orator
and a man, and he over-colored that which, told with

more simplicity, would have been more striking. The
effects of Henry's eloquence being so wonderful in
themselves, narrated in a plainer way, would have more
forcibly struck the mind. What they borrowed from
the poetry of the biographer, seems

Mr. Wirt's Old Bachelor is deserving a high commendation.
It is written in numbers, after the manner
of the Spectator, Guardian, and Adventurer, and has
much of the eloquence of style which has contributed
so largely to the popularity of those celebrated works.
It treats of various subjects; oratory, poetry, morality,
&c., and abounds in reflections happily suited to the
condition of young men who are entering the learned
professions. It is not sparse of wit, while it shows the
author's familiar acquaintance with the old worthies of
English literature, those who drank of the “well of
English undefiled.”

It should not be neglected to be said of Mr. Wirt that
he was one of those who, in early life, from the pressure
of an unfriended condition upon a mind of excessive
sensitiveness, fell, for a while, into reckless despondency,
alternated by wayward fits of intellectual energy,
which had an unfortunate influence upon his habits.
Such has been the situation of men like him, who had
the “fatal gift,” without any other gift—no friendly
hand— no cheering voice. Alas, the records of genius
for wretchedness is surpassed only by the records of
the lunatic asylum. In fact, its history often illustrates
and deepens the saddest story on the maniac's wall.
But, to the glory of Mr. Wirt, it is known that his energies
prevailed—that friends came—that religious hope,
which had formerly visited him, like the fitful wanderings

of a perturbed spirit, at last made her home by his
hearth, where a beautiful and gifted family grew up
around him, until, full of honors and of years, and the
faith that is beyond them, he was gathered to his
fathers.

When contemplating the moral and intellectual character
of Mr. Wirt, it has been regretted that he did not
turn away from the thorny paths of the law, and devote
the whole force of his mind to general literature; but
how could he, with the poor rewards of literature, support
those nearest and dearest to him? Yet, had circumstances
allowed him to have done so, he would
have been one of the first literary men of our country.
I have frequently heard Mr. Wirt when opposed to some
of our most eminent men, and this slight sketch is
drawn from opinions then entertained and expressed.
I presented, while he lived, the tribute of my admiration,
not to the politician, not to the candidate for the
Presidency, but to the author of the “British Spy,” “The
Old Bachelor,” “The Life of Henry,” a great lawyer
and acute statesman, a consummate advocate, and last,
though not least, an honest man; and now, that he is
dead, I would fain garner testimonials to his memory
worthy of him—but the will must be taken for the deed.