University of Virginia Library

WILLIAM WIRT.[1]

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 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

fled 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, 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 connections, to assist him
up the steep hill 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
nature 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
talent 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 wherever they become known, at
least talent 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 to be a superior
man.

His person was above the medium 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 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 a 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 rapt 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, as he gladdened
the hearth at the Bend with stories of the past
and the 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.

On 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, who seemed to hold all
his energies in perfect control. His self-possession
was great. When he arose 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 had heard
the orator to the conclusion, he would wonder that
he had fancied any uncertainty about it—for Mr.
Wirt would lead him 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 is 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 snuffbox 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 some 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 which 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 sanctions 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 Pinkney
on a question of feudal lore, Webster in profundity
and on constitutional law, and Preston
in the glare 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, gifts of which the Grecian
thought so much, were in keeping with his other
excellences. 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 Pinkney,
and there Mr. Wirt and himself were the great
forensic rivals. No two men of the same profession
could have been 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 cause 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
snuffbox—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 subdued earnestness. In a question
of bail in the case of a youth who had shot at his
teacher, I remember, though then a school-boy, attracted
to the court-house in pity for the lad, 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 Glendower's

One of the most interesting cases ever witnessed
at the Baltimore bar, was a trial in a mandamus
case, in which the right to 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
to them, that though they should succeed in their
cause, which he felt confident they would not, they
would feel like the guilty thane;

This quotation, the name and circumstances being

so appropriate, was made with such oratorical effect
that there was a deep silence when Mr. Wirt took
his seat, which was succeeded by repeated out-breaks
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 excellences of Henry
as an orator and a man, and he overcolored that
which, told with more simplicity, would have been
more striking. The effects of Henry's eloquence
being so wonderful in themselves, would, narrated
in a plainer way, have more forcibly struck the
mind. What they borrowed from the poetry of the
biographer seems

Mr. Wirt's “Old Bachelor” is deserving of 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 awhile
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, are 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 trust, 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 years and full of honors, 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 do 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 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, an acute statesman,
a consummate advocate, and last, though not
least, an honest man; and, now that he is dead, I
would fain garner a testimonial to his memory
worthy of him, but the will must be taken for the
deed.