(b. Bladensburg, Md., 8 Nov. 1772; d. Washington, D.C., 18 Feb. 1834), lawyer and statesman. A prominent lawyer in the early republic, William Wirt helped shape its legal system. Though Wirt was inclined toward a scholar's life, he never escaped the financial necessity of frequently arguing in court. As United States attorney general (1817–1829) in cabinets confronted with controversial issues, he seemed uninterested in politics. When nominated for president by the Antimasons in 1832, he wished to withdraw in favor of Whig candidate, Henry Clay, but did not. Originally a states' righter, he moved toward constitutional nationalism under the influence of Chief Justice John Marshall. Still, he seemed not to understand the connections between law and politics.

Wirt argued 174 cases in the Supreme Court, some as attorney general for the government and more as counsel for private clients. (He and his contemporaries saw no impropriety in a mixture of the two roles.) In his long tenure as attorney general, he strengthened that office, which before his term had been quite weak. His advocacy of state power over a chartered corporation was unsuccessful in Dartmouth College v. Woodward (1819). But in Gibbons v. Ogden (1824), the Court's first Commerce Clause case, he assisted Daniel Webster in breaking New York's steamboat monopoly. His argument for the constitutionality of the Bank of the United States in McCulloch v. Maryland (1819) was strong, though overshadowed by William Pinkney's powerful exposition of nationalism. In a valiant effort near the end of his life, he won the case of Worcester v. Georgia (1832), yet found that Indian removal to the West was unavoidable (see Cherokee Cases).

— Maurice Baxter

The Oxford Companion to the Supreme Court of the United States. Copyright © 1992, 2005 by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.