William Wirt (November 8, 1772 – February 18, 1834) was an American author and statesman who is credited with turning the position of United States Attorney General into one of influence.

Wirt accepted the offer and stayed twenty months, teaching, pursuing his own classical and historical studies, writing, and preparing for the bar.

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.

[4] His principal speech, four hours in length, was characterized by eloquent appeal, polished wit, and logical reasoning.

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.

[3] 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.

The American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, an interdenominational missionary organization, hired Wirt to challenge the new law.

[16] Historian William Vaughn wrote, "Wirt was possibly the most reluctant and most unwilling presidential candidate ever nominated by an American party.

"[12]: 66  In private conversations Wirt criticized Masonry for alleged intent to create international order ruled from Europe, but refused all Antimasonic attempts to make his sentiments public.

[12]: 69 In 1833, Wirt became involved with his son-in-law in establishing a German immigrant colony in Florida on lands that he bought but never inspected personally; this business venture failed.

His biographer John P. Kennedy wrote that the early diagnosis of a cold was followed by identifying the symptoms of erysipelas or St. Anthony's fire.

Wirt's last rites were attended by President Jackson and members of his cabinet; John Quincy Adams read a eulogy address in the House of Representatives.

[20][21][22] Wirt's earliest work was Letters of the British Spy, which he first contributed to the Richmond Argus in 1803, and which won immediate popularity.

They were soon afterward issued in book form (Richmond, 1803; 10th ed., with a biographical sketch of the author by Peter H. Cruse, New York, 1832).

An essay from this collection, "Eloquence of the Pulpit", a vigorous and passionate protest against coldness in this genre, has been singled out for praise.

The London Quarterly Review, in a paper on American oratory several years afterward, pronounced this discourse "the best which this remarkable coincidence has called forth".

In 1830 Wirt delivered an address to the literary societies of Rutgers College, which, after its publication by the students (New Brunswick, 1830), was republished in England, and translated into French and German.

After the skull was recovered from the house of a historical memorabilia collector, Robert L. White, it spent time in D.C. Council member Jim Graham's office while he tried to get it returned to its rightful crypt.