William Wirt papers
Language: eng
Number of pages: 1800
Subjects: Correspondence; Social life and customs; Trials, litigation; Diseases; Piety; Antimasonic Party; Slaveholders; Elections; Slavery; Attorneys general; Death; Public prosecutors; Emigration and immigration; Law; Germans; History
Description: Correspondence, writings, reminiscences, clippings, and other papers pertaining primarily to the Wirt (Werth) family, a Southern slaveholding family.  Topics include social life in Baltimore, Md., Richmond, Va., and Washington, D.C., Christian piety, and sickness and death in the Wirt family.  Also includes material concerning the trial of Aaron Burr, legal work conducted by Wirt as U.S. district attorney, Richmond, Va., 1816, and as U.S. attorney general, 1817-1829, Wirt's 1832 presidential campaign on the Anti-Masonic ticket, the efforts of Wirt and his son-in-law, Louis Malesherbes Goldsborough, to settle German farmers near Monticello, Fla., Wirt's book titled, The Letters of the British Spy (1803), and reactions to Wirt's biography of Patrick Henry.

In addition to family members, correspondents include John Quincy Adams, Nicholas Biddle, William H. Cabell, John C. Calhoun, Dabney Carr, Robert Gamble, Peachy R. Gilmer, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, Abner Phelps, Richard Rush, James Wallace, James Webster, and Lewis Williams.
Notes: Open to research.

Microfilm edition available, no. 18,751.

Microfilm produced from originals in Manuscript Division. Washington, D.C. : Library of Congress Photoduplication Service, 1983.

Gift and purchase, James F. Meegan, Alexander Randall, and others, 1909-1957.

U.S. attorney general, lawyer, politician, and biographer.

Collection material in English.

Finding aid available in the Library of Congress Manuscript Reading Room and at http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.mss/eadmss.ms007003