William Wirt practiced law in Virginia and Maryland in the early national period and served as attorney general under James Monroe and John Quincy Adams. Elizabeth Wirt managed the household and cared for the Wirts' large family during her husband's frequent work-related absences. For more than three decades, the Wirts struggled to reconcile their different daily pursuits with their commitment to marriage as a partnership of equals. In Marriage in the Early Republic Anya Jabour explores a marital relationship that brightly illuminates gender relations in nineteenth-century America.