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Patrick Henry

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Title: Patrick Henry

Author: Moses Coit Tyler


        
Release date: July 10, 2009 [eBook #29368]

Language: English

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E-text prepared by Barbara Tozier, Bill Tozier, and the Project Gutenberg
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American Statesmen

PATRICK HENRY

by

MOSES COIT TYLER







Boston and New York
Houghton Mifflin Company
The Riverside Press Cambridge

Copyright, 1887, by Moses Coit Tyler
Copyright, 1898, by Moses Coit Tyler And Houghton, Mifflin & Co.
Copyright, 1915, by Jeannette G. Tyler

The Riverside Press
Cambridge · Massachusetts
Printed in the U.S.A.




PREFACE


In this book I have tried to embody the chief results derived from a
study of all the materials known to me, in print and in manuscript,
relating to Patrick Henry,--many of these materials being now used for
the first time in any formal presentation of his life.

Notwithstanding the great popular interest attaching to the name of
Patrick Henry, he has hitherto been the subject of but one memoir
founded on original investigation, and that, of course, is the Life
by William Wirt. When it is considered, however, that Wirt's book was
finished as long ago as the year 1817,--before the time had fairly
come for the publication of the correspondence, diaries, personal
memoranda, and official records of every sort, illustrating the great
period covered by Patrick Henry's career,--it will be easy to infer
something as to the quantity and the value of those printed materials
bearing upon the subject, which are now to be had by us, but which
were not within the reach of Wirt. Accordingly, in his lack of much
of the detailed testimony that then lay buried in inaccessible
documents, Wirt had to trust largely to the somewhat imaginative
traditions concerning Patrick Henry which he found floating in the
air of Virginia; and especially to the supposed recollections of old
people,--recollections which, in this case, were nearly always vague,
not always disinterested, often inaccurate, and generally made up of
emotional impressions rather than of facts. Any one who will take the
trouble to ascertain the enormous disadvantages under which Wirt
wrote, and which, as we now know, gave him great discouragement, will
be inclined to applaud him for making so good a book, rather than to
blame him for not making a better one.

It is proper for me to state that, besides the copious printed
materials now within reach, I have been able to make use of a large
number of manuscripts relating to my subject. Of these may be
specified a document, belonging to Cornell University, written by a
great-grandson of Patrick Henry, the late Rev. Edward Fontaine, and
giving, among other things, several new anecdotes of the great orator,
as told to the writer by his own father, Colonel Patrick Henry
Fontaine, who was much with Patrick Henry during the later years of
his life. I may add that, through the kindness of the Hon. William
Wirt Henry of Richmond, I have had access to the manuscripts which
were collected by Wirt for the purposes of his book, but were only in
part used by him. With unstinted generosity, Mr. Henry likewise placed
in my hands all the papers relating to his illustrious grandfather,
which, during the past thirty years or more, he has succeeded in
bringing together, either from different branches of the family, or
from other sources. A portion of the manuscripts thus accumulated by
him consists of copies of the letters, now preserved in the Department
of State, written by Patrick Henry, chiefly while governor of
Virginia, to General Washington, to the president of Congress, to
Virginia's delegation in Congress, and to the Board of War.

In the very front of this book, therefore, I record my grateful
acknowledgments to Mr. William Wirt Henry; acknowledgments not alone
for the sort of generosity of which I have just spoken, but for
another sort, also, which is still more rare, and which I cannot so
easily describe,--his perfect delicacy, while promoting my more
difficult researches by his invaluable help, in never once encumbering
that help with the least effort to hamper my judgment, or to sway it
from the natural conclusions to which my studies might lead.

Finally, it gives me pleasure to mention that, in the preparation of
this book, I have received courteous assistance from Mr. Theodore F.
Dwight and Mr. S. M. Hamilton of the library of the Department of
State; from the Rev. Professor W. M. Hughes, of Hobart College; and
from the Rev. Stephen H. Synnott, rector of St. John's, Ithaca.

                                                     M. C. T.

CORNELL UNIVERSITY, 3 June, 1887.




PREFACE

TO REVISED EDITION


I have gladly used the opportunity afforded by a new edition of this
book to give the text a minute revision from beginning to end, and to
make numerous changes both in its substance and in its form.

During the eleven years that have passed since it first came from the
press, considerable additions have been made to our documentary
materials for the period covered by it, the most important for our
purpose being the publication, for the first time, of the
correspondence and the speeches of Patrick Henry and of George Mason,
the former with a life, in three volumes, by William Wirt Henry, the
latter also with a life, in two volumes, by Kate Mason Rowland.
Besides procuring for my own pages whatever benefit I could draw from
these texts, I have tried, while turning over very frequently the
writings of Patrick Henry's contemporaries, to be always on the watch
for the means of correcting any mistakes I may have made concerning
him, whether as to fact or as to opinion.

In this work of rectification I have likewise been aided by
suggestions from many persons, of whom I would particularly mention
the Right Rev. Joseph Blount Cheshire, Jr., D. D., Bishop of North
Carolina, and Mr. William Wirt Henry.

                                                     M. C. T.

CORNELL UNIVERSITY, 31 March, 1898




CONTENTS

    CHAP.                                                PAGE
      I. EARLY YEARS                                        1
     II. WAS HE ILLITERATE?                                10
    III. BECOMES A LAWYER                                  22
     IV. A CELEBRATED CASE                                 36
      V. FIRST TRIUMPHS AT THE CAPITAL                     56
     VI. CONSEQUENCES                                      77
    VII. STEADY WORK                                       90
   VIII. IN THE FIRST CONTINENTAL CONGRESS                101
     IX. "AFTER ALL, WE MUST FIGHT"                       128
      X. THE RAPE OF THE GUNPOWDER                        153
     XI. IN CONGRESS AND IN CAMP                          168
    XII. INDEPENDENCE                                     189
   XIII. FIRST GOVERNOR OF THE STATE OF VIRGINIA          214
    XIV. GOVERNOR A SECOND TIME                           240
     XV. THIRD YEAR IN THE GOVERNORSHIP                   257
    XVI. AT HOME AND IN THE HOUSE OF DELEGATES            271
   XVII. SHALL THE CONFEDERATION BE MADE STRONGER?        298
  XVIII. THE BATTLE IN VIRGINIA OVER THE NEW CONSTITUTION 313
    XIX. THE AFTER-FIGHT FOR AMENDMENTS                   339
     XX. LAST LABORS AT THE BAR                           357
    XXI. IN RETIREMENT                                    382
   XXII. LAST DAYS                                        407
         LIST OF PRINTED DOCUMENTS CITED IN THIS BOOK     424
         INDEX                                            431




PATRICK HENRY




CHAPTER I

EARLY YEARS


On the evening of October 7, 1732, that merry Old Virginian, Colonel
William Byrd of Westover, having just finished a journey through King
William County for the inspection of his estates, was conducted, for
his night's lodging, to the house of a blooming widow, Mistress Sarah
Syme, in the county of Hanover. This lady, at first supposing her guest
to be some new suitor for her lately disengaged affections, "put on a
Gravity that becomes a Weed;" but so soon as she learned her mistake
and the name of her distinguished visitor, she "brighten'd up into an
unusual cheerfulness and Serenity. She was a portly, handsome Dame, of
the Family of Esau, and seem'd not to pine too much for the Death of
her Husband, who was of the Family of the Saracens.... This widow is a
person of a lively & cheerful Conversation, with much less Reserve than
most of her Countrywomen. It becomes her very well, and sets off her
other agreeable Qualities to Advantage. We tost off a Bottle of honest
Port, which we relisht with a broil'd Chicken. At Nine I retir'd to my
Devotions, And then Slept so Sound that Fancy itself was Stupify'd,
else I shou'd have dreamt of my most obliging Landlady." The next day
being Sunday, "the courteous Widow invited me to rest myself there that
good day, and go to Church with Her, but I excus'd myself by telling
her she wou'd certainly spoil my Devotion. Then she civilly entreated
me to make her House my Home whenever I visited my Plantations, which
made me bow low, and thank her very kindly."[1]

Not very long after that notable visit, the sprightly widow gave her
hand in marriage to a young Scotchman of good family, John Henry, of
Aberdeen, a protégé and probably a kinsman of her former husband; and
continuing to reside on her estate of Studley, in the county of
Hanover, she became, on May 29, 1736, the mother of Patrick Henry.

Through the lineage of both his parents, this child had some claim to
an inheritance of brains. The father, a man of firm and sound
intellect, had been liberally educated in Scotland; among the country
gentlemen of his neighborhood in Virginia, he was held in high esteem
for superior intelligence and character, as is shown by the positions
he long held of county surveyor, colonel of his regiment, and
presiding judge of the county court; while he could number among his
near kinsmen at home several persons of eminence as divines, orators,
or men of letters,--such as his uncle, William Robertson, minister of
Borthwick in Mid Lothian and afterward of the Old Greyfriars' Church
in Edinburgh; his cousin, David Henry, the successor of Edward Cave in
the management of the "Gentleman's Magazine;" and especially his
cousin, William Robertson, principal of the University of Edinburgh,
and author of the "History of the Reign of the Emperor Charles V."
Moreover, among the later paternal relatives of Patrick Henry may be
mentioned one person of oratorical and forensic genius very brilliant
and in quality not unlike his own. Patrick Henry's father was second
cousin to that beautiful Eleanor Syme of Edinburgh, who, in 1777,
became the wife of Henry Brougham of Brougham Hall, Westmoreland.
Their eldest son was Lord Brougham, who was thus the third cousin of
Patrick Henry. To some it will perhaps seem not a mere caprice of
ingenuity to discover in the fiery, eccentric, and truculent eloquence
of the great English advocate and parliamentary orator a family
likeness to that of his renowned American kinsman; or to find in the
fierceness of the champion of Queen Caroline against George IV., and
of English anti-slavery reform and of English parliamentary reform
against aristocratic and commercial selfishness, the same bitter and
eager radicalism that burned in the blood of him who, on this side of
the Atlantic, was, in popular oratory, the great champion of the
colonies against George III., and afterward of the political autonomy
of the State of Virginia against the all-dominating centralization
which he saw coiled up in the projected Constitution of the United
States.[2]

Those, however, who knew the mother of Patrick Henry, and her family,
the Winstons, were accustomed to think that it was from her side of
the house that he derived the most characteristic traits not only of
his genius, but of his disposition. The Winstons of Virginia were of
Welsh stock; a family marked by vivacity of spirit, conversational
talent, a lyric and dramatic turn, a gift for music and for eloquent
speech, at the same time by a fondness for country life, for
inartificial pleasures, for fishing and hunting, for the solitude and
the unkempt charms of nature. It was said, too, of the Winstons that
their talents were in excess of their ambition or of their energy, and
were not brought into use except in a fitful way, and under the
stimulus of some outward and passing occasion. They seem to have
belonged to that very considerable class of persons in this world of
whom more might have been made. Especially much talk used to be heard,
among old men in Virginia, of Patrick Henry's uncle, his mother's own
brother, William Winston, as having a gift of eloquence dazzling and
wondrous like Patrick's, nay, as himself unsurpassed in oratory among
all the great speakers of Virginia except by Patrick himself.[3]

The system of education prevailing in Virginia during Patrick Henry's
early years was extremely simple. It consisted of an almost entire
lack of public schools, mitigated by the sporadic and irregular
exercise of domestic tuition. Those who could afford to import
instruction into their homes got it, if they desired; those who could
not, generally went without. As to the youthful Patrick, he and
education never took kindly to each other. From nearly all quarters
the testimony is to this effect,--that he was an indolent, dreamy,
frolicsome creature, with a mortal enmity to books, supplemented by a
passionate regard for fishing-rods and shot-guns; disorderly in dress,
slouching, vagrant, unambitious; a roamer in woods, a loiterer on
river-banks; having more tastes and aspirations in common with
trappers and frontiersmen than with the toilers of civilized life;
giving no hint nor token, by word or act, of the possession of any
intellectual gift that could raise him above mediocrity, or even up to
it.

During the first ten years of his life, he seems to have made, at a
small school in the neighborhood, some small and reluctant progress
into the mysteries of reading, writing, and arithmetic; whereupon his
father took personal charge of the matter, and conducted his further
education at home, along with that of other children, being aided in
the task by the very competent help of a brother, the Rev. Patrick
Henry, rector of St. Paul's parish, in Hanover, and apparently a good
Scotch classicist. In this way our Patrick acquired some knowledge of
Latin and Greek, and rather more knowledge of mathematics,--the latter
being the only branch of book-learning for which, in those days, he
showed the least liking. However, under such circumstances, with
little real discipline, doubtless, and amid plentiful interruptions,
the process of ostensible education went forward with the young man;
and even this came to an end by the time that he was fifteen years
old.

At that age, he was duly graduated from the domestic schoolroom into
the shop of a country tradesman hard by. After an apprenticeship there
of a single year, his father set him up in trade, joining with him in
the conduct of a country store his elder brother, William, a youth
more indolent, if possible, as well as more disorderly and
uncommercial, than Patrick himself. One year of this odd partnership
brought the petty concern to its inevitable fate. Just one year after
that, having attained the ripe age of eighteen, and being then
entirely out of employment, and equally out of money, Patrick rounded
out his embarrassments, and gave symmetry to them, as it were, by
getting married,--and that to a young woman quite as impecunious as
himself. The name of this damsel was Sarah Shelton; her father being a
small farmer, and afterward a small tavern-keeper in the neighborhood.
In the very rashness and absurdity of this proceeding on the part of
these two interesting young paupers, irresistibly smitten with each
other's charms, and mutually resolved to defy their own helplessness
by doubling it, there seems to have been a sort of semi-ludicrous
pathos which constituted an irresistible call for help.

The parents on both sides heard the call, and by their joint efforts
soon established the young couple on a little farm near at hand, from
which, by their own toil, reënforced by that of half a dozen slaves,
they were expected to extort a living. This experiment, the success of
which depended on exactly those qualities which Patrick did not then
possess,--industry, order, sharp calculation, persistence,--turned out
as might have been predicted. At the end of two years he made a forced
sale of some of his slaves, and invested the proceeds in the stock of
a country store once more. But as he had now proved himself to be a
bad farmer, and a still worse merchant, it is not easy to divine by
what subtle process of reasoning he had been able to conclude that
there would be any improvement in his circumstances by getting out of
agriculture and back into merchandise.

When he undertook this last venture he was still but a youth of
twenty. By the time that he was twenty-three, that is, by the autumn
of 1759, he had become convinced that his little store was to prove
for him merely a consumer of capital and a producer of bad debts; and
in view of the necessity of soon closing it, he had ample excuse for
taking into consideration what he should do next. Already was he the
happy father of sundry small children, with the most trustworthy
prospect of a steady enlargement and multiplication of his paternal
honors. Surely, to a man of twenty-three, a husband and a father, who,
from the age of fifteen, had been engaged in a series of enterprises
to gain his livelihood, and had perfectly failed in every one of them,
the question of his future means of subsistence must have presented
itself as a subject of no little pertinence, not to say urgency.
However, at that time Patrick seems to have been a young fellow of
superabounding health and of inextinguishable spirits, and even in
that crisis of his life he was able to deal gayly with its problems.
In that very year, 1759, Thomas Jefferson, then a lad of sixteen, and
on his way to the College of William and Mary, happened to spend the
Christmas holidays at the house of Colonel Nathan Dandridge, in
Hanover, and there first met Patrick Henry. Long afterward, recalling
these days, Jefferson furnished this picture of him:--

     "Mr. Henry had, a little before, broken up his store, or
     rather it had broken him up; but his misfortunes were not to
     be traced either in his countenance or conduct." "During the
     festivity of the season I met him in society every day, and
     we became well acquainted, although I was much his
     junior.... His manners had something of coarseness in them.
     His passion was music, dancing, and pleasantry. He excelled
     in the last, and it attached every one to him."[4]

Shortly after Jefferson left those hilarious scenes for the somewhat
more restrained festivities of the little college at Williamsburg,
Patrick succeeded in settling in his own mind what he was going to do
next. He could not dig, so it seemed, neither could he traffic, but
perhaps he could talk. Why not get a living by his tongue? Why not be
a lawyer?

But before we follow him through the gates of that superb
profession,--gates which, after some preliminary creaking of the
hinges, threw open to him the broad pathway to wealth, renown,
unbounded influence,--let us stop a moment longer on the outside, and
get a more distinct idea, if we can, of his real intellectual outfit
for the career on which he was about to enter.


FOOTNOTES:

[1] _Byrd Manuscripts_, ii. 79, 80.

[2] I have from private sources information that Brougham was aware of
his relationship to Patrick Henry, and that in recognition of it he
showed marked attentions to a grand-nephew of Patrick Henry, the late
W. C. Preston, of South Carolina, when the latter was in England.
Moreover, in his _Life and Times_, i. 17, 18, Brougham declares that
he derived from his maternal ancestors the qualities which lifted him
above the mediocrity that had always attached to his ancestors on the
paternal side.

[3] Wirt, 3.

[4] In a letter to Wirt, in 1815, _Life of Henry_, 14, 15; also
_Writings of Jefferson_, vi. 487, 488, where the letter is given,
apparently, from the first draft.




CHAPTER II

WAS HE ILLITERATE?


Concerning the quality and extent of Patrick Henry's early education,
it is perhaps impossible now to speak with entire confidence. On the
one hand there seems to have been a tendency, in his own time and
since, to overstate his lack of education, and this partly, it may be,
from a certain instinctive fascination which one finds in pointing to
so dramatic a contrast as that between the sway which the great orator
wielded over the minds of other men and the untrained vigor and
illiterate spontaneity of his own mind. Then, too, it must be admitted
that, whatever early education Patrick Henry may have received, he
did, in certain companies and at certain periods of his life, rather
too perfectly conceal it under an uncouth garb and manner, and under a
pronunciation which, to say the least, was archaic and provincial.
Jefferson told Daniel Webster that Patrick Henry's "pronunciation was
vulgar and vicious," although, as Jefferson adds, this "was forgotten
while he was speaking."[5] Governor John Page "used to relate, on the
testimony of his own ears," that Patrick Henry would speak of "the
yearth," and of "men's naiteral parts being improved by larnin';"[6]
while Spencer Roane mentions his pronunciation of China as
"Cheena."[7] All this, however, it should be noted, does not prove
illiteracy. If, indeed, such was his ordinary speech, and not, as some
have suggested, a manner adopted on particular occasions for the
purpose of identifying himself with the mass of his hearers, the fact
is evidence merely that he retained through his mature life, on the
one hand, some relics of an old-fashioned good usage, and, on the
other, some traces of the brogue of the district in which he was born,
just as Edmund Pendleton used to say "scaicely" for scarcely, and as
John Taylor, of Caroline, would say "bare" for bar; just as Thomas
Chalmers always retained the brogue of Fifeshire, and Thomas Carlyle
that of Ecclefechan. Certainly a brogue can never be elegant, but as
it has many times coexisted with very high intellectual cultivation,
its existence in Patrick Henry does not prove him to have been
uncultivated.

Then, too, it must be remembered that he himself had a habit of
depreciating his own acquaintance with books, and his own dependence
on them. He did this, it would seem, partly from a consciousness that
it would only increase his hold on the sympathy and support of the
mass of the people of Virginia if they should regard him as absolutely
one of themselves, and in no sense raised above them by artificial
advantages. Moreover, this habit of self-depreciation would be brought
into play when he was in conversation with such professed devourers of
books as John Adams and Jefferson, compared with whom he might very
properly feel an unfeigned conviction that he was no reader at all,--a
conviction in which they would be quite likely to agree with him, and
which they would be very likely to express. Thus, John Adams mentions
that, in the first intimacy of their friendship begun at the Congress
of 1774, the Virginian orator, at his lodgings, confessed one night
that, for himself, he had "had no public education;" that at fifteen
he had "read Virgil and Livy," but that he had "not looked into a
Latin book since."[8] Upon Jefferson, who of course knew Henry far
longer and far more closely, the impression of his disconnection from
books seems to have been even more decided, especially if we may
accept the testimony of Jefferson's old age, when his memory had taken
to much stumbling, and his imagination even more to extravagance than
in his earlier life. Said Jefferson, in 1824, of his ancient friend:
"He was a man of very little knowledge of any sort. He read nothing,
and had no books."[9]

On the other hand, there are certain facts concerning Henry's early
education and intellectual habits which may be regarded as pretty
well established. Before the age of ten, at a petty neighborhood
school, he had got started upon the three primary steps of knowledge.
Then, from ten to fifteen, whatever may have been his own irregularity
and disinclination, he was member of a home school, under the
immediate training of his father and his uncle, both of them good
Scotch classical scholars, and one of them at least a proficient in
mathematics. No doubt the human mind, especially in its best estate of
juvenile vigor and frivolity, has remarkable aptitude for the
repulsion of unwelcome knowledge; but it can hardly be said that even
Patrick Henry's gift in that direction could have prevented his
becoming, under two such masters, tolerably well grounded in Latin, if
not in Greek, or that the person who at fifteen is able to read Virgil
and Livy, no matter what may be his subsequent neglect of Latin
authors, is not already imbued with the essential and indestructible
rudiments of the best intellectual culture.

It is this early initiation, on the basis of a drill in Latin, into
the art and mystery of expression, which Patrick Henry received from
masters so competent and so deeply interested in him, which helps us
to understand a certain trait of his, which puzzled Jefferson, and
which, without this clue, would certainly be inexplicable. From his
first appearance as a speaker to the end of his days, he showed
himself to be something more than a declaimer,--indeed, an adept in
language. "I have been often astonished," said Jefferson, "at his
command of proper language; how he obtained the knowledge of it I
never could find out, as he read little, and conversed little with
educated men."[10] It is true, probably, that we have no perfect
report of any speech he ever made; but even through the obvious
imperfections of his reporters there always gleams a certain
superiority in diction,--a mastery of the logic and potency of fitting
words; such a mastery as genius alone, without special training,
cannot account for. Furthermore, we have in the letters of his which
survive, and which of course were generally spontaneous and quite
unstudied effusions, absolutely authentic and literal examples of his
ordinary use of words. Some of these letters will be found in the
following pages. Even as manuscripts, I should insist that the letters
of Patrick Henry are witnesses to the fact and quality of real
intellectual cultivation: these are not the manuscripts of an
uneducated person. In penmanship, punctuation, spelling, syntax, they
are, upon the whole, rather better than the letters of most of the
great actors in our Revolution. But, aside from the mere mechanics of
written speech, there is in the diction of Patrick Henry's letters the
nameless felicity which, even with great natural endowments, is only
communicable by genuine literary culture in some form. Where did
Patrick Henry get such literary culture? The question can be answered
only by pointing to that painful drill in Latin which the book-hating
boy suffered under his uncle and his father, when, to his anguish,
Virgil and Livy detained him anon from the true joys of existence.

Wirt seems to have satisfied himself, on evidence carefully gathered
from persons who were contemporaries of Patrick Henry, that the latter
had received in his youth no mean classical education; but, in the
final revision of his book for publication, Wirt abated his statements
on that subject, in deference to the somewhat vehement assertions of
Jefferson. It may be that, in its present lessened form, Wirt's
account of the matter is the more correct one; but this is the proper
place in which to mention one bit of direct testimony upon the
subject, which, probably, was not known to Wirt. Patrick Henry is said
to have told his eldest grandson, Colonel Patrick Henry Fontaine, that
he was instructed by his uncle "not only in the catechism, but in the
Greek and Latin classics."[11] It may help us to realize something of
the moral stamina entering into the training which the unfledged
orator thus got that, as he related, his uncle taught him these maxims
of conduct: "To be true and just in all my dealings. To bear no malice
nor hatred in my heart. To keep my hands from picking and stealing.
Not to covet other men's goods; but to learn and labor truly to get my
own living, and to do my duty in that state of life unto which it
shall please God to call me."[12]

Under such a teacher Patrick Henry was so thoroughly grounded, at
least in Latin and Greek grammar, that when, long afterward, his
eldest grandson was a student in Hampden-Sidney College, the latter
found "his grandfather's examinations of his progress in Greek and
Latin" so rigorous that he dreaded them "much more than he did his
recitations to his professors."[13] Colonel Fontaine also states that
he was present when a certain French visitor, who did not speak
English, was introduced to Governor Henry, who did not speak French.
During the war of the Revolution and just afterwards a similar
embarrassment was not infrequent here in the case of our public men,
among whom the study of French had been very uncommon; and for many of
them the old colonial habit of fitting boys for college by training
them to the colloquial use of Latin proved to be a great convenience.
Colonel Fontaine's anecdote implies, what is altogether probable, that
Patrick Henry's early drill in Latin had included the ordinary
colloquial use of it; for he says that in the case of the visitor in
question his grandfather was able, by means of his early stock of
Latin words, to carry on the conversation in that language.[14]

This anecdote, implying Patrick Henry's ability to express himself
in Latin, I give for what it may be worth. Some will think it
incredible, and that impression will be further increased by the
fact that Colonel Fontaine names Albert Gallatin as the visitor
with whom, on account of his ignorance of English, the conversation
was thus carried on in Latin. This, of course, must be a mistake;
for, at the time of his first visit to Virginia, Gallatin could
speak English very well, so well, in fact, that he went to Virginia
expressly as English interpreter to a French gentleman who could not
speak our language.[15] However, as, during all that period,
Governor Henry had many foreign visitors, Colonel Fontaine, in his
subsequent account of that particular visitor, might easily have
misplaced the name without thereby discrediting the substance of his
narrative. Indeed, the substance of his narrative, namely, that he,
Colonel Fontaine, did actually witness, in the case of some foreign
visitor, such an exhibition of his grandfather's good early training
in Latin, cannot be rejected without an impeachment of the veracity
of the narrator, or at least of that of his son, who has recorded
the alleged incident. Of course, if that narrative be accepted as
substantially true, it will be necessary to conclude that the
Jeffersonian tradition of Patrick Henry's illiteracy is, at any
rate, far too highly tinted.

Thus far we have been dealing with the question of Patrick Henry's
education down to the time of his leaving school, at the age of
fifteen. It was not until nine years afterward that he began the study
of the law. What is the intellectual record of these nine years? It is
obvious that they were years unfavorable to systematic training of
any sort, or to any regulated acquisition of knowledge. During all
that time in his life, as we now look back upon it, he has for us the
aspect of some lawless, unkempt genius, in untoward circumstances,
groping in the dark, not without wild joy, towards his inconceivable,
true vocation; set to tasks for which he was grotesquely unfit;
blundering on from misfortune to misfortune, with an overflow of
unemployed energy and vivacity that swept him often into rough fun,
into great gusts of innocent riot and horseplay; withal borne along,
for many days together, by the mysterious undercurrents of his nature,
into that realm of reverie where the soul feeds on immortal fruit and
communes with unseen associates, the body meanwhile being left to the
semblance of idleness; of all which the man himself might have given
this valid justification:--

      "I loafe and invite my soul,
  I lean and loafe at my ease, observing a spear of summer grass."

Nevertheless, these nine years of groping, blundering, and seeming
idleness were not without their influence on his intellectual
improvement even through direct contact with books. While still a boy
in his teens, and put prematurely to uncongenial attempts at
shopkeeping and farmkeeping, he at any rate made the great discovery
that in books and in the gathering of knowledge from books could be
found solace and entertainment; in short, he then acquired a taste for
reading. No one pretends that Patrick Henry ever became a bookish
person. From the first and always the habit of his mind was that of
direct action upon every subject that he had to deal with, through his
own reflection, and along the broad primary lines of common sense.
There is never in his thought anything subtle or recondite,--no mental
movement through the media of books; but there is good evidence for
saying that this bewildered and undeveloped youth, drifting about in
chaos, did in those days actually get a taste for reading, and that he
never lost it. The books which he first read are vaguely described as
"a few light and elegant authors,"[16] probably in English essays and
fiction. As the years passed and the boy's mind matured, he rose to
more serious books. He became fond of geography and of history, and he
pushed his readings, especially, into the history of Greece and of
Rome. He was particularly fascinated by Livy, which he read in the
English translation; and then it was, as he himself related it to
Judge Hugh Nelson, that he made the rule to read Livy through "once at
least in every year during the early part of his life."[17] He read
also, it is apparent, the history of England and of the English
colonies in America, and especially of his own colony; for the latter
finding, no doubt, in Beverley and in the grave and noble pages of
Stith, and especially in the colonial charters given by Stith, much
material for those incisive opinions which he so early formed as to
the rights of the colonies, and as to the barriers to be thrown up
against the encroaching authority of the mother country.

There is much contemporaneous evidence to show that Patrick Henry was
throughout life a deeply religious person. It certainly speaks well
for his intellectual fibre, as well as for his spiritual tendencies,
that his favorite book, during the larger part of his life, was
"Butler's Analogy," which was first published in the very year in
which he was born. It is possible that even during these years of his
early manhood he had begun his enduring intimacy with that robust
book. Moreover, we can hardly err in saying that he had then also
become a steady reader of the English Bible, the diction of which is
stamped upon his style as unmistakably as it is upon that of the elder
Pitt.

Such, I think it may fairly be said, was Patrick Henry when, at the
age of twenty-four, having failed in every other pursuit, he turned
for bread to the profession of the law. There is no evidence that
either he or any other mortal man was aware of the extraordinary gifts
that lay within him for success in that career. Not a scholar surely,
not even a considerable miscellaneous reader, he yet had the basis of
a good education; he had the habit of reading over and over again a
few of the best books; he had a good memory; he had an intellect
strong to grasp the great commanding features of any subject; he had a
fondness for the study of human nature, and singular proficiency in
that branch of science; he had quick and warm sympathies, particularly
with persons in trouble,--an invincible propensity to take sides with
the under-dog in any fight. Through a long experience in offhand talk
with the men whom he had thus far chiefly known in his little
provincial world,--with an occasional clergyman, pedagogue, or
legislator, small planters and small traders, sportsmen, loafers,
slaves and the drivers of slaves, and, more than all, those bucolic
Solons of old Virginia, the good-humored, illiterate, thriftless
Caucasian consumers of tobacco and whiskey, who, cordially consenting
that all the hard work of the world should be done by the children of
Ham, were thus left free to commune together in endless debate on the
tavern porch or on the shady side of the country store,--young Patrick
had learned somewhat of the lawyer's art of putting things; he could
make men laugh, could make them serious, could set fire to their
enthusiasms. What more he might do with such gifts nobody seems to
have guessed; very likely few gave it any thought at all. In that
rugged but munificent profession at whose outward gates he then
proceeded to knock, it was altogether improbable that he would burden
himself with much more of its erudition than was really necessary for
a successful general practice in Virginia in his time, or that he
would permanently content himself with less.


FOOTNOTES:

[5] Curtis, _Life of Webster_, i. 585.

[6] Randall, _Life of Jefferson_, i. 20.

[7] MS.

[8] _Works of John Adams_, ii. 396.

[9] Curtis, _Life of Webster_, i. 585.

[10] Curtis, _Life of Webster_, i. 585.

[11] MS.

[12] MS.

[13] MS.

[14] MS.

[15] Henry Adams, _Life of Gallatin_, 59, 60.

[16] Wirt, 9.

[17] Wirt, 13. This is the passage on which Jefferson, in his extreme
old age, made the characteristically inaccurate comment: "His
biographer says, 'He read Plutarch every year.' I doubt if he ever
read a volume of it in his life." Curtis, _Life of Webster_, i. 585.




CHAPTER III

BECOMES A LAWYER


Some time in the early spring of 1760, Thomas Jefferson, then a lad in
the College of William and Mary, was surprised by the arrival in
Williamsburg of his jovial acquaintance, Patrick Henry, and still more
by the announcement of the latter that, in the brief interval since
their merrymakings together at Hanover, he had found time to study
law, and had actually come up to the capital to seek an admission to
the bar.

In the accounts that we have from Henry's contemporaries respecting
the length of time during which he was engaged in preparing for his
legal examination, there are certain discrepancies,--some of these
accounts saying that it was nine months, others six or eight months,
others six weeks. Henry himself told a friend that his original study
of the law lasted only one month, and consisted in the reading of Coke
upon Littleton and of the Virginia laws.[18]

Concerning the encounter of this obscure and raw country youth with
the accomplished men who examined him as to his fitness to receive a
license to practice law, there are three primary narratives,--two by
Jefferson, and a third by Judge John Tyler. In his famous talk with
Daniel Webster and the Ticknors at Monticello, in 1824, Jefferson
said: "There were four examiners,--Wythe, Pendleton, Peyton Randolph,
and John Randolph. Wythe and Pendleton at once rejected his
application; the two Randolphs were, by his importunity, prevailed
upon to sign the license; and, having obtained their signatures, he
again applied to Pendleton, and after much entreaty, and many promises
of future study, succeeded also in obtaining his. He then turned out
for a practicing lawyer."[19]

In a memorandum[20] prepared nearly ten years before the conversation
just mentioned, Jefferson described somewhat differently the incidents
of Henry's examination:--

     "Two of the examiners, however, Peyton and John Randolph,
     men of great facility of temper, signed his license with as
     much reluctance as their dispositions would permit them to
     show. Mr. Wythe absolutely refused. Rob. C. Nicholas refused
     also at first; but on repeated importunities, and promises
     of future reading, he signed. These facts I had afterwards
     from the gentlemen themselves; the two Randolphs
     acknowledging he was very ignorant of law, but that they
     perceived him to be a young man of genius, and did not doubt
     he would soon qualify himself."[21]

Long afterward, and when all this anxious affair had become for
Patrick Henry an amusing thing of the past, he himself, in the
confidence of an affectionate friendship, seems to have related one
remarkable phase of his experience to Judge John Tyler, by whom it was
given to Wirt. One of the examiners was "Mr. John Randolph, who was
afterwards the king's attorney-general for the colony,--a gentleman of
the most courtly elegance of person and manners, a polished wit, and a
profound lawyer. At first, he was so much shocked by Mr. Henry's very
ungainly figure and address, that he refused to examine him.
Understanding, however, that he had already obtained two signatures,
he entered with manifest reluctance on the business. A very short time
was sufficient to satisfy him of the erroneous conclusion which he had
drawn from the exterior of the candidate. With evident marks of
increasing surprise (produced, no doubt, by the peculiar texture and
strength of Mr. Henry's style, and the boldness and originality of his
combinations), he continued the examination for several hours;
interrogating the candidate, not on the principles of municipal law,
in which he no doubt soon discovered his deficiency, but on the laws
of nature and of nations, on the policy of the feudal system, and on
general history, which last he found to be his stronghold. During the
very short portion of the examination which was devoted to the common
law, Mr. Randolph dissented, or affected to dissent, from one of Mr.
Henry's answers, and called upon him to assign the reasons of his
opinion. This produced an argument, and Mr. Randolph now played off on
him the same arts which he himself had so often practiced on his
country customers; drawing him out by questions, endeavoring to puzzle
him by subtleties, assailing him with declamation, and watching
continually the defensive operations of his mind. After a considerable
discussion, he said, 'You defend your opinions well, sir; but now to
the law and to the testimony.' Hereupon he carried him to his office,
and, opening the authorities, said to him: 'Behold the force of
natural reason! You have never seen these books, nor this principle of
the law; yet you are right and I am wrong. And from the lesson which
you have given me (you must excuse me for saying it) I will never
trust to appearances again. Mr. Henry, if your industry be only half
equal to your genius, I augur that you will do well, and become an
ornament and an honor to your profession.'"[22]

After such an ordeal at Williamsburg, the young man must have ridden
back to Hanover with some natural elation over his success, but that
elation not a little tempered by serious reflection upon his own
deficiencies as a lawyer, and by an honest purpose to correct them.
Certainly nearly everything that was dear to him in life must then
have risen before his eyes, and have incited him to industry in the
further study of his profession.

At that time, his father-in-law had become the keeper of a tavern in
Hanover; and for the next two or three years, while he was rapidly
making his way as a general practitioner of the law in that
neighborhood, Patrick seems occasionally to have been a visitor at
this tavern. It was in this way, undoubtedly, that he sometimes acted
as host, especially in the absence of his father-in-law,--receiving
all comers, and providing for their entertainment; and it was from
this circumstance that the tradition arose, as Jefferson bluntly
expressed it, that Patrick Henry "was originally a barkeeper,"[23] or,
as it is more vivaciously expressed by a recent writer, that "for
three years" after getting his license to practice law, he "tended
travelers and drew corks."[24]

These statements, however, are but an exaggeration of the fact that,
whenever visiting at the tavern of his father-in-law, he had the good
sense and the good feeling to lend a hand, in case of need, in the
business of the house; and that no more than this is true may be
proved, not only from the written testimony of survivors,[25] who knew
him in those days, but from the contemporary records, carefully kept
by himself, of his own earliest business as a lawyer. These records
show that, almost at once after receiving his license to practice
law, he must have been fully occupied with the appropriate business of
his profession.

It is quite apparent, also, from the evidence just referred to, that
the common history of his life has, in another particular, done great
injustice to this period of it. According to the recollection of one
old man who outlived him, "he was not distinguished at the bar for
near four years."[26] Wirt himself, relying upon the statements of
several survivors of Patrick Henry, speaks of his lingering "in the
background for three years," and of "the profits of his practice" as
being so inadequate for the supply of even "the necessaries of life,"
that "for the first two or three years" he was living with his family
in dependence upon his father-in-law.[27] Fortunately, however, we are
not left in this case to grope our way toward the truth amid the ruins
of the confused and decaying memories of old men. Since Wirt's time,
there have come to light the fee-books of Patrick Henry, carefully and
neatly kept by him from the beginning of his practice, and covering
nearly his entire professional life down to old age.[28] The first
entry in these books is for September, 1760; and from that date onward
to the end of the year 1763,--by which time he had suddenly sprung
into great professional prominence by his speech in "the Parsons'
Cause,"--he is found to have charged fees in 1185 suits, besides many
other fees for the preparation of legal papers out of court. From
about the time of his speech in "the Parsons' Cause," as his fee-books
show, his practice became enormous, and so continued to the end of his
days, excepting when public duties or broken health compelled him to
turn away clients. Thus it is apparent that, while the young lawyer
did not attain anything more than local professional reputation until
his speech against the parsons, he did acquire a very considerable
practice almost immediately after his admission to the bar. Moreover,
so far from his being a needy dependent on his father-in-law for the
first two or three years, the same quiet records show that his
practice enabled him, even during that early period, to assist his
father-in-law by an important advance of money.

The fiction that Patrick Henry, during the first three or four years
of his nominal career as a lawyer, was a briefless barrister,--earning
his living at the bar of a tavern rather than at the bar of
justice,--is the very least of those disparaging myths, which, through
the frailty of human memory and the bitterness of partisan ill-will,
have been permitted to settle upon his reputation. Certainly, no one
would think it discreditable, or even surprising, if Patrick Henry,
while still a very young lawyer, should have had little or no
practice, provided only that, when the practice did come, the young
lawyer had shown himself to have been a good one. It is precisely
this honor which, during the past seventy years, has been denied him.
Upon the evidence thus far most prominently before the public, one is
compelled to conceive of him as having been destitute of nearly all
the qualifications of a good lawyer, excepting those which give
success with juries, particularly in criminal practice: he is
represented as ignorant of the law, indolent, and grossly negligent of
business,--with nothing, in fact, to give him the least success in the
profession but an abnormal and quite unaccountable gift of persuasion
through speech.

Referring to this period of his life, Wirt says:--

     "Of the science of law he knew almost nothing; of the
     practical part he was so wholly ignorant that he was not
     only unable to draw a declaration or a plea, but incapable,
     it is said, of the most common or simple business of his
     profession, even of the mode of ordering a suit, giving a
     notice, or making a motion in court."[29]

This conception of Henry's professional character, to which Wirt seems
to have come reluctantly, was founded, as is now evident, on the
long-suppressed memorandum of Jefferson, who therein states that,
after failing in merchandise, Patrick "turned his views to the law,
for the acquisition or practice of which however, he was too lazy.
Whenever the courts were closed for the winter session, he would make
up a party of poor hunters of his neighborhood, would go off with
them to the piny woods of Fluvanna, and pass weeks in hunting deer, of
which he was passionately fond, sleeping under a tent before a fire,
wearing the same shirt the whole time, and covering all the dirt of
his dress with a hunting-shirt. He never undertook to draw pleadings,
if he could avoid it, or to manage that part of a cause, and very
unwillingly engaged but as an assistant to speak in the cause. And the
fee was an indispensable preliminary, observing to the applicant that
he kept no accounts, never putting pen to paper, which was true."[30]

The last sentence of this passage, in which Jefferson declares that it
was true that Henry "kept no accounts, never putting pen to paper,"
is, of course, now utterly set aside by the discovery of the precious
fee-books; and these orderly and circumstantial records almost as
completely annihilate the trustworthiness of all the rest of the
passage. Let us consider, for example, Jefferson's statement that for
the acquisition of the law, or for the practice of it, Henry was too
lazy, and that much of the time between the sessions of the courts was
passed by him in deer-hunting in the woods. Confining ourselves to the
first three and a half years of his actual practice, in which, by the
record, his practice was the smallest that he ever had, it is not easy
for one to understand how a mere novice in the profession, and one so
perfectly ignorant of its most rudimental forms, could have earned,
during that brief period, the fees which he charged in 1185 suits, and
in the preparation of many legal papers out of court, and still have
been seriously addicted to laziness. Indeed, if so much legal business
could have been transacted within three years and a half, by a lawyer
who, besides being young and incompetent, was also extremely lazy, and
greatly preferred to go off to the woods and hunt for deer while his
clients were left to hunt in vain for him, it becomes an interesting
question just how much legal business we ought to expect to be done by
a young lawyer who was not incompetent, was not lazy, and had no
inordinate fondness for deer-hunting. It happens that young Thomas
Jefferson himself was just such a lawyer. He began practice exactly
seven years after Patrick Henry, and at precisely the same time of
life, though under external circumstances far more favorable. As a
proof of his uncommon zeal and success in the profession, his
biographer, Randall, cites from Jefferson's fee-books the number of
cases in which he was employed until he was finally drawn off from the
law into political life. Oddly enough, for the first four years of his
practice, the cases registered by Jefferson[31] number, in all, but
504. It should be mentioned that this number, as it includes only
Jefferson's cases in the General Court, does not indicate all the
business done by him during those first four years; and yet, even with
this allowance, we are left standing rather helpless before the
problem presented by the fact that this competent and diligent young
lawyer--whom, forsooth, the rustling leaves of the forest could never
for once entice from the rustle of the leaves of his law-books--did
nevertheless transact, during his own first four years of practice,
probably less than one half as much business as seems to have been
done during a somewhat shorter space of time by our poor, ignorant,
indolent, slovenly, client-shunning and forest-haunting Patrick.

But, if Jefferson's charge of professional indolence and neglect on
the part of his early friend fares rather ill when tested by those
minute and plodding records of his professional employments which were
kept by Patrick Henry, a fate not much more prosperous overtakes
Jefferson's other charge,--that of professional incompetence. It is
more than intimated by Jefferson that, even had Patrick been disposed
to engage in a general law practice, he did not know enough to do so
successfully by reason of his ignorance of the most ordinary legal
principles and legal forms. But the intellectual embarrassment which
one experiences in trying to accept this view of Patrick Henry arises
from the simple fact that these incorrigible fee-books show that it
was precisely this general law practice that he did engage in, both in
court and out of court; a practice only a small portion of which was
criminal, the larger part of it consisting of the ordinary suits in
country litigation; a practice which certainly involved the drawing
of pleadings, and the preparation of many sorts of legal papers; a
practice, moreover, which he seems to have acquired with extraordinary
rapidity, and to have maintained with increasing success as long as he
cared for it. These are items of history which are likely to burden
the ordinary reader with no little perplexity,--a perplexity the
elements of which are thus modestly stated by a living grandson of
Patrick Henry: "How he acquired or retained a practice so large and
continually increasing, so perfectly unfit for it as Mr. Jefferson
represents him, I am at a loss to understand."[32]

As we go further in the study of this man's life, we shall have before
us ample materials for dealing still further and still more definitely
with the subject of his professional character, as that character
itself became developed and matured. Meantime, however, the evidence
already in view seems quite enough to enable us to form a tolerably
clear notion of the sort of lawyer he was down to the end of 1763,
which may be regarded as the period of his novitiate at the bar. It is
perfectly evident that, at the time of his admission to the bar, he
knew very little of the law, either in its principles or in its forms:
he knew no more than could have been learned by a young man of genius
in the course of four weeks in the study of Coke upon Littleton, and
of the laws of Virginia. If, now, we are at liberty to suppose that
his study of the law then ceased, we may accept the view of his
professional incompetence held up by Jefferson; but precisely that is
what we are not at liberty to suppose. All the evidence, fairly
sifted, warrants the belief that, on his return to Hanover with his
license to practice law, he used the next few months in the further
study of it; and that thenceforward, just so fast as professional
business came to his hands, he tried to qualify himself to do that
business, and to do it so well that his clients should be inclined to
come to him again in case of need. Patrick Henry's is not the first
case, neither is it the last one, of a man coming to the bar miserably
unqualified for its duties, but afterward becoming well qualified. We
need not imagine, we do not imagine, that he ever became a man of
great learning in the law; but we do find it impossible to believe
that he continued to be a man of great ignorance in it. The law,
indeed, is the one profession on earth in which such success as he is
proved to have had, is impossible to such incompetence as he is said
to have had. Moreover, in trying to form a just idea of Patrick Henry,
it is never safe to forget that we have to do with a man of genius,
and that the ways by which a man of genius reaches his results are
necessarily his own,--are often invisible, are always somewhat
mysterious, to the rest of us. The genius of Patrick Henry was
powerful, intuitive, swift; by a glance of the eye he could take in
what an ordinary man might spend hours in toiling for; his memory
held whatever was once committed to it; all his resources were at
instant command; his faculty for debate, his imagination, humor, tact,
diction, elocution, were rich and exquisite; he was also a man of
human and friendly ways, whom all men loved, and whom all men wanted
to help; and it would not have been strange if he actually fitted
himself for the successful practice of such law business as was then
to be had in Virginia, and actually entered upon its successful
practice with a quickness the exact processes of which were
unperceived even by his nearest neighbors.


FOOTNOTES:

[18] Wirt, 16.

[19] Curtis, _Life of Webster_, i. 584.

[20] First printed in the Philadelphia _Age_, in 1867; and again
printed, from the original manuscript, in _The Historical Magazine_,
August, 1867, 90-93. I quote from the latter.

[21] Jefferson's memorandum, _Hist. Mag._ for August, 1867, 90.

[22] Wirt, 16, 17.

[23] Curtis, _Life of Webster_, i. 584.

[24] McMaster, _Hist. of U. S._ i. 489.

[25] I have carefully examined this testimony, which is still in
manuscript.

[26] Judge Winston, MS.

[27] Wirt, 18, 19.

[28] These fee-books are now in the possession of Mr. William Wirt
Henry, of Richmond.

[29] Wirt, 18.

[30] _Hist. Mag._ for 1867, 93.

[31] Randall, _Life of Jefferson_, i. 47, 48.

[32] William Wirt Henry, _Character and Public Career of Patrick
Henry_, 3.




CHAPTER IV

A CELEBRATED CASE


Thus Patrick Henry had been for nearly four years in the practice of
the law, with a vigor and a success quite extraordinary, when, late in
the year 1763, he became concerned in a case so charged with popular
interest, and so well suited to the display of his own marvellous
genius as an advocate, as to make both him and his case immediately
celebrated.

The side upon which he was retained happened to be the wrong
side,--wrong both in law and in equity; having only this element of
strength in it, namely, that by a combination of circumstances there
were enlisted in its favor precisely those passions of the multitude
which are the most selfish, the most blinding, and at the same time
the most energetic. It only needed an advocate skilful enough to play
effectively upon these passions, and a storm would be raised before
which mere considerations of law and of equity would be swept out of
sight.

In order to understand the real issue presented by "the Parsons'
Cause," and consequently the essential weakness of the side to the
service of which our young lawyer was now summoned, we shall need to
turn about and take a brief tour into the earlier history of Virginia.
In that colony, from the beginning, the Church of England was
established by law, and was supported, like any other institution of
the government, by revenues derived from taxation,--taxation levied in
this case upon nearly all persons in the colony above the age of
sixteen years. Moreover, those local subdivisions which, in the
Northern colonies, were called towns, in Virginia were called
parishes; and accordingly, in the latter, the usual local officers who
manage the public business for each civil neighborhood were called,
not selectmen or supervisors, as at the North, but vestrymen. Among
the functions conferred by the law upon these local officers in
Virginia was that of hiring the rector or minister, and of paying him
his salary; and the same authority which gave to the vestry this power
fixed likewise the precise amount of salary which they were to pay.
Ever since the early days of the colony, this amount had been stated,
not in money, which hardly existed there, but in tobacco, which was
the staple of the colony. Sometimes the market value of tobacco would
be very low,--so low that the portion paid to the minister would yield
a sum quite insufficient for his support; and on such occasions, prior
to 1692, the parishes had often kindly made up for such depreciation
by voluntarily paying an extra quantity of tobacco.[33] After 1692,
however, for reasons which need not now be detailed, this generous
custom seems to have disappeared. For example, from 1709 to 1714, the
price of tobacco was so low as to make its shipment to England, in
many instances, a positive loss to its owner; while the sale of it on
the spot was so disadvantageous as to reduce the minister's salary to
about £25 a year, as reckoned in the depreciated paper currency of the
colony. Of course, during those years, the distress of the clergy was
very great; but, whatever it may have been, they were permitted to
bear it, without any suggestion, either from the legislature or from
the vestries, looking toward the least addition to the quantity of
tobacco then to be paid them. On the other hand, from 1714 to 1720,
the price of tobacco rose considerably above the average, and did
something towards making up to the clergy the losses which they had
recently incurred. Then, again, from 1720 to 1724, tobacco fell to the
low price of the former period, and of course with the same results of
unrelieved loss to the clergy.[34] Thus, however, in the process of
time, there had become established, in the fiscal relations of each
vestry to its minister, a rough but obvious system of fair play. When
the price of tobacco was down, the parson was expected to suffer the
loss; when the price of tobacco was up, he was allowed to enjoy the
gain. Probably it did not then occur to any one that a majority of
the good people of Virginia could ever be brought to demand such a
mutilation of justice as would be involved in depriving the parson of
the occasional advantage of a very good market, and of making up for
this by always leaving to him the undisturbed enjoyment of every
occasional bad one. Yet it was just this mutilation of justice which,
only a few years later, a majority of the good people of Virginia were
actually brought to demand, and which, by the youthful genius of
Patrick Henry, they were too well aided in effecting.

Returning now from our brief tour into a period of Virginian history
just prior to that upon which we are at present engaged, we find
ourselves arrived at the year 1748, in which year the legislature of
Virginia, revising all previous regulations respecting the hiring
and paying of the clergy, passed an act, directing that every parish
minister should "receive an annual salary of 16,000 pounds of
tobacco, ... to be levied, assessed, collected, and paid" by the
vestry. "And if the vestry of any parish" should "neglect or refuse
to levy the tobacco due to the minister," they should "be liable to
the action of the party grieved ... for all damages which he ...
shall sustain by such refusal or neglect."[35] This act of the
colonial legislature, having been duly approved by the king, became
a law, and consequently was not liable to repeal or even to
suspension except by the king's approval. Thus, at the period now
reached, there was between every vestry and its minister a valid
contract for the annual payment, by the former to the latter, of
that particular quantity of tobacco,--the clergy to take their
chances as to the market value of the product from year to year.

Thus matters ran on until 1755, when, by reason of a diminished crop
of tobacco, the legislature passed an option law,[36] virtually
suspending for the next ten months the Act of 1748, and requiring the
clergy, at the option of the vestries, to receive their salaries for
that year, not in tobacco, but in the depreciated paper currency of
the colony, at the rate of two pence for each pound of tobacco due,--a
price somewhat below the market value of the article for that year.
Most clearly this act, which struck an arbitrary blow at the validity
of all contracts in Virginia, was one which exceeded the
constitutional authority of the legislature; since it suspended,
without the royal approval, a law which had been regularly ratified by
the king. However, the operation of this act was shrewdly limited to
ten months,--a period just long enough to accomplish its object, but
too short for the royal intervention against it to be of any direct
avail. Under these circumstances, the clergy bore their losses for
that year with some murmuring indeed, but without any formal
protest.[37]

Just three years afterward, in 1758, the legislature, with even less
excuse than before, passed an act[38] similar to that of 1755,--its
force, however, being limited to twelve months. The operation of this
act, as affecting each parish minister, may be conveyed in very few
words. In lieu of what was due him under the law for his year's
services, namely, 16,000 pounds of tobacco, the market value of which
for the year in question proved to be about £400 sterling, it
compelled him to take, in the paper money of the colony, the sum of
about £133. To make matters still worse, while the tobacco which was
due him was an instant and an advantageous medium of exchange
everywhere, and especially in England whence nearly all his merchant
supplies were obtained, this paper money that was forced upon him was
a depreciated currency even within the colony, and absolutely
worthless outside of it; so that the poor parson, who could never
demand his salary for any year until six full months after its close,
would have proffered to him, at the end, perhaps, of another six
months, just one third of the nominal sum due him, and that in a
species of money of no value at all except in Virginia, and even in
Virginia of a purchasing value not exceeding that of £20 sterling in
England.[39]

Nor, in justification of such a measure, could it be truthfully said
that there was at that time in the colony any general "dearth and
scarcity,"[40] or any such public distress of any sort as might
overrule the ordinary maxims of justice, and excuse, in the name of
humanity, a merely technical violation of law. As a matter of fact,
the only "dearth and scarcity" in Virginia that year was "confined to
one or two counties on James River, and that entirely owing to their
own fault;"[41] wherever there was any failure of the tobacco crop, it
was due to the killing of the plants so early in the spring, that such
land did not need to lie uncultivated, and in most cases was planted
"in corn and pease, which always turned to good account;"[42] and
although, for the whole colony, the crop of tobacco "was short in
quantity," yet "in cash value it proved to be the best crop that
Virginia had ever had" since the settlement of the colony.[43]
Finally, it was by no means the welfare of the poor that "was the
object, or the effect, of the law;" but it was "the rich planters"
who, first selling their tobacco at about fifty shillings the hundred,
and then paying to the clergy and others their tobacco debts at the
rate of sixteen shillings the hundred, were "the chief gainers" by the
act.[44]

Such, then, in all its fresh and unadorned rascality, was the famous
"option law," or "two-penny act," of 1758: an act firmly opposed, on
its first appearance in the legislature, by a noble minority of
honorable men; an act clearly indicating among a portion of the people
of Virginia a survival of the old robber instincts of our Norse
ancestors; an act having there the sort of frantic popularity that all
laws are likely to have which give a dishonest advantage to the debtor
class,--and in Virginia, unfortunately, on the subject of salaries due
to the clergy, nearly all persons above sixteen years of age belonged
to that class.[45]

At the time when this act was before the legislature for
consideration, the clergy applied for a hearing, but were refused.
Upon its passage by the two houses, the clergy applied to the acting
governor, hoping to obtain his disapproval of the act; but his reply
was an unblushing avowal of his determination to pursue any course,
right or wrong, which would bring him popular favor. They then sent
one of their own number to England, for the purpose of soliciting the
royal disallowance of the act. After a full hearing of both sides, the
privy council gave it as their opinion that the clergy of Virginia had
their "certain remedy at law;" Lord Hardwicke, in particular,
declaring that "there was no occasion to dispute about the authority
by which the act was passed; for that no court in the judicature
whatever could look upon it to be law, by reason of its manifest
injustice alone."[46] Accordingly, the royal disallowance was granted.
Upon the arrival in Virginia of these tidings, several of the clergy
began suits against their respective vestries, for the purpose of
compelling them to pay the amounts then legally due upon their
salaries for the year 1758.

Of these suits, the first to come to trial was that of the Rev. Thomas
Warrington, in the County Court of Elizabeth City. In that case, "a
jury of his own parishioners found for him considerable damages,
allowing on their oaths that there was above twice as much justly due
to him as the act had granted;"[47] but "the court hindered him from
immediately coming at the damages, by judging the act to be law, in
which it is thought they were influenced more by the fear of giving
offense to their superiors, than by their own opinion of the
reasonableness of the act,--they privately professing that they
thought the parson ought to have his right."[48]

Soon afterward came to trial, in the court of King William County, the
suit of the Rev. Alexander White, rector of St. David's parish. In
this case, the court, instead of either sustaining or rejecting the
disallowed act, simply shirked their responsibility, "refused to
meddle in the matter, and insisted on leaving the whole affair to the
jury;" who being thus freed from all judicial control, straightway
rendered a verdict of neat and comprehensive lawlessness: "We bring in
for the defendant."[49]

It was at this stage of affairs that the court of Hanover County
reached the case of the Rev. James Maury, rector of Fredericksville
parish, Louisa; and the court, having before it the evidence of the
royal disallowance of the Act of 1758, squarely "adjudged the act to
be no law." Of course, under this decision, but one result seemed
possible. As the court had thus rejected the validity of the act
whereby the vestry had withheld from their parson two thirds of his
salary for the year 1758, it only remained to summon a special jury on
a writ of inquiry to determine the damages thus sustained by the
parson; and as this was a very simple question of arithmetic, the
counsel for the defendants expressed his desire to withdraw from the
case.

Such was the situation, when these defendants, having been assured by
their counsel that all further struggle would be hopeless, turned for
help to the enterprising young lawyer who, in that very place, had
been for the previous three and a half years pushing his way to notice
in his profession. To him, accordingly, they brought their cause,--a
desperate cause, truly,--a cause already lost and abandoned by veteran
and eminent counsel. Undoubtedly, by the ethics of his profession,
Patrick Henry was bound to accept the retainer that was thus tendered
him; and, undoubtedly, by the organization of his own mind, having
once accepted that retainer, he was likely to devote to the cause no
tepid or half-hearted service.

The decision of the court, which has been referred to, was rendered at
its November session. On the first day of the session in December, the
order was executed for summoning a select jury "to examine whether the
plaintiff had sustained any damages, and what."[50] Obviously, in the
determination of these two questions, much would depend on the
personal composition of the jury; and it is apparent that this matter
was diligently attended to by the sheriff. His plan seems to have been
to secure a good, honest jury of twelve adult male persons, but
without having among them a single one of those over-scrupulous and
intractable people who, in Virginia, at that time, were still
technically described as gentlemen. With what delicacy and efficiency
he managed this part of the business was thus described shortly
afterward by the plaintiff, of course a deeply interested
eye-witness:--

     "The sheriff went into a public room full of gentlemen, and
     told his errand. One excused himself ... as having already
     given his opinion in a similar case. On this, ... he
     immediately left the room, without summoning any one person
     there. He afterwards met another gentleman ... on the green,
     and, on saying he was not fit to serve, being a church
     warden, he took upon himself to excuse him, too, and, as far
     as I can learn made no further attempts to summon
     gentlemen.... Hence he went among the vulgar herd. After he
     had selected and set down upon his list about eight or ten
     of these, I met him with it in his hand, and on looking over
     it, observed to him that they were not such jurors as the
     court had directed him to get,--being people of whom I had
     never heard before, except one whom, I told him, he knew to
     be a party in the cause.... Yet this man's name was not
     erased. He was even called in court, and had he not excused
     himself, would probably have been admitted. For I cannot
     recollect that the court expressed either surprise or
     dislike that a more proper jury had not been summoned. Nay,
     though I objected against them, yet, as Patrick Henry, one
     of the defendants' lawyers, insisted they were honest men,
     and, therefore, unexceptionable, they were immediately
     called to the book and sworn."[51]

Having thus secured a jury that must have been reasonably
satisfactory to the defendants, the hearing began. Two gentlemen,
being the largest purchasers of tobacco in the county, were then sworn
as witnesses to prove the market price of the article in 1759. By
their testimony it was established that the price was then more than
three times as much as had been estimated in the payment of paper
money actually made to the plaintiff in that year. Upon this state of
facts, "the lawyers on both sides" proceeded to display "the force and
weight of the evidence;" after which the case was given to the jury.
"In less than five minutes," they "brought in a verdict for the
plaintiff,--one penny damages."[52]

Just how the jury were induced, in the face of the previous judgment
of that very court, to render this astounding verdict, has been
described in two narratives: one by William Wirt, written about fifty
years after the event; the other by the injured plaintiff himself, the
Rev. James Maury, written exactly twelve days after the event. Few
things touching the life of Patrick Henry can be more notable or more
instructive than the contrast presented by these two narratives.

On reaching the scene of action, on the 1st of December, Patrick Henry
"found," says Wirt,--

     "on the courtyard such a concourse as would have appalled
     any other man in his situation. They were not people of the
     county merely who were there, but visitors from all the
     counties to a considerable distance around. The decision
     upon the demurrer had produced a violent ferment among the
     people, and equal exultation on the part of the clergy, who
     attended the court in a large body, either to look down
     opposition, or to enjoy the final triumph of this hard
     fought contest, which they now considered as perfectly
     secure.... Soon after the opening of the court the cause was
     called.... The array before Mr. Henry's eyes was now most
     fearful. On the bench sat more than twenty clergymen, the
     most learned men in the colony.... The courthouse was
     crowded with an overwhelming multitude, and surrounded with
     an immense and anxious throng, who, not finding room to
     enter, were endeavoring to listen without in the deepest
     attention. But there was something still more awfully
     disconcerting than all this; for in the chair of the
     presiding magistrate sat no other person than his own
     father. Mr. Lyons opened the cause very briefly.... And now
     came on the first trial of Patrick Henry's strength. No one
     had ever heard him speak,[53] and curiosity was on tiptoe.
     He rose very awkwardly, and faltered much in his exordium.
     The people hung their heads at so unpromising a
     commencement; the clergy were observed to exchange sly looks
     with each other; and his father is described as having
     almost sunk with confusion, from his seat. But these
     feelings were of short duration, and soon gave place to
     others of a very different character. For now were those
     wonderful faculties which he possessed, for the first time
     developed; and now was first witnessed that mysterious and
     almost supernatural transformation of appearance, which the
     fire of his own eloquence never failed to work in him. For
     as his mind rolled along, and began to glow from its own
     action, all the exuviæ of the clown seemed to shed
     themselves spontaneously. His attitude, by degrees, became
     erect and lofty. The spirit of his genius awakened all his
     features. His countenance shone with a nobleness and
     grandeur which it had never before exhibited. There was a
     lightning in his eyes which seemed to rive the spectator.
     His action became graceful, bold, and commanding; and in the
     tones of his voice, but more especially in his emphasis,
     there was a peculiar charm, a magic, of which any one who
     ever heard him will speak as soon as he is named, but of
     which no one can give any adequate description. They can
     only say that it struck upon the ear and upon the heart, in
     a manner which language cannot tell. Add to all these, his
     wonder-working fancy, and the peculiar phraseology in which
     he clothed its images: for he painted to the heart with a
     force that almost petrified it. In the language of those who
     heard him on this occasion, 'he made their blood run cold,
     and their hair to rise on end.'

     "It will not be difficult for any one who ever heard this
     most extraordinary man, to believe the whole account of this
     transaction which is given by his surviving hearers; and
     from their account, the court house of Hanover County must
     have exhibited, on this occasion, a scene as picturesque as
     has been ever witnessed in real life. They say that the
     people, whose countenance had fallen as he arose, had heard
     but a very few sentences before they began to look up; then
     to look at each other with surprise, as if doubting the
     evidence of their own senses; then, attracted by some strong
     gesture, struck by some majestic attitude, fascinated by the
     spell of his eye, the charm of his emphasis, and the varied
     and commanding expression of his countenance, they could
     look away no more. In less than twenty minutes, they might
     be seen in every part of the house, on every bench, in every
     window, stooping forward from their stands, in death-like
     silence; their features fixed in amazement and awe; all
     their senses listening and riveted upon the speaker, as if
     to catch the least strain of some heavenly visitant. The
     mockery of the clergy was soon turned into alarm; their
     triumph into confusion and despair; and at one burst of his
     rapid and overwhelming invective, they fled from the house
     in precipitation and terror. As for the father, such was his
     surprise, such his amazement, such his rapture, that,
     forgetting where he was, and the character which he was
     filling, tears of ecstasy streamed down his cheeks, without
     the power or inclination to repress them.

     "The jury seem to have been so completely bewildered, that
     they lost sight not only of the Act of 1748, but that of
     1758 also; for, thoughtless even of the admitted right of
     the plaintiff, they had scarcely left the bar, when they
     returned with a verdict of one penny damages. A motion was
     made for a new trial; but the court, too, had now lost the
     equipoise of their judgment, and overruled the motion by an
     unanimous vote. The verdict and judgment overruling the
     motion were followed by redoubled acclamations, from within
     and without the house. The people, who had with difficulty
     kept their hands off their champion from the moment of
     closing his harangue, no sooner saw the fate of the cause
     finally sealed, than they seized him at the bar; and in
     spite of his own exertions, and the continued cry of order
     from the sheriffs and the court, they bore him out of the
     courthouse, and raising him on their shoulders, carried him
     about the yard, in a kind of electioneering triumph."[54]

At the time when Wirt wrote this rhapsody, he was unable, as he tells
us, to procure from any quarter a rational account of the line of
argument taken by Patrick Henry, or even of any other than a single
topic alluded to by him in the course of his speech,--they who heard
the speech saying "that when it was over, they felt as if they had
just awaked from some ecstatic dream, of which they were unable to
recall or connect the particulars."[55]

There was present in that assemblage, however, at least one person who
listened to the young orator without falling into an ecstatic dream,
and whose senses were so well preserved to him through it all that he
was able, a few days afterward, while the whole occasion was fresh in
his memory, to place upon record a clear and connected version of the
wonder-working speech. This version is to be found in a letter written
by the plaintiff on the 12th of December, 1763, and has been brought
to light only within recent years.

After giving, for the benefit of the learned counsel by whom the cause
was to be managed, on appeal, in the general court, a lucid and rather
critical account of the whole proceeding, Maury adds:--

     "One occurrence more, though not essential to the cause, I
     can't help mentioning.... Mr. Henry, mentioned above (who
     had been called in by the defendants, as we suspected, to do
     what I some time ago told you of), after Mr. Lyons had
     opened the cause, rose and harangued the jury for near an
     hour. This harangue turned upon points as much out of his
     own depth, and that of the jury, as they were foreign from
     the purpose,--which it would be impertinent to mention here.
     However, after he had discussed those points, he labored to
     prove 'that the Act of 1758 had every characteristic of a
     good law; that it was a law of general utility, and could
     not, consistently with what he called the original compact
     between the king and people ... be annulled.' Hence he
     inferred, 'that a king, by disallowing acts of this salutary
     nature, from being the father of his people, degenerated
     into a tyrant, and forfeits all right to his subjects'
     obedience.' He further urged 'that the only use of an
     established church and clergy in society, is to enforce
     obedience to civil sanctions, and the observance of those
     which are called duties of imperfect obligation; that when a
     clergy ceases to answer these ends, the community have no
     further need of their ministry, and may justly strip them of
     their appointments; that the clergy of Virginia, in this
     particular instance of their refusing to acquiesce in the
     law in question, had been so far from answering, that they
     had most notoriously counteracted, those great ends of their
     institution; that, therefore, instead of useful members of
     the state, they ought to be considered as enemies of the
     community; and that, in the case now before them, Mr. Maury,
     instead of countenance, and protection, and damages, very
     justly deserved to be punished with signal severity.' And
     then he perorates to the following purpose, 'that excepting
     they (the jury) were disposed to rivet the chains of bondage
     on their own necks, he hoped they would not let slip the
     opportunity which now offered, of making such an example of
     him as might, hereafter, be a warning to himself and his
     brethren, not to have the temerity, for the future, to
     dispute the validity of such laws, authenticated by the only
     authority which, in his conception, could give force to laws
     for the government of this colony,--the authority of a legal
     representative of a council, and of a kind and benevolent
     and patriot governor.' You'll observe I do not pretend to
     remember his words, but take this to have been the sum and
     substance of this part of his labored oration. When he came
     to that part of it where he undertook to assert 'that a
     king, by annulling or disallowing acts of so salutary a
     nature, from being the father of his people, degenerated
     into a tyrant, and forfeits all right to his subjects'
     obedience,' the more sober part of the audience were struck
     with horror. Mr. Lyons called out aloud, and with an honest
     warmth, to the Bench, 'that the gentleman had spoken
     treason,' and expressed his astonishment, 'that their
     worships could hear it without emotion, or any mark of
     dissatisfaction.' At the same instant, too, amongst some
     gentlemen in the crowd behind me, was a confused murmur of
     'treason, treason!' Yet Mr. Henry went on in the same
     treasonable and licentious strain, without interruption from
     the Bench, nay, even without receiving the least exterior
     notice of their disapprobation. One of the jury, too, was so
     highly pleased with these doctrines, that, as I was
     afterwards told, he every now and then gave the traitorous
     declaimer a nod of approbation. After the court was
     adjourned, he apologized to me for what he had said,
     alleging that his sole view in engaging in the cause, and in
     saying what he had, was to render himself popular. You see,
     then, it is so clear a point in this person's opinion that
     the ready road to popularity here is to trample under foot
     the interests of religion, the rights of the church, and the
     prerogatives of the crown."[56]


FOOTNOTES:

[33] Perry, _Hist. Coll._ i. 12.

[34] Perry, _Hist. Coll._ 316, 317.

[35] Hening, _Statutes at Large_, vi. 88, 89.

[36] _Ibid._ vi. 568, 569.

[37] Perry, _Hist. Coll._ i. 508, 509.

[38] Hening, _Statutes at Large_, vii. 240, 241.

[39] Perry, _Hist. Coll._ i. 467, 468.

[40] As was alleged in Richard Bland's _Letter to the Clergy_, 17.

[41] Perry, _Hist. Coll._ i. 467.

[42] _Ibid._ i. 466.

[43] _Ibid._ i. 465, 466.

[44] Meade, _Old Families of Virginia_, i. 223.

[45] In the account here given of these Virginia "option laws," I have
been obliged, by lack of space, to give somewhat curtly the bald
results of rather careful studies which I have made upon the question
in all accessible documents of the period; and I have not been at
liberty to state many things, on both sides of the question, which
would be necessary to a complete discussion of the subject. For
instance, among the motives to be mentioned for the popularity of laws
whose chief effects were to diminish the pay of the established
clergy, should be considered those connected with a growing dissent
from the established church in Virginia, and particularly with the
very human dislike which even churchmen might have to paying in the
form of a compulsory tax what they would have cheerfully paid in the
form of a voluntary contribution. Perhaps the best modern defense of
these laws is by A. H. Everett, in his _Life of Henry_, 230-233; but
his statements seem to be founded on imperfect information. Wirt,
publishing his opinion under the responsibility of his great
professional and official position, affirms that on the whole
question, "the clergy had much the best of the argument." _Life of
Henry,_ 22.

[46] Perry, _Hist. Coll._ i. 510.

[47] _Ibid._ i. 513, 514.

[48] _Ibid._ i. 496, 497.

[49] Perry, _Hist. Coll._ i. 497.

[50] Maury, _Mem. of a Huguenot Family_, 419.

[51] Maury, _Mem. of a Huguenot Family_, 419, 420.

[52] _Ibid._ 420.

[53] This cannot be true except in the sense that he had never before
spoken to such an assemblage or in any great cause.

[54] Wirt, 23-27.

[55] _Ibid._ 29.

[56] Maury, _Mem. of a Huguenot Family_, 418-424, where the entire
letter is given in print for the first time.




CHAPTER V

FIRST TRIUMPHS AT THE CAPITAL


It is not in the least strange that the noble-minded clergyman, who
was the plaintiff in the famous cause of the Virginia parsons, should
have been deeply offended by the fierce and victorious eloquence of
the young advocate on the opposite side, and should have let fall,
with reference to him, some bitter words. Yet it could only be in a
moment of anger that any one who knew him could ever have said of
Patrick Henry that he was disposed "to trample under foot the
interests of religion," or that he had any ill-will toward the church
or its ministers. It is very likely that, in the many irritations
growing out of a civil establishment of the church in his native
colony, he may have shared in feelings that were not uncommon even
among devout churchmen there; but in spite of this, then and always,
to the very end of his life, his most sacred convictions and his
tenderest affections seem to have been on the side of the institutions
and ministers of Christianity, and even of Christianity in its
historic form. Accordingly, both before and after his great speech, he
tried to indicate to the good men whose legal claims it had become
his professional duty to resist, that such resistance must not be
taken by them as implying on his part any personal unkindness. To his
uncle and namesake, the Reverend Patrick Henry, who was even then a
plaintiff in a similar suit, and whom he had affectionately persuaded
not to remain at the courthouse to hear the coming speech against the
pecuniary demands of himself and his order, he said "that the clergy
had not thought him worthy of being retained on their side," and that
"he knew of no moral principle by which he was bound to refuse a fee
from their adversaries."[57] So, too, the conciliatory words, which,
after the trial, he tried to speak to the indignant plaintiff, and
which the latter has reported in the blunt form corresponding to his
own angry interpretation of them, after all may have borne the better
meaning given to them by Bishop Meade, who says that Patrick Henry, in
his apology to Maury, "pleaded as an excuse for his course, that he
was a young lawyer, a candidate for practice and reputation, and
therefore must make the best of his cause."[58]

These genial efforts at pacification are of rather more than casual
significance: they are indications of character. They mark a distinct
quality of the man's nature, of which he continued to give evidence
during the rest of his life,--a certain sweetness of spirit, which
never deserted him through all the stern conflicts of his career. He
was always a good fighter: never a good hater. He had the brain and
the temperament of an advocate; his imagination and his heart always
kindled hotly to the side that he had espoused, and with his
imagination and his heart always went all the rest of the man; in his
advocacy of any cause that he had thus made his own, he hesitated at
no weapon either of offence or of defence; he struck hard blows--he
spoke hard words--and he usually triumphed; and yet, even in the
paroxysms of the combat, and still more so when the combat was over,
he showed how possible it is to be a redoubtable antagonist without
having a particle of malice.

Then, too, from this first great scene in his public life, there comes
down to us another incident that has its own story to tell. In all the
roar of talk within and about the courthouse, after the trial was
over, one "Mr. Cootes, merchant of James River," was heard to say that
"he would have given a considerable sum out of his own pocket rather
than his friend Patrick should have been guilty of a crime but little,
if any thing, inferior to that which brought Simon Lord Lovat to the
block,"--adding that Patrick's speech had "exceeded the most seditious
and inflammatory harangues of the Tribunes of Old Rome."[59] Here,
then, thus early in his career, even in this sorrowful and alarmed
criticism on the supposed error of his speech, we find a token of that
loving interest in him and in his personal fate, which even in those
days began to possess the heartstrings of many a Virginian all about
the land, and which thenceforward steadily broadened and deepened into
a sort of popular idolization of him. The mysterious hold which
Patrick Henry came to have upon the people of Virginia is an historic
fact, to be recognized, even if not accounted for. He was to make
enemies in abundance, as will appear; he was to stir up against
himself the alarm of many thoughtful and conservative minds, the
deadly hatred of many an old leader in colonial politics, the deadly
envy of many a younger aspirant to public influence; he was to go on
ruffling the plumage and upsetting the combinations of all sorts of
good citizens, who, from time to time, in making their reckonings
without him, kept finding that they had reckoned without their host.
But for all that, the willingness of this worthy Mr. Cootes of James
River to part with his money, if need be, rather than his friend
Patrick should go far wrong, seems to be one token of the beginning of
that deep and swelling passion of love for him that never abated among
the mass of the people of Virginia so long as Patrick lived, and
perhaps has never abated since.

It is not hard to imagine the impulse which so astonishing a forensic
success must have given to the professional and political career of
the young advocate. Not only was he immediately retained by the
defendants in all the other suits of the same kind then instituted in
the courts of the colony, but, as his fee-books show, from that hour
his legal practice of every sort received an enormous increase.
Moreover, the people of Virginia, always a warm-hearted people, were
then, to a degree almost inconceivable at the North, sensitive to
oratory, and admirers of eloquent men. The first test by which they
commonly ascertained the fitness of a man for public office, concerned
his ability to make a speech; and it cannot be doubted that from the
moment of Patrick Henry's amazing harangue in the "Parsons' Cause,"--a
piece of oratory altogether surpassing anything ever before heard in
Virginia,--the eyes of men began to fasten upon him as destined to
some splendid and great part in political life.

During the earlier years of his career, Williamsburg was the capital
of the colony,--the official residence of its governor, the place of
assemblage for its legislature and its highest courts, and, at certain
seasons of the year, the scene of no little vice-regal and provincial
magnificence.

Thither our Patrick had gone in 1760 to get permission to be a lawyer.
Thither he now goes once more, in 1764, to give some proof of his
quality in the profession to which he had been reluctantly admitted,
and to win for himself the first of a long series of triumphs at the
colonial capital,--triumphs which gave food for wondering talk to all
his contemporaries, and long lingered in the memories of old men. Soon
after the assembling of the legislature, in the fall of 1764, the
committee on privileges and elections had before them the case of
James Littlepage, who had taken his seat as member for the county of
Hanover, but whose right to the seat was contested, on a charge of
bribery and corruption, by Nathaniel West Dandridge. For a day or two
before the hearing of the case, the members of the house had "observed
an ill-dressed young man sauntering in the lobby," apparently a
stranger to everybody, moving "awkwardly about ... with a countenance
of abstraction and total unconcern as to what was passing around him;"
but who, when the committee convened to consider the case of Dandridge
against Littlepage, at once took his place as counsel for the former.
The members of the committee, either not catching his name or not
recalling the association attaching to it from the scene at Hanover
Court House nearly a twelvemonth before, were so affected by his
rustic and ungainly appearance that they treated him with neglect and
even with discourtesy; until, when his turn came to argue the cause of
his client, he poured forth such a torrent of eloquence, and exhibited
with so much force and splendor the sacredness of the suffrage and the
importance of protecting it, that the incivility and contempt of the
committee were turned into admiration.[60] Nevertheless, it appears
from the journals of the House that, whatever may have been the
admiration of the committee for the eloquence of Mr. Dandridge's
advocate, they did not award the seat to Mr. Dandridge.

Such was Patrick Henry's first contact with the legislature of
Virginia,--a body of which he was soon to become a member, and over
which, in spite of the social prestige, the talents, and the envious
opposition of its old leaders, he was promptly to gain an ascendancy
that constituted him, almost literally, the dictator of its
proceedings, so long as he chose to hold a place in it. On the present
occasion, having finished the somewhat obscure business that had
brought him before the committee, it is probable that he instantly
disappeared from the scene, not to return to it until the following
spring, when he came back to transact business with the House itself.
For, early in May, 1765, a vacancy having occurred in the
representation for the county of Louisa, Patrick Henry, though not
then a resident in that county, was elected as its member. The first
entry to be met with in the journals, indicating his presence in the
House, is that of his appointment, on the 20th of May, as an
additional member of the committee for courts of justice. Between that
date and the 1st of June, when the House was angrily dissolved by the
governor, this young and very rural member contrived to do two or
three quite notable things--things, in fact, so notable that they
conveyed to the people of Virginia the tidings of the advent among
them of a great political leader, gave an historic impulse to the
series of measures which ended in the disruption of the British
Empire, and set his own name a ringing through the world,--not without
lively imputations of treason, and comforting assurances that he was
destined to be hanged.

The first of these notable things is one which incidentally throws a
rather painful glare on the corruptions of political life in our old
and belauded colonial days. The speaker of the House of Burgesses at
that time was John Robinson, a man of great estate, foremost among all
the landed aristocracy of Virginia. He had then been speaker for about
twenty-five years; for a long time, also, he had been treasurer of the
colony; and in the latter capacity he had been accustomed for many
years to lend the public money, on his own private account, to his
personal and political friends, and particularly to those of them who
were members of the House. This profligate business had continued so
long that Robinson had finally become a defaulter to an enormous
amount; and in order to avert the shame and ruin of an exposure, he
and his particular friends, just before the arrival of Patrick Henry,
had invented a very pretty device, to be called a "public loan
office,"--"from which monies might be lent on public account, and on
good landed security, to individuals," and by which, as was expected,
the debts due to Robinson on the loans which he had been granting
might be "transferred to the public, and his deficit thus completely
covered."[61] Accordingly, the scheme was brought forward under nearly
every possible advantage of influential support. It was presented to
the House and to the public as a measure eminently wise and
beneficial. It was supported in the House by many powerful and
honorable members who had not the remotest suspicion of the corrupt
purpose lying at the bottom of it. Apparently it was on the point of
adoption when, from among the members belonging to the upper counties,
there arose this raw youth, who had only just taken his seat, and who,
without any information respecting the secret intent of the measure,
and equally without any disposition to let the older and statelier
members do his thinking for him, simply attacked it, as a scheme to be
condemned on general principles. From the door of the lobby that day
there stood peering into the Assembly Thomas Jefferson, then a law
student at Williamsburg, who thus had the good luck to witness the
début of his old comrade. "He laid open with so much energy the spirit
of favoritism on which the proposition was founded, and the abuses to
which it would lead, that it was crushed in its birth."[62] He
"attacked the scheme ... in that style of bold, grand, and
overwhelming eloquence for which he became so justly celebrated
afterwards. He carried with him all the members of the upper
counties, and left a minority composed merely of the aristocracy of
the country. From this time his popularity swelled apace; and Robinson
dying four years after, his deficit was brought to light, and
discovered the true object of the proposition."[63]

But a subject far greater than John Robinson's project for a loan
office was then beginning to weigh on men's minds. Already were
visible far off on the edge of the sky, the first filmy threads of a
storm-cloud that was to grow big and angry as the years went by, and
was to accompany a political tempest under which the British Empire
would be torn asunder, and the whole structure of American colonial
society wrenched from its foundations. Just one year before the time
now reached, news had been received in Virginia that the British
ministry had announced in parliament their purpose to introduce, at
the next session, an act for laying certain stamp duties on the
American colonies. Accordingly, in response to these tidings, the
House of Burgesses, in the autumn of 1764, had taken the earliest
opportunity to send a respectful message to the government of England,
declaring that the proposed act would be deemed by the loyal and
affectionate people of Virginia as an alarming violation of their
ancient constitutional rights. This message had been elaborately drawn
up, in the form of an address to the king, a memorial to the House of
Lords, and a remonstrance to the Commons;[64] the writers being a
committee composed of gentlemen prominent in the legislature, and of
high social standing in the colony, including Landon Carter, Richard
Henry Lee, George Wythe, Edmund Pendleton, Benjamin Harrison, Richard
Bland, and even Peyton Randolph, the king's attorney-general.

Meantime, to this appeal no direct answer had been returned; instead
of which, however, was received by the House of Burgesses, in May,
1765, about the time of Patrick Henry's accession to that body, a copy
of the Stamp Act itself. What was to be done about it? What was to be
done by Virginia? What was to be done by her sister colonies? Of
course, by the passage of the Stamp Act, the whole question of
colonial procedure on the subject had been changed. While the act was,
even in England, merely a theme for consideration, and while the
colonies were virtually under invitation to send thither their views
upon the subject, it was perfectly proper for colonial pamphleteers
and for colonial legislatures to express, in every civilized form,
their objections to it. But all this was now over. The Stamp Act had
been discussed; the discussion was ended; the act had been decided on;
it had become a law. Criticism upon it now, especially by a
legislative body, was a very different matter from what criticism upon
it had been, even by the same body, a few months before. Then, the
loyal legislature of Virginia had fittingly spoken out, concerning the
contemplated act, its manly words of disapproval and of protest; but
now that the contemplated act had become an adopted act--had become
the law of the land--could that same legislature again speak even
those same words, without thereby becoming disloyal,--without
venturing a little too near the verge of sedition,--without putting
itself into an attitude, at least, of incipient nullification
respecting a law of the general government?

It is perfectly evident that by all the old leaders of the House at
that moment,--by Peyton Randolph, and Pendleton, and Wythe, and Bland,
and the rest of them,--this question was answered in the negative.
Indeed, it could be answered in no other way. Such being the case, it
followed that, for Virginia and for all her sister colonies, an
entirely new state of things had arisen. A most serious problem
confronted them,--a problem involving, in fact, incalculable
interests. On the subject of immediate concern, they had endeavored,
freely and rightfully, to influence legislation, while that
legislation was in process; but now that this legislation was
accomplished, what were they to do? Were they to submit to it quietly,
trusting to further negotiations for ultimate relief, or were they to
reject it outright, and try to obstruct its execution? Clearly, here
was a very great problem, a problem for statesmanship,--the best
statesmanship anywhere to be had. Clearly this was a time, at any
rate, for wise and experienced men to come to the front; a time, not
for rash counsels, nor for spasmodic and isolated action on the part
of any one colony, but for deliberate and united action on the part of
all the colonies; a time in which all must move forward, or none. But,
thus far, no colony had been heard from: there had not been time. Let
Virginia wait a little. Let her make no mistake; let her not push
forward into any ill-considered and dangerous measure; let her wait,
at least, for some signal of thought or of purpose from her sister
colonies. In the meanwhile, let her old and tried leaders continue to
lead.

Such, apparently, was the state of opinion in the House of Burgesses
when, on the 29th of May, a motion was made and carried, "that the
House resolve itself into a committee of the whole House, immediately
to consider the steps necessary to be taken in consequence of the
resolutions of the House of Commons of Great Britain, relative to the
charging certain stamp duties in the colonies and plantations in
America."[65] On thus going into committee of the whole, to deliberate
on the most difficult and appalling question that, up to that time,
had ever come before an American legislature, the members may very
naturally have turned in expectation to those veteran politicians and
to those able constitutional lawyers who, for many years, had been
accustomed to guide their deliberations, and who, especially in the
last session, had taken charge of this very question of the Stamp
Act. It will not be hard for us to imagine the disgust, the anger,
possibly even the alarm, with which many may have beheld the floor now
taken, not by Peyton Randolph, nor Richard Bland, nor George Wythe,
nor Edmund Pendleton, but by this new and very unabashed member for
the county of Louisa,--this rustic and clownish youth of the terrible
tongue,--this eloquent but presumptuous stripling, who was absolutely
without training or experience in statesmanship, and was the merest
novice even in the forms of the House.

For what precise purpose the new member had thus ventured to take the
floor, was known at the moment of his rising by only two other
members,--George Johnston, the member for Fairfax, and John Fleming,
the member for Cumberland. But the measureless audacity of his
purpose, as being nothing less than that of assuming the leadership of
the House, and of dictating the policy of Virginia in this stupendous
crisis of its fate, was instantly revealed to all, as he moved a
series of resolutions, which he proceeded to read from the blank leaf
of an old law book, and which, probably, were as follows:--

     "_Whereas_, the honorable House of Commons in England have
     of late drawn into question how far the General Assembly of
     this colony hath power to enact laws for laying of taxes and
     imposing duties, payable by the people of this, his
     majesty's most ancient colony: for settling and ascertaining
     the same to all future times, the House of Burgesses of this
     present General Assembly have come to the following
     resolves:--

     "1. _Resolved_, That the first adventurers and settlers of
     this, his majesty's colony and dominion, brought with them
     and transmitted to their posterity, and all other his
     majesty's subjects, since inhabiting in this, his majesty's
     said colony, all the privileges, franchises, and immunities
     that have at any time been held, enjoyed, and possessed, by
     the people of Great Britain.

     "2. _Resolved_, That by two royal charters, granted by king
     James the First, the colonists aforesaid are declared
     entitled to all the privileges, liberties, and immunities of
     denizens and natural born subjects, to all intents and
     purposes, as if they had been abiding and born within the
     realm of England.

     "3. _Resolved_, That the taxation of the people by
     themselves or by persons chosen by themselves to represent
     them, who can only know what taxes the people are able to
     bear, and the easiest mode of raising them, and are equally
     affected by such taxes themselves, is the distinguishing
     characteristic of British freedom, and without which the
     ancient constitution cannot subsist.

     "4. _Resolved_, That his majesty's liege people of this most
     ancient colony have uninterruptedly enjoyed the right of
     being thus governed by their own Assembly in the article of
     their taxes and internal police, and that the same hath
     never been forfeited, or any other way given up, but hath
     been constantly recognized by the kings and people of Great
     Britain.

     "5. _Resolved_, therefore, That the General Assembly of this
     colony have the only and sole exclusive right and power to
     lay taxes and impositions upon the inhabitants of this
     colony; and that every attempt to vest such power in any
     person or persons whatsoever, other than the General
     Assembly aforesaid, has a manifest tendency to destroy
     British as well as American freedom.

     "6. _Resolved_, That his majesty's liege people, the
     inhabitants of this colony, are not bound to yield obedience
     to any law or ordinance whatever, designed to impose any
     taxation whatsoever upon them, other than the laws or
     ordinances of the General Assembly aforesaid.

     "7. _Resolved_, That any person who shall, by speaking or
     writing, assert or maintain that any person or persons,
     other than the General Assembly of this colony, have any
     right or power to impose or lay any taxation on the people
     here, shall be deemed an enemy to his majesty's colony."[66]

No reader will find it hard to accept Jefferson's statement that the
debate on these resolutions was "most bloody." "They were opposed by
Randolph, Bland, Pendleton, Nicholas, Wythe, and all the old members,
whose influence in the House had till then been unbroken."[67] There
was every reason, whether of public policy or of private feeling, why
the old party leaders in the House should now bestir themselves, and
combine, and put forth all their powers in debate, to check, and if
possible to rout and extinguish, this self-conceited but most
dangerous young man. "Many threats were uttered, and much abuse cast
on me," said Patrick himself, long afterward. Logic, learning,
eloquence, denunciation, derision, intimidation, were poured from all
sides of the House upon the head of the presumptuous intruder; but
alone, or almost alone, he confronted and defeated all his assailants.
"Torrents of sublime eloquence from Mr. Henry, backed by the solid
reasoning of Johnston, prevailed."[68]

It was sometime in the course of this tremendous fight, extending
through the 29th and 30th of May, that the incident occurred which has
long been familiar among the anecdotes of the Revolution, and which
may be here recalled as a reminiscence not only of his own consummate
mastery of the situation, but of a most dramatic scene in an
epoch-making debate. Reaching the climax of a passage of fearful
invective, on the injustice and the impolicy of the Stamp Act, he said
in tones of thrilling solemnity, "Cæsar had his Brutus; Charles the
First, his Cromwell; and George the Third ['Treason,' shouted the
speaker. 'Treason,' 'treason,' rose from all sides of the room. The
orator paused in stately defiance till these rude exclamations were
ended, and then, rearing himself with a look and bearing of still
prouder and fiercer determination, he so closed the sentence as to
baffle his accusers, without in the least flinching from his own
position,]--and George the Third may profit by their example. If this
be treason, make the most of it."[69]

Of this memorable struggle nearly all other details have perished with
the men who took part in it. After the House, in committee of the
whole, had, on the 29th of May, spent sufficient time in the
discussion, "Mr. Speaker resumed the chair," says the Journal, "and
Mr. Attorney reported that the said committee had had the said matter
under consideration, and had come to several resolutions thereon,
which he was ready to deliver in at the table. Ordered that the said
report be received to-morrow." It is probable that on the morrow the
battle was renewed with even greater fierceness than before. The
Journal proceeds: "May 30. Mr. Attorney, from the committee of the
whole House, reported according to order, that the committee had
considered the steps necessary to be taken in consequence of the
resolutions of the House of Commons of Great Britain, relative to the
charging certain stamp duties in the colonies and plantations in
America, and that they had come to several resolutions thereon, which
he read in his place and then delivered at the table; when they were
again twice read, and agreed to by the House, with some amendments."
Then were passed by the House, probably, the first five resolutions as
offered by Henry in the committee, but "passed," as he himself
afterward wrote, "by a very small majority, perhaps of one or two
only."

Upon this final discomfiture of the old leaders, one of their number,
Peyton Randolph, swept angrily out of the house, and brushing past
young Thomas Jefferson, who was standing in the door of the lobby, he
swore, with a great oath, that he "would have given five hundred
guineas for a single vote."[70] On the afternoon of that day, Patrick
Henry, knowing that the session was practically ended, and that his
own work in it was done, started for his home. He was seen "passing
along Duke of Gloucester Street, ... wearing buckskin breeches, his
saddle bags on his arm, leading a lean horse, and chatting with Paul
Carrington, who walked by his side."[71]

That was on the 30th of May. The next morning, the terrible Patrick
being at last quite out of the way, those veteran lawyers and
politicians of the House, who had found this young protagonist alone
too much for them all put together, made bold to undo the worst part
of the work he had done the day before; they expunged the fifth
resolution. In that mutilated form, without the preamble, and with the
last three of the original resolutions omitted, the first four then
remained on the journal of the House as the final expression of its
official opinion. Meantime, on the wings of the wind, and on the eager
tongues of men, had been borne, past recall, far northward and far
southward, the fiery unchastised words of nearly the entire series, to
kindle in all the colonies a great flame of dauntless purpose;[72]
while Patrick himself, perhaps then only half conscious of the fateful
work he had just been doing, travelled homeward along the dusty
highway, at once the jolliest, the most popular, and the least
pretentious man in all Virginia, certainly its greatest orator,
possibly even its greatest statesman.


FOOTNOTES:

[57] Wirt, 24.

[58] Meade, _Old Families and Churches of Va._ i. 220.

[59] Maury, _Mem. of a Huguenot Fam._ 423.

[60] Wirt, 39-41.

[61] Mem. by Jefferson, in _Hist. Mag._ for 1867, 91.

[62] Jefferson's _Works_, vi. 365.

[63] Mem. by Jefferson, in _Hist. Mag._ for 1867, 91.

[64] These documents are given in full in the Appendix to Wirt's _Life
of Henry_, as Note A.

[65] _Jour. Va. House of Burgesses._

[66] Of this famous series of resolutions, the first five are here
given precisely as they are given in Patrick Henry's own certified
copy still existing in manuscript, and in the possession of Mr. W. W.
Henry; but as that copy evidently contains only that portion of the
series which was reported from the committee of the whole, and was
adopted by the House, I have here printed also what I believe to have
been the preamble, and the last two resolutions in the series as first
drawn and introduced by Patrick Henry. For this portion of the series,
I depend on the copy printed in the _Boston Gazette_, for July 1,
1765, and reprinted in R. Frothingham, _Rise of the Republic_, 180
note. In Wirt's _Life of Henry_, 56-59, is a transcript of the first
five resolutions as given in Henry's handwriting: but it is inaccurate
in two places.

[67] Mem. by Jefferson, in _Hist. Mag._ for 1867, 91.

[68] Mem. by Jefferson, in _Hist. Mag._ for 1867, 91. Henry was aided
in this debate by Robert Munford, also, and by John Fleming: W. W.
Henry, _Life, Corr. and Speeches of P. Henry_, i. 82_n._

[69] For this splendid anecdote we are indebted to Judge John Tyler,
who, then a youth of eighteen, listened to the speech as he stood in
the lobby by the side of Jefferson. Edmund Randolph, in his _History
of Virginia_, still in manuscript, has a somewhat different version of
the language of the orator, as follows: "'Cæsar had his Brutus,
Charles the First, his Cromwell, and George the Third'--'Treason,
Sir,' exclaimed the Speaker; to which Mr. Henry instantly replied,
'and George the Third, may he never have either.'" The version
furnished by John Tyler is, of course, the more effective and
characteristic; and as Tyler actually heard the speech, and as,
moreover, his account is confirmed by Jefferson who also heard it, his
account can hardly be set aside by that of Randolph who did not hear
it, and was indeed but a boy of twelve at the time it was made. L. G.
Tyler, _Letters and Times of the Tylers_, i. 56; Wirt, 65.

[70] Mem. by Jefferson, _Hist. Mag._ for 1867, 91.

[71] Campbell, _Hist. Va._ 542.

[72] The subject of the Virginia resolutions presents several
difficulties which I have not thought it best to discuss in the text,
where I have given merely the results of my own rather careful and
repeated study of the question. In brief, my conclusion is this: That
the series as given above, consisting of a preamble and seven
resolutions, is the series as originally prepared by Patrick Henry,
and introduced by him on Wednesday, May 29, in the committee of the
whole, and probably passed by the committee on that day; that at once,
without waiting for the action of the House upon the subject, copies
of the series got abroad, and were soon published in the newspapers of
the several colonies, as though actually adopted by the House; that on
Thursday, May 30, the series was cut down in the House by rejection of
the preamble and the resolutions 6 and 7, and by the adoption of only
the first five as given above; that on the day after that, when
Patrick Henry had gone home, the House still further cut down the
series by expunging the resolution which is above numbered as 5: and
that, many years afterwards, when Patrick Henry came to prepare a copy
for transmission to posterity, he gave the resolutions just as they
stood when adopted by the House on May 30, and not as they stood when
originally introduced by him in committee of the whole on the day
before, nor as they stood when mutilated by the cowardly act of the
House on the day after. It will be noticed, therefore, that the
so-called resolutions of Virginia, which were actually published and
known to the colonies in 1765, and which did so much to fire their
hearts, were not the resolutions as adopted by the House, but were the
resolutions as first introduced, and probably passed, in committee of
the whole; and that even this copy of them was inaccurately given,
since it lacked the resolution numbered above as 3, probably owing to
an error in the first hurried transcription of them. Those who care to
study the subject further will find the materials in _Prior
Documents_, 6, 7; Marshall, _Life of Washington_, i. note iv.;
Frothingham, _Rise of the Republic_, 180 note; Gordon, _Hist. Am.
Rev._, i. 129-139; _Works of Jefferson_, vi. 366, 367; Wirt, _Life of
Henry_, 56-63; Everett, _Life of Henry_, 265-273, with important note
by Jared Sparks in Appendix, 391-398. It may be mentioned that the
narrative given in Burk, _Hist. Va._, iii. 305-310, is untrustworthy.




CHAPTER VI

CONSEQUENCES


Seldom has a celebrated man shown more indifference to the
preservation of the records and credentials of his career than did
Patrick Henry. While some of his famous associates in the Revolution
diligently kept both the letters they received, and copies of the
letters they wrote, and made, for the benefit of posterity, careful
memoranda concerning the events of their lives, Patrick Henry did none
of these things. Whatever letters he wrote, he wrote at a dash, and
then parted with them utterly; whatever letters were written to him,
were invariably handed over by him to the comfortable custody of luck;
and as to the correct historic perpetuation of his doings, he seems
almost to have exhausted his interest in each one of them so soon as
he had accomplished it, and to have been quite content to leave to
other people all responsibility for its being remembered correctly, or
even remembered at all.

To this statement, however, a single exception has to be made. It
relates to the great affair described in the latter part of the
previous chapter.

Of course, it was perceived at the time that the passing of the
Virginia resolutions against the Stamp Act was a great affair; but
just how great an affair it was, neither Patrick Henry nor any other
mortal man could tell until years had gone by, and had unfolded the
vast sequence of world-resounding events, in which that affair was
proved to be a necessary factor. It deserves to be particularly
mentioned that, of all the achievements of his life, the only one
which he has taken the pains to give any account of is his authorship
of the Virginia resolutions, and his successful championship of them.
With reference to this achievement, the account he gave of it was
rendered with so much solemnity and impressiveness as to indicate
that, in the final survey of his career, he regarded this as the one
most important thing he ever did. But before we cite the words in
which he thus indicated this judgment, it will be well for us to
glance briefly at the train of historic incidents which now set forth
the striking connection between that act of Patrick Henry and the
early development of that intrepid policy which culminated in American
independence.

It was on the 29th of May, 1765, as will be remembered, that Patrick
Henry moved in the committee of the whole the adoption of his series
of resolutions against the Stamp Act; and before the sun went down
that day, the entire series, as is probable, was adopted by the
committee. On the following day, the essential portion of the series
was adopted, likewise, by the House. But what was the contemporary
significance of these resolutions? As the news of them swept from
colony to colony, why did they so stir men's hearts to excitement, and
even to alarm? It was not that the language of those resolutions was
more radical or more trenchant than had been the language already used
on the same subject, over and over again, in the discussions of the
preceding twelve months. It was that, in the recent change of the
political situation, the significance of that language had changed.
Prior to the time referred to, whatever had been said on the subject,
in any of the colonies, had been said for the purpose of dissuading
the government from passing the Stamp Act. But the government had now
passed the Stamp Act; and, accordingly, these resolutions must have
been meant for a very different purpose. They were a virtual
declaration of resistance to the Stamp Act; a declaration of
resistance made, not by an individual writer, nor by a newspaper, but
by the legislature of a great colony; and, moreover, they were the
very first declaration of resistance which was so made.[73]

This it is which gives us the contemporary key to their significance,
and to the vast excitement produced by them, and to the enormous
influence they had upon the trembling purposes of the colonists at
that precise moment. Hence it was, as a sagacious writer of that
period has told us, that merely upon the adoption of these resolves by
the committee of the whole, men recognized their momentous bearing,
and could not be restrained from giving publicity to them, without
waiting for their final adoption by the House. "A manuscript of the
unrevised resolves," says William Gordon, "soon reached Philadelphia,
having been sent off immediately upon their passing, that the earliest
information of what had been done might be obtained by the Sons of
Liberty.... At New York the resolves were handed about with great
privacy: they were accounted so treasonable, that the possessors of
them declined printing them in that city." But a copy of them having
been procured with much difficulty by an Irish gentleman resident in
Connecticut, "he carried them to New England, where they were
published and circulated far and wide in the newspapers, without any
reserve, and proved eventually the occasion of those disorders which
afterward broke out in the colonies.... The Virginia resolutions gave
a spring to all the disgusted; and they began to adopt different
measures."[74]

But while the tidings of these resolutions were thus moving toward New
England, and before they had arrived there, the assembly of the great
colony of Massachusetts had begun to take action. Indeed, it had first
met on the very day on which Patrick Henry had introduced his
resolutions into the committee of the whole at Williamsburg. On the
8th of June, it had resolved upon a circular letter concerning the
Stamp Act, addressed to all the sister colonies, and proposing that
all should send delegates to a congress to be held at New York, on the
first Tuesday of the following October, to deal with the perils and
duties of the situation. This circular letter at once started upon its
tour.

The first reception of it, however, was discouraging. From the speaker
of the New Jersey assembly came the reply that the members of that
body were "unanimously against uniting on the present occasion;" and
for several weeks thereafter, "no movement appeared in favor of the
great and wise measure of convening a congress." At last, however, the
project of Massachusetts began to feel the accelerating force of a
mighty impetus. The Virginia resolutions, being at last divulged
throughout the land, "had a marked effect on public opinion." They
were "heralded as the voice of a colony.... The fame of the resolves
spread as they were circulated in the journals.... The Virginia
action, like an alarum, roused the patriots to pass similar
resolves.[75] "On the 8th of July, "The Boston Gazette" uttered this
most significant sentence: "The people of Virginia have spoken very
sensibly, and the frozen politicians of a more northern government say
they have spoken treason."[76] On the same day, in that same town of
Boston, an aged lawyer and patriot[77] lay upon his death bed; and in
his admiration for the Virginians on account of these resolves, he
exclaimed, "They are men; they are noble spirits."[78] On the 13th of
August, the people of Providence instructed their representatives in
the legislature to vote in favor of the congress, and to procure the
passage of a series of resolutions in which were incorporated those of
Virginia.[79] On the 15th of August, from Boston, Governor Bernard
wrote home to the ministry: "Two or three months ago, I thought that
this people would submit to the Stamp Act. Murmurs were indeed
continually heard; but they seemed to be such as would die away. But
the publishing of the Virginia resolves proved an alarm bell to the
disaffected."[80] On the 23d of September, General Gage, the commander
of the British forces in America, wrote from New York to Secretary
Conway that the Virginia resolves had given "the signal for a general
outcry over the continent."[81] And finally, in the autumn of 1774, an
able loyalist writer, looking back over the political history of the
colonies from the year of the Stamp Act, singled out the Virginia
resolves as the baleful cause of all the troubles that had then come
upon the land. "After it was known," said he, "that the Stamp Act was
passed, some resolves of the House of Burgesses in Virginia, denying
the right of Parliament to tax the colonies, made their appearance. We
read them with wonder; they savored of independence; they flattered
the human passions; the reasoning was specious; we wished it
conclusive. The transition to believing it so was easy; and we, and
almost all America, followed their example, in resolving that
Parliament had no such right."[82]

All these facts, and many more that might be produced, seem to point
to the Virginia resolutions of 1765 as having come at a great primary
crisis of the Revolution,--a crisis of mental confusion and
hesitation,--and as having then uttered, with trumpet voice, the very
word that was fitted to the hour, and that gave to men's minds
clearness of vision, and to their hearts a settled purpose. It must
have been in the light of such facts as these that Patrick Henry, in
his old age, reviewing his own wonderful career, determined to make a
sort of testamentary statement concerning his relation to that single
transaction,--so vitally connected with the greatest epoch in American
history.

Among the papers left by him at his death was one significantly placed
by the side of his will, carefully sealed, and bearing this
superscription: "Inclosed are the resolutions of the Virginia Assembly
in 1765, concerning the Stamp Act. Let my executors open this paper."
On opening the document, his executors found on one side of the sheet
the first five resolutions in the famous series introduced by him; and
on the other side, these weighty words:--

     The within resolutions passed the House of Burgesses in May,
     1765. They formed the first opposition to the Stamp Act, and
     the scheme of taxing America by the British parliament. All
     the colonies, either through fear, or want of opportunity to
     form an opposition, or from influence of some kind or other,
     had remained silent. I had been for the first time elected a
     Burgess a few days before; was young, inexperienced,
     unacquainted with the forms of the House, and the members
     that composed it. Finding the men of weight averse to
     opposition, and the commencement of the tax at hand, and
     that no person was likely to step forth, I determined to
     venture; and alone, unadvised, and unassisted, on a blank
     leaf of an old law book, wrote the within.[83] Upon
     offering them to the House, violent debates ensued. Many
     threats were uttered, and much abuse cast on me by the party
     for submission. After a long and warm contest, the
     resolutions passed by a very small majority, perhaps of one
     or two only. The alarm spread throughout America with
     astonishing quickness, and the ministerial party were
     overwhelmed. The great point of resistance to British
     taxation was universally established in the colonies. This
     brought on the war, which finally separated the two
     countries, and gave independence to ours.

     Whether this will prove a blessing or a curse, will depend
     upon the use our people make of the blessings which a
     gracious God hath bestowed on us. If they are wise, they
     will be great and happy. If they are of a contrary
     character, they will be miserable. Righteousness alone can
     exalt them as a nation.

     Reader! whoever thou art, remember this; and in thy sphere
     practice virtue thyself, and encourage it in others.

                                                  P. HENRY.[84]

But while this renowned act in Patrick Henry's life had consequences
so notable in their bearing on great national and international
movements, it is interesting to observe, also, its immediate effects
on his own personal position in the world, and on the development of
his career. We can hardly be surprised to find, on the one hand, that
his act gave deep offence to one very considerable class of persons in
Virginia,--the official representatives of the English government, and
their natural allies, those thoughtful and conscientious colonists
who, by temperament and conviction, were inclined to lay a heavy
accent on the principle of civil authority and order. Of course, as
the official head of this not ignoble class, stood Francis Fauquier,
the lieutenant-governor of the colony; and his letter to the lords of
trade, written from Williamsburg a few days after the close of the
session, contains a striking narrative of this stormy proceeding, and
an almost amusing touch of official undervaluation of Patrick Henry:
"In the course of the debate, I have heard that very indecent language
was used by a Mr. Henry, a young lawyer, who had not been above a
month a member of the House, and who carried all the young members
with him."[85] But a far more specific and intense expression of
antipathy came, a few weeks later, from the Reverend William Robinson,
the colonial commissary of the Bishop of London. Writing, on the 12th
of August, to his metropolitan, he gave an account of Patrick Henry's
very offensive management of the cause against the parsons, before
becoming a member of the House of Burgesses; and then added:--

     "He has since been chosen a representative for one of the
     counties, in which character he has lately distinguished
     himself in the House of Burgesses on occasion of the arrival
     of an act of Parliament for stamp duties, while the Assembly
     was sitting. He blazed out in a violent speech against the
     authority of Parliament and the king, comparing his majesty
     to a Tarquin, a Cæsar, and a Charles the First, and not
     sparing insinuations that he wished another Cromwell would
     arise. He made a motion for several outrageous resolves,
     some of which passed and were again erased as soon as his
     back was turned.... Mr. Henry, the hero of whom I have been
     writing, is gone quietly into the upper parts of the country
     to recommend himself to his constituents by spreading
     treason and enforcing firm resolutions against the authority
     of the British Parliament."[86]

Such was Patrick Henry's introduction to the upper spheres of English
society,--spheres in which his name was to become still better known
as time rolled on, and for conduct not likely to efface the impression
of this bitter beginning.

As to his reputation in the colonies outside of Virginia, doubtless
the progress of it, during this period, was slow and dim; for the
celebrity acquired by the resolutions of 1765 attached to the colony
rather than to the person. Moreover, the boundaries of each colony, in
those days, were in most cases the boundaries likewise of the personal
reputations it cherished. It was not until Patrick Henry came
forward, in the Congress of 1774, upon an arena that may be called
national, that his name gathered about it the splendor of a national
fame. Yet, even before 1774, in the rather dull and ungossiping
newspapers of that time, and in the letters and diaries of its public
men, may be discovered an occasional allusion showing that already his
name had broken over the borders of Virginia, had traveled even so far
as to New England, and that in Boston itself he was a person whom
people were beginning to talk about. For example, in his Diary for the
22d of July, 1770, John Adams speaks of meeting some gentlemen from
Virginia, and of going out to Cambridge with them. One of them is
mentioned by name as having this distinction,--that he "is an intimate
friend of Mr. Patrick Henry, the first mover of the Virginia resolves
in 1765."[87] Thus, even so early, the incipient revolutionist in New
England had got his thoughts on his brilliant political kinsman in
Virginia.

But it was chiefly within the limits of his own splendid and gallant
colony, and among an eager and impressionable people whose habitual
hatred of all restraints turned into undying love for this dashing
champion of natural liberty, that Patrick Henry was now instantly
crowned with his crown of sovereignty. By his resolutions against the
Stamp Act, as Jefferson testifies, "Mr. Henry took the lead out of the
hands of those who had heretofore guided the proceedings of the
House, that is to say, of Pendleton, Wythe, Bland, Randolph, and
Nicholas."[88] Wirt does not put the case too strongly when he
declares, that "after this debate there was no longer a question among
the body of the people, as to Mr. Henry's being the first statesman
and orator in Virginia. Those, indeed, whose ranks he had scattered,
and whom he had thrown into the shade, still tried to brand him with
the names of declaimer and demagogue. But this was obviously the
effect of envy and mortified pride.... From the period of which we
have been speaking, Mr. Henry became the idol of the people of
Virginia."[89]


FOOTNOTES:

[73] See this view supported by Wirt, in his life by Kennedy, ii. 73.

[74] Gordon, _Hist. of Am. Rev._ i. 131.

[75] Frothingham, _Rise of the Republic_, 178-181.

[76] Cited in Frothingham, 181.

[77] Oxenbridge Thacher.

[78] _Works of John Adams_, x. 287.

[79] Frothingham, 181.

[80] Cited by Sparks, in Everett, _Life of Henry_, 396.

[81] Frothingham, _Rise of the Republic_, 181.

[82] Daniel Leonard, in _Novanglus and Massachusettensis_, 147, 148.

[83] As the historic importance of the Virginia resolutions became
more and more apparent, a disposition was manifested to deny to
Patrick Henry the honor of having written them. As early as 1790,
Madison, between whom and Henry there was nearly always a sharp
hostility, significantly asked Edmund Pendleton to tell him "where the
resolutions proposed by Mr. Henry really originated." _Letters and
Other Writings of Madison_, i. 515. Edmund Randolph is said to have
asserted that they were written by William Fleming; a statement of
which Jefferson remarked, "It is to me incomprehensible." _Works_, vi.
484. But to Jefferson's own testimony on the same subject, I would
apply the same remark. In his Memorandum, he says without hesitation
that the resolutions "were drawn up by George Johnston, a lawyer of
the Northern Neck, a very able, logical, and correct speaker." _Hist.
Mag._ for 1867, 91. But in another paper, written at about the same
time, Jefferson said: "I can readily enough believe these resolutions
were written by Mr. Henry himself. They bear the stamp of his mind,
strong, without precision. That they were written by Johnston, who
seconded them, was only the rumor of the day, and very possibly
unfounded." _Works_, vi. 484. In the face of all this tissue of rumor,
guesswork, and self-contradiction, the deliberate statement of Patrick
Henry himself that he wrote the five resolutions referred to by him,
and that he wrote them "alone, unadvised, and unassisted," must close
the discussion.

[84] Verified from the original manuscript, now in possession of Mr.
W. W. Henry.

[85] Cited by Sparks, in Everett, _Life of Henry_, 392.

[86] Perry, _Hist. Coll._ i. 514, 515.

[87] _Works of John Adams_, ii. 249.

[88] _Works of Jefferson_, vi. 368.

[89] _Life of Henry_, 66.




CHAPTER VII

STEADY WORK


From the close of Patrick Henry's first term in the Virginia House of
Burgesses, in the spring of 1765, to the opening of his first term in
the Continental Congress, in the fall of 1774, there stretches a
period of about nine years, which, for the purposes of our present
study, may be rapidly glanced at and passed by.

In general, it may be described as a period during which he had
settled down to steady work, both as a lawyer and as a politician. The
first five years of his professional life had witnessed his advance,
as we have seen, by strides which only genius can make, from great
obscurity to great distinction; his advance from a condition of
universal failure to one of success so universal that his career may
be said to have become within that brief period solidly established.
At the bar, upon the hustings, in the legislature, as a master of
policies, as a leader of men, he had already proved himself to be, of
his kind, without a peer in all the colony of Virginia,--a colony
which was then the prolific mother of great men. With him, therefore,
the period of training and of tentative struggle had passed: the
period now entered upon was one of recognized mastership and of
assured performance, along lines certified by victories that came
gayly, and apparently at his slightest call.

We note, at the beginning of this period, an event indicating
substantial prosperity in his life: he acquires the visible dignity of
a country-seat. Down to the end of 1763, and probably even to the
summer of 1765, he had continued to live in the neighborhood of
Hanover Court House. After coming back from his first term of service
in the House of Burgesses, where he had sat as member for the county
of Louisa, he removed his residence into that county, and established
himself there upon an estate called Roundabout, purchased by him of
his father. In 1768 he returned to Hanover, and in 1771 he bought a
place in that county called Scotch Town, which continued to be his
seat until shortly after the Declaration of Independence, when, having
become governor of the new State of Virginia, he took up his residence
at Williamsburg, in the palace long occupied by the official
representatives of royalty.

For the practice of his profession, the earlier portion of this period
was perhaps not altogether unfavorable. The political questions then
in debate were, indeed, exciting, but they had not quite reached the
ultimate issue, and did not yet demand from him the complete surrender
of his life. Those years seem to have been marked by great
professional activity on his part, and by considerable growth in his
reputation, even for the higher and more difficult work of the law. Of
course, as the vast controversy between the colonists and Great
Britain grew in violence, all controversies between one colonist and
another began to seem petty, and to be postponed; even the courts
ceased to meet with much regularity, and finally ceased to meet at
all; while Patrick Henry himself, forsaking his private concerns,
became entirely absorbed in the concerns of the public.

The fluctuations in his engagements as a lawyer, during all these
years, may be traced with some certainty by the entries in his
fee-books. For the year 1765, he charges fees in 547 cases; for 1766,
in 114 cases; for 1767, in 554 cases; for 1768, in 354 cases. With the
next year there begins a great falling off in the number of his cases;
and the decline continues till 1774, when, in the convulsions of the
time, his practice stops altogether. Thus, for 1769, there are
registered 132 cases; for 1770, 94 cases; for 1771, 102 cases; for
1772, 43 cases; for 1773, 7 cases; and for 1774, none.[90]

The character of the professional work done by him during this period
deserves a moment's consideration. Prior to 1769, he had limited
himself to practice in the courts of the several counties. In that
year he began to practice in the general court,--the highest court in
the colony,--where of course were tried the most important and
difficult causes, and where thenceforward he had constantly to
encounter the most learned and acute lawyers at the bar, including
such men as Pendleton, Wythe, Blair, Mercer, John Randolph, Thompson
Mason, Thomas Jefferson, and Robert C. Nicholas.[91]

There could never have been any doubt of his supreme competency to
deal with such criminal causes as he had to manage in that court or in
any other; and with respect to the conduct of other than criminal
causes, all purely contemporaneous evidence, now to be had, implies
that he had not ventured to present himself before the higher
tribunals of the land until he had qualified himself to bear his part
there with success and honor. Thus, the instance may be mentioned of
his appearing in the Court of Admiralty, "in behalf of a Spanish
captain, whose vessel and cargo had been libeled. A gentleman who was
present, and who was very well qualified to judge, was heard to
declare, after the trial was over, that he never heard a more eloquent
or argumentative speech in his life; that Mr. Henry was on that
occasion greatly superior to Mr. Pendleton, Mr. Mason, or any other
counsel who spoke to the subject; and that he was astonished how Mr.
Henry could have acquired such a knowledge of the maritime law, to
which it was believed he had never before turned his attention."[92]
Moreover, in 1771, just two years from the time when Patrick Henry
began practice in the General Court, Robert C. Nicholas, then a
veteran member of the profession, "who had enjoyed the first practice
at the bar," had occasion to retire, and began looking about among the
younger men for some competent lawyer to whom he might safely intrust
the unfinished business of his clients. He first offered his practice
to Thomas Jefferson, who, however, was compelled to decline it.
Afterward, he offered it to Patrick Henry, who accepted it; and
accordingly, by public advertisement, Nicholas informed his clients
that he had committed to Patrick Henry the further protection of their
interests,[93]--a perfectly conclusive proof, it should seem, of the
real respect in which Patrick Henry's qualifications as a lawyer were
then held, not only by the public but by the profession. Certainly
such evidence as this can hardly be set aside by the supposed
recollections of one old gentleman, of broken memory and unbroken
resentment, who long afterward tried to convince Wirt that, even at
the period now in question, Patrick Henry was "wofully deficient as a
lawyer," was unable to contend with his associates "on a mere question
of law," and was "so little acquainted with the fundamental principles
of his profession ... as not to be able to see the remote bearings of
the reported cases."[94] The expressions here quoted are, apparently,
Wirt's own paraphrase of the statements which were made to him by
Jefferson, and which, in many of their details, can now be proved, on
documentary evidence, to be the work of a hand that had forgot, not
indeed its cunning, but at any rate its accuracy.

As to the political history of Patrick Henry during this period, it
may be easily described. The doctrine on which he had planted himself
by his resolutions in 1765, namely, that the parliamentary taxation of
unrepresented colonies is unconstitutional, became the avowed doctrine
of Virginia, and of all her sister colonies; and nearly all the men
who, in the House of Burgesses, had, for reasons of propriety, or of
expediency, or of personal feeling, opposed the passage of his
resolutions, soon took pains to make it known to their constituents
that their opposition had not been to the principle which those
resolutions expressed. Thenceforward, among the leaders in Virginian
politics, there was no real disagreement on the fundamental question;
only such disagreement touching methods as must always occur between
spirits who are cautious and spirits who are bold. Chief among the
former were Pendleton, Wythe, Bland, Peyton Randolph, and Nicholas. In
the van of the latter always stood Patrick Henry, and with him
Jefferson, Richard Henry Lee, the Pages, and George Mason. But between
the two groups, after all, was surprising harmony, which is thus
explained by one who in all that business had a great part and who
never was a laggard:--

     "Sensible, however, of the importance of unanimity among
     our constituents, although we often wished to have gone
     faster, we slackened our pace, that our less ardent
     colleagues might keep up with us; and they, on their part,
     differing nothing from us in principle, quickened their gait
     somewhat beyond that which their prudence might of itself
     have advised, and thus consolidated the phalanx which
     breasted the power of Britain. By this harmony of the bold
     with the cautious, we advanced with our constituents in
     undivided mass, and with fewer examples of separation than,
     perhaps, existed in any other part of the union."[95]

All deprecated a quarrel with Great Britain; all deprecated as a
boundless calamity the possible issue of independence; all desired to
remain in loyal, free, and honorable connection with the British
empire; and against the impending danger of an assault upon the
freedom, and consequently the honor, of this connection, all stood on
guard.

One result, however, of this practical unanimity among the leaders in
Virginia was the absence, during all this period, of those impassioned
and dramatic conflicts in debate, which would have called forth
historic exhibitions of Patrick Henry's eloquence and of his gifts for
conduct and command. He had a leading part in all the counsels of the
time; he was sent to every session of the House of Burgesses; he was
at the front in all local committees and conventions; he was made a
member of the first Committee of Correspondence; and all these
incidents in this portion of his life culminated in his mission as one
of the deputies from Virginia to the first Continental Congress.

Without here going into the familiar story of the occasion and
purposes of the Congress of 1774, we may briefly indicate Patrick
Henry's relation to the events in Virginia which immediately preceded
his appointment to that renowned assemblage. On the 24th of May, 1774,
the House of Burgesses, having received the alarming news of the
passage of the Boston Port Bill, designated the day on which that bill
was to take effect--the first day of June--"as a day of fasting,
humiliation, and prayer, devoutly to implore the Divine interposition
for averting the heavy calamity which threatens destruction to our
civil rights, and the evils of civil war; to give us one heart and one
mind firmly to oppose, by all just and proper means, every injury to
American rights; and that the minds of his majesty and his parliament
may be inspired from above with wisdom, moderation, and justice, to
remove from the loyal people of America all cause of danger, from a
continued pursuit of measures pregnant with their ruin."[96] Two days
afterward, the governor, Lord Dunmore, having summoned the House to
the council chamber, made to them this little speech:--

     "Mr. Speaker and gentlemen of the House of Burgesses, I have
     in my hand a paper published by order of your House,
     conceived in such terms as reflect highly upon his majesty
     and the Parliament of Great Britain, which makes it
     necessary for me to dissolve you, and you are dissolved
     accordingly."[97]

At ten o'clock on the following day, May 27, the members of the late
House met by agreement at the Raleigh Tavern, and there promptly
passed a nobly-worded resolution, deploring the policy pursued by
Parliament and suggesting the establishment of an annual congress of
all the colonies, "to deliberate on those general measures which the
united interests of America may from time to time require."[98]

During the anxious days and nights immediately preceding the
dissolution of the House, its prominent members held many private
conferences with respect to the course to be pursued by Virginia. In
all these conferences, as we are told, "Patrick Henry was the
leader;"[99] and a very able man, George Mason, who was just then a
visitor at Williamsburg, and was admitted to the consultations of the
chiefs, wrote at the time concerning him: "He is by far the most
powerful speaker I ever heard.... But his eloquence is the smallest
part of his merit. He is, in my opinion, the first man upon this
continent, as well in abilities as public virtues."[100]

In response to a recommendation made by leading members of the recent
House of Burgesses, a convention of delegates from the several
counties of Virginia assembled at Williamsburg, on August 1, 1774, to
deal with the needs of the hour, and especially to appoint deputies to
the proposed congress at Philadelphia. The spirit in which this
convention transacted its business is sufficiently shown in the
opening paragraphs of the letter of instructions which it gave to the
deputies whom it sent to the congress:--

     "The unhappy disputes between Great Britain and her American
     colonies, which began about the third year of the reign of
     his present majesty, and since, continually increasing, have
     proceeded to lengths so dangerous and alarming as to excite
     just apprehensions in the minds of his majesty's faithful
     subjects of this colony that they are in danger of being
     deprived of their natural, ancient, constitutional, and
     chartered rights, have compelled them to take the same into
     their most serious consideration; and being deprived of
     their usual and accustomed mode of making known their
     grievances, have appointed us their representatives, to
     consider what is proper to be done in this dangerous crisis
     of American affairs.

     "It being our opinion that the united wisdom of North
     America should be collected in a general congress of all the
     colonies, we have appointed the honorable Peyton Randolph,
     Esquire, Richard Henry Lee, George Washington, Patrick
     Henry, Richard Bland, Benjamin Harrison, and Edmund
     Pendleton, Esquires, deputies to represent this colony in
     the said congress, to be held at Philadelphia on the first
     Monday in September next. And that they may be the better
     informed of our sentiments touching the conduct we wish them
     to observe on this important occasion, we desire that they
     will express, in the first place, our faith and true
     allegiance to his majesty King George the Third, our lawful
     and rightful sovereign; and that we are determined, with our
     lives and fortunes, to support him in the legal exercise of
     all his just rights and prerogatives; and however
     misrepresented, we sincerely approve of a constitutional
     connection with Great Britain, and wish most ardently a
     return of that intercourse of affection and commercial
     connection that formerly united both countries; which can
     only be effected by a removal of those causes of discontent
     which have of late unhappily divided us.... The power
     assumed by the British Parliament to bind America by their
     statutes, in all cases whatsoever, is unconstitutional, and
     the source of these unhappy differences."[101]

The convention at Williamsburg, of which, of course, Patrick Henry was
a member, seems to have adjourned on Saturday, the 6th of August.
Between that date and the time for his departure to attend the
congress at Philadelphia, we may imagine him as busily engaged in
arranging his affairs for a long absence from home, and even then as
not getting ready to begin the long journey until many of his
associates had nearly reached the end of it.


FOOTNOTES:

[90] MS.

[91] Wirt, 70, 71.

[92] Wirt, 71, 72.

[93] Randall, _Life of Jefferson_, i. 49; Wirt, 77.

[94] Wirt, 71.

[95] Jefferson's _Works_, vi. 368.

[96] 4 _Am. Arch._ i. 350.

[97] Campbell, _Hist. Va._ 573.

[98] 4 _Am. Arch._ i. 350, 351. The narrative of these events as given
by Wirt and by Campbell has several errors. They seem to have been
misled by Jefferson, who, in his account of the business (_Works_, i.
122, 123), is, if possible, rather more inaccurate than usual.

[99] Campbell, _Hist. Va._ 573.

[100] Mason to Martin Cockburn, _Va. Hist. Reg._ iii. 27-29.

[101] The full text of this letter of instructions is given in 4 _Am.
Arch._ i. 689, 690. With this should be compared note C. in
Jefferson's _Works_, i. 122-142.




CHAPTER VIII

IN THE FIRST CONTINENTAL CONGRESS


On the morning of Tuesday, the 30th of August, Patrick Henry arrived
on horseback at Mt. Vernon, the home of his friend and colleague,
George Washington; and having remained there that day and night, he
set out for Philadelphia on the following morning, in the company of
Washington and of Edmund Pendleton. From the jottings in Washington's
diary,[102] we can so far trace the progress of this trio of
illustrious horsemen, as to ascertain that on Sunday, the 4th of
September, they "breakfasted at Christiana Ferry; dined at Chester;"
and reached Philadelphia for supper--thus arriving in town barely in
time to be present at the first meeting of the Congress on the morning
of the 5th.

John Adams had taken pains to get upon the ground nearly a week
earlier; and carefully gathering all possible information concerning
his future associates, few of whom he had then ever seen, he wrote in
his diary that the Virginians were said to "speak in raptures about
Richard Henry Lee and Patrick Henry, one the Cicero, and the other the
Demosthenes, of the age."[103]

Not far from the same time, also, a keen-witted Virginian, Roger
Atkinson, at his home near Petersburg, was writing to a friend about
the men who had gone to represent Virginia in the great Congress; and
this letter of his, though not meant for posterity, has some neat,
off-hand portraits which posterity may, nevertheless, be glad to look
at. Peyton Randolph is "a venerable man ... an honest man; has
knowledge, temper, experience, judgment,--above all, integrity; a true
Roman spirit." Richard Bland is "a wary, old, experienced veteran at
the bar and in the senate; has something of the look of old musty
parchments, which he handleth and studieth much. He formerly wrote a
treatise against the Quakers on water-baptism." Washington "is a
soldier,--a warrior; he is a modest man; sensible; speaks little; in
action cool, like a bishop at his prayers." Pendleton "is an humble
and religious man, and must be exalted. He is a smooth-tongued
speaker, and, though not so old, may be compared to old Nestor,--

  'Experienced Nestor, in persuasion skilled,
  Words sweet as honey from his lips distilled.'"

But Patrick Henry "is a real half-Quaker,--your brother's
man,--moderate and mild, and in religious matters a saint; but the
very devil in politics; a son of thunder. He will shake the Senate.
Some years ago he had liked to have talked treason into the
House."[104]

Few of the members of this Congress had ever met before; and if all
had arrived upon the scene as late as did these three members from
Virginia, there might have been some difficulty, through a lack of
previous consultation and acquaintance, in organizing the Congress on
the day appointed, and in entering at once upon its business. In fact,
however, more than a week before the time for the first meeting, the
delegates had begun to make their appearance in Philadelphia;
thenceforward with each day the arrivals continued; by Thursday, the
1st of September, twenty-five delegates, nearly one half of the entire
body elected, were in town;[105] and probably, during all that week,
no day and no night had passed without many an informal conference
respecting the business before them, and the best way of doing it.

Concerning these memorable men of the first Continental Congress, it
must be confessed that as the mists of a hundred years of glorifying
oratory and of semi-poetic history have settled down upon them, they
are now enveloped in a light which seems to distend their forms to
proportions almost superhuman, and to cast upon their faces a gravity
that hardly belongs to this world; and it may, perhaps, help us to
bring them and their work somewhat nearer to the plane of natural
human life and motive, and into a light that is as the light of
reality, if, turning to the daily memoranda made at the time by one of
their number, we can see how merrily, after all, nay, with what
flowing feasts, with what convivial communings, passed those days and
nights of preparation for the difficult business they were about to
take in hand.

For example, on Monday, the 29th of August, when the four members of
the Massachusetts delegation had arrived within five miles of the
city, they were met by an escort of gentlemen, partly residents of
Philadelphia, and partly delegates from other colonies, who had come
out in carriages to greet them.

     "We were introduced," writes John Adams, "to all these
     gentlemen, and most cordially welcomed to Philadelphia. We
     then rode into town, and dirty, dusty, and fatigued as we
     were, we could not resist the importunity to go to the
     tavern, the most genteel one in America. There we were
     introduced to a number of other gentlemen of the city, ...
     and to Mr. Lynch and Mr. Gadsden, of South Carolina. Here we
     had a fresh welcome to the city of Philadelphia; and after
     some time spent in conversation, a curtain was drawn, and in
     the other half of the chamber a supper appeared as elegant
     as ever was laid upon a table. About eleven o'clock we
     retired.

     "30, Tuesday. Walked a little about town; visited the
     market, the State House, the Carpenters' Hall, where the
     Congress is to sit, etc.; then called at Mr. Mifflin's, a
     grand, spacious, and elegant house. Here we had much
     conversation with Mr. Charles Thomson, who is ... the Sam
     Adams of Philadelphia, the life of the cause of liberty,
     they say. A Friend, Collins, came to see us, and invited us
     to dine on Thursday. We returned to our lodgings, and Mr.
     Lynch, Mr. Gadsden, Mr. Middleton, and young Mr. Rutledge
     came to visit us.

     "31, Wednesday. Breakfasted at Mr. Bayard's, of
     Philadelphia, with Mr. Sprout, a Presbyterian minister. Made
     a visit to Governor Ward of Rhode Island, at his lodgings.
     There we were introduced to several gentlemen. Mr.
     Dickinson, the Farmer of Pennsylvania, came in his coach
     with four beautiful horses to Mr. Ward's lodgings, to see
     us.... We dined with Mr. Lynch, his lady and daughter, at
     their lodgings, ... and a very agreeable dinner and
     afternoon we had, notwithstanding the violent heat. We were
     all vastly pleased with Mr. Lynch. He is a solid, firm,
     judicious man.

     "September 1, Thursday. This day we breakfasted at Mr.
     Mifflin's. Mr. C. Thomson came in, and soon after Dr. Smith,
     the famous Dr. Smith, the provost of the college.... We then
     went to return visits to the gentlemen who had visited us.
     We visited a Mr. Cadwallader, a gentleman of large fortune,
     a grand and elegant house and furniture. We then visited Mr.
     Powell, another splendid seat. We then visited the gentlemen
     from South Carolina, and, about twelve, were introduced to
     Mr. Galloway, the speaker of the House in Pennsylvania. We
     dined at Friend Collins' ... with Governor Hopkins, Governor
     Ward, Mr. Galloway, Mr. Rhoades, etc. In the evening all the
     gentlemen of the Congress who were arrived in town, met at
     Smith's, the new city tavern, and spent the evening
     together. Twenty-five members were come. Virginia, North
     Carolina, Maryland, and the city of New York were not
     arrived.

     "2, Friday. Dined at Mr. Thomas Mifflin's with Mr. Lynch,
     Mr. Middleton, and the two Rutledges with their ladies....
     We were very sociable and happy. After coffee we went to the
     tavern, where we were introduced to Peyton Randolph,
     Esquire, speaker of Virginia, Colonel Harrison, Richard
     Henry Lee, Esquire, and Colonel Bland.... These gentlemen
     from Virginia appear to be the most spirited and consistent
     of any. Harrison said he would have come on foot rather than
     not come. Bland said he would have gone, upon this occasion,
     if it had been to Jericho.

     "3, Saturday. Breakfasted at Dr. Shippen's; Dr. Witherspoon
     was there. Col. R. H. Lee lodges there; he is a masterly
     man.... We went with Mr. William Barrell to his store, and
     drank punch, and ate dried smoked sprats with him; read the
     papers and our letters from Boston; dined with Mr. Joseph
     Reed, the lawyer; ... spent the evening at Mr. Mifflin's,
     with Lee and Harrison from Virginia, the two Rutledges, Dr.
     Witherspoon, Dr. Shippen, Dr. Steptoe, and another
     gentleman; an elegant supper, and we drank sentiments till
     eleven o'clock. Lee and Harrison were very high. Lee had
     dined with Mr. Dickinson, and drank Burgundy the whole
     afternoon."[106]

Accordingly, at 10 o'clock on Monday morning, the 5th of September,
when the delegates assembled at their rendezvous, the city tavern, and
marched together through the streets to Carpenters' Hall, for most of
them the stiffness of a first introduction was already broken, and
they could greet one another that morning with something of the
freedom and good fellowship of boon companions. Moreover, they were
then ready to proceed to business under the advantage of having
arranged beforehand an outline of what was first to be done. It had
been discovered, apparently, that the first serious question which
would meet them after their formal organization, was one relating to
the method of voting in the Congress, namely, whether each deputy
should have a vote, or only each colony; and if the latter, whether
the vote of each colony should be proportioned to its population and
property.

Having arrived at the hall, and inspected it, and agreed that it would
serve the purpose, the delegates helped themselves to seats. Then Mr.
Lynch of South Carolina arose, and nominated Mr. Peyton Randolph of
Virginia for president. This nomination having been unanimously
adopted, Mr. Lynch likewise proposed Mr. Charles Thomson for
secretary, which was carried without opposition; but as Mr. Thomson
was not a delegate, and of course was not then present, the doorkeeper
was instructed to go out and find him, and say to him that his
immediate attendance was desired by the Congress.

Next came the production and inspection of credentials. The roll
indicated that of the fifty-two delegates appointed, forty-four were
already upon the ground,--constituting an assemblage of representative
Americans, which, for dignity of character and for intellectual
eminence, was undoubtedly the most imposing that the colonies had ever
seen. In that room that day were such men as John Sullivan, John and
Samuel Adams, Stephen Hopkins, Roger Sherman, James Duane, John Jay,
Philip and William Livingston, Joseph Galloway, Thomas Mifflin, Cæsar
Rodney, Thomas McKean, George Read, Samuel Chase, John and Edward
Rutledge, Christopher Gadsden, Henry Middleton, Edmund Pendleton,
George Washington, and Patrick Henry.

Having thus got through with the mere routine of organization, which
must have taken a considerable time, James Duane, of New York, moved
the appointment of a committee "to prepare regulations for this
Congress." To this several gentlemen objected; whereupon John Adams,
thinking that Duane's purpose might have been misunderstood, "asked
leave of the president to request of the gentleman from New York an
explanation, and that he would point out some particular regulations
which he had in his mind." In reply to this request, Duane "mentioned
particularly the method of voting, whether it should be by colonies,
or by the poll, or by interests."[107] Thus Duane laid his finger on
perhaps the most sensitive nerve in that assemblage; but as he sat
down, the discussion of the subject which he had mentioned was
interrupted by a rather curious incident. This was the return of the
doorkeeper, having under his escort Mr. Charles Thomson. The latter
walked up the aisle, and standing opposite to the president, said,
with a bow, that he awaited his pleasure. The president replied:
"Congress desire the favor of you, sir, to take their minutes."
Without a word, only bowing his acquiescence, the secretary took his
seat at his desk, and began those modest but invaluable services from
which he did not cease until the Congress of the Confederation was
merged into that of the Union.

The discussion, into which this incident had fallen as a momentary
episode, was then resumed. "After a short silence," says the man who
was thus inducted into office, "Patrick Henry arose to speak. I did
not then know him. He was dressed in a suit of parson's gray, and from
his appearance I took him for a Presbyterian clergyman, used to
haranguing the people. He observed that we were here met in a time and
on an occasion of great difficulty and distress; that our public
circumstances were like those of a man in deep embarrassment and
trouble, who had called his friends together to devise what was best
to be done for his relief;--one would propose one thing, and another a
different one, whilst perhaps a third would think of something better
suited to his unhappy circumstances, which he would embrace, and think
no more of the rejected schemes with which he would have nothing to
do."[108]

Such is the rather meagre account, as given by one ear-witness, of
Patrick Henry's first speech in the Congress of 1774. From another
ear-witness we have another account, likewise very meagre, but giving,
probably, a somewhat more adequate idea of the drift and point of what
he said:--

     "Mr. Henry then arose, and said this was the first general
     congress which had ever happened; that no former congress
     could be a precedent; that we should have occasion for more
     general congresses, and therefore that a precedent ought to
     be established now; that it would be a great injustice if a
     little colony should have the same weight in the councils of
     America as a great one; and therefore he was for a
     committee."[109]

The notable thing about both these accounts is that they agree in
showing Patrick Henry's first speech in Congress to have been not, as
has been represented, an impassioned portrayal of "general
grievances," but a plain and quiet handling of a mere "detail of
business." In the discussion he was followed by John Sullivan, who
merely observed that "a little colony had its all at stake as well as
a great one." The floor was then taken by John Adams, who seems to
have made a searching and vigorous argument,--exhibiting the great
difficulties attending any possible conclusion to which they might
come respecting the method of voting. At the end of his speech,
apparently, the House adjourned, to resume the consideration of the
subject on the following day.[110]

Accordingly, on Tuesday morning the discussion was continued, and at
far greater length than on the previous day; the first speaker being
Patrick Henry himself, who seems now to have gone into the subject far
more broadly, and with much greater intensity of thought, than in his
first speech.

     "'Government,' said he, 'is dissolved. Fleets and armies and
     the present state of things show that government is
     dissolved. Where are your landmarks, your boundaries of
     colonies? We are in a state of nature, sir. I did propose
     that a scale should be laid down; that part of North America
     which was once Massachusetts Bay, and that part which was
     once Virginia, ought to be considered as having a weight.
     Will not people complain,--"Ten thousand Virginians have not
     outweighed one thousand others?"

     "'I will submit, however; I am determined to submit, if I am
     overruled.

     "'A worthy gentleman near me [John Adams] seemed to admit
     the necessity of obtaining a more adequate representation.

     "'I hope future ages will quote our proceedings with
     applause. It is one of the great duties of the democratical
     part of the constitution to keep itself pure. It is known in
     my province that some other colonies are not so numerous or
     rich as they are. I am for giving all the satisfaction in my
     power.

     "'The distinctions between Virginians, Pennsylvanians, New
     Yorkers, and New Englanders are no more. I am not a
     Virginian, but an American.

     "'Slaves are to be thrown out of the question; and if the
     freemen can be represented according to their numbers, I am
     satisfied.'

     "The subject was then debated at length by Lynch, Rutledge,
     Ward, Richard Henry Lee, Gadsden, Bland, and Pendleton, when
     Patrick Henry again rose:--

     "'I agree that authentic accounts cannot be had, if by
     authenticity is meant attestations of officers of the crown.
     I go upon the supposition that government is at an end. All
     distinctions are thrown down. All America is thrown into one
     mass. We must aim at the minutiæ of rectitude.'"

Patrick Henry was then followed by John Jay, who seems to have closed
the debate, and whose allusion to what his immediate predecessor had
said gives us some hint of the variations in Revolutionary opinion
then prevailing among the members, as well as of the advanced position
always taken by Patrick Henry:--

     "'Could I suppose that we came to frame an American
     constitution, instead of endeavoring to correct the faults
     in an old one, I can't yet think that all government is at
     an end. The measure of arbitrary power is not full; and I
     think it must run over, before we undertake to frame a new
     constitution. To the virtue, spirit, and abilities of
     Virginia we owe much. I should always, therefore, from
     inclination as well as justice, be for giving Virginia its
     full weight. I am not clear that we ought not to be bound by
     a majority, though ever so small; but I only mentioned it as
     a matter of danger worthy of consideration.'"[111]

Of this entire debate, the most significant issue is indicated by the
following passage from the journal for Tuesday, the 6th of
September:--

     "_Resolved_, that in determining questions in this Congress,
     each colony or province shall have one vote; the Congress
     not being possessed of, or at present able to procure,
     proper materials for ascertaining the importance of each
     colony."[112]

So far as it is now possible to ascertain it, such was Patrick Henry's
part in the first discussion held by the first Continental
Congress,--a discussion occupying parts of two days, and relating
purely to methods of procedure by that body, and not to the matters of
grievance between the colonies and Great Britain. We have a right to
infer something as to the quality of the first impression made upon
his associates by Patrick Henry in consequence of his three speeches
in this discussion, from the fact that when, at the close of it, an
order was taken for the appointment of two grand committees, one "to
state the rights of the colonies," the other "to examine and report
the several statutes which affect the trade and manufactures of the
colonies," Patrick Henry was chosen to represent Virginia on the
latter committee,[113]--a position not likely to have been selected
for a man who, however eloquent he may have seemed, had not also shown
business-like and lawyer-like qualities.

The Congress kept steadily at work from Monday, the 5th of September,
to Wednesday, the 26th of October,--just seven weeks and two days.
Though not a legislative body, it resembled all legislative bodies
then in existence, in the fact that it sat with closed doors, and that
it gave to the public only such results as it chose to give. Upon the
difficult and exciting subjects which came before it, there were, very
likely, many splendid passages of debate; and we cannot doubt that in
all these discussions Patrick Henry took his usually conspicuous and
powerful share. Yet no official record was kept of what was said by
any member; and it is only from the hurried private memoranda of two
of his colleagues that we are able to learn anything more respecting
Patrick Henry's participation in the debates of those seven weeks.

For example, just two weeks after the opening of this Congress, one of
its most critical members, Silas Deane of Connecticut, in a letter to
his wife, gave some capital sketches of his more prominent associates
there, especially those from the South,--as Randolph, Harrison,
Washington, Pendleton, Richard Henry Lee, and Patrick Henry. The
latter he describes as "a lawyer, and the completest speaker I ever
heard. If his future speeches are equal to the small samples he has
hitherto given us, they will be worth preserving; but in a letter I
can give you no idea of the music of his voice, or the high-wrought
yet natural elegance of his style and manner."[114]

It was on the 28th of September that Joseph Galloway brought forward
his celebrated plan for a permanent reconciliation between Great
Britain and her colonies. This was simply a scheme for what we should
now call home rule, on a basis of colonial confederation, with an
American parliament to be elected every three years by the
legislatures of the several colonies, and with a governor-general to
be appointed by the crown. The plan came very near to adoption.[115]
The member who introduced it was a man of great ability and great
influence; it was supported by James Duane and John Jay; it was
pronounced by Edward Rutledge to be "almost a perfect plan;" and in
the final trial it was lost only by a vote of six colonies to five.
Could it have been adopted, the disruption of the British empire would
certainly have been averted for that epoch, and, as an act of
violence and of unkindness, would perhaps have been averted forever;
while the thirteen English colonies would have remained English
colonies, without ceasing to be free.

The plan, however, was distrusted and resisted, with stern and
implacable hostility, by the more radical members of the Congress,
particularly by those from Massachusetts and Virginia; and an outline
of what Patrick Henry said in his assault upon it, delivered on the
very day on which it was introduced, is thus given by John Adams:--

     "The original constitution of the colonies was founded on
     the broadest and most generous base. The regulation of our
     trade was compensation enough for all the protection we ever
     experienced from her.

     "We shall liberate our constituents from a corrupt House of
     Commons, but throw them into the arms of an American
     legislature, that may be bribed by that nation which avows,
     in the face of the world, that bribery is a part of her
     system of government.

     "Before we are obliged to pay taxes as they do, let us be as
     free as they; let us have our trade open with all the world.

     "We are not to consent by the representatives of
     representatives.

     "I am inclined to think the present measures lead to
     war."[116]

The only other trace to be discovered of Patrick Henry's activity in
the debates of this Congress belongs to the day just before the one
on which Galloway's plan was introduced. The subject then under
discussion was the measure for non-importation and non-exportation. On
considerations of forbearance, Henry tried to have the date for the
application of this measure postponed from November to December,
saying, characteristically, "We don't mean to hurt even our rascals,
if we have any."[117]

Probably the most notable work done by this Congress was its
preparation of those masterly state papers in which it interpreted and
affirmed the constitutional attitude of the colonies, and which, when
laid upon the table of the House of Lords, drew forth the splendid
encomium of Chatham.[118] In many respects the most important, and
certainly the most difficult, of these state papers, was the address
to the king. The motion for such an address was made on the 1st of
October. On the same day the preparation of it was entrusted to a very
able committee, consisting of Richard Henry Lee, John Adams, Thomas
Johnson, Patrick Henry, and John Rutledge; and on the 21st of October
the committee was strengthened by the accession of John Dickinson, who
had entered the Congress but four days before.[119] Precisely what
part Patrick Henry took in the preparation of this address is not now
known; but there is no evidence whatever for the assertion[120] that
the first draft, which, when submitted to Congress, proved to be
unsatisfactory, was the work of Patrick Henry. That draft, as is now
abundantly proved, was prepared by the chairman of the committee,
Richard Henry Lee, but after full instructions from Congress and from
the committee itself.[121] In its final form, the address was largely
moulded by the expert and gentle hand of John Dickinson.[122] No one
can doubt, however, that even though Patrick Henry may have
contributed nothing to the literary execution of this fine address, he
was not inactive in its construction,[123] and that he was not likely
to have suggested any abatement from its free and manly spirit.

The only other committee on which he is known to have served during
this Congress was one to which his name was added on the 19th of
September,--"the committee appointed to state the rights of the
colonies,"[124] an object, certainly, far better suited to the
peculiarities of his talents and of his temper than that of the
committee for the conciliation of a king.

Of course, the one gift in which Patrick Henry excelled all other men
of his time and neighborhood was the gift of eloquence; and it is not
to be doubted that in many other forms of effort, involving, for
example, plain sense, practical experience, and knowledge of details,
he was often equaled, and perhaps even surpassed, by men who had not a
particle of his genius for oratory. This fact, the analogue of which
is common in the history of all men of genius, seems to be the basis
of an anecdote which, possibly, is authentic, and which, at any rate,
has been handed down by one who was always a devoted friend[125] of
the great orator. It is said that, after Henry and Lee had made their
first speeches, Samuel Chase of Maryland was so impressed by their
superiority that he walked over to the seat of one of his colleagues
and said: "We might as well go home; we are not able to legislate with
these men." But some days afterward, perhaps in the midst of the work
of the committee on the statutes affecting trade and commerce, the
same member was able to relieve himself by the remark: "Well, after
all, I find these are but men, and, in mere matters of business, but
very common men."[126]

It seems hardly right to pass from these studies upon the first
Continental Congress, and upon Patrick Henry's part in it, without
some reference to Wirt's treatment of the subject in a book which has
now been, for nearly three quarters of a century, the chief source of
public information concerning Patrick Henry. There is perhaps no other
portion of this book which is less worthy of respect.[127] It is not
only unhistoric in nearly all the very few alleged facts of the
narrative, but it does great injustice to Patrick Henry by
representing him virtually as a mere declaimer, as an ill-instructed
though most impressive rhapsodist in debate, and as without any claim
to the character of a serious statesman, or even of a man of affairs;
while, by the somewhat grandiose and melodramatic tone of some portion
of the narrative, it is singularly out of harmony with the real tone
of that famous assemblage,--an assemblage of Anglo-Saxon lawyers,
politicians, and men of business, who were probably about as practical
and sober-minded a company as had been got together for any manly
undertaking since that of Runnymede.

Wirt begins by convening his Congress one day too soon, namely, on the
4th of September, which was Sunday; and he represents the members as
"personally strangers" to one another, and as sitting, after their
preliminary organization, in a "long and deep silence," the members
meanwhile looking around upon each other with a sort of helpless
anxiety, "every individual" being reluctant "to open a business so
fearfully momentous." But

     "in the midst of this deep and death-like silence, and just
     when it was beginning to become painfully embarrassing, Mr.
     Henry arose slowly, as if borne down by the weight of the
     subject. After faltering, according to his habit, through a
     most impressive exordium, in which he merely echoed back the
     consciousness of every other heart in deploring his
     inability to do justice to the occasion, he launched
     gradually into a recital of the colonial wrongs. Rising, as
     he advanced, with the grandeur of his subject, and glowing
     at length with all the majesty and expectation of the
     occasion, his speech seemed more than that of mortal man.
     Even those who had heard him in all his glory in the House
     of Burgesses of Virginia were astonished at the manner in
     which his talents seemed to swell and expand themselves to
     fill the vaster theatre in which he was now placed. There
     was no rant, no rhapsody, no labor of the understanding, no
     straining of the voice, no confusion of the utterance. His
     countenance was erect, his eye steady, his action noble, his
     enunciation clear and firm, his mind poised on its centre,
     his views of his subject comprehensive and great, and his
     imagination coruscating with a magnificence and a variety
     which struck even that assembly with amazement and awe. He
     sat down amidst murmurs of astonishment and applause; and,
     as he had been before proclaimed the greatest orator of
     Virginia, he was now on every hand admitted to be the first
     orator of America."[128]

This great speech from Patrick Henry, which certainly was not made on
that occasion, and probably was never made at all, Wirt causes to be
followed by a great speech from Richard Henry Lee, although the
journal could have informed him that Lee was not even in the House on
that day. Moreover, he makes Patrick Henry to be the author of the
unfortunate first draft of the address to the king,--a document which
was written by another man; and on this fiction he founds two or three
pages of lamentation and of homily with reference to Patrick Henry's
inability to express himself in writing, in consequence of "his early
neglect of literature." Finally, he thinks it due "to historic truth
to record that the superior powers" of Patrick Henry "were manifested
only in debate;" and that, although he and Richard Henry Lee "took the
undisputed lead in the Assembly," "during the first days of the
session, while general grievances were the topic," yet they were both
"completely thrown into the shade" "when called down from the heights
of declamation to that severer test of intellectual excellence, the
details of business,"--the writer here seeming to forget that "general
grievances" were not the topic "during the first days of the session,"
and that the very speeches by which these two men are said to have
made their mark there, were speeches on mere rules of the House
relating to methods of procedure.[129]

Since the death of Wirt, and the publication of the biography of him
by Kennedy, it has been possible for us to ascertain just how the
genial author of "The Life and Character of Patrick Henry" came to be
so gravely misled in this part of his book. "The whole passage
relative to the first Congress" appears to have been composed from
data furnished by Jefferson, who, however, was not a member of that
Congress; and in the original manuscript the very words of Jefferson
were surrounded with quotation marks, and were attributed to him by
name. When, however, that great man, who loved not to send out
calumnies into the world with his own name attached to them, came to
inspect this portion of Wirt's manuscript, he was moved by his usual
prudence to write such a letter as drew from Wirt the following
consolatory assurance:--

     "Your repose shall never be endangered by any act of mine,
     if I can help it. Immediately on the receipt of your last
     letter, and before the manuscript had met any other eye, I
     wrote over again the whole passage relative to the first
     Congress, omitting the marks of quotation, and removing your
     name altogether from the communication."[130]

The final adjournment of the first Continental Congress, it will be
remembered, did not occur until its members had spent together more
than seven weeks of the closest intellectual intimacy. Surely, no mere
declaimer however enchanting, no sublime babbler on the rights of man,
no political charlatan strutting about for the display of his
preternatural gift of articulate wind, could have grappled in keen
debate, for all those weeks, on the greatest of earthly subjects, with
fifty of the ablest men in America, without exposing to their view all
his own intellectual poverty, and without losing the very last shred
of their intellectual respect for him. Whatever may have been the
impression formed of Patrick Henry as a mere orator by his associates
in that Congress, nothing can be plainer than that those men carried
with them to their homes that report of him as a man of extraordinary
intelligence, integrity, and power, which was the basis of his
subsequent fame for many years among the American people. Long
afterward, John Adams, who formed his estimate of Patrick Henry
chiefly from what he saw of him in that Congress, and who was never
much addicted to bestowing eulogiums on any man but John Adams, wrote
to Jefferson that "in the Congress of 1774 there was not one member,
except Patrick Henry, who appeared ... sensible of the precipice, or
rather the pinnacle, on which we stood, and had candor and courage
enough to acknowledge it."[131] To Wirt likewise, a few years later,
the same hard critic of men testified that Patrick Henry always
impressed him as a person "of deep reflection, keen sagacity, clear
foresight, daring enterprise, inflexible intrepidity, and untainted
integrity, with an ardent zeal for the liberties, the honor, and
felicity of his country and his species."[132]

Of the parting interview between these two men, at the close of that
first period of thorough personal acquaintance, there remains from the
hand of one of them a graphic account that reveals to us something of
the conscious kinship which seems ever afterward to have bound
together their robust and impetuous natures.

     "When Congress," says John Adams, "had finished their
     business, as they thought, in the autumn of 1774, I had with
     Mr. Henry, before we took leave of each other, some familiar
     conversation, in which I expressed a full conviction that
     our resolves, declarations of rights, enumeration of wrongs,
     petitions, remonstrances, and addresses, associations, and
     non-importation agreements, however they might be expected
     by the people in America, and however necessary to cement
     the union of the colonies, would be but waste paper in
     England. Mr. Henry said they might make some impression
     among the people of England, but agreed with me that they
     would be totally lost upon the government. I had but just
     received a short and hasty letter, written to me by Major
     Hawley, of Northampton, containing 'a few broken hints,' as
     he called them, of what he thought was proper to be done,
     and concluding[133] with these words: 'After all, we must
     fight.' This letter I read to Mr. Henry, who listened with
     great attention; and as soon as I had pronounced the words,
     'After all, we must fight,' he raised his head, and with an
     energy and vehemence that I can never forget, broke out
     with: 'By God, I am of that man's mind!'"[134]

This anecdote, it may be mentioned, contains the only instance on
record, for any period of Patrick Henry's life, implying his use of
what at first may seem a profane oath. John Adams, upon whose very
fallible memory in old age the story rests, declares that he did not
at the time regard Patrick Henry's words as an oath, but rather as a
solemn asseveration, affirmed religiously, upon a very great occasion.
At any rate, that asseveration proved to be a prophecy; for from it
there then leaped a flame that lighted up for an instant the next
inevitable stage in the evolution of events,--the tragic and bloody
outcome of all these wary lucubrations and devices of the assembled
political wizards of America.

It is interesting to note that, at the very time when the Congress at
Philadelphia was busy with its stern work, the people of Virginia were
grappling with the peril of an Indian war assailing them from beyond
their western mountains. There has recently been brought to light a
letter written at Hanover, on the 15th of October, 1774, by the aged
mother of Patrick Henry, to a friend living far out towards the
exposed district; and this letter is a touching memorial both of the
general anxiety over the two concurrent events, and of the motherly
pride and piety of the writer:--

     "My son Patrick has been gone to Philadelphia near seven
     weeks. The affairs of Congress are kept with great secrecy,
     nobody being allowed to be present. I assure you we have our
     lowland troubles and fears with respect to Great Britain.
     Perhaps our good God may bring good to us out of these many
     evils which threaten us, not only from the mountains but
     from the seas."[135]


FOOTNOTES:

[102] _Washington's Writings_, ii. 503.

[103] _Works of John Adams_, ii. 357.

[104] Meade, _Old Churches and Families of Va._ i. 220, 221.

[105] _Works of John Adams_, ii. 361.

[106] _Works of John Adams_, ii. 357-364.

[107] _Works of John Adams_, ii. 365.

[108] _Am. Quarterly Review_, i. 30, whence it is quoted in _Works of
John Adams_, iii. 29, 30, note. As regards the value of this testimony
of Charles Thomson, we should note that it is something alleged to
have been said by him at the age of ninety, in a conversation with a
friend, and by the latter reported to the author of the article above
cited in the _Am. Quart. Rev._

[109] _Works of John Adams_, ii. 365.

[110] It seems to me that the second paragraph on page 366 of volume
ii. of the _Works of John Adams_ must be taken as his memorandum of
his own speech; and that what follows on that page, as well as on page
367, and the first half of page 368, is erroneously understood by the
editor as belonging to the first day's debate. It must have been an
outline of the second day's debate. This is proved partly by the fact
that it mentions Lee as taking part in the debate; but according to
the journal, Lee did not appear in Congress until the second day. 4
_Am. Arch._ i. 898.

[111] _Works of John Adams_, ii. 366-368.

[112] 4 _Am. Arch._ i. 898, 899.

[113] 4 _Am. Arch._ i. 899.

[114] _Conn. Hist. Soc. Coll._ ii. 181.

[115] The text of Galloway's plan is given in 4 _Am. Arch._ i. 905,
906.

[116] _Works of John Adams_, ii. 390.

[117] _Works of John Adams_, ii. 385.

[118] Hansard, _Parl. Hist._ xviii. 155, 156 note, 157.

[119] 4 _Am. Arch._ i. 906, 907, 927.

[120] Wirt, 109.

[121] _Works of John Adams_, x. 79; ii. 396, note; Lee's _Life of R.
H. Lee_, i. 116-118, 270-272.

[122] _Political Writings_, ii. 19-29.

[123] Thus John Adams, on 11th October, writes: "Spent the evening
with Mr. Henry at his lodgings consulting about a petition to the
king." _Works_, ii. 396.

[124] 4 _Am. Arch._ i. 904.

[125] Judge John Tyler, in Wirt, 109, note.

[126] For another form of this tradition, see Curtis's _Life of
Webster_, i. 588.

[127] Pages 105-113.

[128] Wirt, 105, 106.

[129] The exact rules under debate during those first two days are
given in 4 _Am. Arch._ i. 898, 899.

[130] Kennedy, _Mem. of Wirt_, i. 364.

[131] _Works of John Adams_, x. 78.

[132] _Ibid._ x. 277.

[133] As a matter of fact, the letter from Hawley began with these
words, instead of "concluding" with them.

[134] _Works of John Adams_, x. 277, 278.

[135] Peyton, _History of Augusta County_, 345, where will be found
the entire letter.




CHAPTER IX

"AFTER ALL, WE MUST FIGHT"


We now approach that brilliant passage in the life of Patrick Henry
when, in the presence of the second revolutionary convention of
Virginia, he proclaimed the futility of all further efforts for peace,
and the instant necessity of preparing for war.

The speech which he is said to have made on that occasion has been
committed to memory and declaimed by several generations of American
schoolboys, and is now perhaps familiarly known to a larger number of
the American people than any other considerable bit of secular prose
in our language. The old church at Richmond, in which he made this
marvelous speech, is in our time visited every year, as a patriotic
shrine, by thousands of pilgrims, who seek curiously the very spot
upon the floor where the orator is believed to have stood when he
uttered those words of flame. It is chiefly the tradition of that one
speech which to-day keeps alive, in millions of American homes, the
name of Patrick Henry, and which lifts him, in the popular faith,
almost to the rank of some mythical hero of romance.

In reality, that speech, and the resolutions in support of which that
speech was made, constituted Patrick Henry's individual declaration of
war against Great Britain. But the question is: To what extent, if
any, was he therein original, or even in advance of his
fellow-countrymen, and particularly of his associates in the Virginia
convention?

It is essential to a just und

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