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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 protege 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, reenforced 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.