AT HOME AND IN THE HOUSE OF DELEGATES
The high official rank which Governor Henry had borne during the first
three years of American independence was so impressive to the
imaginations of the French allies who were then in the country, that
some of them addressed their letters to him as "Son Altesse Royale,
Monsieur Patrick Henri, Gouverneur de l'Etat de Virginie."[311] From
this titular royalty he descended, as we have seen, about the 1st of
June, 1779; and for the subsequent five and a half years, until his
recall to the governorship, he is to be viewed by us as a very retired
country gentleman in delicate health, with episodes of labor and of
leadership in the Virginia House of Delegates.
A little more than a fortnight after his descent from the governor's
chair, he was elected by the General Assembly as a delegate in
Congress.[312] It is not known whether he at any time thought it
possible for him to accept this appointment; but, on the 28th of the
following October, the body that had elected him received from him a
letter declining the service.[313] Moreover, in spite of all
invitations and entreaties, Patrick Henry never afterwards served in
any public capacity outside the State of Virginia.
During his three years in the governorship, he had lived in the palace
at Williamsburg. In the course of that time, also, he had sold his
estate of Scotchtown, in Hanover County, and had purchased a large
tract of land in the new county of Henry,--a county situated about two
hundred miles southwest from Richmond, along the North Carolina
boundary, and named, of course, in honor of himself. To his new estate
there, called Leatherwood, consisting of about ten thousand acres, he
removed early in the summer of 1779. This continued to be his home
until he resumed the office of governor in November, 1784.[314]
After the storm and stress of so many years of public life, and of
public life in an epoch of revolution, the invalid body, the
care-burdened spirit, of Patrick Henry must have found great
refreshment in this removal to a distant, wild, and mountainous
solitude. In undisturbed seclusion, he there remained during the
summer and autumn of 1779, and even the succeeding winter and
spring,--scarcely able to hear the far-off noises of the great
struggle in which he had hitherto borne so rugged a part, and of which
the victorious issue was then to be seen by him, though dimly, through
many a murky rack of selfishness, cowardice, and crime.
His successor in the office of governor was Thomas Jefferson, the
jovial friend of his own jovial youth, bound to him still by that
hearty friendship which was founded on congeniality of political
sentiment, but was afterward to die away, at least on Jefferson's
side, into alienation and hate. To this dear friend Patrick Henry
wrote late in that winter, from his hermitage among the eastward
fastnesses of the Blue Ridge, a remarkable letter, which has never
before been in print, and which is full of interest for us on account
of its impulsive and self-revealing words. Its tone of despondency,
almost of misanthropy,--so unnatural to Patrick Henry,--is perhaps a
token of that sickness of body which had made the soul sick too, and
had then driven the writer into the wilderness, and still kept him
there:--
TO THOMAS JEFFERSON.
LEATHERWOOD, 15th Feby., 1780.
DEAR SIR,--I return you many thanks for your favor by Mr.
Sanders. The kind notice you were pleased to take of me was
particularly obliging, as I have scarcely heard a word of
public matters since I moved up in the retirement where I
live.
I have had many anxieties for our commonwealth, principally
occasioned by the depreciation of our money. To judge by
this, which somebody has called the pulse of the state, I
have feared that our body politic was dangerously sick. God
grant it may not be unto death. But I cannot forbear
thinking, the present increase of prices is in great part
owing to a kind of habit, which is now of four or five
years' growth, which is fostered by a mistaken avarice, and
like other habits hard to part with. For there is really
very little money hereabouts.
What you say of the practice of our distinguished Tories
perfectly agrees with my own observation, and the attempts
to raise prejudices against the French, I know, were begun
when I lived below. What gave me the utmost pain was to see
some men, indeed very many, who were thought good Whigs,
keep company with the miscreants,--wretches who, I am
satisfied, were laboring our destruction. This countenance
shown them is of fatal tendency. They should be shunned and
execrated, and this is the only way to supply the place of
legal conviction and punishment. But this is an effort of
virtue, small as it seems, of which our countrymen are not
capable.
Indeed, I will own to you, my dear Sir, that observing this
impunity and even respect, which some wicked individuals
have met with while their guilt was clear as the sun, has
sickened me, and made me sometimes wish to be in retirement
for the rest of my life. I will, however, be down, on the
next Assembly, if I am chosen. My health, I am satisfied,
will never again permit a close application to sedentary
business, and I even doubt whether I can remain below long
enough to serve in the Assembly. I will, however, make the
trial.
But tell me, do you remember any instance where tyranny was
destroyed and freedom established on its ruins, among a
people possessing so small a share of virtue and public
spirit? I recollect none, and this, more than the British
arms, makes me fearful of final success without a reform.
But when or how this is to be effected, I have not the means
of judging. I most sincerely wish you health and prosperity.
If you can spare time to drop me a line now and then, it
will be highly obliging to, dear Sir, your affectionate
friend and obedient servant,
P. HENRY.[315]
The next General Assembly, which he thus promised to attend in case he
should be chosen, met at Richmond on the 1st of May, 1780. It hardly
needs to be mentioned that the people of Henry County were proud to
choose him as one of their members in that body; but he seems not to
have taken his seat there until about the 19th of May.[316] From the
moment of his arrival in the House of Delegates, every kind of
responsibility and honor was laid upon him. This was his first
appearance in such an assembly since the proclamation of independence;
and the prestige attaching to his name, as well as his own undimmed
genius for leadership, made him not only the most conspicuous person
in the house, but the nearly absolute director of its business in
every detail of opinion and of procedure on which he should choose to
express himself,--his only rival, in any particular, being Richard
Henry Lee. It helps one now to understand the real reputation he had
among his contemporaries for practical ability, and for a habit of
shrinking from none of the commonplace drudgeries of legislative work,
that during the first few days after his accession to the House he
was placed on the committee of ways and means; on a committee "to
inquire into the present state of the account of the commonwealth
against the United States, and the most speedy and effectual method of
finally settling the same;" on a committee to prepare a bill for the
repeal of a part of the act "for sequestering British property,
enabling those indebted to British subjects to pay off such debts, and
directing the proceedings in suits where such subjects are parties;"
on three several committees respecting the powers and duties of high
sheriffs and of grand juries; and, finally, on a committee to notify
Jefferson of his reelection as governor, and to report his answer to
the House. On the 7th of June, however, after a service of little more
than two weeks, his own sad apprehensions respecting his health seem
to have been realized, and he was obliged to ask leave to withdraw
from the House for the remainder of the session.[317]
At the autumn session of the legislature he was once more in his
place. On the 6th of November, the day on which the House was
organized, he was made chairman of the committee on privileges and
elections, and also of a committee "for the better defence of the
southern frontier," and was likewise placed on the committee on
propositions and grievances, as well as on the committee on courts of
justice. On the following day he was made a member of a committee for
the defence of the eastern frontier. On the 10th of November he was
placed on a committee to bring in a bill relating to the enlistment of
Virginia troops, and to the redemption of the state bills of credit
then in circulation, and the emission of new bills. On the 22d of
November he was made a member of a committee to which was again
referred the account between the State and the United States. On the
9th of December he was made a member of a committee to draw up bills
for the organization and maintenance of a navy for the State, and the
protection of navigation and commerce upon its waters. On the 14th of
December he was made chairman of a committee to draw up a bill for the
better regulation and discipline of the militia, and of still another
committee to prepare a bill "for supplying the army with clothes and
provisions."[318] On the 28th of December, the House having knowledge
of the arrival in town of poor General Gates, then drooping under the
burden of those Southern willows which he had so plentifully gathered
at Camden, Patrick Henry introduced the following magnanimous
resolution:--
"That a committee of four be appointed to wait on Major
General Gates, and to assure him of the high regard and
esteem of this House; that the remembrance of his former
glorious services cannot be obliterated by any reverse of
fortune; but that this House, ever mindful of his great
merit, will omit no opportunity of testifying to the world
the gratitude which, as a member of the American Union, this
country owes to him in his military character."[319]
On the 2d of January, 1781, the last day of the session, the House
adopted, on Patrick Henry's motion, a resolution authorizing the
governor to convene the next meeting of the legislature at some other
place than Richmond, in case its assembling in that city should "be
rendered inconvenient by the operations of an invading enemy,"[320] a
resolution reflecting their sense of the peril then hanging over the
State.
Before the legislature could again meet, events proved that it was no
imaginary danger against which Patrick Henry's resolution had been
intended to provide. On the 2d of January, 1781, the very day on which
the legislature had adjourned, a hostile fleet conveyed into the James
River a force of about eight hundred men under command of Benedict
Arnold, whose eagerness to ravage Virginia was still further
facilitated by the arrival, on the 26th of March, of two thousand men
under General Phillips. Moreover, Lord Cornwallis, having beaten
General Greene at Guilford, in North Carolina, on the 15th of March,
seemed to be gathering force for a speedy advance into Virginia. That
the roar of his guns would soon be heard in the outskirts of their
capital, was what all Virginians then felt to be inevitable.
Under such circumstances, it is not strange that a session of the
legislature, which is said to have been held on the 1st of March,[321]
should have been a very brief one, or that when the 7th of May
arrived--the day for its reassembling at Richmond--no quorum should
have been present; or that, on the 10th of May, the few members who
had arrived in Richmond should have voted, in deference to "the
approach of an hostile army,"[322] to adjourn to Charlottesville,--a
place of far greater security, ninety-seven miles to the northwest,
among the mountains of Albemarle. By the 20th of May, Cornwallis
reached Petersburg, twenty-three miles south of Richmond; and shortly
afterward, pushing across the James and the Chickahominy, he encamped
on the North Anna, in the county of Hanover. Thus, at last, the single
county of Louisa then separated him from that county in which was the
home of the governor of the State, and where was then convened its
legislature,--Patrick Henry himself being present and in obvious
direction of all its business. The opportunity to bag such game, Lord
Cornwallis was not the man to let slip. Accordingly, on Sunday, the 3d
of June, he dispatched a swift expedition under Tarleton, to surprise
and capture the members of the legislature, "to seize on the person of
the governor," and "to spread on his route devastation and
terror."[323] In this entire scheme, doubtless, Tarleton would have
succeeded, had it not been that as he and his troopers, on that fair
Sabbath day, were hurrying past the Cuckoo tavern in Louisa, one
Captain John Jouette, watching from behind the windows, espied them,
divined their object, and mounting a fleet horse, and taking a shorter
route, got into Charlottesville a few hours in advance of them, just
in time to give the alarm, and to set the imperiled legislators
a-flying to the mountains for safety.
Then, by all accounts, was witnessed a display of the locomotive
energies of grave and potent senators, such as this world has not
often exhibited. Of this tragically comical incident, of course, the
journal of the House of Delegates makes only the most placid and
forbearing mention. For Monday, June 4, its chief entry is as follows:
"There being reason to apprehend an immediate incursion of the enemy's
cavalry to this place, which renders it indispensable that the General
Assembly should forthwith adjourn to a place of greater security;
resolved, that this House be adjourned until Thursday next, then to
meet at the town of Staunton, in the county of Augusta,"--a town
thirty-nine miles farther west, beyond a chain of mountains, and only
to be reached by them or their pursuers through difficult passes in
the Blue Ridge. The next entry in the journal is dated at Staunton, on
the 7th of June, and, very properly, is merely a prosaic and
business-like record of the reassembling of the House according to the
adjournment aforesaid.[324]
But as to some of the things that happened in that interval of panic
and of scrambling flight, popular tradition has not been equally
forbearing; and while the anecdotes upon that subject, which have
descended to our time, are very likely decorated by many tassels of
exaggeration and of myth, they yet have, doubtless, some slight
framework of truth, and do really portray for us the actual beliefs of
many people in Virginia respecting a number of their celebrated men,
and especially respecting some of the less celebrated traits of those
men. For example, it is related that on the sudden adjournment of the
House, caused by this dusty and breathless apparition of the speedful
Jouette, and his laconic intimation that Tarleton was coming, the
members, though somewhat accustomed to ceremony, stood not upon the
order of their going, but went at once,--taking first to their horses,
and then to the woods; and that, breaking up into small parties of
fugitives, they thus made their several ways, as best they could,
through the passes of the mountains leading to the much-desired
seclusion of Staunton. One of these parties consisted of Benjamin
Harrison, Colonel William Christian, John Tyler, and Patrick Henry.
Late in the day, tired and hungry, they stopped their horses at the
door of a small hut, in a gorge of the hills, and asked for food. An
old woman, who came to the door, and who was alone in the house,
demanded of them who they were, and where they were from. Patrick
Henry, who acted as spokesman of the party, answered: "We are members
of the legislature, and have just been compelled to leave
Charlottesville on account of the approach of the enemy." "Ride on,
then, ye cowardly knaves," replied she, in great wrath; "here have my
husband and sons just gone to Charlottesville to fight for ye, and you
running away with all your might. Clear out--ye shall have nothing
here." "But," rejoined Mr. Henry, in an expostulating tone, "we were
obliged to fly. It would not do for the legislature to be broken up by
the enemy. Here is Mr. Speaker Harrison; you don't think he would have
fled had it not been necessary?" "I always thought a great deal of Mr.
Harrison till now," answered the old woman; "but he'd no business to
run from the enemy," and she was about to shut the door in their
faces. "Wait a moment, my good woman," urged Mr. Henry; "you would
hardly believe that Mr. Tyler or Colonel Christian would take to
flight if there were not good cause for so doing?" "No, indeed, that I
wouldn't," she replied. "But," exclaimed he, "Mr. Tyler and Colonel
Christian are here." "They here? Well, I never would have thought it;"
and she stood for a moment in doubt, but at once added, "No matter. We
love these gentlemen, and I didn't suppose they would ever run away
from the British; but since they have, they shall have nothing to eat
in my house. You may ride along." In this desperate situation Mr.
Tyler then stepped forward and said, "What would you say, my good
woman, if I were to tell you that Patrick Henry fled with the rest of
us?" "Patrick Henry! I should tell you there wasn't a word of truth in
it," she answered angrily; "Patrick Henry would never do such a
cowardly thing." "But this is Patrick Henry," said Mr. Tyler, pointing
to him. The old woman was amazed; but after some reflection, and with
a convulsive twitch or two at her apron string, she said, "Well, then,
if that's Patrick Henry, it must be all right. Come in, and ye shall
have the best I have in the house."[325]
The pitiless tongue of tradition does not stop here, but proceeds to
narrate other alleged experiences of this our noble, though somewhat
disconcerted, Patrick. Arrived at last in Staunton, and walking
through its reassuring streets, he is said to have met one Colonel
William Lewis, to whom the face of the orator was then unknown; and to
have told to this stranger the story of the flight of the legislature
from Albemarle. "If Patrick Henry had been in Albemarle," was the
stranger's comment, "the British dragoons never would have passed over
the Rivanna River."[326]
The tongue of tradition, at last grown quite reckless, perhaps, of
its own credit, still further relates that even at Staunton these
illustrious fugitives did not feel entirely sure that they were beyond
the reach of Tarleton's men. A few nights after their arrival there,
as the story runs, upon some sudden alarm, several of them sprang from
their beds, and, imperfectly clapping on their clothes, fled out of
the town, and took refuge at the plantation of one Colonel George
Moffett, near which, they had been told, was a cave in which they
might the more effectually conceal themselves. Mrs. Moffett, though
not knowing the names of these flitting Solons, yet received them with
true Virginian hospitality: but the next morning, at breakfast, she
made the unlucky remark that there was one member of the legislature
who certainly would not have run from the enemy. "Who is he?" was then
asked. Her reply was, "Patrick Henry." At that moment a gentleman of
the party, himself possessed of but one boot, was observed to blush
considerably. Furthermore, as soon as possible after breakfast, these
imperiled legislators departed in search of the cave; shortly after
which a negro from Staunton rode up, carrying in his hand a solitary
boot, and inquiring earnestly for Patrick Henry. In that way, as the
modern reporter of this very debatable tradition unkindly adds, the
admiring Mrs. Moffett ascertained who it was that the boot fitted; and
he further suggests that, whatever Mrs. Moffett's emotions were at
that time, those of Patrick must have been, "Give me liberty, but not
death."[327]
Passing by these whimsical tales, we have now to add that the
legislature, having on the 7th of June entered upon its work at
Staunton, steadily continued it there until the 23d of the month, when
it adjourned in orderly fashion, to meet again in the following
October. Governor Jefferson, whose second year of office had expired
two days before the flight of himself and the legislature from
Charlottesville, did not accompany that body to Staunton, but pursued
his own way to Poplar Forest and to Bedford, where, "remote from the
legislature,"[328] he remained during the remainder of its session. On
the 12th of June, Thomas Nelson was elected as his successor in
office.[329]
It was during this period of confusion and terror that, as Jefferson
alleges, the legislature once more had before it the project of a
dictator, in the criminal sense of that word; and, upon Jefferson's
private authority, both Wirt and Girardin long afterward named Patrick
Henry as the man who was intended for this profligate honor.[330] We
need not here repeat what was said, in our narrative of the closing
weeks of 1776, concerning this terrible posthumous imputation upon the
public and private character of Patrick Henry. Nearly everything which
then appeared to the discredit of this charge in connection with the
earlier date, is equally applicable to it in connection with the later
date also. Moreover, as regards this later date, there has recently
been discovered a piece of contemporaneous testimony which shows that,
whatever may have been the scheme for a dictatorship in Virginia in
1781, it was a great military chieftain who was wanted for the
position; and, apparently, that Patrick Henry was not then even
mentioned in the affair. On the 9th of June, 1781, Captain H. Young,
though not a member of the House of Delegates, writes from Staunton to
Colonel William Davies as follows: "Two days ago, Mr. Nicholas gave
notice that he should this day move to have a dictator appointed.
General Washington and General Greene are talked of. I dare say your
knowledge of these worthy gentlemen will be sufficient to convince you
that neither of them will, or ought to, accept of such an
appointment.... We have but a thin House of Delegates; but they are
zealous, I think, in the cause of virtue."[331] Furthermore, the
journal of that House contains no record of any such motion having
been made; and it is probable that it never was made, and that the
subject never came before the legislature in any such form as to call
for its notice.
Finally, with respect to both the dates mentioned by Jefferson for the
appearance of the scheme, Edmund Randolph has left explicit testimony
to the effect that such a scheme never had any substantial existence
at all: "Mr. Jefferson, in his Notes on Virginia, speaks with great
bitterness against those members of the Assembly in the years 1776 and
1781, who espoused the erection of a dictator. Coming from such
authority, the invective infects the character of the legislature,
notwithstanding he has restricted the charge to less than a majority,
and acknowledged the spotlessness of most of them.... The subject was
never before them, except as an article of newspaper intelligence, and
even then not in a form which called for their attention. Against this
unfettered monster, which deserved all the impassioned reprobation of
Mr. Jefferson, their tones, it may be affirmed, would have been loud
and tremendous."[332]
For its autumn session, in 1781, the legislature did not reach an
organization until the 19th of November,--just one month after the
surrender of Cornwallis. Eight days after the organization of the
House, Patrick Henry took his seat;[333] and after a service of less
than four weeks, he obtained leave of absence for the remainder of the
session.[334] During 1782 his attendance upon the House seems to have
been limited to the spring session. At the organization of the House,
on the 12th of May, 1783, he was in his place again, and during that
session, as well as the autumnal one, his attendance was close and
laborious. At both sessions of the House in 1784 he was present and
in full force; but in the very midst of these employments he was
interrupted by his election as governor, on the 17th of
November,--shortly after which, he withdrew to his country-seat in
order to remove his family thence to the capital.
In the course of all these labors in the legislature, and amid a
multitude of topics merely local and temporary, Patrick Henry had
occasion to deal publicly, and under the peculiar responsibilities of
leadership, with nearly all the most important and difficult questions
that came before the American people during the later years of the war
and the earlier years of the peace. The journal of the House for that
period omits all mention of words spoken in debate; and although it
does occasionally enable us to ascertain on which side of certain
questions Patrick Henry stood, it leaves us in total ignorance of his
reasons for any position which he chose to take. In trying, therefore,
to estimate the quality of his statesmanship when dealing with these
questions, we lack a part of the evidence which is essential to any
just conclusion; and we are left peculiarly at the mercy of those
sweeping censures which have been occasionally applied to his
political conduct during that period.[335]
On the assurance of peace, in the spring of 1783, perhaps the earliest
and the knottiest problem which had to be taken up was the one
relating to that vast body of Americans who then bore the
contumelious name of Tories,--those Americans who, against all loss
and ignominy, had steadily remained loyal to the unity of the British
empire, unflinching in their rejection of the constitutional heresy of
American secession. How should these execrable beings--the defeated
party in a long and most rancorous civil war--be treated by the party
which was at last victorious? Many of them were already in exile:
should they be kept there? Many were still in this country: should
they be banished from it? As a matter of fact, the exasperation of
public feeling against the Tories was, at that time, so universal and
so fierce that no statesman could then lift up his voice in their
favor without dashing himself against the angriest currents of popular
opinion and passion, and risking the loss of the public favor toward
himself. Nevertheless, precisely this is what Patrick Henry had the
courage to do. While the war lasted, no man spoke against the Tories
more sternly than did he. The war being ended, and its great purpose
secured, no man, excepting perhaps Alexander Hamilton, was so prompt
and so energetic in urging that all animosities of the war should be
laid aside, and that a policy of magnanimous forbearance should be
pursued respecting these baffled opponents of American independence.
It was in this spirit that, as soon as possible after the cessation of
hostilities, he introduced a bill for the repeal of an act "to
prohibit intercourse with, and the admission of British subjects
into" Virginia,[336]--language well understood to refer to the Tories.
This measure, we are told, not only excited surprise, but "was, at
first, received with a repugnance apparently insuperable." Even his
intimate friend John Tyler, the speaker of the House, hotly resisted
it in the committee of the whole, and in the course of his argument,
turning to Patrick Henry, asked "how he, above all other men, could
think of inviting into his family an enemy from whose insults and
injuries he had suffered so severely?"
In reply to this appeal, Patrick Henry declared that the question
before them was not one of personal feeling; that it was a national
question; and that in discussing it they should be willing to
sacrifice all personal resentments, all private wrongs. He then
proceeded to unfold the proposition that America had everything out of
which to make a great nation--except people.
"Your great want, sir, is the want of men; and these you
must have, and will have speedily, if you are wise. Do you
ask how you are to get them? Open your doors, sir, and they
will come in. The population of the Old World is full to
overflowing; that population is ground, too, by the
oppressions of the governments under which they live. Sir,
they are already standing on tiptoe upon their native
shores, and looking to your coasts with a wishful and
longing eye.... But gentlemen object to any accession from
Great Britain, and particularly to the return of the British
refugees. Sir, I feel no objection to the return of those
deluded people. They have, to be sure, mistaken their own
interests most wofully, and most wofully have they suffered
the punishment due to their offences. But the relations
which we bear to them and to their native country are now
changed. Their king hath acknowledged our independence. The
quarrel is over. Peace hath returned, and found us a free
people. Let us have the magnanimity, sir, to lay aside our
antipathies and prejudices, and consider the subject in a
political light. Those are an enterprising, moneyed people.
They will be serviceable in taking off the surplus produce
of our lands, and supplying us with necessaries during the
infant state of our manufactures. Even if they be inimical
to us in point of feeling and principle, I can see no
objection, in a political view, in making them tributary to
our advantage. And, as I have no prejudices to prevent my
making this use of them, so, sir, I have no fear of any
mischief that they can do us. Afraid of them? What, sir
[said he, rising to one of his loftiest attitudes, and
assuming a look of the most indignant and sovereign
contempt], shall we, who have laid the proud British lion at
our feet, now be afraid of his whelps?"[337]
In the same spirit he dealt with the restraints on British commerce
imposed during the war,--a question similar to the one just mentioned,
at least in this particular, that it was enveloped in the angry
prejudices born of the conflict just ended. The journal for the 13th
of May, 1783, has this entry: "Mr. Henry presented, according to
order, a bill 'to repeal the several Acts of Assembly for seizure and
condemnation of British goods found on land;' and the same was
received and read the first time, and ordered to be read a second
time." In advocating this measure, he seems to have lifted the
discussion clear above all petty considerations to the plane of high
and permanent principle, and, according to one of his chief
antagonists in that debate, to have met all objections by arguments
that were "beyond all expression eloquent and sublime." After
describing the embarrassments and distresses of the situation and
their causes, he took the ground that perfect freedom was as necessary
to the health and vigor of commerce as it was to the health and vigor
of citizenship. "Why should we fetter commerce? If a man is in chains,
he droops and bows to the earth, for his spirits are broken; but let
him twist the fetters from his legs, and he will stand erect. Fetter
not commerce, sir. Let her be as free as air; she will range the whole
creation, and return on the wings of the four winds of heaven, to
bless the land with plenty."[338]
Besides these and other problems in the foreign relations of the
country, there remained, of course, at the end of the war, several
vast domestic problems for American statesmanship to grapple
with,--one of these being the relations of the white race to their
perpetual neighbors, the Indians. In the autumn session of 1784, in a
series of efforts said to have been marked by "irresistible
earnestness and eloquence," he secured the favorable attention of the
House to this ancient problem, and even to his own daring and
statesmanlike solution of it. The whole subject, as he thought, had
been commonly treated by the superior race in a spirit not only mean
and hard, but superficial also; the result being nearly two centuries
of mutual suspicion, hatred, and slaughter. At last the time had come
for the superior race to put an end to this traditional disaster and
disgrace. Instead of tampering with the difficulty by remedies applied
merely to the surface, he was for striking at the root of it, namely,
at the deep divergence in sympathy and in interest between the two
races. There was but one way in which to do this: it was for the white
race to treat the Indians, consistently, as human beings, and as fast
as possible to identify their interests with our own along the entire
range of personal concerns,--in property, government, society, and,
especially, in domestic life. In short, he proposed to encourage, by a
system of pecuniary bounties, the practice of marriage between members
of the two races, believing that such ties, once formed, would be an
inviolable pledge of mutual friendship, fidelity, and forbearance, and
would gradually lead to the transformation of the Indians into a
civilized and Christian people. His bill for this purpose, elaborately
drawn up, was carried through its second reading and "engrossed for
its final passage," when, by his sudden removal from the floor of the
House to the governor's chair, the measure was deprived of its
all-conquering champion, and, on the third reading, it fell a
sacrifice to the Caucasian rage and scorn of the members.
It is proper to note, also, that during this period of service in the
legislature Patrick Henry marched straight against public opinion, and
jeoparded his popularity, on two or three other subjects. For example,
the mass of the people of Virginia were then so angrily opposed to the
old connection between church and state that they occasionally saw
danger even in projects which in no way involved such a connection.
This was the case with Patrick Henry's necessary and most innocent
measure "for the incorporation of all societies of the Christian
religion which may apply for the same;" likewise, his bill for the
incorporation of the clergy of the Episcopal Church; and, finally, his
more questionable and more offensive resolution for requiring all
citizens of the State to contribute to the expense of supporting some
form of religious worship according to their own preference.
Whether, in these several measures, Patrick Henry was right or wrong,
one thing, at least, is obvious: no politician who could thus beard in
his very den the lion of public opinion can be accurately described as
a demagogue.
With respect to those amazing gifts of speech by which, in the House
of Delegates, he thus repeatedly swept all opposition out of his way,
and made people think as he wished them to do, often in the very
teeth of their own immediate interests or prepossessions, an amusing
instance was mentioned, many years afterward, by President James
Madison. During the war Virginia had paid her soldiers in certificates
for the amounts due them, to be redeemed in cash at some future time.
In many cases, the poverty of the soldiers had induced them to sell
these certificates, for trifling sums in ready money, to certain
speculators, who were thus making a traffic out of the public
distress. For the purpose of checking this cruel and harmful business,
Madison brought forward a suitable bill, which, as he told the story,
Patrick Henry supported with an eloquence so irresistible that it was
carried through the House without an opposing vote; while a notorious
speculator in these very certificates, having listened from the
gallery to Patrick Henry's speech, at its conclusion so far forgot his
own interest in the question as to exclaim, "That bill ought to
pass."[339]
Concerning his appearance and his manner of speech in those days, a
bit of testimony comes down to us from Spencer Roane, who, as he tells
us, first "met with Patrick Henry in the Assembly of 1783." He adds:--
"I also then met with R. H. Lee.... I lodged with Lee one or
two sessions, and was perfectly acquainted with him, while I
was yet a stranger to Mr. H. These two gentlemen were the
great leaders in the House of Delegates, and were almost
constantly opposed. Notwithstanding my habits of intimacy
with Mr. Lee, I found myself obliged to vote with P. H.
against him in '83, and against Madison in '84, ... but with
several important exceptions. I voted against him (P. H.), I
recollect, on the subject of the refugees,--he was for
permitting their return; on the subject of a general
assessment; and the act incorporating the Episcopal Church.
I voted with him, in general, because he was, I thought, a
more practical statesman than Madison (time has made Madison
more practical), and a less selfish one than Lee. As an
orator, Mr. Henry demolished Madison with as much ease as
Samson did the cords that bound him before he was shorn. Mr.
Lee held a greater competition.... Mr. Lee was a polished
gentleman. His person was not very good; and he had lost the
use of one of his hands; but his manner was perfectly
graceful. His language was always chaste, and, although
somewhat too monotonous, his speeches were always pleasing;
yet he did not ravish your senses, nor carry away your
judgment by storm.... Henry was almost always victorious. He
was as much superior to Lee in temper as in eloquence....
Mr. Henry was inferior to Lee in the gracefulness of his
action, and perhaps also in the chasteness of his language;
yet his language was seldom incorrect, and his address
always striking. He had a fine blue eye; and an earnest
manner which made it impossible not to attend to him. His
speaking was unequal, and always rose with the subject and
the exigency. In this respect, he entirely differed from Mr.
Lee, who always was equal. At some times, Mr. Henry would
seem to hobble, especially in the beginning of his speeches;
and, at others, his tones would be almost disagreeable; yet
it was by means of his tones, and the happy modulation of
his voice, that his speaking perhaps had its greatest
effect. He had a happy articulation, and a clear, distinct,
strong voice; and every syllable was distinctly uttered. He
was very unassuming as to himself, amounting almost to
humility, and very respectful towards his competitor; the
consequence was that no feeling of disgust or animosity was
arrayed against him. His exordiums in particular were often
hobbling and always unassuming. He knew mankind too well to
promise much.... He was great at a reply, and greater in
proportion to the pressure which was bearing upon him. The
resources of his mind and of his eloquence were equal to any
drafts which could be made upon them. He took but short
notes of what fell from his adversaries, and disliked the
drudgery of composition; yet it is a mistake to say that he
could not write well."[340]
FOOTNOTES:
[311] Rives, _Life of Madison_, i. 189, note.
[312] _Jour. Va. House Del._ 54.
[313] _Jour. Va. House Del._ 27.
[314] MS.
[315] MS.
[316] _Jour. Va. House Del._ 14.
[317] _Jour. Va. House Del._ 14, 15, 18, 25, 28, 31, 39.
[318] _Jour. Va. House Del._ 7, 8, 10, 14, 24, 45, 50, 51.
[319] _Jour. Va. House Del._ 71.
[320] _Ibid._ 79.
[321] Burk, _Hist. Va._ iv. 491.
[322] _Jour. Va. House Del._ 1.
[323] Burk, _Hist. Va._ iv. 496-497.
[324] _Jour. Va. House Del._ 10.
[325] L. G. Tyler, _Letters and Times of the Tylers_, i. 81-83, where
it is said to be taken from Abel's _Life of John Tyler_.
[326] Peyton, _Hist. Augusta Co._ 211.
[327] Peyton, _Hist. Augusta Co._ 211.
[328] Randall, _Life of Jefferson_, i. 352.
[329] _Jour. Va. House Del._ 15.
[330] _Jefferson's Writings_, viii. 368; Wirt, 231; Girardin, in Burk.
_Hist. Va._ iv. App. pp. xi.-xii.; Randall, _Life of Jefferson_, i.
348-352.
[331] _Calendar Va. State Papers_, ii. 152.
[332] MS. _Hist. Va._
[333] _Jour. Va. House Del._ for Nov. 27.
[334] _Jour. Va. House Del._ for Dec. 21.
[335] For example, _Bland Papers_, ii. 51; Rives, _Life of Madison_,
i. 536; ii. 240, note.
[336] _Jour. Va. House Del._ 42.
[337] John Tyler, in Wirt, 233, 236.
[338] John Tyler, in Wirt, 237-238.
[339] Howe, _Hist. Coll. Va._ 222.
[340] MS.