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Part I
PATRICK HENRY![]()
INTRODUCTION
In early September 1774, delegates from 12 British North American colonies gathered at the First Continental Congress in Philadelphia. They came to decide what should be done about the “Intolerable Acts” that Britain had imposed to punish Massachusetts aft er the Boston Tea Party on December 16, 1773.1
The British Parliament had been deeply disturbed by the destruction of private property by a Boston mob and Boston’s apparent lack of interest in finding and punishing the rioters. Tensions between the colonies and mother country had simmered hot and cold for almost ten years aft er colonial protests against the 1765 Stamp Act as “taxation without representation,” and Parliament thought that it had been tolerant, perhaps too tolerant. Now, with tea soaking in Boston harbor, it chose to act decisively in an effort to stop this lawlessness.
In a series of laws known as the Coercive Acts in Britain and the Intolerable Acts in America, Parliament closed the port of Boston to all trade, a heavy blow for a city that lived on its commerce. Parliament also fundamentally changed the Massachusetts government. All members of the Council (the upper branch of Massachusetts’ legislature), previously elected, would now be royal appointees, and all sheriffs (who chose juries in court cases) would be appointed by the royal governor. British troops patrolled Boston streets, and British warships patrolled the harbor. Unless it paid for the tea that had been destroyed, Boston was threatened with hunger and economic collapse, and Massachusetts feared that its dearest liberties were lost. Massachusetts desperately needed the help of the other colonies.
Yet, it was not at all clear that the other colonies would support Massachusetts. Many colonists believed that hot-heads in Massachusetts had acted illegally in rioting and destroying the tea, and few colonial leaders condoned such attacks on private property. Even if Parliament was wrong to impose taxes on the importation of tea into America, the tea dumped into Boston’s harbor belonged to the East India Company. Further complicating matters for Boston, colonists from outside of New England generally did not have a natural sympathy for, or even an intimate familiarity with, Massachusetts. Commerce and communications in the colonies ran like spokes on a wheel with London (the metropole) at the center. As a result, delegates from southern and middle colonies usually had closer ties with Britain – economic, commercial, political, and family relations – than they did with Boston. Should they risk also being punished by Britain if they supported illegal activity in Boston? Was an open dispute with Britain justified by a very small tax on tea imports and Boston’s violent and illegal reaction to the tax?
Other colonies had protested the Tea Act and had refused to allow taxed tea to land in their ports. In Philadelphia, a “Committee for Tarring and Feathering” easily persuaded British sea captains that they should not even try to unload taxed tea. Only in Boston had the protests resulted in massive violent mobs and open destruction of private property. Moderates reminded colonial leaders that peaceful demonstrations had worked in the past; Britain had withdrawn the Stamp Tax in 1765, and in 1770 the Townshend Duties on paper, paint, and lead had been removed aft er colonial protests and commercial boycotts, leaving only a small tax on tea. Was Massachusetts leading the colonies in a dangerous and unjustified direction? These were questions that faced the delegates at the First Continental Congress.
The Congress was populated with many of the most famous and gift ed men in the colonies – Sam Adams (probably the best known of the Boston hot-heads), his cousin John, George Washington (respected for his bravery in the French & Indian War), Peyton Randolph (Speaker of Virginia’s House of Burgesses); but in the age before easy transportation and mass communication, most of the delegates were strangers to each other. Many of the delegates had the natural caution of lawyers and businessmen. As these proud men, each a leader in his own colony, gathered in Carpenter’s Hall in Philadelphia, they introduced themselves to one another and tried to take the measure of their new colleagues. Aft er settling on a place to meet and electing a speaker and secretary, the delegates seemed to be at a bit of a loss on how best to proceed.
Into the uncertainty, a tall, thin Virginian rose to address the gathering. He was dressed in a plain suit like a “Presbyterian clergyman,” according to one observer. Many delegates had heard of Patrick Henry because of his famous resolutions against the Stamp Act in 1765 (and the treasonous speech that accompanied them). He had also participated on the Committee of Correspondence that helped to maintain communication between the colonies during their struggles with Great Britain. But probably no one outside of the Virginia delegation had ever seen him or heard his mesmerizing voice.2
Yet, the minute he launched into his speech, the group’s attention was focused on the man who became known as the “trumpet of the American Revolution” (with George Washington being “the sword” and Thomas Jefferson “the pen”). “Henry from Virginia insisted that by the oppression of Parliament all Government was dissolved, and that we were reduced to a State of Nature,” wrote a delegate from New York. “Fleets and armies and the present state of things show that government is dissolved,” Henry warned the delegates. It was immediately clear that Henry planned to throw his full support behind the suffering patriots of Massachusetts and, to rally that support, this most Virginian of men declared to rapt delegates that “The distinctions between Virginians, Pennsylvanians, New Yorkers, and New Englanders, are no more. I am not a Virginian, but an American.” When Thomas Jefferson came to Congress a year later, he was told that Henry “had captivated all, by his bold and splendid eloquence.”3
One can hardly blame the delegates for being moved. Henry’s emphatic declaration, coming from a leader of the largest American colony, set an important tone of unity and cooperation for the rest of the meeting of the First Continental Congress. Members could not help but notice that Henry embraced the word “American.” For years prior to the Continental Congress, the term was used primarily by Englishmen almost as an insult, as a way to distinguish “colonials” who were somehow not fully English. Yet, as the Revolution approached, the name “American” was increasingly used proudly on the western shores of the Atlantic. Henry’s declaration in Philadelphia was part of that important change, part of forming a new people.4
Edmund Randolph, soon a leader in the patriot movement in his own right, explained that “It was Patrick Henry … awakening the genius of his country, and binding a band of patriots together to hurl defiance at the tyranny of so formidable a nation as Great Britain.” Jefferson, who would in later life develop a deep-seated hatred, some would say jealousy, of Henry, conceded that Henry’s influence in these early days of the American Revolution was essential. “[I]t is not now easy to say what we should have done without Patrick Henry,” said Jefferson. “He was far before all in maintaining the spirit of the Revolution … he was our leader in the measures of the Revolution in Virginia, and in that respect more is due to him than to any other person.” Henry “certainly gave the first impulse to the ball of the revolution.” Henry’s “I am … an American” speech helped to unite the colonies and drive the Revolution forward.5
All of this is true. Yet, as is oft en the case with history, there was also a different story being acted out by Patrick Henry in Philadelphia. The context of his speech is critical. As the delegates gathered in Philadelphia, largely unknown to each other and unsure of how to proceed, one of the first and most important questions faced was how to vote in the Congress: Should each colony have one vote or should larger colonies have more votes? This was an especially important issue for Virginia, the largest colony in both population and land. Should Virginia have the same vote as Delaware (which had far less than one-tenth of Virginia’s population)? Thus, when Henry rose to break the silence in Philadelphia, he was not simply making a moving speech about the ties that bound all North American colonists together, about British oppression destroying the old political system, and how shared interests were greater than local interests, he was also politicking for his own colony, trying to increase its voting power in the Congress.i
Does this mean Henry did not mean to state an important principle about American identity? That he should not be remembered for leading the call for revolution?
No. But it does suggest that this speech, like his other speeches, was not simply eloquent and persuasive. Henry was an intelligent politician and lawyer, and his speeches, whether in a political assembly or in a courtroom, drove at a particular purpose.
In popular memory, Henry’s legacy has been his stirring oratory, or at least what we think he said – very few of his speeches were written down at the time they were given (see Appendix). Yet, while those speeches were enormously important, Henry’s real legacy goes beyond speech-making. Henry was one of the most dynamic and respected leaders in the crucial years leading up to the beginning of the American Revolution. He was Virginia’s first governor aft er independence, serving successfully during very trying war years. Henry later became the most vocal and well-known opponent of ratification of the U.S. Constitution, believing that it created a government that was too powerful and too distant and that would undermine the authority of the states, a recipe for tyranny he believed. His objections played an important role in development of the Bill of Rights. As he approached death, he was called upon by George Washington to help the nation through another crisis, and Henry re-entered the political fray to insist that any changes to the government be made legally and that radical attacks on federal authority based on states’ rights threatened to split the union and should be rejected. His legacy includes both his speeches and his important political contributions.
It is striking that of the leading Founding Fathers, Henry is arguably the least remembered. One problem for historians is that his written record of letters, reports, memoranda, and other papers pales next to that of the Revolution’s sword, George Washington, and its pen, Thomas Jefferson. Henry, far less concerned than Washington, Jefferson, John Adams, or other early leaders about how future generations would remember his role, simply did not spend a lot of time focused on preserving his legacy, leading one frustrated historian to declare that he had “a miserable sense of history.” In fact, it has been suggested that the memory of Henry’s famous speeches has ill-served his legacy, with Americans remembering him only for a few important phrases (like “give me liberty or give me death”) rather than his other contributions, and many historians dismiss even that legacy as a later fabrication.6
There may be some truth in that, but there are other reasons why Henry does not loom as large in our national memory as his importance justifies. Foremost among these is the fact that Henry opposed the new Constitution. Not only did he oppose adoption of the framework of government that has achieved a status in American history as strong as Scripture, but he refused to serve in the new national government that the Constitution created, declining offers of a position on the Supreme Court, as secretary of state, as senator, as ambassador, or a likely election to the vice-presidency. His absence from federal office in the early republic certainly dramatically diminishes his historical memory.
Henry’s memory also suffers very seriously because many of his political opponents rose to power and lived long aft er Henry’s death in 1799. The problem is made worse by the fact that Henry – having been one of the leading anti-federalists during the battle over ratification of the Constitution – entered his final political campaign as a Federalist, concerned with the danger of disunion posed by the extreme states’ rights position reflected in the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions draft ed by Jefferson and James Madison respectively. In retaliation, Jefferson and his acolytes declared that Henry was an “apostate” shortly before his death. With the Jefferson-Madisonian Democratic-Republican party gaining near total dominance of American politics aft er 1800, many individuals who otherwise would have honored Henry’s accomplishments and principles found little reason to support his memory. Jefferson in an effort to try to justify his own actions, found it necessary to tell history that Henry was uneducated, inconsistent, narrow-minded, “avaritious & rotten hearted,” and a traitor to the cause of states’ rights that Henry had originally championed. While Henry was far more successful as an attorney than Jefferson, the latter also attacked Henry’s legal abilities, insisting that his legal training was “not worth a copper” (a penny). There is a good argument that Jefferson’s outrage hid his own envy of a self-made, successful, and popular man, but the negative opinion of Jefferson and his supporters had an enormous impact. The history that has been transmitted to us is deeply influenced by less than flattering, and less than fair, remembrances of Henry.7
More recently, there has been some increased interest in Patrick Henry’s role in the Revolution and early republic, but this has not necessarily improved the historic understanding of his life and contributions. Today, conservatives oft en use Henry’s opposition to a distant and powerful government in their own attacks on the federal government, allowing them to claim the legacy of one of America’s greatest Founders. This, too, can obscure the real historic figure. Aft er all, to cite Henry’s fears of a powerful and distant government for support for states’ rights today is to read into Henry much that he did not, could not have said or believed. Henry did not witness a devastating Civil War that resulted from states’ refusal to protect people with the rights of citizens; he could not have anticipated the rapid growth in technology and commerce linking the nation from sea-to-sea and beyond; he could not have imagined an increasingly fragile world in which uncontrolled freedom of individuals to do as they please, even on their own lands, risks the environment for millions yet unborn; he could not have foreseen the international challenges that the nation would face in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Equally important, even in his own times, he advocated limits on the states’ rights doctrine. At best, he stands ill at ease in the dress placed on him by some twenty-first century conservatives.
How such an important historical figure can be so wrongly belittled and equally wrongly lionized can be perplexing. Understanding Patrick Henry and his contribution to our history then is not only a question of understanding his youth, career, and principles, but also an exercise in understanding the American nation that he helped to birth and how history is written and remembered. One must cut through both the myth that makes him almost a demi-god and the equally strained outrage of his enemies.
* * * * *
Patrick Henry was one of the first of the patriots to push the new nation toward the Revolution. Even Jefferson conceded that Henry provided essential leadership by inspiring and “maintaining the spirit of the Revolution.” He spoke words so powerful and beautiful that “He appeared to me to speak as Homer wrote” – an extraordinary compliment coming from Jefferson, and he was oft en compared to Cicero or Demosthenes, the greatest of orators in classical Rome and Greece. Those who might have waivered were strengthened by his speeches; many of those who fought did so with the slogan that he made famous – “liberty or death” – on their minds, many with the slogan emblazoned on their shirts. He was steadfast.8
As Virginia’s first elected governor (and the only person ever elected six times to that post), he h...
