25 chapters
10 hour read
Selected Chapters
25 chapters
PREFACE
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 consider
3 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
PREFACE TO REVISED EDITION
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 Patric
1 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER I EARLY YEARS
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 nam
10 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER II WAS HE ILLITERATE?
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 spontane
14 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER III BECOMES A LAWYER
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 o
16 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER IV A CELEBRATED CASE
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, n
26 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER V FIRST TRIUMPHS AT THE CAPITAL
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
30 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER VI CONSEQUENCES
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; w
16 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER VII STEADY WORK
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
13 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER VIII IN THE FIRST CONTINENTAL CONGRESS
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
33 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER IX “AFTER ALL, WE MUST FIGHT”
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 consider
30 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER X THE RAPE OF THE GUNPOWDER
CHAPTER X THE RAPE OF THE GUNPOWDER
Several of the famous men of the Revolution, whose distinction is now exclusively that of civilians, are supposed to have cherished very decided military aspirations; to have been rather envious of the more vivid renown acquired by some of their political associates who left the senate for the field; and, indeed, to have made occasional efforts to secure for themselves the opportunity for glory in the same pungent and fascinating form. A notable example of this class of Revolutionary civilians w
18 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XI IN CONGRESS AND IN CAMP
CHAPTER XI IN CONGRESS AND IN CAMP
On Thursday, the 18th of May, Patrick Henry took his seat in the second Continental Congress; and he appears thenceforward to have continued in attendance until the very end of the session, which occurred on the 1st of August. From the official journal of this Congress, it is impossible to ascertain the full extent of any member’s participation in its work. Its proceedings were transacted in secret; and only such results were announced to the public as, in the opinion of Congress, it was desirab
26 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XII INDEPENDENCE
CHAPTER XII INDEPENDENCE
Upon this mortifying close of a military career which had opened with so much expectation and even éclat , Patrick Henry returned, early in March, 1776, to his home in the county of Hanover,—a home on which then rested the shadow of a great sorrow. In the midst of the public engagements and excitements which absorbed him during the previous year, his wife, Sarah, the wife of his youth, the mother of his six children, had passed away. His own subsequent release from public labor, however bitter i
30 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XIII FIRST GOVERNOR OF THE STATE OF VIRGINIA
CHAPTER XIII FIRST GOVERNOR OF THE STATE OF VIRGINIA
On Friday, the 5th of July, 1776, Patrick Henry took the oath of office, [255] and entered upon his duties as governor of the commonwealth of Virginia. The salary attached to the position was fixed at one thousand pounds sterling for the year; and the governor was invited to take up his residence in the palace at Williamsburg. No one had resided in the palace since Lord Dunmore had fled from it; and the people of Virginia could hardly fail to note the poetic retribution whereby the very man whom
32 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XIV GOVERNOR A SECOND TIME
CHAPTER XIV GOVERNOR A SECOND TIME
Patrick Henry’s second term as governor extended from the 28th of June, 1777, to the 28th of June, 1778: a twelvemonth of vast and even decisive events in the struggle for national independence,—its awful disasters being more than relieved by the successes, both diplomatic and military, which were compressed within that narrow strip of time. Let us try, by a glance at the chief items in the record of that year, to bring before our eyes the historic environment amid which the governor of Virginia
21 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XV THIRD YEAR IN THE GOVERNORSHIP
CHAPTER XV THIRD YEAR IN THE GOVERNORSHIP
Governor Henry’s third official year was marked, in the great struggle then in progress, by the arrival of the French fleet, and by its futile attempts to be of any use to those hard-pressed rebels whom the king of France had undertaken to encourage in their insubordination; by awful scenes of carnage and desolation in the outlying settlements at Wyoming, Cherry Valley, and Schoharie; by British predatory expeditions along the Connecticut coast; by the final failure and departure of Lord North’s
17 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XVI AT HOME AND IN THE HOUSE OF DELEGATES
CHAPTER XVI 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 governors
33 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XVII SHALL THE CONFEDERATION BE MADE STRONGER?
CHAPTER XVII SHALL THE CONFEDERATION BE MADE STRONGER?
We have now arrived at the second period of Patrick Henry’s service as governor of Virginia, beginning with the 30th of November, 1784. For the four or five years immediately following that date, the salient facts in his career seem to group themselves around the story of his relation to that vast national movement which ended in an entire reorganization of the American Republic under a new Constitution. Whoever will take the trouble to examine the evidence now at hand bearing upon the case, can
17 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XVIII THE BATTLE IN VIRGINIA OVER THE NEW CONSTITUTION
CHAPTER XVIII THE BATTLE IN VIRGINIA OVER THE NEW CONSTITUTION
The great convention at Philadelphia, after a session of four months, came to the end of its noble labors on the 17th of September, 1787. Washington, who had been not merely its presiding officer but its presiding genius, then hastened back to Mt. Vernon, and, in his great anxiety to win over to the new Constitution the support of his old friend Patrick Henry, he immediately dispatched to him a copy of that instrument, accompanied by a very impressive and conciliatory letter, [362] to which, abo
31 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XIX THE AFTER-FIGHT FOR AMENDMENTS
CHAPTER XIX THE AFTER-FIGHT FOR AMENDMENTS
Thus, on the question of adopting the new Constitution, the fight was over; but on the question of amending that Constitution, now that it had been adopted, the fight, of course, was only just begun. For how could this new Constitution be amended? A way was provided,—but an extremely strait and narrow way. No amendment whatsoever could become valid until it had been accepted by three fourths of the States; and no amendment could be submitted to the States for their consideration until it had fir
20 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XX LAST LABORS AT THE BAR
CHAPTER XX LAST LABORS AT THE BAR
The incidents embraced within the last three chapters cover the period from 1786 to 1791, and have been thus narrated by themselves for the purpose of exhibiting as distinctly as possible, and in unbroken sequence, Patrick Henry’s relations to each succeeding phase of that immense national movement which produced the American Constitution, with its first ten amendments. During those same fervid years, however, in which he was devoting, as it might seem, every power of body and mind to his great
31 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XXI IN RETIREMENT
CHAPTER XXI IN RETIREMENT
In the year 1794, being then fifty-eight years old, and possessed at last of a competent fortune, Patrick Henry withdrew from his profession, and resolved to spend in retirement the years that should remain to him on earth. Removing from Prince Edward County, he lived for a short time at Long Island, in Campbell County; but in 1795 he finally established himself in the county of Charlotte, on an estate called Red Hill,—an estate which continued to be his home during the rest of his life, which g
30 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XXII LAST DAYS
CHAPTER XXII LAST DAYS
The intimation given by Patrick Henry to his daughter, in the summer of 1796, that, though he could never again engage in a public career, he yet might be compelled by “some unlooked-for circumstance” to make “a transient effort” for the public safety, was not put to the test until nearly three years afterward, when it was verified in the midst of those days in which he was suddenly to find surcease of all earthly care and pain. Our story, therefore, now passes hurriedly by the year 1797,—which
20 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
LIST OF PRINTED DOCUMENTS CITED IN THIS BOOK, WITH TITLES, PLACES, AND DATES OF THE EDITIONS USED.
LIST OF PRINTED DOCUMENTS CITED IN THIS BOOK, WITH TITLES, PLACES, AND DATES OF THE EDITIONS USED.
Adams, Charles Francis. (See John Adams .) Adams, Henry , The Life of Albert Gallatin. Philadelphia: 1880. Adams, Henry , John Randolph. Am. Statesmen Series. Boston: 1882. Adams, John. (See Novanglus , etc.) Adams, John , Letters of, Addressed to his Wife. Ed. by Charles Francis Adams. 2 vols. Boston: 1841. Adams, John , The Works of. Ed. by Charles Francis Adams. 10 vols. Boston: 1856. Adams, Samuel , Life of. (See Wm. V. Wells .) Alexander, James W. , The Life of Archibald Alexander. New York
21 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter