Patrick Henry

by Thomas S. Kidd

  9 Robert H. Bishop, An Outline of the History of the Church in the State of Kentucky (Lexington, KY, 1824), 40.

  10 Kidd, Great Awakening, 234–36.

  11 Patrick Henry to William Dawson, October 14, 1745, in “Letters of Patrick Henry, Sr., Samuel Davies, James Maury, Edwin Conway and George Trask,” William and Mary Quarterly 2nd series, 1, no. 4 (October 1921): 266–67.

  12 Patrick Henry to William Dawson, June 8, 1747, in “Letters,” William and Mary Quarterly, 273.

  13 Samuel Davies to the Bishop of London, January 10, 1752, in Foote, Sketches of Virginia, 183–84; Rhys Isaac, “Religion and Authority: Problems of the Anglican Establishment in Virginia in the Era of the Great Awakening and the Parsons’ Cause,” William and Mary Quarterly 3rd series, 30, no. 1 (January 1973): 26.

  14 Kidd, Great Awakening, 290.

  15 Soame Jenyns, A View of the Internal Evidence of the Christian Religion, 10th ed. (Richmond, VA, 1787), 28; Narrative of Colonel Samuel Meredith, Patrick Henry Papers, Library of Congress, 2.

  16 Narrative of Meredith, 2–3; Philip Doddridge, The Rise and Progress of Religion in the Soul, 6th ed. (Boston, 1749), 9.

  17 Narrative of Meredith, 3.

  18 James Maury to John Fontaine, June 15, 1756, in Ann Maury, trans. and comp., Memoirs of a Huguenot Family (New York, 1853), 402; Isaac, “Religion and Authority,” 11–13.

  19 Governor Dinwiddie to the Bishop of London, September 12, 1757, in Historical Collections Relating to the American Colonial Church, ed. William Stevens Perry (1870; New York, 1969), 455; Isaac, “Religion and Authority,” 13–14.

  20 John Camm, “The Humble Representation of the Clergy,” in Pamphlets of the American Revolution, 1750–1776, ed. Bernard Bailyn (Cambridge, MA, 1965), 1:353; Landon Carter, A Letter to the Right Reverend Father in God (Williamsburg, VA, 1759), 8.

  21 William Kay to the Bishop of London, June 14, 1752, quoted in Isaac, “Religion and Authority,” 8.

  22 Carter, Letter, 14.

  23 Bailyn, Pamphlets, 1:295; “turbulent” quote from Jack P. Greene, The Quest for Power: The Lower Houses of Assembly in the Southern Royal Colonies, 1689–1776 (Chapel Hill, NC, 1963), 359; Fauquier quote in Thomas J. Wertenbaker, Give Me Liberty: The Struggle for Self-Government in Virginia (Philadelphia, 1958), 214.

  24 Richard Bland, A Letter to the Clergy of Virginia (Williamsburg, VA, 1760), 16, 20.

  25 Leonard W. Labaree, Royal Government in America: A Study of the British Colonial System Before 1783 (New Haven, CT, 1930), 264–65.

  26 William Robinson to the Bishop of London, 1763, in Perry, Historical Collections, 482.

  27 Maury to Camm, December 12, 1763.

  28 Carl R. Loundsbury, The Courthouses of Early Virginia: An Architectural History (Charlottesville, VA, 2005), 88–89, 151–52.

  29 Maury to Camm, December 12, 1763.

  30 Ibid.

  31 John Camm, A Review of the Rector Detected (Williamsburg, VA, 1764), 23; Robert Douthat Meade, Patrick Henry: Patriot in the Making (Philadelphia, 1957), 136–37.

  32 Meade, Patriot in the Making, 141–42.

  33 Charles S. Sydnor, Gentlemen Freeholders: Political Practices in Washington’s Virginia (1952; Westport, CT, 1984), 51–54.

  34 John Pendleton Kennedy, ed., Journals of the House of Burgesses of Virginia, 1761–1765 (Richmond, VA, 1907), 271–72.

  35 Beeman, Patrick Henry, 25, 30.

  Chapter 3: “If This Be Treason”: The Stamp Act Crisis

  1 “Journal of a French Traveler in the Colonies, 1765,” American Historical Review 26, no. 4 (July 1921): 745.

  2 “Line of treason” quote in Edmund Pendleton to James Madison, April 21, 1790, in The Letters and Papers of Edmund Pendleton, 1734–1803, ed. David John Mays (Charlottesville, VA, 1967), 2:565; Richard R. Beeman, Patrick Henry: A Biography (New York, 1974), 37–38.

  3 “Heard” quote in Thomas Jefferson, “Autobiography,” 1821, at www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/jeffauto.htm; “baffled” quote in Thomas Jefferson to William Wirt, August 14, 1814, in The Writings of Thomas Jefferson , ed. Albert E. Bergh (Washington, DC, 1907), 13:169.

  4 Edmund S. Morgan and Helen M. Morgan, The Stamp Act Crisis: Prologue to Revolution, rev. ed. (New York: 1962), 36–37; Fred Anderson, Crucible of War: The Seven Years’ War and the Fate of Empire in British North America, 1754–1766 (New York, 2000), 547–48.

  5 John Pendleton Kennedy, ed., Journals of the House of Burgesses of Virginia, 1761–1765 (Richmond, VA, 1907), 303; Morgan and Morgan, Stamp Act, 58, 87–88; Walter Isaacson, Benjamin Franklin: An American Life (New York, 2003), 223.

  6 Morgan and Morgan, Stamp Act, 93–94.

  7 Boston Evening Post, May 27, 1765.

  8 Kennedy, Journals, 345. On the qualities of the most powerful House members in the eighteenth century, Jack P. Greene, “Foundations of Political Power in the Virginia House of Burgesses, 1720–76,” in Jack P. Greene, Negotiated Authorities: Essays in Colonial Political and Constitutional History (Charlottesville, VA, 1994), 238–58.

  9 Thomas Jefferson to William Wirt, in S. V. Henkels, ed., “Jefferson’s Recollections of Patrick Henry,” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 34, no. 4 (1910): 388; T. H. Breen, Tobacco Culture: The Mentality of the Great Tidewater Planters on the Eve of Revolution, 2nd ed. (Princeton, NJ, 2001), 189–90.

  10 George Morgan, The True Patrick Henry (Philadelphia, 1907), 100; Kennedy, Journals, 360.

  11 Morgan and Morgan, Stamp Act, 125; Kennedy, Journals, lxviii.

  12 Maryland Gazette, July 4, 1765, in Morgan and Morgan, Stamp Act, 128–29.

  13 Boston Gazette, July 8, 1765; Morgan and Morgan, Stamp Act, 135.

  14 Morgan and Morgan, Stamp Act, 142–44.

  15 Ibid., 161–64.

  16 James Mercer Garnett, “James Mercer,” William and Mary College Quarterly Historical Magazine 17, no. 2 (October 1908): 88.

  17 Francis Fauquier to the Lords of Trade, November 3, 1765, in Kennedy, Journals, lxix–lxx.

  18 Ibid., lxx–lxxi.

  19 Morgan and Morgan, Stamp Act, 330–31.

  20 House of Commons, The Examination of Doctor Benjamin Franklin (Philadelphia, 1766), 3–4; Isaacson, Benjamin Franklin, 229–31.

  21 Morgan and Morgan, Stamp Act, 347–48.

  22 George Mason to the Committee of Merchants in London, June 6, 1766, in The Papers of George Mason, ed. Robert A. Rutland (Chapel Hill, NC, 1970), 1:65–66; Jeff Broadwater, George Mason: Forgotten Founder (Chapel Hill, NC, 2006), 38–39.

  23 “Journal of a French Traveler,” 747.

  24 William Robinson to the Bishop of London, August 12, 1765, in Historical Collections Relating to the American Colonial Church, ed. William Stevens Perry (1870; New York, 1969), 515.

  25 Morgan, True Patrick Henry, 100.

  Chapter 4: “The First Man Upon This Continent”:

  Boycotts and the Growing Crisis with Britain

  1 John Pendleton Kennedy, ed., Journals of the House of Burgesses of Virginia, 1761–1765 (Richmond, VA, 1907), 218.

  2 George Washington to George Mason, April 5, 1769, in The Papers of George Washington: Digital Edition, ed. Theodore Crackel (Charlottesville, VA, 2007); Jeff Broadwater, George Mason: Forgotten Founder (Chapel Hill, NC, 2006), 50–51.

  3 “Circular Letter to the Governors in America,” April 21, 1768, at www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/amerrev/amerdocs/circ_let_gov_1768.htm.

  4 Kennedy, Journals, 214–16.

  5 Richard R. Beeman, Patrick Henry: A Biography (New York, 1974), 22–23.

  6 Frank L. Dewey, “Thomas Jefferson and a Williamsburg Scandal: The Case of Blair v. Blair,” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 89, no. 1 (January 1981): 57; Andrew Burstein and Nancy Isenberg, Madison and Jefferson (New York, 2010), 16.

  7 Beeman, Patrick Henry, 25–27; “Kinney v. Clark (1844),” in Cases Argued and Decided in the Supreme Court of the United States, ed. Stephen K. Williams (Rochester, NY, 1911), 11:89.

  8 Patrick Henry to William Fle
ming, June 10, 1767, in Thomas Perkins Abernathy, Western Lands and the American Revolution (New York, 1937), 61–62; Patrick Griffin, American Leviathan: Empire, Nation, and the Revolutionary Frontier (New York, 2007), 101.

  9 Robert Douthat Meade, Patrick Henry: Patriot in the Making (Philadelphia, 1957), 278–79.

  10 “Notice of Sale of All of the John Robinson Estate,” December 28, 1769, in The Letters and Papers of Edmund Pendleton, 1734–1803, ed. David John Mays (Charlottesville, VA, 1967), 53–54.

  11 Ron Chernow, Washington: A Life (New York, 2010), 483; David Waldstreicher, ed., Notes on the State of Virginia, by Thomas Jefferson, with Related Documents (Boston, 2002), 199; T. H. Breen, Tobacco Culture: The Mentality of the Great Tidewater Planters on the Eve of Revolution, 2nd ed. (Princeton, NJ, 2001), 204–06.

  12 Patrick Henry, Memorandum of September 5, 1785, in Henry Family Papers, Records of the Ante-Bellum Southern Plantations from the Revolution Through the Civil War, ed. Kenneth Stampp, Series M, Selections from the Virginia Historical Society, Part 5: Southside Virginia; Robert Douthat Meade, Patrick Henry: Practical Revolutionary (Philadelphia, 1969), 151–52, 315–16.

  13 Jackson Turner Main, “The One Hundred,” William and Mary Quarterly 3rd series, 11, no. 3 (July 1954): 376–77; “Journal of a French Traveler in the Colonies,” American Historical Review 26, no. 4 (July 1921): 745.

  14 Anthony S. Parent Jr., Foul Means: The Formation of a Slave Society in Virginia, 1660–1740 (Chapel Hill, NC, 2003), 124–25; Meade, Patriot in the Making, 294.

  15 William Waller Hening, ed., The Statutes at Large; Being a Collection of All the Laws of Virginia (Richmond, VA, 1821), 8:358; Kennedy, Journals, 259.

  16 Parent, Foul Means, 161–62.

  17 “A Hanover County, Virginia, Uprising, Christmas, 1769,” in American Negro Slavery, ed. Michael Mullin (Columbia, SC, 1976), 95.

  18 Robert L. Scribner, ed., Revolutionary Virginia: The Road to Independence (Charlottesville, VA, 1973), 1:87–88.

  19 Pauline Maier, American Scripture: Making the Declaration of Independence (New York, 1997), 239.

  20 Patrick Henry to Robert Pleasants, January 18, 1773, in Meade, Patriot in the Making, 299–300.

  21 Lacy K. Ford, Deliver Us from Evil: The Slavery Question in the Old South (New York, 2009), 23.

  22 Robert Pleasants to Anthony Benezet, August 20, 1774, in “Letters of Robert Pleasants, of Curles,” William and Mary Quarterly 2nd series, 1, no. 2 (April 1921): 107, 108 n2.

  23 Samuel Allinson to Patrick Henry, October 17, 1774, in Allinson Family Papers, Rutgers University Special Collections; Robert Pleasants to Patrick Henry, March 28, 1777, in William Wirt Henry, Patrick Henry: Life, Correspondence, and Speeches (New York, 1891), 3: 49–51.

  24 Meade, Practical Revolutionary, 168–69.

  25 Waldstreicher, Notes on the State of Virginia, 195–96; Peter S. Onuf, “‘To Declare Them a Free and Independant People’: Race, Slavery, and National Identity in Jefferson’s Thought,” Journal of the Early Republic 18, no. 1 (Spring 1998): 1–6.

  26 George Mason quoted in The Founders’ Constitution, ed. Philip B. Kurland and Ralph Lerner (Chicago, 1987), at http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/a1_9_1s3.html; Broadwater, George Mason, 191–92; Beeman, Patrick Henry, 97.

  27 Kennedy, Journals, 233.

  28 “Nonimportation Association of Burgesses and Merchants,” June 22, 1770, in Scribner, Revolutionary Virginia, 82; Beeman, Patrick Henry, 48.

  29 Dumas Malone, Jefferson and His Time: Jefferson the Virginian (Boston, 1948), 1:121.

  30 Thomas Jefferson, “Autobiography,” at www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/jeffauto.htm; “Extracts from the Journal of the Proceedings of the House of Burgesses, of Virginia,” March 13, 1773, in Scribner, Revolutionary Virginia, 91.

  31 Richard Henry Lee to John Dickinson, July 25, 1768, in The Letters of Richard Henry Lee, ed. James Curtis Ballagh (1911; New York, 1970), 1:29.

  32 George Mason to Martin Cockburn, May 26, 1774, in The Papers of George Mason, ed. Robert A. Rutland (Chapel Hill, NC, 1970), 1:190.

  33 Jefferson, “Autobiography.”

  34 “An Association, Signed by 89 Members of the Late House of Burgesses,” May 27, 1774, in Scribner, Revolutionary Virginia, 97.

  35 Jefferson, “Autobiography”; Scribner, Revolutionary Virginia, 103–04.

  36 “At a Meeting of the Freeholders of Hanover County,” July 20, 1774, in Henry, Patrick Henry, 1:191–93.

  37 “Convention Association,” August 6, 1774, in Scribner, Revolutionary Virginia, 231–32.

  38 Edmund Randolph, History of Virginia, ed. Arthur H. Shaffer (Charlottesville, VA, 1970), 206.

  39 George Washington, diary, August 30–31, 1774, in Crackel, Papers of George Washington.

  Chapter 5: “Liberty or Death”: Arming for Revolution

  1 Joseph Jackson, “Washington in Philadelphia,” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 56, no. 2 (1932): 124.

  2 Richard R. Beeman, Plain, Honest Men: The Making of the American Constitution (New York, 2009), 73–75.

  3 Mark David Hall, “Roger Sherman: An Old Puritan in a New Nation,” in The Forgotten Founders on Religion and Public Life, ed. Daniel L. Dreisbach, Mark David Hall, and Jeffry H. Morrison (Notre Dame, IN, 2009), 248–49; John Adams to Patrick Henry, June 3, 1776, in Papers of John Adams, ed. Robert J. Taylor (Cambridge, MA, 1979), 4:234.

  4 John Adams, The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: With a Life of the Author, Notes and Illustrations (Boston, 1850–1856), 2:366–67; Richard R. Beeman, Patrick Henry: A Biography (New York, 1974), 60.

  5 Adams, Works of John Adams, 2:367; Beeman, Patrick Henry, 61.

  6 At a Meeting of the Delegates of Every Town and District in the County of Suffolk (Boston, 1774), 1; Adams, Works of Adams, 2:380.

  7 Adams, Works of Adams, 2:390, 396; Robert Douthat Meade, Patrick Henry: Patriot in the Making (Philadelphia, 1957), 331.

  8 Edmund C. Burnett, ed., Letters of Members of the Continental Congress (Washington, DC, 1921), 1:28–29.

  9 Anne Christian to her sister, October 15, 1774, in William Fleming Papers, Washington and Lee University; Beeman, Patrick Henry, 63–64.

  10 www.redhill.org/descendants_genealogy.html.

  11 Meade, Patriot in the Making, 280–282; Priscilla Hart, “The Madhouse of Colonial Williamsburg: An Interview with Shomer Zwelling,” History News Network, October 5, 2009, at http://hnn.us/articles/117164.html.

  12 “Recommendations and Instructions to Hanover County Delegates,” March 4, 1775, in Revolutionary Virginia: The Road to Independence, ed. Robert L. Scribner (Charlottesville, VA, 1975), 2:311–12.

  13 “Humble Petition and Memorial of the Assembly of Jamaica,” December 28, 1774, in Scribner, Revolutionary Virginia, 2:363–66; “Proceedings of the Second Virginia Convention,” March 23, 1775, in Scribner, Revolutionary Virginia, 2:366.

  14 Charles L. Cohen, “The ‘Liberty or Death’ Speech: A Note on Religion and Revolutionary Rhetoric,” William and Mary Quarterly 3rd series, 38, no. 4 (October 1981): 710–14.

  15 William Wirt, Sketches of the Life and Character of Patrick Henry, 15th ed. (New York, 1857), 138–39, 141; Cohen, “‘Liberty or Death’ Speech,” 706.

  16 Wirt, Sketches, 138–39.

  17 Ibid., 140–42.

  18 Edmund Randolph, History of Virginia, ed. Arthur H. Shaffer (Charlottesville, VA, 1970), 212; James Parker to Charles Steuart, April 6, 1775, in Robert Douthat Meade, Patrick Henry: Practical Revolutionary (Philadelphia, 1969), 36.

  19 Joseph Addison, Cato, A Tragedy (Boston, 1767), 37; H. Trevor Col-bourn, The Lamp of Experience: Whig History and the Intellectual Origins of the American Revolution (Chapel Hill, NC, 1965), 153; Kevin J. Hayes, The Mind of a Patriot: Patrick Henry and the World of Ideas (Charlottesville, VA, 2008), 72–73.

  20 Wirt, Sketches, 141.

  21 James Parker quoted in Meade, Practical Revolutionary, 43.

  22 “Proceedings,” March
25, 1775, in Scribner, Revolutionary Virginia, 2:374–75; “Lieutenant George Gilmer to the Albemarle County First Independent Company,” in Scribner, Revolutionary Virginia, 3:52.

  23 Robert L. Scribner, “Introductory Note,” in Scribner, Revolutionary Virginia, 4:3–5; Michael A. McDonnell, The Politics of War: Race, Class, and Conflict in Revolutionary Virginia (Chapel Hill, NC, 2007), 49–50.

  24 “An Humble Address,” April 21, 1775, in Scribner, Revolutionary Virginia, 4:54–55; Woody Holton, Forced Founders: Indians, Debtors, Slaves, and the Making of the American Revolution in Virginia (Chapel Hill, NC, 1999), 141–45.

  25 Scribner, Revolutionary Virginia, 3:52 n2; Holton, Forced Founders, 147.

  26 Charles Dabney to William Wirt, December 21, 1805, in Patrick Henry Papers, Library of Congress; George Dabney to William Wirt, May 14, 1805, in Patrick Henry Papers, Library of Congress; Beeman, Patrick Henry, 70.

  27 “Hanover County Committee,” May 9, 1775, in Scribner, Revolutionary Virginia, 3:111.

  28 “A True Patriot,” in Virginia Gazette (Pinkney), May 11, 1775, in Scribner, Revolutionary Virginia, 3:117; Lord Dunmore, “A Proclamation,” May 6, 1775, in Scribner, Revolutionary Virginia, 3:100–01.

  29 Orange County Committee, “An Endorsement of Violence and Reprisal,” in Scribner, Revolutionary Virginia, 3:112–13.

  30 Patrick Henry to Francis Lightfoot Lee, May 8, 1775, in Lee Family Papers, University of Virginia Library.

  31 William Wirt Henry, Patrick Henry: Life, Correspondence, and Speeches (New York, 1891), 1:290.

  32 Thomas Jefferson to William Wirt, August 4, 1805, in “Jefferson’s Recollections of Patrick Henry,” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 34, no. 4 (1910): 393.

  33 George Washington to John Washington, June 20, 1775, in The Papers of George Washington: Digital Edition, ed. Theodore Crackel (Charlottesville, VA, 2007); Beeman, Patrick Henry, 72.

  Chapter 6: “To Cut the Knot”: Independence

  1 William Waller Hening, ed., The Statutes at Large (Richmond, VA, 1821), 9:36; “Patrick Henry’s Commission,” American Historical Record 2, no. 13 (January 1873): 32–33.