Patrick Henry

by Thomas S. Kidd

  2 “Form of a Commission for the Colonel of the First Regiment, and Commander in Chief of the Regular Forces,” August 26, 1775, in Revolutionary Virginia: The Road to Independence, ed. Robert L. Scribner (Charlottesville, VA, 1978), 3:498.

  3 Lord Dunmore, “A Proclamation,” November 7, 1775, and Patrick Henry to the County Lieutenant of Westmoreland, November 20, 1775, in Scribner, Revolutionary Virginia, 4:334, 435–36.

  4 Robert W. Carter to Landon Carter, quoted in Michael McDonnell, The Politics of War: Race, Class, and Conflict in Revolutionary Virginia (Chapel Hill, NC, 2007), 101; “Commission for the Colonel of the First Regiment,” August 26, 1775, in Scribner, Revolutionary Virginia, 3:498.

  5 Virginia Committee of Safety, “Orders for Colonel William Woodford,” October 24, 1775, in Scribner, Revolutionary Virginia, 4:270; Virginia Committee of Safety, Vice President John Page to Patrick Henry, November 4, 1775, in Scribner, Revolutionary Virginia, 4:321.

  6 E. C. Branchi, “Memoirs of the Life and Voyages of Doctor Philip Mazzei,” William and Mary Quarterly 2nd series, 9, no. 3 (July 1929): 173.

  7 “A Few Anonymous Remarks on Lord Dunmore’s Proclamation,” Virginia Gazette, November 23, 1775, in Scribner, Revolutionary Virginia, 4:459–62.

  8 McDonnell, Politics of War, 135–40; Goochland County Committee, Virginia Gazette, November 29, 1775, in Scribner, Revolutionary Virginia, 4:491–92.

  9 Letter from Richard Meade, December 18, 1775, in The Bland Papers, Being a Selection from the Manuscripts of Colonel Theodorick Bland, Jr., ed. Charles Campbell (Petersburg, VA, 1840), 1:39; William Woodford quoted in John E. Selby, The Revolution in Virginia, 1775–1783 (Williamsburg, VA, 1988), 73–74; Fourth Virginia Convention Proceedings, January 17, 1776, in Scribner, Revolutionary Virginia, 5:423.

  10 Patrick Henry to William Woodford, December 6, 1775, Newberry Library; Virginia Committee of Safety, “Instruction to Colonel Woodford,” in Scribner, Revolutionary Virginia, 5:221.

  11 Edmund Pendleton to William Woodford, December 24, 1775, in The Letters and Papers of Edmund Pendleton, 1734–1803, ed. David John Mays (Charlottesville, VA, 1967), 1:141; George Washington to Joseph Reed, February 26, 1776, in Papers of George Washington: Digital Edition, ed. Theodore Crackel (Charlottesville, VA, 2007).

  12 John Adams to Abigail Adams, February 13, 1776, in Letters of Delegates to Congress, 1774–1789, ed. Paul H. Smith (Washington, DC, 1978), 3:241.

  13 Virginia Committee of Safety Proceedings, February 28, 1776, in Scribner, Revolutionary Virginia, 6:149; McDonnell, Politics of War, 181–83.

  14 Virginia Gazette (Purdie), March 1, 1776, 3.

  15 Ibid., March 15, 1776, supplement, 2.

  16 Richard Henry Lee to John Page, March 19, 1776, in Smith, Letters of Delegates to Congress, 3:408n.

  17 Virginia Gazette (Purdie), February 2, 1776, 2; Lincoln MacVeagh, ed., The Journal of Nicholas Creswell, 1774–1777 (New York, 1924), 136; McDonnell, Politics of War, 198–99.

  18 George Washington to Joseph Reed, April 1, 1776, in Crackel, Papers of George Washington: Digital Edition.

  19 Richard Henry Lee to Patrick Henry, April 20, 1776, in The Letters of Richard Henry Lee, ed. James Curtis Ballagh (1911; New York, 1970), 1:176.

  20 A Proclamation for a Continental Fast, March 16, 1776, Philadelphia, broadside; Robert Douthat Meade, Patrick Henry: Practical Revolutionary (Philadelphia, 1969), 102.

  21 Charlotte County Committee, “A Public Letter of Instructions,” in Scribner, Revolutionary Virginia, 6:447.

  22 John Adams to James Warren, July 24, 1775, in Warren-Adams Letters, ed. Worthington Chauncey Ford (Boston, 1917), 1:89; Charles Lee to Patrick Henry, May 7, 1776, in Collections of the New York Historical Society 5 (1872): 1–3.

  23 Edmund Randolph, History of Virginia, ed. Arthur H. Shaffer (Charlottesville, VA, 1970), 250; Resolution of Patrick Henry, in Scribner, Revolutionary Virginia, vol. 7, part 1: 145–46.

  24 Randolph, History of Virginia, 250.

  25 Fifth Virginia Convention, May 15, 1776, in Scribner, Revolutionary Virginia, 7, part 1:142–43.

  26 Patrick Henry to John Adams, May 20, 1776, in Papers of John Adams, ed. Robert J. Taylor (Cambridge, MA, 1979), 4:201.

  27 Virginia Gazette (Purdie), May 17, 1776, 3; Virginia Gazette (Dixon and Hunter), May 18, 1776, 3.

  28 John Adams to Patrick Henry, June 3, 1776, in Taylor, Papers of John Adams, 4:235.

  29 Ibid., 4:234; “Political cooks” quote in Andrew Burstein and Nancy Isenberg, Madison and Jefferson (New York, 2010), 34.

  30 Virginia Declaration of Rights (1776), at http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/virginia.asp; Randolph, History of Virginia, 253.

  31 Jeff Broadwater, George Mason: Forgotten Founder (Chapel Hill, NC, 2006), 81.

  32 Patrick Henry, undated fragment, in William Wirt Henry, Patrick Henry: Life, Correspondence, and Speeches (New York, 1891), 1:116; Thomas J. Buckley, S.J., “Patrick Henry, Religious Liberty, and the Search for Civic Virtue,” in The Forgotten Founders on Religion and Public Life, ed. Daniel L. Dreisbach, Mark David Hall, and Jeffry H. Morrison (Notre Dame, IN, 2009), 131–32.

  33 Third Virginia Convention, August 16, 1775, in Scribner, Revolutionary Virginia, 3:450–51, 453 n3; Thomas O’Gorman, A History of the Roman Catholic Church in the United States (New York, 1902), 252.

  34 Fifth Virginia Convention, “Petition of Baptists of Prince William County,” May 19, 1776, in Scribner, Revolutionary Virginia, 188–89; Patrick Henry to the Ministers and Delegates of the Baptist Churches, August 13, 1776, Dunlap’s Pennsylvania Packet, September 3, 1776.

  35 Virginia Declaration of Rights, http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/virginia.asp; Randolph, History of Virginia, 254; Thomas E. Buckley, Church and State in Revolutionary Virginia, 1776–1787 (Charlottesville, VA, 1977), 17–19.

  36 Randolph, History of Virginia, 255.

  37 Ibid., 255–56.

  38 Patrick Henry to the President and House of Convention, June 29, 1776, in Patrick Henry papers, Pierpont Morgan Library, New York City.

  39 Fifth Virginia Convention, June 29, 1776, in Scribner, Revolutionary Virginia, 654–55; McDonnell, Politics of War, 243–44.

  Chapter 7: “Our Worthy Governor”: Patrick Henry in Wartime

  1 “Diary of Col. Landon Carter,” William and Mary Quarterly 1st series, 20, no. 3 (January 1912): 180, 184.

  2 “Address of the First and Second Virginia Regiment to Patrick Henry, on His Appointment of Governour, Answer of the Governour,” July 1, 1776, in American Archives: Documents of the American Revolution, 1774–1776, at http://dig.lib.niu.edu/amarch.

  3 Michael A. McDonnell, The Politics of War: Race, Class, and Conflict in Revolutionary Virginia (Chapel Hill, NC, 2007), 250–51.

  4 Virginia Gazette (Purdie), August 2, 1776, 2; Brent Tarter and Robert L. Scribner, eds., Revolutionary Virginia: The Road to Independence (Charlottesville, VA, 1983), vol. 7, part 2: 669 n.3; George F. Willison, Patrick Henry and His World (Garden City, NY, 1969), 329.

  5 Patrick Henry to George Washington, September 20, 1776, in The Papers of George Washington: Digital Edition, ed. Theodore Crackel (Charlottesville, VA, 2007).

  6 George Washington to Patrick Henry, October 5, 1776, also on militias, George Washington to John Hancock, September 2, 1776, in Crackel, Papers of George Washington; Robert Douthat Meade, Patrick Henry: Practical Revolutionary (Philadelphia, 1969), 141–42.

  7 Thomas Paine, “The American Crisis,” December 19, 1776, in Thomas Paine, Common Sense and Related Writings, ed. Thomas P. Slaughter (Boston, 2001), 126.

  8 Journal of the House of Delegates, December 21, 1776, in Official Letters of the Governors of the State of Virginia, ed. H. R. McIlwaine (Richmond, VA, 1926), 1:82–83.

  9 David Waldstreicher, ed. Notes on the State of Virginia by Thomas Jefferson with Related Documents (Boston, 2002), 165.

  10 Patrick Henry to Richard Henry Lee, March 28, 1777, in William Wirt Henry, Patrick Henry: Life, Correspondence and Speec
hes (New York, 1891), 1:515; Elizabeth A. Fenn, Pox Americana: The Great Smallpox Epidemic of 1775–82 (New York, 2001), 85, 94–95.

  11 Patrick Henry to George Washington, March 29, 1777, in Crackel, Papers of George Washington.

  12 George Washington to Patrick Henry, April 13, 1777, Patrick Henry to George Washington, September 5, 1777, in Crackel, Papers of George Washington; Patrick Henry to Charles Lewis, February 21, 1777, and March 15, 1777, in Patrick Henry papers, Pierpont Morgan Library, New York City.

  13 McDonnell, Politics of War, 284–88; Patrick Henry to George Washington, October 30, 1777, in Crackel, Papers of George Washington.

  14 Patrick Henry to George Wythe, October 22, 1777, Bancroft Library, University of California-Berkeley; McDonnell, Politics of War, 295–96.

  15 Articles of Confederation, Article I, at http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/v1ch1s7.html .

  16 Ibid., Article VII.

  17 Virginia Gazette (Dixon and Hunter), October 31, 1777, 2.

  18 Ibid., November 7, 1777, 2.

  19 Richard R. Beeman, Patrick Henry: A Biography (New York, 1974), 109–10.

  20 Patrick Griffin, American Leviathan: Empire, Nation, and Revolutionary Frontier (New York, 2007), 142; Secret instructions to Clark, January 2, 1778; George Wythe, George Mason, and Thomas Jefferson to George Rogers Clark, January 3, 1778, in George Rogers Clark Papers, 1771–1781, ed. James A. James (1912; New York, 1972), 34.

  21 Patrick Henry to George Rogers Clark, January 24, 1778; Patrick Henry to Virginia Delegates in Congress, November 16, 1778; and Patrick Henry to George Rogers Clark, December 12, 1778, in James, Clark Papers, 72, 75; Griffin, American Leviathan, 142–43.

  22 Patrick Henry to Benjamin Harrison, May 19, 1779, in James, Clark Papers, 322; Griffin, American Leviathan, 143–45.

  23 George Rogers Clark to Patrick Henry, February 3, 1779, and March 9, 1779, in James, Clark Papers, 97, 304.

  24 Thomas Jefferson to George Rogers Clark, November 26, 1782, in The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, ed. Julian P. Boyd (Princeton, NJ, 1952), 6:205; John E. Selby, The Revolution in Virginia, 1775–1783 (Charlottesville, VA, 1988), 202–03.

  25 [Benjamin Rush] to Patrick Henry, January 12, 1778, in L. H. Butterfield, Letters of Benjamin Rush (Princeton, NJ, 1951), 1:182–83.

  26 Patrick Henry to George Washington, February 20, 1778, and Henry to Washington, March 5, 1778, in Crackel, Papers of Washington.

  27 George Washington to Patrick Henry, March 27, 1778, and Washington to Henry, March 28, 1778, in ibid; Alyn Brodsky, Benjamin Rush: Patriot and Physician (New York, 2004), 246, 377 n.2.

  28 George Washington to Henry Lee, August 26, 1794, and Henry to Washington, February 20, 1778, n.1, in Crackel, Papers of Washington.

  29 Patrick Henry to Benjamin Harrison, May 27, 1778, in McIlwaine, Official Letters, 1:283.

  30 Patrick Henry to Richard Henry Lee, June 18, 1778, in Henry, Patrick Henry, 1:564.

  31 Colonel William Preston to Patrick Henry, November 25, 1778, in “Preston Papers,” ed. R. B. Marston, John P. Branch Historical Papers of Randolph-Macon College 4, no. 3 (June 1915): 297–98; Emory G. Evans, “Trouble in the Backcountry: Disaffection in Southwest Virginia During the American Revolution,” in An Uncivil War: The Southern Backcountry during the American Revolution, ed. Ronald Hoffman, Thad W. Tate, and Peter J. Albert (Charlottesville, VA, 1985), 190.

  32 Henry to Lee, June 18, 1778, in Henry, Patrick Henry, 1:564–55.

  33 Patrick Henry to Henry Laurens, November 23, 1778, in Henry, Patrick Henry, 3:205.

  34 Continental Congress, Proclamation (Hartford, CT, 1779); Patrick Henry recommendation, April 6, 1779, in McIlwaine, Official Letters, 364–65.

  35 St. George Tucker to Theodorick Bland Jr., June 6, 1779, in Henry, Patrick Henry, 2:34–35.

  36 House of Senators resolution, June 1, 1779, in McIlwaine, Official Letters, 379.

  Chapter 8: “Virtue Has Taken Its Departure”:

  The War’s End and a New Virginia

  1 Patrick Henry to Thomas Jefferson, February 15, 1780, in William Wirt Henry, Patrick Henry: Life, Correspondence, and Speeches (New York, 1891), 2:48–49.

  2 John Parke Custis to George Washington, January 9, 1779, in The Papers of George Washington: Digital Edition, ed. Theodore J. Crackel (Charlottesville, VA, 2007).

  3 George Washington to John Augustine Washington, November 26, 1778, in ibid.

  4 Henry to Jefferson, February 15, 1780, in Henry, Patrick Henry, 2:49.

  5 Patrick Henry to Adam Stephen, June 10, 1779, Virginia Historical Society; Robert Douthat Meade, Patrick Henry: Practical Revolutionary (Philadelphia, 1969), 224–25.

  6 John E. Selby, The Revolution in Virginia, 1775–1783 (Charlottesville, VA, 1988), 248–50.

  7 Meade, Practical Revolutionary, 228; John Ferling, Almost a Miracle: The American Victory in the War of Independence (New York, 2007), 421.

  8 Michael Kranish, Flight from Monticello: Thomas Jefferson at War (New York, 2010), 162.

  9 Ibid., 166–67.

  10 Ibid., 188–90.

  11 Quotes from Ferling, Almost a Miracle, 497–99; Meade, Practical Revolutionary , 234–35.

  12 Henry, Patrick Henry, 2:118–19.

  13 Thomas Jefferson to George Washington, May 28, 1781, in The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, ed. Julian P. Boyd (Princeton, NJ, 1952), 6:33.

  14 Kranish, Flight from Monticello, 278, 295–96.

  15 Archibald Stuart to Thomas Jefferson, September 8, 1818, in Henry, Patrick Henry, 148; David Waldstreicher, ed., Notes on the State of Virginia with Related Documents (Boston, 2002), 165–66; Richard Henry Lee to [James Lovell], June 12, 1781, in The Letters of Richard Henry Lee, ed. James Curtis Ballagh (1911; New York, 1970), 2:237; Michael A. McDonnell, The Politics of War: Race, Class, and Conflict in Revolutionary Virginia (Chapel Hill, NC, 2007), 465–66.

  16 McDonnell, Politics of War, 469–70; Henry, Patrick Henry, 2:154.

  17 Thomas Jefferson to Isaac Zane, December 24, 1781, in Boyd, Papers of Thomas Jefferson, 6:143; Richard R. Beeman, Patrick Henry: A Biography (New York, 1974), 132.

  18 Thomas Jefferson to James Monroe, May 20, 1782, in Boyd, Papers of Thomas Jefferson, 6:185; Andrew Burstein and Nancy Isenberg, Madison and Jefferson (New York, 2010), 92.

  19 Elizabeth A. Fenn, Pox Americana: The Great Smallpox Epidemic of 1775–82 (New York, 2001), 129–31.

  20 Horatio Gates to Patrick Henry, May 10, 1782, in Henry, Patrick Henry, 2:173.

  21 Ibid., 174; McDonnell, Politics of War, 487, 490; Eva Sheppard Wolf, Race and Liberty in the New Nation: Emancipation in Virginia from the Revolution to Nat Turner’s Rebellion (Baton Rouge, LA, 2006), 44, 125; Bureau of the Census, A Century of Population Growth (Washington, DC, 1909), 132.

  22 Beeman, Patrick Henry, 120–21.

  23 George Mason to Patrick Henry, May 6, 1783, in The Papers of George Mason, ed. Robert A. Rutland (Chapel Hill, NC, 1970), 2:770–71; Emory G. Evans, “Private Indebtedness and the Revolution in Virginia, 1776 to 1796,” William and Mary Quarterly 3rd series, 28, no. 3 (July 1971): 368–69.

  24 William Wirt, Sketches of the Life and Character of Patrick Henry (New York, 1857), 254–55.

  25 Wirt, Sketches, 252–53; John A. George, “Virginia Loyalists, 1775–1783,” in Richmond College Historical Papers 1, no. 2 (June 1916): 219.

  26 Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, May 7, 1783, in Boyd, Papers of Thomas Jefferson, 6:266; J. Kent McGaughy, Richard Henry Lee of Virginia: A Portrait of an American Revolutionary (Lanham, MD, 2004), 171–72; Richard Henry Lee to Patrick Henry, December 18, 1784, in Ballagh, Letters of Richard Henry Lee, 2:314.

  27 Jefferson to Madison, May 7, 1783, in Boyd, Papers of Thomas Jefferson, 6:266; Beeman, Patrick Henry, 124–26; Ron Chernow, Alexander Hamilton (New York, 2004), 176.

  28 William Short to Thomas Jefferson, May 14, 1784, in Beeman, Patrick Henry, 126–27.

  29 Charles F. James, Documentary History of the Struggle for Religious Liberty in
Virginia (Lynchburg, VA, 1900), 129.

  30 Thomas E. Buckley, S.J., “Patrick Henry, Religious Liberty, and the Search for Civic Virtue,” in The Forgotten Founders on Religion and Public Life, ed. Daniel L. Dreisbach, Mark David Hall, and Jeffry H. Morrison (Notre Dame, IN, 2009), 125–27.

  31 Richard Henry Lee to James Madison, November 26, 1784, in Ballagh, ed., Letters of Richard Henry Lee, 2:304; George Washington to George Mason, October 3, 1785, in Crackel, Papers of George Washington.

  32 James Madison to Thomas Jefferson, July 3, 1784, in The Papers of James Madison, ed. Robert A. Rutland and William M. E. Rachal (Chicago, 1973), 8:94; Thomas E. Buckley, S.J., Church and State in Revolutionary Virginia, 1776–1787 (Charlottesville, VA, 1977), 86–88. Thanks to Tom Buckley for helping me understand, via e-mail, the legal details of the incorporation bill.

  33 James Madison to James Monroe, November 27, 1784, in Rutland and Rachal, Papers of James Madison, 8:158; Meade, Practical Revolutionary, 280–83.

  34 James Madison, “Memorial and Remonstrance,” June 20, 1785, document 43 in Philip B. Kurland and Ralph Lerner, The Founders’ Constitution (Chicago, 1987), at http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/amendI_religions43.html; William Fristoe, A Concise History of the Ketoc-ton Baptist Association (Staunton, VA, 1808), 94.

  35 “A Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom,” (1786), in The Sacred Rights of Conscience: Selected Readings on Religious Liberty and Church-State Relations in the American Founding, ed. Daniel L. Dreisbach and Mark David Hall (Indianapolis, 2009), 251.

  36 Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, December 8, 1784, in Boyd, Papers of Thomas Jefferson, 7:558; Kevin R. C. Gutzman, Virginia’s American Revolution: From Dominion to Republic, 1776–1840 (Lanham, MD, 2007), 64.

  37 Mary V. Thompson, “In the Hands of a Good Providence”: Religion in the Life of George Washington (Charlottesville, VA, 2008), 69–71.

  38 James Jay to Patrick Henry, December 20, 1784; Countess of Huntingdon to Governor of Virginia, April 8, 1784; Outlines of Countess of Huntingdon’s Plan, April 8, 1784, in Henry, Patrick Henry, 3:248–61; Patrick Henry to Virginia Delegates in Congress, February 3, 1785, in Henry, Patrick Henry, 2:273–74; Patrick Henry to Joseph Martin, February 4, 1785, Patrick Henry Papers, Library of Congress.