Lion of Liberty

by Harlow Giles Unger

  George Washington was named commander in chief of the Continental Army by the Continental Congress in 1775, but took command too late to prevent the slaughter of American Patriots on Bunker Hill. (LIBRARY OF CONGRESS)

  With the Pennsylvania Assembly convening in the State House, the delegates to the intercolonial meeting met in Carpenters’ Hall, the craftsmen’s union headquarters and meeting hall, about two blocks to the east on Chestnut Street. Only Georgia failed to send a delegate. With Virginia’s acquiescence a key to success, the delegates unanimously elected fifty-three-year-old Peyton Randolph, Speaker of the House of Burgesses, to chair the meeting. Though stout, Randolph idealized Virginia’s Tidewater aristocracy, dressed elegantly with a powdered wig and just enough of “Old England” in his bearing to command respect from “commoners.”

  Of the procedural questions that delegates faced after Randolph called them to order, they quickly resolved two, dubbing themselves “Congress” (the press would label it the Continental Congress) and giving Randolph the title of “President.” A third question on voting would prove more contentious and, indeed, would hound them and their successors for the next fifteen years: whether to vote as equals, with each colony having one vote, or as representatives of the people, with each delegation casting votes in proportion to the population of its state. The question puzzled the entire Assembly. None had ever dealt with problems of a free republic. Assigning each colony an equal vote would allow eight or nine colonies with a collective minority of the people to dictate to the majority, while voting proportional to population would allow Virginia and Massachusetts to act in concert and dictate to the eleven other colonies. Delegates sat puzzled—indeed stunned by the grave injustices that each system might produce.

  “None seemed willing to break the eventful silence,” said Charles Thomson, who had been elected secretary of Congress, “until a grave looking member, in a plain dark suit of minister’s gray, and unpowdered wig arose. All became fixed in attention on him. ...”9 It was Patrick Henry.

  John Adams described Henry’s inaugural address on America’s national stage:Mr. Henry . . . said this was the first General Congress which had ever happened; and that no former congress could be a precedent; that we should have occasion for more general congresses, and therefore that a precedent ought to be established now; that it would be a great injustice if a little colony should have the same weight in the councils of America as a great one. . . .

  According to Adams, Henry went on to proclaim,Government is dissolved. Where are your landmarks, your boundaries of colonies? We are in a state of nature, sir. . . . The distinctions between Virginians, Pennsylvanians, New Yorkers, and New Englanders, are no more. I am not a Virginian, I am an American. I propose that a scale should be laid down; that part of North America which was once Massachusetts Bay and that part which was once Virginia ought to be considered as having a weight. . . . I will submit, however; I am determined to submit, if I am overruled.10

  Governor Samuel Ward of tiny Rhode Island objected to Henry’s argument, pointing out that each county in Virginia sent two delegates to the House of Burgesses, regardless of any county’s population or wealth. To Henry’s surprise, his ally Richard Henry Lee raised another objection to proportionate representation: Congress had no way to measure the population. New York’s John Jay stepped in with a compromise: “To the virtue, spirit, and abilities of Virginia we owe much. I should always, therefore, from inclination as well as justice be for giving Virginia its full weight.” Given the impossibility of obtaining a population count, however, Jay said Congress should give each colony an equal voice, but that the voting method not become a precedent until Congress was “able to procure proper materials for ascertaining the importance of each colony.”11

  Congress remained in session seven weeks, during which every delegate had to “show his oratory, his criticism, and his political abilities,” John Adams complained to his wife, Abigail. Calling the proceedings “tedious beyond expression,” he told her that if a motion were made that two plus two equaled five, delegates would debate it endlessly “with logic and rhetoric, law, history, politics and mathematics.”12 Because of Virginia’s importance, at least two Virginia delegates served on every committee, with Henry serving on three—including one with John Adams and Richard Henry Lee to prepare a final address to the king. With so many of his colleagues quoting from it, Henry acquired a translation of L’Esprit des lois, or The Spirit of Laws, a monumental work by France’s Baron de Montesquieu, whom John Adams and other Congress “intellects” cited as casually as a minister citing the Scriptures.13

  On September 17, Congress endorsed the Suffolk Resolves adopted in Suffolk County, Massachusetts, which declared the Coercive Acts unconstitutional and urged the people of Massachusetts to withhold payment of all taxes until Britain repealed the Acts. The Suffolk Resolves (and Congress) urged the people to boycott British goods and form their own armed militia to end the need for British military protection against the Indians. On September 28, Pennsylvania delegate Joseph Galloway proposed a “Plan of a Proposed Union between Great Britain and the Colonies” to create a new American government, with a president-general appointed by the king and a grand council, as an “inferior and distinct branch” of Parliament.

  After a New York delegate seconded Galloway, John Jay and South Carolina’s Edward Rutledge proffered their support. A curious silence then gripped Congress, awaiting some opposition. With no one else apparently willing to challenge the proposal, Henry finally stood to denounce it, with what presaged his lifelong opposition to centralized government.

  The original constitution of the colonies was founded on the broadest and most generous base. The regulation of our trade was compensation enough for all the protection we ever experienced from England. We shall liberate our constituents from a corrupt House of Commons, but throw them into the arms of an American legislature that may be bribed by that nation which avows, in the face of the world, that bribery is a part of her system of government. Before we are obliged to pay taxes as they do, let us be as free as they; let us have our trade with all the world.”14

  Led by Henry’s and Samuel Adams’s fierce opposition, Congress rejected the plan by a single vote, and it later expunged the proposal from the record. “Had it been adopted,” Henry’s grandson William Wirt Henry commented later, “the independence of the colonies would have been indefinitely postponed. ...”15

  “He is a real half-Quaker,” a spectator at the convention wrote of Henry to Robert Pleasants, Henry’s Quaker friend in Virginia. Henry, he said, was “moderate and mild, and in religious matters a saint; but the very devil in politics—a son of thunder.”16

  Except for his denunciation of the Galloway proposal, Henry had no more nor less impact at the Continental Congress than his counterparts—largely because he was, for the first time in his life, in the metaphorical big pond of American politics, with some of America’s best educated, best trained lawyers. Many had studied in Britain and debated with that nation’s most brilliant scholars. To his credit, Henry did not display the meaningless rhetorical tricks and “string of learning” that mesmerized semiliterate mountain people in Hanover County, Virginia. Instead, he held his tongue and had the good sense and political instinct to begin studying Montesquieu’s work on government.

  On October 14, as Congress prepared its declaration and resolves, Paul Revere galloped to the door of Carpenters’ Hall to announce that the Massachusetts House had met in Salem and declared itself a Provincial Congress. In effect, Massachusetts had staged a coup d’état, overthrowing royal rule and creating the first independent government in America. The Provincial Congress elected John Hancock its president and assumed all powers to govern the province, collect taxes, buy supplies, and raise a militia.

  Stunned by the news, members of the Continental Congress did not know whether to cheer the boldness of Massachusetts assemblymen or lament their probable capture and slaughter by British troops. When delegates c
ollected themselves, they issued a declaration supporting “the inhabitants of Massachusetts” and urging “all America . . . to support them in their opposition.”17 Congress then issued resolutions condemning the Coercive Acts and all the taxes imposed since 1763, along with the practice of dissolving assemblies and maintaining a standing army in colonial towns in peacetime. It issued ten resolutions proclaiming the rights of colonists, including the right to “life, liberty and property” and the right to control internal affairs (including taxes) through their own elected legislatures. Before adjourning, the delegates voted to form a Continental Association to boycott imports from Britain, end exports to Britain and its possessions, and to end the slave trade. The Association agreed to impose an economic boycott on any town, city, county, or colony that violated Association rules. On October 26, Congress prepared a petition for redress of grievances to the king and an address to the British and American peoples. Before adjourning, it resolved to reconvene on May 10, 1775, if Britain did not redress American grievances by then.

  After signing the document, Patrick Henry, Richard Henry Lee, and George Washington saddled up for the long ride home. John Adams approached them to say good-bye and showed them a letter he had received from the mayor of Northampton, Massachusetts, saying, “We must fight if we can’t otherwise rid ourselves of British taxation . . . enacted for us by the British parliament.”

  “By God,” Henry interrupted, “I am of that man’s mind. We must fight.”

  Richard Henry Lee disagreed: “We shall infallibly carry all our points; you will be completely relieved; all the offensive acts will be repealed; the army and fleet will be recalled, and Britain will give up her foolish project.”

  “Only Washington was in doubt,” Adams noted.18

  When Henry arrived home, his Hanover County neighbors asked him the prospects of reconciliation with Britain. Already furious at the intrusions of the British government in his life, Henry asserted that Britain “will drive us to extremities—no accommodation will take place—hostilities will soon commence—and a desperate and bloody touch it will be.”19 In his heart and soul, Patrick Henry had already declared war.

  Chapter 7

  “Give Me Liberty ...”

  Virginia was preparing for war when Henry rode home from the First Continental Congress in September 1774. “Every county is now arming a company of men whom they call an independent company,” Royal Governor Lord Dunmore wrote to the secretary of state for the colonies on Christmas Eve. In fact, almost every state was arming or planning to do so. Maryland had resolved two weeks earlier to organize a militia to eliminate the need for protection by regular British troops. Delaware followed suit two weeks later, and in early January, George Washington took command of the hundred-man Fairfax Independent Company in Alexandria—Virginia’s first such force.

  When Henry reached Scotchtown after the Continental Congress, he learned that his wife had attempted suicide during his absence and had deteriorated into deep depression. His oldest daughter, Martha, and her husband, John Fontaine, who had been caring for the five younger Henry children, had brought the entire brood to Scotchtown for the Christmas holidays in hopes of lifting Sarah Henry’s spirits. Henry had little time for his family, however. Stirred by fears of imminent British attack, he rode into Hanover town to call together the men of the county. He “addressed them in a very animated speech, pointing out the necessity of our having recourse to arms in defense of our rights, and recommending in strong terms that we should immediately form ourselves into a volunteer company.” 1 Abetted by a few jugs of white lightning, Henry’s emotional appeal sent the mountain men into a frenzy of patriotic fervor that left them pushing and shoving to volunteer in his company. After they’d finished signing up, they elected him their captain by unanimous vote, and Henry rode home to spend what remained of the Christmas holidays with his family. They proved to be melancholy days indeed. After plunging into an abyss of depression, Sarah Henry died early in the new year.

  After burying his wife, Henry buried himself in nonstop political and military activities, drilling his volunteers and preparing for the Second Virginia Convention. Only six or seven other counties across the colony had managed to raise companies of any consequence. In fact, most Virginians agreed with Richard Henry Lee that the king and Parliament would respond favorably to the Continental Congress petition for redress—much as they had responded by repealing most of the Townshend Acts in 1770 in the aftermath of the Boston Massacre.

  Indeed, all England seemed to support the American petition. When Parliament reconvened in January 1775, petitions from London, Bristol, Birmingham, Liverpool, Manchester, and almost every other trading city asked for restoration of normal relations with the colonies.

  On January 12, however, George III dashed their hopes. After reading the petition of the Continental Congress, he responded with a broad, cynical smile, complimented its eloquence, and laid it aside. A fortnight later, he rejected it and demanded that Parliament halt trade with the colonies, provide army protection for Loyalists, and arrest colonist protesters as traitors. As the House of Commons debated passage of legislation to transform the king’s pronouncements into law, Edmund Burke again pleaded with his colleagues to reconsider. “The use of force alone is but temporary,” he protested. “It may subdue for a moment; but it does not remove the necessity of subduing again, and a nation is not governed which is perpetually being conquered.”2 Parliament relented only slightly after Burke’s speech by offering a blanket pardon to repentant rebels—with the exception of such “principal Gentlemen who . . . are to be brought over to England . . . for an inquiry . . . into their conduct.” Among them were George Washington, Patrick Henry, John Hancock, Samuel Adams, John Adams, and other radicals the government believed were in “a traitorous conspiracy” against a monarch seated by “Divine Providence.” As punishment for such a crime, British law dictated hanging by the neck and “while you are still living your bodies are to be taken down, your bowels torn out . . . your head then cut off, and your bodies divided each into four quarters. ...”3

  Although news had reached America that the king had smiled at the Continental Congress petition, word of his subsequent rejection and Parliament’s trade embargo had yet to reach the former burgesses when they called for a Second Virginia Convention. They picked Richmond as their site rather than Williamsburg, where a buildup of British naval strength in nearby waters raised the menace of Lord Dunmore’s arresting Henry, Richard Henry Lee, and other Virginia political leaders. A town of only 600 residents and 150 homes, Richmond had no assembly hall, as such. The largest seating area was in St. John’s Anglican Church on Richmond Hill, with space in its pews for about 120 people.

  On March 20, 1775, the delegates sidled into the pews—Washington, Jefferson, Richard Henry Lee and other renowned Virginians. Henry took a seat in the third pew on the gospel, or left, side of the church facing the front. Almost all wanted to believe rumors, born of the king’s smile, that Parliament would repeal most of the Intolerable Acts and restore calm in America. Every delegate seemed in a good mood as the convention opened—every delegate but Henry. Confident again in his regional political pond, he reclaimed his Demosthenic airs and “in the sacred place of meeting, launched forth in solemn tones.”4 He proposed three resolutions, with the first two merely parroting the Maryland resolutions of the previous December: “That a well regulated militia, composed of gentlemen and yeomen, is the natural strength and only security of a free government; that such a militia in this colony would forever render it unnecessary for the mother country to keep among us, for the purpose of our defense, any standing army of mercenary soldiers . . . and would obviate the pretext of taxing us for their support.”5

  Henry’s third resolution, however, broke new ground with nothing less than a declaration of war: “That this colony be immediately put into a state of defense, and . . . prepare a plan for embodying, arming, and disciplining such a number of men, as may be sufficient for th
at purpose.”6 Spectators standing at the rear of the church applauded, as Peyton Randolph, the president of the convention, stood at the front trying to bring his “congregation” to order.

  St. John’s Church in Richmond, Virginia, where Patrick Henry delivered his stirring speech ending, “Give me liberty, or give me death.” (LIBRARY OF CONGRESS)

  Richard Henry Lee immediately seconded Henry, and in the debate that followed, many delegates insisted that peace was imminent and that Henry’s resolutions were premature. “Washington was prominent, though silent,” recalled Edmund Randolph, who had chosen to remain in America while his father, a staunch Tory, prepared to return to England. “His [Washington’s] looks bespoke . . . a positive concert between him and Henry.”7

  When all the delegates had finished expressing their views, Henry stood to speak. A clergyman at the church described the scene: Henry arose with an unearthly fire burning in his eye . . . this time with a majesty . . . and with all that self-possession by which he was so invariably distinguished . . . the tendons of his neck stood out white and rigid like whipcords. . . .8

  Mr. President, it is natural to man to indulge in the illusions of hope. We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth—and listen to the song of that siren, till she transforms us into beasts. Is this the part of wise men engaged in a great and arduous struggle for liberty? . . .