Lion of Liberty

by Harlow Giles Unger

  Among other rights, the sixteen articles guaranteed the “inalienable right to enjoy life, liberty, and happiness, the freedom of the press, the right to a speedy and fair trial before a jury, and the freedom of elections.” The sixteenth article asserted that “all men are entitled to the free exercise of religion. ...” and would lead to separation of church and state in Virginia in 1786. The articles prohibited excessive bail and fines, cruel and unusual punishment, imprisonment except by law or jury judgments, inheritance of public offices, and a standing army.

  On June 29, the Virginia Convention adopted one of the first written constitutions in the Americas and proclaimed that “the government of this country [Virginia] as formerly exercised under the Crown of Great Britain, is TOTALLY DISSOLVED.” After George Mason placed Henry’s name in nomination, the Convention elected Henry first governor of the newest, largest, and most powerful state in America, thus allowing him to fulfill his pledge to his troops to serve “the glorious cause” as a private citizen.14

  Virginia’s declaration of independence came three weeks after Richard Henry Lee, Virginia’s delegate to the Continental Congress, proposed the sweeping resolution that the United Colonies “are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States.” He also proposed that “a plan of confederation be prepared and transmitted to the respective colonies for their consideration and approbation.”15

  On July 2, Congress adopted Lee’s resolution, and on July 4, it approved a Declaration of Independence written largely by Thomas Jeffer-son and to which John Hancock appended his bold signature as president of Congress. As Hancock was signing the Declaration, Patrick Henry was taking his oath as first governor of the free and independent Commonwealth of Virginia. In an evident response to criticisms of his coarse apparel, Henry laid aside his coarse country clothes before taking office. Breaking with his past, he crowned his head with an unpowdered wig and donned a costly black suit with knee breeches, overlaid by a scarlet cloak and other adornments that befitted the highest office in the new and sovereign Commonwealth—including a costly, ornate carriage.

  Planter George Mason was among the first members of Virginia’s House of Burgesses to support a boycott of British goods after Parliament raised duties and sought to tax American colonists. (LIBRARY OF CONGRESS)

  “He had been accused by the big-wigs of former times as being a coarse and common man, and utterly destitute of dignity,” explained his son-in-law Judge Spencer Roane, “and perhaps he wished to show them that they were mistaken.”16 He apparently succeeded. From that time on, his friends and enemies addressed him as “Your Excellency” or “Your Honor.”

  Almost all Virginians and, indeed, leaders in other states, hailed Henry’s election. “Once happy under your military command,” wrote the officers and men of the First and Second Regiments that he had once commanded, “we hope for more extensive blessings from your civil empire . . . our hearts are willing, and arms ready to maintain your authority as chief magistrate. . . . ” Replying that “the remembrance of my former connection with you shall ever be dear to me,” Henry urged them, “Go on, gentlemen, to finish the great work you have so nobly and successfully begun. Convince the tyrants again, that they shall bleed, that America will bleed to her last drop, ’ere their wicked schemes find success.”17

  Henry’s Quaker friends were equally elated that “the representatives of the people have nobly declared all men equally free,” and they proposed a plan for gradual emancipation of slaves. “I can but wish and hope,” wrote Virginia’s Quaker leader Robert Pleasants, “that great abilities and interest may be exerted toward a full . . . confirmation thereof.”18

  In New York, meanwhile, the 10,000 British troops General Howe had evacuated from Boston landed unopposed on Staten Island. Ten days later, 150 British transports sailed into New York Bay and landed 20,000 more British troops and 9,000 Hessian mercenaries. Meanwhile, a second British fleet sailed within sight of Charleston, South Carolina, and rained cannon fire over Fort Moultrie on Sullivan’s Island at the entrance to Charleston Bay. Instead of destroying the fort, however, the cannon balls embedded themselves in the soft palmetto logs of the fort’s walls and strengthened them—indeed, made them all but impenetrable. When the fort’s cannons returned fire, the British fleet had no choice but to sail away ingloriously, leaving the South free of British occupation for the moment.

  With fewer than 20,000 men to defend the sprawling New York area, Washington desperately needed help defending Long Island. On August 16, Patrick Henry’s former troops—the 700 men of the First and Second Virginia regiments—broke camp in Williamsburg and marched northward through the oppressive summer heat, with the Culpeper Minutemen carrying their rattlesnake flag, to which they had added Henry’s words, “Liberty or Death.” They reached Washington’s headquarters on Harlem Heights in less than a month—but they were too late. Twenty thousand British and Hessian troops had stormed ashore in Brooklyn on the southwestern edge of Long Island and overrun the Patriot force of 5,000 defenders, killing 1,500 and capturing the American army’s entire food supply—along with two American generals. Only a thick fog allowed survivors to escape in the dark of night across the East River to New York Island (Manhattan) on August 29.

  After the Battle of Long Island, the British high command freed one of the captured American generals—John Sullivan of New Hampshire—to go to Congress with a proposal for an informal peace conference. On September 6, Congress sent Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, and Edmund Rutledge of South Carolina to Staten Island to confer with Britain’s military commanders General Sir William Howe and his brother Admiral Lord Richard Howe. After the usual preliminaries on September 11, the conference came to an abrupt end when the Howes insisted that the Americans renounce the Declaration of Independence as a condition for any further discussions.

  Washington immediately posted the Connecticut militia to guard against a British landing at Kips Bay on the eastern shore of Manhattan Island and moved the main body of his troops to Harlem Heights, about six miles to the north.19 Three days later, on the morning of September 15, five British ships in the East River began pounding American emplacements at Kips Bay with cannon fire. Within hours, 6,000 of the 8,000 Connecticut troops had fled. In disbelief, Washington galloped to the scene to rally the troops, but the slaughter on Long Island had left them so terrified they ignored Washington’s orders. Officers and soldiers alike sprinted to the rear without firing a shot, leaving Washington and his aides exposed to possible capture.

  “Good God,” Washington cried out. “Are these the men with which I am to defend America?”20

  As the British landed, Washington and his aides galloped off to safety, as British buglers mocked them with the call of hunters on a fox chase. “I never felt such a sensation before,” said a Washington aide. “It seemed to crown our disgrace.”21

  Connecticut militiamen continued disappearing, reducing one regiment to only fourteen men, another to fewer than thirty. With his troop strength disintegrating, Washington withdrew from Manhattan northward towards White Plains, on the mainland in Westchester County—only to have another British force scatter the Continental Army in three directions. While some of his men moved northward into the Hudson River Highlands, Washington led a contingent of about 5,000 men in full flight across the Hudson to New Jersey.

  Despite Washington’s desperate situation, the Virginia state constitution left Henry without authority to help, and the lengthy debates that rent the House of Delegates over each decision left the state’s military in limbo. As titular leader of America’s largest, most powerful state, Henry decided to ignore the constitution and simply assume the powers he needed to act. Gambling that his popularity was too broad based for the House of Delegates to challenge him, he ordered men and materials sent to Washington, then issued orders to improve state defenses against British attacks in the East and South and Anglo-Indian raids in the West. He wrote to Washington of his decisions and received this reply: “Your correspo
ndence will confer honor and satisfaction, and, whenever it is in my power, I shall write to you with pleasure.”

  Washington gave Henry details of his recent military defeat and the status of the army, calling “our defeat on Long Island . . . and the evacuation of New York . . . [acts] of prudence and necessity.” He reported the troops “in some measure dispirited by these successive retreats,” and he complained about “the evils of short enlistments,” urging establishment of “a permanent body of forces.” To help Henry defend Virginia, he suggested that Henry act to createobstacles against the enemy’s ships and tenders, which may go up your rivers in quest of provisions, or for the purpose of destroying your towns. If you have depended on batteries to prevent them without any other obstruction, a trial of the matter has taught us to believe that it will be altogether ineffectual. . . . I would strongly recommend row galleys . . . officered with brave and determined men . . . would be the most likely means of securing your towns and houses on navigable waters. . . .

  He reminded Henry that he expected Virginia to furnish the Continental Army with fifteen battalions.22

  Henry immediately acted on Washington’s advice, winning Privy Council approval to arm six sloops to protect entrances to inland waterways and prevent British ships from sailing upstream to pillage river-front villages and plantations. Seeking more sweeping powers, he bullied the House of Delegates with vague threats of resignation to win appointment as chairman of a new Navy Board. He used his new authority to open six new shipyards and assemble a navy of seventy ships—refitting some captured British ships, but building many from scratch. In addition to 600 seamen, Henry’s Virginia Navy recruited 300 marines to repel British hit-and-run assaults on coastal towns and plantations. Henry ordered the swiftest of the ships to slice through the British blockade at the entrance to Chesapeake Bay and carry tobacco to the West Indies to exchange for badly needed supplies such as gunpowder and salt.

  As head of state, Henry invested himself with powers over the conduct of foreign affairs and established trade relations with the governors of Cuba and New Orleans, and through them the king of Spain. “I need not inform your excellency,” he wrote to the governor of Cuba (and much the same to the governor of New Orleans), “that these states are now free and independent, capable of forming alliances and of making treaties.

  I think the connection might be mutually beneficial; for independent of the beef, pork, livestock, flour, staves, shingles, and several other articles with which we could supply your islands, we have vast quantities of skins, furs, hemp, and flax, which we could by an easy inland navigation, bring down the Mississippi to New Orleans from our back county, in exchange for your woolens, linens, wines, military stores, etc.23

  At Henry’s request, the Spanish king approved shipment to Virginia of “a quantity of goods” to Havana and from there to New Orleans, for overland shipment to Williamsburg.

  With the House of Delegates unable or unwilling to stop him, Henry inserted himself into every area of Virginia’s war effort, unilaterally ordering counties that had yet to supply troops to the Continental Army to muster twenty-six companies of militia. Washington had asked the states for eighty-eight battalions, of which Virginia and Massachusetts were to supply fifteen each, Pennsylvania twelve, and other states the rest, in proportion to their populations. Virginia, however, had not been able to assemble enough men and materials to protect its own territory, let alone contribute more troops to the Continental Army.

  As Washington’s army retreated across New Jersey, Henry acted to send reinforcements. “I have issued the necessary orders this morning that the Troops of Horse (six) shall be marched to join General Washington,” 24 Henry notified the War Office in Philadelphia.

  Besides creating Virginia’s Navy and raising troops for Washington’s Continental Army, Henry took charge of procurement of war materiel for both Virginia’s militia and the Continental Army. “There are now ten tons of lead, which are ready to be delivered for the use of the Continental Congress,” he wrote to Richard Henry Lee and Virginia’s other delegates in Congress.25 And he informed John Hancock, the president of Congress, that “we have a gun factory at Fredericksburg.”26 Henry also ordered the evacuation of cattle and other food stores, as well as military supplies, from coastal areas, where British raiders might capture them, and he wrote to the governors of neighboring states such as Maryland and North Carolina to coordinate defense measures. Fearful that Tories in coastal towns might facilitate landings of British raiders, he set about “removing out of the country certain natives of Great Britain.”27

  Henry faced serious problems in the western reaches of Virginia, where Indian tribes had taken advantage of the conflict with Britain to attack white settlements and reclaim lands that settlers and various land companies had staked out in Kentucky and the Ohio Valley. One group of Kentucky settlers retaliated by massacring an entire peaceful Shawnee village—men, women, and children. The atrocity threatened to set the frontier ablaze just as Henry needed more troops to fight the British. Henry was furious, as he ordered militia commanders in two western countiesto embody fifty men . . . and order them to Kentucky . . . to ward off the stroke which may be expected. Have every gun in your county put into good order and get ready for action. Lead may be had from the mines. An order for 1 lb. for each man of your militia accompanies this; powder it is said is plenty among you. If it can’t be had otherwise, send to Richmond for it.

  Henry ordered “trusty scouts” into Shawnee country and told the militia commander to build “proper stockades or defenses to receive the more helpless part of the people.” As he would later explain,I really blush for the occasion of this war with the Shawnees. I doubt not that you detest the vile assassins who have brought it on us at this critical time, when our whole force was wanted in another quarter. Tis a few wicked men who committed the murder. Why do not those among you of a contrary character drag them to justice? Shall this precedent establish the right of involving Virginia in war whenever anyone in the back country shall please?

  As the war against the Shawnees dragged on, Henry told commanders, “I mean bringing the murderers of the Indians to justice,” accusing them of being “traitors . . . agents for the enemy who have taken this method to find employment for the brave back woodsmen at home, and prevent their joining General Washington to strike a decisive stroke for independency. ...”28

  He had no sooner ordered troops west when he received another request from Washington for more troops. Working almost twenty-four hours a day, he managed to organize an officer corps and report to Congress that “one full battalion of troops of this state are under orders to march to Jersey.”29 With that, however, he all but collapsed, pushed to exhaustion in his dawn-to-dusk efforts to raise troops and locate military supplies. In addition, he contracted malaria and now had no choice but to go home to Scotchtown to recuperate. He remained bedridden for nearly six weeks—so sick at times that rumors of his death began to circulate. Not uncommon in an era when swarms of mosquitoes infested Virginia’s wet lowlands, malaria produced periodic bouts of chills, fever, debilitating fatigue, and anemia. When they could get some, victims treated themselves with the bark of the cinchona tree, which contained quinine. Others relied on rum laced with garlic, red pepper, or other strong ingredients. Unable to tolerate alcohol, however, Henry simply suffered much of the time. His drink of choice was spring water, whose bacterial contamination often aggravated his condition.

  Henry did not remain totally idle during his illness, however. Already interested in promoting higher education, he helped Hampden-Sydney Academy obtain a charter as a college—the first to serve Henry’s beloved Piedmont. Named a founding trustee, he would hold his trusteeship the rest of his life and send six of his sons and many of their boys to study there.

  The war followed Henry to Scotchtown when George Rogers Clark, a twenty-three-year-old Kentucky frontiersman, appeared at his door, saying he had been elected to the Virginia Convention by Kentucky settlers
and needed 500 pounds of gunpowder to fight the Indians. Born and raised in Charlottesville, Clark had gone to the Kentucky wilderness as a surveyor for early settlers and metamorphosed into their political leader. When Clark arrived, Henry had already received intelligence reports of a British plan to incite a full-scale Indian war against colonists in the West and force Washington to dilute his army and fight on two fronts. Henry quickly approved Clark’s request and sent him on to Williamsburg for Privy Council approval.

  After six weeks of convalescence, Henry returned to Williamsburg in September 1776, this time bringing his two sisters, Anne and Elizabeth, to care for him and assume responsibilities as hostesses in the Governor’s Palace. Within days, however, Henry longed for his children, and his daughter Martha brought twelve-year-old William and nine-year-old Anne, along with her own infant son Patrick Henry Fontaine, to enliven the governor’s mansion with the shouts of children. Henry needed play as much as his children. Henry’s two youngest, only five and seven, were staying with Henry’s sister, Jane Meredith, at the time, and his oldest, John, had marched north with the First Virginia Regiment.

  During Henry’s absence, Thomas Jefferson had emerged as the foremost young political leader in the House. He succeeded in furthering Henry’s agenda to expand individual liberties by repealing laws that forced dissenters to pay taxes to the Anglican church and made membership a prerequisite for voting. The Assembly also abolished fines for failure to attend church at least once a month—and the punishment of ten whip lashes for refusal to pay those fines. Jefferson was curiously unconcerned with military affairs, however, and left Virginia’s coastline “naked and defenseless” after the Williamsburg regiments marched north to join the Continental Army. The House of Delegates, therefore, drew considerable comfort from Henry’s return—so much so that they honored him by slicing off the western half of Pittsylvania County and renaming it Henry County. When the toasts had ended, however, Henry turned to neglected military affairs and learned of grim news from northern battlefields: Winter had enveloped the Northeast earlier than usual, and, with the powerful British army in close pursuit, Washington’s men had fled westward across New Jersey through sheets of icy autumn rains towards the Delaware River. They barely made it to safety on the opposite bank in Pennsylvania. By early December, desertions had reduced his army to only about 3,000 men. Sickness left 500 of the 700 Virginians unfit for duty.