Lion of Liberty

by Harlow Giles Unger

  Again the gallery erupted, and after the chair restored order, Henry stood silent in a dramatic pose, looking down at his feet before whispering apologetically, “I have trespassed so long on your patience.” Henry had held the floor for seven hours.

  I have, I fear, fatigued the Committee, yet I have not said the one hundred thousandth part of what I have on my mind, and wish to impart. . . . Having lived so long—been so much honored—my efforts, though small, are due my country. . . . I trust you will indulge me. . . . Old as I am, it is probable that I may yet have the appellation of rebel. . . . As this government stands, I despise and abhor it.

  After a long silence, Governor Randolph tried to regain the initiative, protesting Henry’s refusal to yield the floor. “Mr. Chairman! If we go on in this irregular manner . . . instead of three or six weeks, it will take us six months to decide this question”—which, of course, was exactly what Henry had in mind. With the dinner hour long past, Randolph wanted to convince the convention of “the necessity of establishing a national government,” but he conceded, “it is too late to enter into the subject now.”13 Henry had won the day.

  Aware now of Henry’s intention of dragging out the proceedings to a stalemate, Federalists returned the next day intent on seizing the floor to prevent another interminable Henry oration. One after another, they spoke, each attacking one of Henry’s objections before yielding to his colleague. Governor Randolph dealt with Henry’s objection to national government control over the military, asking, “Can Virginia send her navy . . . to bid defiance to foreign nations? . . . We must have a navy, sir . . . a navy will require money . . . how shall we raise it?.”14

  Randolph ceded the floor to Madison, “but he spoke so low that his exordium could not be heard distinctly,” according to David Robertson, the reporter of the convention. His head all but invisible to most of the delegates, Madison stood barely taller than a dwarf, reading in short feeble bursts from notes inside his hat, which he held like a bucket of water into which he was about to dip his head for apples. His voice was that of cold, albeit dull, reason and logic, arguing simply that the Constitution did not grant the new national government any powers beyond those spelled out in the document.

  “The powers of the federal government are enumerated,” he explained. “It has . . . defined and limited objects, beyond which it cannot extend its jurisdiction.” In reasoned, measured tones, he pointed out the contradiction between Henry’s demands for American navigation rights on the Mississippi and his opposition to a standing federal army to obtain and ensure those rights.

  “Congress ought to have the power to provide for the execution of the laws, suppress insurrections, and repel invasions,” he said simply. “Without a general controlling power to call forth the strength of the Union, to repel invasions, the country might be overrun and conquered by foreign enemies.” He then cited Washington’s own argument that Article V gave opponents of the Constitution the right to amend it, and, in a stunning reversal of his previous position, he pledged to work to amend the Constitution with a bill of rights if he won election to the First Congress.15

  After Madison had spoken, the Federalists decided to gamble by ceding the floor to the brilliant young attorney Francis Corbin, who had fled to London with his loyalist parents at the beginning of the Revolution. Corbin spent the war years studying at Cambridge University and reading law at London’s Inner Temple. He then returned to America to reclaim his vast family properties, claiming he had been but a boy—unable to prevent his family’s flight to England and too young to remain behind. His distinct English accent, regal dress, and aristocratic airs—and his failure to fight in the war—clearly annoyed backcountry delegates, who listened impatiently as he demolished Henry’s argument that the government of the Confederation had been adequate to meet the nation’s needs.

  “The honorable gentleman must be well acquainted with the debts due by the United States and how much is due to foreign nations,” Corbin asked in the same mocking tones that Randolph and Lee had used. “Have not the payment of these been shamefully withheld? . . . No part of the principal is paid to those nations—nor has even the interest been paid as honorably and punctually as it ought. . . . What is to be done? Compel the delinquent states to pay requisitions to Congress? How are they to be compelled?”

  Corbin’s relentless delineation of the specific deficiencies of the government of the Confederation left Henry uncharacteristically speechless—so much so that he allowed Edmund Randolph to take the floor again—and then Madison—while he let the opposition display all its arguments as he tried to collect his thoughts. Randolph expanded his demonstration of Virginia’s inability to survive as an independent state. Her inability to raise an army would leave citizens unprotected from internal seditions and external attacks, and her inability to raise a navy would leave her trade and coastline constantly open to attack.

  In case of a conflict between us and Maryland or Pennsylvania, they would be aided by the whole strength of all . . . the adopting states. . . . The other states have upwards of 330,000 men capable of bearing arms. . . . Our militia amounts to 50,000. . . . Till France joined us, our troops were not able to withstand the enemy. Yet the fate of many other nations ought to convince us that the assistance of foreigners is the most dangerous and the last experiment that ought to be recurred to.16

  And before Henry could take a breath, Madison had taken the floor, asking,How have we dealt with our benevolent ally [France]? Have we complied with our most sacred obligations to that nation? Have we paid the interest punctually from year to year? Is not the interest accumulating, while not a shilling is discharged? . . . The honorable member told us we might rely on the punctuality and friendship of the states and that they will discharge their quotas for the future. The contributions of the states have been found inadequate from the beginning and are diminishing instead of increasing.17

  The relentless Federalist attack caught Henry unprepared. Isolated in the Piedmont for so many years, with only periodic trips to Richmond to deal with mostly local issues, he had not set foot out of state for more than thirteen years and was less aware than Madison of the national and international problems facing all thirteen states. Even as governor, he tended to ignore the lengthy reports from Virginia’s delegates at the Confederation Congress, which was the only mechanism for dealing with collective state problems. Henry now realized that his failure to participate in the Constitutional Convention had cost him the opportunity to contribute to—or even contemplate—a solution. Still a backcountry man at heart, he believed that states could endure like farmers on self-sufficient properties in the Piedmont, independent of their neighbors and united with them for only a handful of collective actions such as barter, defense against intruders, and mutual aid after natural disasters. Still embracing the specious concept of “natural rights,” he had no reasoned answers to Madison’s or Randolph’s or Corbin’s arguments other than an emotional—albeit accurate—argument that ratification of the Constitution would strip states of their sovereignty and inevitably reduce individual liberties.

  On June 9, a week after the convention had started, Henry “LightHorse Harry” Lee continued the Federalist attack. Using Henry’s opposition to a standing federal army, he questioned Henry’s character and failure to fight in the Revolutionary War, then mocked Henry’s “rage for democracy and zeal for the rights of the people. . . . He tells us that he is a staunch republican, and that he adores liberty,” Lee said of Henry. “I believe him, and when I do so, I wonder that he should say . . . that militia alone ought to be depended upon for the defense of every free country. . . .I have had a different experience of their service from the Honorable Gentleman. It was my fortune to be a soldier of my country. In the discharge of my duty . . . I saw what the Honorable Gentleman did not see: Our men fighting with the troops of the King. . . . I have seen incontrovertible evidence that militia cannot always be relied upon. . . . Let the Gentleman recollect the action of Guilford [N
orth Carolina]. The American regular troops behaved there with the most gallant intrepidity. What did the militia do? The greatest numbers of them fled. . . . But says the Honorable Gentleman, we are in peace. Does he forget the insurrection in Massachusetts? . . . Had Shays been possessed of abilities . . . nothing was wanting to bring about a revolution.18

  Henry ignored Lee’s jab at his failure to fight in the Revolution, but when Randolph resumed the attack, he could no longer contain his bitterness at the governor’s betrayal. Henry suspected that Washington had offered the governor an enticement for switching political camps and all but called Randolph a turncoat. “It seems to be very strange and unaccountable,” Henry said of Randolph, “that that which was the object of his execration should now receive his encomium.” Although he stopped short of suggesting bribery, Henry did not stop short enough. He went on to tell the convention that “something extraordinary must have operated so great a change in his opinions.”19

  Insulted by Henry’s charges, Randolph retorted, “I find myself attacked, in the most illiberal manner by the Honorable Gentleman. I disdain his aspersions and his insinuations. His asperity is warranted by no principle of parliamentary decency, nor compatible with the least shadow of friendship, and if our friendship must fall, Let it fall like Lucifer, never to rise again.

  Let him remember that it is not to answer him, but to satisfy this respectable audience that I now get up. He has accused me of inconsistency in this very respectable assembly. Sir, if I do not stand on the bottom of integrity and pure love for Virginia, as much as those who can be most clamorous, I wish to resign my existence. Consistency consists in actions, and not in empty specious words. . . . I understand not him who wishes to give a full scope to licentiousness and dissipation, who would advise me to reject the proposed plan and plunge us into anarchy.20

  Randolph’s reference to Lucifer’s fall set all the delegates—indeed all of Richmond abuzz—with its meaning. Most interpreted the phrase as a challenge to a duel—an interpretation that left the forty-eight-year-old Henry visibly shaken by the prospects of facing the thirty-five-year-old governor with drawn pistols. At the first opportunity, Henry told the convention he had had “no intention of offending anyone”—that he “did not mean to wound the feelings of any Gentleman.” He said he was “sorry if I offended the Honorable Gentleman without intending it.” But Randolph grew only more enraged, saying that “were it not for the concession of the Gentleman, I would have made some men’s hair stand on end by the disclosure of certain facts.”21

  Now it was Henry’s turn to anger, telling Randolph that if he had something to say against him to disclose it. Randolph responded calmly, “I beg the Honorable Gentleman to pardon me for reminding him that his historical references and quotations are not accurate. If he errs so much with respect to his facts, as he has done in history, we cannot depend on his information or assertions.”22

  That evening, Henry and his second called on Randolph, and all Richmond jabbered about the prospects of a duel between the two great Virginia governors, with many tavern habitués suggesting small wagers. Although no record exists of their discussion, Henry did not press his challenge and left without provoking violence.

  Talk of the duel, however, drew a clear line between Tidewater aristocrats and backcountry delegates—especially Kentuckians and other frontier buckskins—and Henry saw a chance to reply to Madison’s attack on his opposition to a standing federal army. He turned the floor over to the young war hero James Monroe, who had served in the Continental Congress when it narrowly rejected John Jay’s instructions to forfeit Mississippi River navigation rights to Spain. Monroe described how seven northeastern states had voted to further the interests of their own merchants and shipping companies by sacrificing the interests of the rest of the nation—especially those of westerners and southerners in states like Virginia, whose boundaries lay on the Mississippi River.

  “We are told,” Henry smiled, pointing at Madison, that in order to secure the navigation of that river, it was necessary to give it up for twenty-five years to the Spaniards and that thereafter we should enjoy it forever . . . Is it imagined that Spain will . . . give it up to you again? Can credulity itself hope that the Spaniards wish to have it for that period, wish to clear the river for you? . . . America saw the time when she had the reputation of common sense at least. Do you suppose they will restore it to you?

  If you do,[he wagged his finger at Madison], you depart from that rule. Common observation tells you that it must be the policy of Spain to get it first and then retain it forever.23

  Madison had little choice but to concede the north’s treachery, and Henry exploded with rage:

  “No constitution under heaven, founded on the principles of justice, can warrant the relinquishment of the most sacred rights of the society to promote the interest of one part of it. . . . Are not the rivers and waters that wash the shores of the country appendages, inseparable from our right of sovereignty? . . . The people of Kentucky, though weak now, will not let the President and Senate take away this right.”24 It was Henry at his best again, and the gallery loved him for it. Madison’s dry reasoning had been lost on them; it was Henry they had come to hear, and he used the advantage he had in the gallery to lash out at Madison’s—and, indeed, George Washington’s—recurring ripostes to opponents of the Constitution—that the document contained “a constitutional door . . . for amendment.”25

  “I am constrained to make a few remarks on the absurdity of . . . relying on the chance of getting it amended afterwards,” Henry sneered.When it is confessed to be replete with defects, is it not offering to insult your understandings to attempt to reason you out of the propriety of rejecting it till it be amended? Does it not insult your judgments to tell you—adopt first, and then amend? Is your rage for novelty so great that you are first to sign and seal, and then to retract? . . . You agree to bind yourselves hand and foot—for the sake of what? Of being unbound? You go into a dungeon—for what? To get out? Is there no danger when you go in that the bolts of federal authority shall shut you in?26

  “Human nature,” he roared, “never will part from power!” He noted that nothing in any law forbad the offering of amendments to other states before ratification. “Have we not a right to say, ‘Hear our propositions,’” he asked. “If this moment goes away, we shall never see its return.”27

  Henry’s evident rhetorical recovery—and Madison’s own failure to foresee and head off the Jay-Gardoqui Treaty controversy—left Federalists discouraged. “Appearances are at present less favorable,” Madison wrote to Washington.

  Our progress is slow and every advantage is taken of delay, to work on the local prejudices of particular sets of members. . . . There is reason to believe that the event may depend on the Kentucky members; who seem to lean more against than in favor of the Constitution. . . . The majority will certainly be very small on whatever side it may finally lie; and I dare not encourage much expectation that it will be on the favorable side.28

  Madison discovered that the publisher of Philadelphia’s Antifederalist Independent Gazetteer had arrived in Richmond “with letters for the antifederal leaders from New York and probably Philadelphia” and spent time “closeted” with Henry, Mason, and other Antifederalists. Although Madison had no knowledge of it, New York Governor Clinton was in the first stages of uniting New York and Virginia to thwart ratification of the Constitution by linking New York, Pennsylvania, and Virginia in a new “middle confederacy.” Henry, meanwhile, had taken a more significant step with an approach to the French minister plenipotentiary to determine how France might react to a declaration of independence by Virginia.

  In a letter to his foreign minister in Paris, the Comte de Moustier reported the plan by “Monsieur Patrick Henri . . . to detach his state from the confederation. If he carries the votes from North Carolina . . . he would be able to form a body strong enough to sustain itself against the efforts of the party opposed to his plan.”29


  On June 24, with only five days left for delegates to vote the Constitution up or down—or adjourn without a decision—Henry came to the hall elated by the support he had built with the Mississippi River issue. He was certain he could now crush Federalist chances for ratification over an explosive issue no one had yet dared address: the power of the new federal government to decree that “every black man must fight . . . that every black man who would go into the army should be free.” As looks of horror spread across the hall, Henry stared directly at Madison and demanded to know, “May they not pronounce all slaves free?” Without giving the shaken little Federalist leader a chance to respond, Henry roared his own answer, in words that would echo across the South for the next seventy-five years to justify secession:They have the power in clear unequivocal terms and will clearly and certainly exercise it! As much as I deplore slavery, I see that prudence forbids abolition. I deny that the general government ought to set them free, because a decided majority of the States have not the ties of sympathy and fellow-feeling for those whose interests would be affected by their emancipation. The majority of Congress is in the North, and the slaves are to the South. In this situation, I see a great deal of the property of Virginia in jeopardy. . . . I repeat it again, that it would rejoice my very soul that everyone of my fellow beings was emancipated . . . but is it practicable by any human means to liberate them, without producing the most dreadful and ruinous consequences? We ought to possess them, in the manner we inherited them from our ancestors, as their manumission is incompatible with the felicity of our country. . . . This is a local matter and I can see no propriety in subjecting it to Congress.30