21 Henry Knox to George Washington, January 31, 1785, in PGW Confed., 2:301-306.
22 DHRC, XIII:25.
23 James Monroe, The Autobiography of James Monroe (Syracuse, NY: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1926), 45.
24 Morris, Encyclopedia of American History, 114.
25 John Marshall to Arthur Lee, in Beeman, 140.
26 James Monroe to Patrick Henry, August 12, 1786, Daniel Preston, ed., The Papers of James Monroe (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2003-2006, 2 vols. [in progress]), II:331-334.
27 DHRC, XIII:154-155.
28 Ibid., II:57.
29 Morris, Encyclopedia of American History, 115.
Chapter 12. Seeds of Discontent
1 Henry, II:305-309. An article by Thomas E. Buckley, S.J., in The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 91 (January, 1983), 98-104, presents an identical letter as having been written by Bishop James Madison (1749-1812) to his daughter in 1811, twenty-five years after the date of Henry’s letter. There is at present no way to authenticate the origins of the letter. A cousin of President James Madison, Bishop Madison was president of the College of William and Mary at the time and may well have had access to some of Patrick Henry’s letters and papers, then in the hands of Henry’s many heirs. On the other hand, Henry took the unusual step for his era of designating his daughter as administrator of the estate of one of his late sons and attorney-in-fact for her late husband’s estate—a show of confidence in a woman so rare in his day that it seems incongruous with the tone of his letter of advice to his other daughters. Regardless of its origins and author, however, the letter is of interest as a reflection of the times.
2 Patrick Henry to Mrs. Annie Christian, October 20, 1786, Henry, III:379-380.
3 Morris, Encyclopedia of American History, 115.
4 Edmund Randolph to Patrick Henry, December 6, 1786, Henry, II:310-311.
5 James Madison to George Washington, December 7, 1786, in Tyler, 310.
6 James Madison to George Washington, March 18, 1787, PGW Confed., 5:92-95.
7 James Madison to Edmund Randolph, March 25, 1786, Henry, II:313.
8 James Madison, Notes of Debates in the Federal Convention of 1787 Reported by James Madison (New York: W. W. Norton, 1987), 19. [Author’s note: Madison’s Notes of Debates in the Federal Convention of 1787 detail only part of the proceedings of the Constitutional Convention. A more complete compilation may be found in the four-volume work, The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787, edited by Max Farrand (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1966).]
9 Harlow Giles Unger, America’s Second Revolution (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2007).
10 Madison, Notes, 28.
11 Ibid., 31.
12 PGW Confed., 5:239-241.
13 Madison, Notes, 42-43.
14 Ibid., 39-40.
15 Carl Van Doren, The Great Rehearsal: The Story of the Making and Ratifying of the Constitution of the United States (New York: The Viking Press, 1948), 189-190.
16 Madison, Notes, 652-654.
17 Ibid., 385.
18 Ibid., 502-503.
19 George Washington to the Marquis de Lafayette, August 17, 1787, Freeman, 6:105.
20 Madison, Notes, 651.
Chapter 13. On the Wings of the Tempest
1 DHRC, VII:337-339.
2 Richard Henry Lee to Patrick Henry, September 14, 1789, Henry, III:399-400.
3 George Washington to Patrick Henry, September 24, 1787, PGW Confed., 5:339-340.
4 Patrick Henry to George Washington, October 1787, ibid., 5:384.
5 Ibid.
6 Meade, Patrick Henry, Practical Revolutionary, quoting “Journal of William Loughton Smith, 1790-1791,” in Massachusetts Historical Society Publication, October, 1917.
7 Spencer Roane’s memorandum to William Wirt, in Morgan, 445.
8 Ibid.
9 DHRC, VIII:65-67.
10 Ibid.
11 George Washington to Benjamin Lincoln, April 2, 1788, PGW Confed., 6:187-188.
12 Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, November 13, 1787, in Lester J. Cappon, ed., The Adams-Jefferson Letters: The Complete Correspondence between Thomas Jefferson and Abigail and John Adams (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1959), 211-212.
13 Thomas Jefferson to George Washington, May 2, 1788, PGW Confed., 6:251-257.
14 Max Farrand, The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1911, 4 vols.), III:123-127.
15 George Washington to Charles Carter, December 14, 1787, PGW Confed., 5:489-492.
16 George Washington to Henry Knox, October 15, 1787, PGW Confed., 5:288-290.
17 Massachusetts Centinel, November 17, 1787, DHRC, IV:259-262.
18 Centinel I, Philadelphia Independent Gazetteer, October 5, 1787, ibid., XIII:326-337.
19 Philadelphia Freeman’s Journal, September 26, 1787, ibid., XIII:243-245.
20 Philadelphia Independent Gazetteer, January 12, 1788, DHRC, V:817.
21 Louis-Guillaume Otto to French minister of foreign affairs, comte de Montmorin, October 10, 1787, Correspondence politique, États-Unis 32, 368 ff., Archives du Ministre des Affaires Étrangères, Paris.
22 Henry, III:579.
23 Meade, Patrick Henry, Practical Revolutionary, 339.
24 Tyler, 317.
25 Gouverneur Morris to George Washington, October 30, 1787, PGW Confed., 5:398-401.
26 DHRC, XX:688.
27 Henry, II:342-343.
28 Ibid.
29 Author’s note: The most complete text of Henry’s speeches to the Virginia Ratification Convention can be found in two sources. Volume III, pp. 431-600 of Patrick Henry, Life Correspondence and Speeches, by his grandson William Wirt Henry (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1891, reprinted by Sprinkle Publications, Harrisonburg, VA, 1993) contains his speeches with brief summaries of responses by other delegates. The complete proceedings of the Virginia Ratification Convention, including Henry’s speeches, may be found in volumes VIII-XI, of DHRC.
30 Morris, Encyclopedia of American History, 115.
31 DHRC, IX:929-931.
32 Ibid.
33 Ibid., IX:931-936.
34 Richard B. Morris, Witnesses at the Creation: Hamilton, Madison, Jay, and the Constitution (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1985), 197.
Chapter 14. A Bane of Sedition
1 DHRC, IX:949-951.
2 Henry, II:267-268, citing the description of “an old Baptist clergyman who was one of the auditory.”
3 Henry, III:568.
4 DHRC, IX:951-968.
5 Ibid.
6 Ibid.
7 Henry, II:359.
8 Ibid., II:381.
9 Ibid., II:382.
10 Ibid., II:536-537; Henry, III:471-472.
11 Henry, II:544-545.
12 DHRC, IX:951-968.
13 Ibid., IX:968.
14 Ibid., IX:971-989.
15 Ibid., IX:689-998.
16 Ibid., IX:1016-1028.
17 Ibid., IX:1028-1035.
18 Ibid., IX:1072-1080.
19 Ibid., IX:1036.
20 Ibid., IX:1082.
21 Ibid.
22 Ibid., IX:1082-1083.
23 Henry, III:518-519.
24 DHRC, IX:1246.
25 George Washington to Patrick Henry, September 24, 1787, PGW Confed., 5:339-340.
26 Henry, III:501.
27 Ibid., III:582-583.
28 James Madison to George Washington, June 13, 1788, PGW Confed., 6:329.
29 Comte de Moustier to Comte de Montmorin, June 23, 1788, DHRC, XXI: 1227-1228.
30 DHRC, X:1476-1477.
31 Henry, III:586; Morgan, 354.
32 Wirt, 313; Henry II:371.
Chapter 15. Beef! Beef! Beef!
1 Henry, II:364.
2 James Monroe to Thomas Jefferson, July 12, 1788, Dumas Malone, Jefferson and His Time, Volume Two: Jefferson and the Rights of Man (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1951), 175.
3 DHR
C X:1498.
4 Ibid., X:1537.
5 James Madison to George Washington, June 27, 1788, PGW Confed., 6: 356-357.
6 Thomas Jefferson to William S. Smith, February 2, 1788, Malone, Jefferson and the Rights of Man, 171.
7 Henry, II:416.
8 Ibid., II:419-420.
9 Ibid., II:421.
10 Ibid., II:422.
11 Ibid.
12 Ibid.
13 Ibid., II:423-425.
14 Henry, III:527-528.
15 Patrick Henry to Mrs. Elizabeth Aylett, November 11, 1788, Henry, II:434.
16 Patrick Henry to Richard Henry Lee, November 15, 1788, ibid., II:428-430.
17 Tobias Lear, January 31, 1789, ibid., II:433.
18 James Madison to Thomas Jefferson, February 15, 1789, Writings of James Monroe, I:199.
19 Richard Labunski, James Madison and the Struggle for the Bill of Rights (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 64.
20 William Grayson to Patrick Henry, June 12, 1789, Henry, II:443.
21 Robert R. Rutland, ed., The Papers of James Madison (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1984-1989, 17 vols.), 12:203.
22 The Tenth Amendment reads: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.”
23 Patrick Henry to Richard Henry Lee, January 28, 1790, Henry, II:451
24 Edmund Randolph to George Washington, November 22, 1789, ibid., II:449.
25 Henry Lee to President George Washington, August 17, 1794, Tyler, 399.
26 Fitzpatrick, Writings . . . , 33:474-479.
27 Ibid.
28 Meade, Patrick Henry, Practical Revolutionary, 397.
29 Henry, II:478-479.
30 Morgan, 387.
31 Spencer Roane to William Wirt, in Morgan, 447.
32 Henry, II:484.
33 Ibid.
34 Wirt, 389-391.
35 Edmund Randolph to George Washington, June 24, 1793, PGW Pres., 13: 137-142.
36 Henry, II:472.
37 Morgan, 386.
38 John Marshall to Rufus King, May 24, 1796, in Jean Edward Smith, John Marshall: Definer of a Nation (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1996), 148.
39 Wirt, 337-338.
40 Henry, II:495.
41 Ibid., II:475.
42 Wirt, 363.
43 Morgan, 433.
44 Mark Couvillon, Patrick Henry’s Virginia (Brookneal, VA: The Patrick Henry Memorial Foundation, 2001), 87.
45 Henry, II:475.
46 Tyler, 369-370.
47 Henry, II:488.
Chapter 16. The Sun Has Set in All Its Glory
1 Roane memorandum to William Wirt, in Morgan, 439.
2 Beeman, 183.
3 Theodore Bland to Patrick Henry, March 9, 1790, Henry, III:417-420.
4 Patrick Henry to Governor Edward Telfair, October 14, 1790, Henry II:507.
5 Although Henry died in 1799, many Yazoo shareholders sued for compensation. When Georgia ceded the territory to the federal government in 1802, they took their claims to the United States Supreme Court and, in 1810, won their case. Although the court conceded the fraudulent basis of the original contract, it ruled that the fraud committed by participants did not affect the obligations of the contract. In 1814, Congress voted $4 million to settle with the Yazoo investors—eight times their original investment.
6 Henry Lee to James Madison, April 3, 1790, in Beeman, 174.
7 Couvillon, 95.
8 Kentucky Gazette (Lexington), April 5, 1794.
9 George Washington to Edmund Pendleton, January 22, 1795, in Fitzpatrick, Writings . . . , 34:98-101.
10 Patrick Henry to Elizabeth Aylett, August 30, 1796, in Henry, II:568-571.
11 Edmund Randolph to George Washington, June 24, 1793, PGW Pres., 13:137-142.
12 Patrick Henry to Elizabeth Aylett, August 20, 1796, Henry II:568-571.
13 Patrick Henry to Henry Lee, July 14, 1794, ibid., II:547.
14 Patrick Henry to Edmund Randolph, September 14, 1794, ibid., II:548-549.
15 George Washington to Patrick Henry, October 9, 1795, ibid., II:556-557.
16 Patrick Henry to George Washington, October 16, 1795, ibid., II:558-559.
17 Henry, II:519.
18 Ibid., II:518.
19 Thomas Jefferson to James Monroe, July 10, 1796, cited in Henry, II:572.
20 John Marshall to Rufus King, May 24, 1796, Smith, John Marshall, 148n.
21 Patrick Henry to Elizabeth Aylet, August 20, 1796, in Daily, 156.
22 Virginia Gazette, September 15, 1796.
23 Virginia Gazette and General Advertiser, November 16, 1796.
24 Morris, Encyclopedia of American History, 130.
25 John C. Miller, The Federalist Era, 1789-1801 (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1960), 240-241.
26 Patrick Henry to George Washington, October 16, 1795, Henry, II:558-559.
27 George Washington to Patrick Henry, January 15, 1799, ibid., II:601-604.
28 Henry, II:607-610; Edward Fontaine, “Patrick Henry—A Patrick Henry Essay by Patrick Henry’s great-grandson,” published by the Patrick Henry Memorial Foundation, 2008.
29 Patrick Henry to George Washington, April 16, 1799, Henry, II:623-624.
30 Ibid., II:625.
31 Ibid., II:610, citing John H. Rice.
Afterword
1 John Locke, Second Treatise of Government (1690), as cited in Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations, 277; Plutarch, Lives, Life of Solon, cited in Bartlett’s, 56; Jonathan Swift, A Critical Essay upon the Faculties of the Mind (1707): “Laws are like cobwebs, which may catch small flies, but let wasps and hornets break through.” Bartlett’s, 288.
Appendix A: The Speech
1 As stated earlier, no actual transcript of Henry’s speech exists, and the words shown here represent a reconstruction by Henry’s first biographer, William Wirt, who extrapolated its contents from recollections—forty years after the event—by those present at St. Paul’s, including John Tyler, an intimate of Henry’s, Thomas Jefferson, Edmund Randolph, and St. George Tucker, among others. Hardly a friend of Henry, Jefferson did not alter a word in Wirt’s reconstruction of the speech and reiterated his appraisal of Henry as the greatest orator in history. I believe, however, that word-for-word accuracy is less important than what I believe to be an accurate presentation of Henry’s meaning, his passion, and his eloquence.
2 Tyler, 140-145, citing Peter Force, ed., American Archives (Washington: 1837-1853, 9 vols.), II:167 ff.
Appendix B: Henry on Slavery
1 Patrick Henry to Robert Pleasants, January 18, 1773, in Meade, I:299-300.
Appendix C: Henry’s Heirs
1 Morgan, 455, 459.
Bibliography of Principal Sources
Bibliographical Essay
Three principal sources of original Patrick Henry materials that are listed below in the bibliography deserve more complete identification. Henry’s grandson, William Wirt Henry (1831-1900), accumulated as much as remained of his grandfather’s papers—from more than one hundred of his grandfather’s descendants, relatives, and friends. The result was the three-volume epic, Patrick Henry: Life Correspondence and Speeches (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1891), which contains the largest trove of original, authenticated manuscripts of Patrick Henry’s speeches and correspondence. Although biased in his grandfather’s favor, William Wirt Henry was nonetheless a serious scholar and historian. A graduate of the University of Virginia, he passed his bar exams in 1853, served in the Confederate Army during the Civil War, then practiced law in Richmond and served in both houses of the Virginia state legislature. At various times, he was president of the Virginia Bar Association, vice president of the American Bar Association, president of the Virginia Historical Society and the American Historical Association. Besides his biography of Patrick Henry, he was author of The Trial of Aaron Burr and the Trials of Jefferson Davis, along with many
magazine articles on American history.
Patrick Henry’s first biographer actually knew Henry. A prominent attorney and member of Virginia’s Tidewater social elite, William Wirt (1772-1834) collected long “memoirs,” as they were called, from many of Henry’s relatives, in-laws, friends, and political friends and foes. Although he had access to original manuscripts, he let his own patriotic bias—and those of Henry’s friends and enemies—color his work, forcing today’s researcher to pick carefully among the pages of his 450-plus-page biography to filter factual material from biased interpretations of actual events and documents. Although a valuable resource, Wirt’s Life of Patrick Henry, which he published in 1817, was but a pastime. He was, above all else, a lawyer, who gained national prominence as a prosecutor in the treason trial of Aaron Burr in 1807. President James Monroe appointed him U.S. attorney general in 1817, a post he retained through Monroe’s two terms and President John Quincy Adams’s one-term presidency. Thomas Jefferson offered Wirt the presidency of the University of Virginia in 1826, but Wirt declined in favor of remaining attorney general.
Moses Coit Tyler (1835-1900) was a contemporary of William Wirt Henry and one of America’s first American history scholars. He was a clergyman as a young man, but his scholarship earned him a professorship in English at the University of Michigan and, later, appointment at Cornell University as America’s first professor of history. His 450-page biography, Patrick Henry, relies on his own examinations of original manuscripts in the hands of Henry family members—including William Wirt Henry, who cooperated with Tyler. More than William Wirt Henry, however, Tyler often exposed the flaws in the William Wirt biography and tries to separate the actuality of Henry’s life from exaggerations, inventions, and biases of his contemporaries. A founder of the American Historical Association, Tyler was author of A History of American Literature During the Colonial Time, 1607-1765 (1878, 2 vols.), The Literary History of the American Revolution, 1763-1783 (1897, 2 vols.), and Three Men of Letters (1895)—the biographies of George Berkeley, Timothy Dwight, and Joel Barlow.
Few original Henry manuscripts survive. In the first place, he was not a prolific letter writer. Second, he seldom wrote out his speeches, preferring to speak from notes. Thirdly, his wife burned all his letters after his death—a common practice in eighteenth-century America, when widows and widowers routinely remarried after the death of a spouse to ensure continuing care and sustenance for their children. And finally, the few papers that did survive burned in a 1917 fire that leveled the house at Red Hill, his last home. His law office still stands, as does the site of his and Dorothea’s graves. The property is now the National Memorial to Patrick Henry and includes reconstructed buildings and an extensive collection of Patrick Henry artifacts.
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