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America’s Virginian
Among the men who did the most for the American Revolution, Patrick Henry is probably the least appreciated.
Lion of Liberty: Patrick Henry and the Call to a New
Nation
By Harlow Giles
Unger
(Da Capo Press, 322 pages,
$26)
Among the men who did the most for the American Revolution, Patrick Henry is probably the least appreciated. The admirable new biography of Henry, Lion of Liberty by historian Harlow Giles Unger, goes far to restore that able, eloquent, and courageous man to a proper place in our national memory.
Henry was cut from a different cloth than most of the Founders. Although his family was prosperous, he did not spring from the Virginia aristocracy of wealthy Tidewater planters. He grew up in Hanover County, then a rustic area of the Virginia Piedmont not far north of what would one day become the city of Richmond.
At 18, Henry married 16-year-old Sarah Shelton, the daughter of a publisher who also owned a popular inn and tavern. They quickly produced three children. After failing dismally as a farmer (abetted by exhausted soil), and as a storekeeper (abetted by economic downturn), Henry, Sarah, and their young family were reduced to living in the attic of her father’s inn. In return, Henry tended bar and played fiddle to entertain the tavern’s patrons, many of whom were lawyers from the Hanover courthouse just across the street.
Listening to the lawyers tell courtroom tales and debate legal points, he eventually joined their disputations. Henry soon became proficient enough at amateur lawyering that he began dispensing over-the-counter legal advice to men who could not afford a lawyer, in exchange for their purchase of drinks. Informed that he could be liable for practicing law without a license, he betook himself to Williamsburg and presented himself for examination for admission to the bar. His legal knowledge was scant, but his powers of argument were sufficiently impressive that he was admitted (with an admonition to study up a bit).
After three years of undistinguished practice, in 1763 he fell into a case that instantly earned him a brilliant reputation. The “Parson’s Cause” arose from a tax levied by the Anglican Church on each Virginia parish. The details of the dispute are in the book; suffice it to say that, after a tobacco crop failure in 1758, enforcement of the tax law as originally written would have driven many of the Hanover parishioners into bankruptcy or ruin.
The Anglican priest sued the parish, and the validity of the tax was upheld. All that remained was the bleak task of determining the money damages, likely to be crushing. The lawyer for the parishioners resigned from the case. Henry took his place.
At the damages trial, Henry cannily turned from defense to offense. “We have heard a great deal about the benevolence and holy zeal of our reverend clergy,” he intoned. But how do they act?
Do they manifest their zeal in the cause of religion and humanity by practicing the mild and benevolent precepts of the Gospel of Jesus? Do they feed the hungry and clothe the naked? Oh, no, gentlemen! Instead of feeding the hungry and clothing the naked, these rapacious harpies would, were their powers equal to their will, snatch from the hearth of their honest parishioner his last hoe-cake, from the widow and her orphaned children their last milch cow! the last bed, nay, the last blanket from the lying-in woman!
Unger describes him in action: “Six feet tall, lean, cheekbones protruding from his gaunt face, he marched back and forth, using every element of the stage.” A spectator remembered that everyone present looked on “in death-like silence, their features fixed in amazement and awe, all their senses listening and riveted upon the speaker.…” According to a 19th-century biographer, “Those who heard him said he made their blood run cold and their hair to rise on end.” The jury awarded damages of one penny, the courtroom erupted in whoops and cheers, and Henry was carried away on the crowd’s shoulders. Soon he was making a handsome living as an advocate.
Just before his 29th birthday, Henry took his seat as a freshman member of the House of Burgesses in Williamsburg. On the day before the session was to adjourn, Henry performed a deed that changed the course of history. The Stamp Act tax was about to be quietly approved by the Burgesses as it had been in other colonies. Henry saw, as he later recalled, that no man was likely to step forward in opposition. So he “alone, unadvised, and unassisted, on a blank leaf of an old law book, wrote… the first opposition to the Stamp Act and the scheme of taxing America by the British Parliament.”
One of Henry’s resolutions asserted the radical proposition that “the General Assembly of this colony have the only and sole exclusive right and power to lay taxes… upon the inhabitants of this colony.” The House elders, dependent on British trade, spluttered with rage. But with support from the backcountry members, George Washington, and Richard Henry Lee, the resolutions barely passed.
Reports of Henry’s resolutions spread through the colonies like wildfire. Riots erupted, tax collectors were hung in effigy, the Stamp Act Congress was convened, and boycotts of British goods were imposed. Only the speedy repeal of the Stamp Act quelled the mass uprising. The first resistance in the colonies to British rule was ignited by Patrick Henry, “alone, unadvised, and unassisted.”
HENRY WENT BACK to practicing law and building his estate. In 1767, he acquired the fine Scotchtown plantation in the western part of the county, where he rejoiced to see his young sons run wild and free. According to his brother-in-law, Henry thought that “the most important thing…is to give them good constitutions,” and his boys “were six or seven years old before they were permitted to wear shoes.…”
His rural joys were not unalloyed. After his oldest daughter Martha was married, Henry’s wife Sarah sank into a deep depression. She had “lost her reason,” according to the family physician, “and could only be restrained from self-destruction by a strait-dress.” She spent her remaining years confined to a sunny room at Scotchtown, where she was given every attention. Martha’s new husband managed the plantation, freeing Henry to practice law and engage in public service.
Letter to the Editor View all comments (29) | Leave a comment
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Len| 4.20.11 @ 9:13AM
Just added this book to my wish list at Amazon.
I often wonder how things might have gone had Patrick attended the federal convention. I think that had he gone we would have ended up with something different, something ensuring that there would have been more checks built into the US constitution.
On another note, I have read that one of the reasons Madison proposed his plan for a national government was that he was jealous of Henry's influence in Virginia and felt that he could fare better on a national stage. Take that for what you will.
Alan Brooks| 4.20.11 @ 9:33AM
You're too eastern oriented; you almost think America ends west of the Appalachians.
Sam Levi| 4.20.11 @ 2:29PM
At the time, it did.
Rope Jumper| 4.21.11 @ 9:18AM
Slam.......dunk. "Uh, wifey, do we have anymore lemonade left in the fridge? Let's go sit on the back porch together and relax in the swing."
WRTolkas| 4.20.11 @ 10:35AM
This line: "I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death!" I've always wondered if he was thinking of his wife.
His famous speech was prophetic. Less than a month later, we were at war.
I had the honor to recite this speech, in its entirety, before my congregation. Many, for the first time, heard and now understand the full meaning.
Where are the likes of Adam, Henry, Jefferson, Otis, Washington, Franklin, ...? Lord knows we need them now more than ever.
JimP| 4.20.11 @ 3:32PM
I think there are modern day founders out there and they are beginning to emerge. Allan West comes to mind as one who appears to be of that archetype. IMHO, just as the Revolution took a number of years to develop, I see the new revolution taking more time to reach the point at which the Continental Congress met and the Declaration of Indepence was written. The Tea Party Congress members elected in '10 are the vanguard and many may go down as new founders. Things are evolving in that direction it seems. If we have a cataclismic financial collapse I expect riots and violence in the cities and maybe even states seceding. (I know, I sound like Glenn Beck- lol).
Stuart Koehl| 4.20.11 @ 10:58AM
I would have thought George Washington was the Virginian who did the most for the American revolution--by holding the Continental Army together, by defeating the British army, and then, by resigning his commission and going home. There were many Patrick Henrys; there was but one George Washington, and he remains, as Thomas Flexner called him, "The Indispensable Man".
JimP| 4.20.11 @ 3:19PM
The author of this column said Henry was "probably the least appreciated". He didn't say Henry was greater than Washington or even on par with him.
Stuart Koehl| 4.20.11 @ 9:13PM
I appreciate Henry just fine. He was the Virginia equivalent of Sam Adams, thankfully with better manners and personal hygiene (which might make him the Virginia Joseph Warren, come to think of it), and he was a marginally better governor that Thomas Jefferson, but he was on the wrong side of the Constitutional debate, and his career after his big speech is largely a disappointment.
GW| 4.20.11 @ 1:21PM
Stuart, meet non sequitur. Non sequitur, meet Stuart.
Stuart Koehl| 4.20.11 @ 1:27PM
Not at all. If someone has to be "America's Virginian", that person is George Washington, next to whom Patrick Henry pales to insignificance.
JimP| 4.20.11 @ 3:21PM
So he took a little poetic license. Big deal. Don't be so like Alan Brooks.
Stuart Koehl| 4.20.11 @ 9:13PM
Maybe a lot of poetic license.
SugartownSuper| 4.20.11 @ 1:46PM
I wonder whether Henry's slaves found anything ironic in his public positions? I do recall that Dr. Johnson said something about the greatest crys for liberty came from the drivers of slaves...
Stuart Koehl| 4.20.11 @ 9:16PM
Back in Africa, the friends and relatives of Henry's slaves were busily and happily enslaving each other and benefiting from the triangle trade. Slavery was a universal human institution--and still is in some parts of the world--but whatever else the faults of the Anglo-Saxon peoples, they were the ones who ended it and made it morally odious.
Al Adab| 4.20.11 @ 2:25PM
The question Patrick Henry posed is one for all of us today. "Is life so dear or Peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?" Are our comforts and security so precious that we accept a ponderous chain of Debt? The answer we respond will set the stage for the next two hundred years of history. A dark age of tyranny or a new day of Freedom. The choice is ours.;
Stuart Koehl| 4.20.11 @ 9:20PM
Of course, Henry and most other Virginia planters were chronically in debt (one reason they could not have freed their slaves if they had wanted was the slaves were collateral on their mortgages). Henry himself had several brushes with bankruptcy, and fellow founder Thomas Jefferson crossed over that line--apparently he felt he could not be overdrawn, as he still had checks left. Of all the Virginia Founders, Washington alone seems to have had a good head for business and to have died solvent. Washington and Hamilton saw eye-to-eye on finance; Jefferson, Madison, and, yes, Henry, lived in some sort of agrarian cloud cuckoo land of self-sufficient yeomanry who had no need for banks, credit or anything else. Funny, though--none of them managed to put their money where their mouths were.
axbucxdu| 4.22.11 @ 8:44PM
Jefferson had no need of central banks, unlike Hamilton, and today history has recorded once again how well central banking "works". Cloud cuckoo land never counted Jefferson among its residents.
Stuart Koehl| 4.24.11 @ 10:05PM
Jefferson had to sell his slaves to avoid losing Monticello. The only difference between Thomas Jefferson's personal finances and those of the Obama Administration is the latter can cover its debts by printing money--which I am sure Jefferson would have done, if anyone would accept his paper.
axbucxdu| 4.25.11 @ 10:22PM
My point is that Jefferson was correct about central banking. Sure the Fed can print, that's the obvious problem, and for some of that we can thank Hamilton. In the antebellum U.S. though, it wasn't unusual for bank notes to circulate and compete against each other as currency. Jefferson in effect could have printed his own notes; he didn't.
The problem for us, and your comment about Jefferson and banking, is that Hamilton essentially won this argument, and here we are adrift in a cloud cuckoo land if there ever was one. To Jefferson, financial disasters like Wilson, Hoover, FDR, Johnson, Nixon, Carter, Bush/Clinton/Bush II and Obama would not be unexpected given what he apparently knew from his own experience with banks and his instincts against strong governments. The question is, what cloud cuckoo land was Hamilton living in to think that a government bank could possibly avoid moral hazard?
Ned the Red| 4.20.11 @ 6:00PM
Kenya is a long way from Virginia.
DHenry| 4.20.11 @ 8:42PM
as a direct descendant of the great man, and having read his biography by his grandson William Wirt, I take great exception to todays so called leadership. Pray that we remove this cancer from our country.
Alfred| 4.20.11 @ 10:15PM
Patrick Henry's famous quote is nothing but empty, meaningless words for most Americans, who only too gladly surrender their liberties for the illusion of security.
Rope Jumper| 4.21.11 @ 8:57AM
Well, you may have a point, however, I believe that our U.S. Service Members will "be dammed," to let that happen on anyone's watch. Other than that, I cannot wait to hit the library and see if it has arrived yet.
gary siebel| 4.20.11 @ 11:36PM
So ol' Patrick fired TWO first shots" The first against the Stamp Act and the second against Sumter?
Actually, the only indispensable guy was Ben Franklin. He mid-wifed the entire thing from at least 1754 (Albany Plan) long before Patrick Henry's resistance to the Stamp Act, to the foundation of the government at the 1787 Convention. One could even take it back further with Franklin, to when he ran his brother's press, and tweaked the governor.
It is probably safe to say that both Franklin and Washington were irreplaceable, but not Henry. It's just like that fruit vendor in Tunisia triggering a revolution; when the time is ripe, when people are finally fed up, anything, or anyone, can set it off. Oratory is often one of the triggers, and it doesn't have to be grandiose.
Must have been a heckuva Dear John letter for his son, especially the, "I've decided to marry your father," part. Who was worse, Henry or Gingrich?
marshcope| 4.21.11 @ 3:52AM
According to Chernow Washington had chronic money problems (Mt. Vernon was a money pit) and Hamilton ended his earthly days deep in debt.
Stuart Koehl| 4.24.11 @ 10:12PM
Washington was a very astute businessman and entrepreneur, who managed to make enough money that, in his will, he was able to provide for the manumission of his slaves, providing them with education and land.
He was one of the most progressive farmers of his day, among the first to abandon tobacco as a cash crop, diversifying his crops, devising new methods of crop rotation and fertilization, importing new varieties of trees and grains, developing fisheries on the Potomac and building one of the largest distilleries in North America (not to mention a grist mill that serviced farms and plantations all across Northern Virginia). In addition, he developed a wide range of manufacturing enterprises at Mount Vernon, including foundaries, furniture shops, weaving and brickmaking. Add to this his successful land speculations and far-sighted investments in canals opening the trans-Appalachian, and you have the image of an extremely sharp, forward-looking businessman. Again, Flexner's full multi-volume biography remains the best source for this information.
Creative Recreation | 8.10.11 @ 10:04PM
is good