Patrick Henry Part 20

Then, by all accounts, was witnessed a display of the locomotive energies of grave and potent senators, such as this world has not often exhibited. Of this tragically comical incident, of course, the journal of the House of Delegates makes only the most placid and forbearing mention. For Monday, June 4, its chief entry is as follows: "There being reason to apprehend an immediate incursion of the enemy's cavalry to this place, which renders it indispensable that the General a.s.sembly should forthwith adjourn to a place of greater security; resolved, that this House be adjourned until Thursday next, then to meet at the town of Staunton, in the county of Augusta,"--a town thirty-nine miles farther west, beyond a chain of mountains, and only to be reached by them or their pursuers through difficult pa.s.ses in the Blue Ridge. The next entry in the journal is dated at Staunton, on the 7th of June, and, very properly, is merely a prosaic and business-like record of the rea.s.sembling of the House according to the adjournment aforesaid.[324]

But as to some of the things that happened in that interval of panic and of scrambling flight, popular tradition has not been equally forbearing; and while the anecdotes upon that subject, which have descended to our time, are very likely decorated by many ta.s.sels of exaggeration and of myth, they yet have, doubtless, some slight framework of truth, and do really portray for us the actual beliefs of many people in Virginia respecting a number of their celebrated men, and especially respecting some of the less celebrated traits of those men. For example, it is related that on the sudden adjournment of the House, caused by this dusty and breathless apparition of the speedful Jouette, and his laconic intimation that Tarleton was coming, the members, though somewhat accustomed to ceremony, stood not upon the order of their going, but went at once,--taking first to their horses, and then to the woods; and that, breaking up into small parties of fugitives, they thus made their several ways, as best they could, through the pa.s.ses of the mountains leading to the much-desired seclusion of Staunton. One of these parties consisted of Benjamin Harrison, Colonel William Christian, John Tyler, and Patrick Henry.

Late in the day, tired and hungry, they stopped their horses at the door of a small hut, in a gorge of the hills, and asked for food. An old woman, who came to the door, and who was alone in the house, demanded of them who they were, and where they were from. Patrick Henry, who acted as spokesman of the party, answered: "We are members of the legislature, and have just been compelled to leave Charlottesville on account of the approach of the enemy." "Ride on, then, ye cowardly knaves," replied she, in great wrath; "here have my husband and sons just gone to Charlottesville to fight for ye, and you running away with all your might. Clear out--ye shall have nothing here." "But," rejoined Mr. Henry, in an expostulating tone, "we were obliged to fly. It would not do for the legislature to be broken up by the enemy. Here is Mr. Speaker Harrison; you don't think he would have fled had it not been necessary?" "I always thought a great deal of Mr.

Harrison till now," answered the old woman; "but he'd no business to run from the enemy," and she was about to shut the door in their faces. "Wait a moment, my good woman," urged Mr. Henry; "you would hardly believe that Mr. Tyler or Colonel Christian would take to flight if there were not good cause for so doing?" "No, indeed, that I wouldn't," she replied. "But," exclaimed he, "Mr. Tyler and Colonel Christian are here." "They here? Well, I never would have thought it;"

and she stood for a moment in doubt, but at once added, "No matter. We love these gentlemen, and I didn't suppose they would ever run away from the British; but since they have, they shall have nothing to eat in my house. You may ride along." In this desperate situation Mr.

Tyler then stepped forward and said, "What would you say, my good woman, if I were to tell you that Patrick Henry fled with the rest of us?" "Patrick Henry! I should tell you there wasn't a word of truth in it," she answered angrily; "Patrick Henry would never do such a cowardly thing." "But this is Patrick Henry," said Mr. Tyler, pointing to him. The old woman was amazed; but after some reflection, and with a convulsive twitch or two at her ap.r.o.n string, she said, "Well, then, if that's Patrick Henry, it must be all right. Come in, and ye shall have the best I have in the house."[325]

The pitiless tongue of tradition does not stop here, but proceeds to narrate other alleged experiences of this our n.o.ble, though somewhat disconcerted, Patrick. Arrived at last in Staunton, and walking through its rea.s.suring streets, he is said to have met one Colonel William Lewis, to whom the face of the orator was then unknown; and to have told to this stranger the story of the flight of the legislature from Albemarle. "If Patrick Henry had been in Albemarle," was the stranger's comment, "the British dragoons never would have pa.s.sed over the Rivanna River."[326]

The tongue of tradition, at last grown quite reckless, perhaps, of its own credit, still further relates that even at Staunton these ill.u.s.trious fugitives did not feel entirely sure that they were beyond the reach of Tarleton's men. A few nights after their arrival there, as the story runs, upon some sudden alarm, several of them sprang from their beds, and, imperfectly clapping on their clothes, fled out of the town, and took refuge at the plantation of one Colonel George Moffett, near which, they had been told, was a cave in which they might the more effectually conceal themselves. Mrs. Moffett, though not knowing the names of these flitting Solons, yet received them with true Virginian hospitality: but the next morning, at breakfast, she made the unlucky remark that there was one member of the legislature who certainly would not have run from the enemy. "Who is he?" was then asked. Her reply was, "Patrick Henry." At that moment a gentleman of the party, himself possessed of but one boot, was observed to blush considerably. Furthermore, as soon as possible after breakfast, these imperiled legislators departed in search of the cave; shortly after which a negro from Staunton rode up, carrying in his hand a solitary boot, and inquiring earnestly for Patrick Henry. In that way, as the modern reporter of this very debatable tradition unkindly adds, the admiring Mrs. Moffett ascertained who it was that the boot fitted; and he further suggests that, whatever Mrs. Moffett's emotions were at that time, those of Patrick must have been, "Give me liberty, but not death."[327]

Pa.s.sing by these whimsical tales, we have now to add that the legislature, having on the 7th of June entered upon its work at Staunton, steadily continued it there until the 23d of the month, when it adjourned in orderly fas.h.i.+on, to meet again in the following October. Governor Jefferson, whose second year of office had expired two days before the flight of himself and the legislature from Charlottesville, did not accompany that body to Staunton, but pursued his own way to Poplar Forest and to Bedford, where, "remote from the legislature,"[328] he remained during the remainder of its session. On the 12th of June, Thomas Nelson was elected as his successor in office.[329]

It was during this period of confusion and terror that, as Jefferson alleges, the legislature once more had before it the project of a dictator, in the criminal sense of that word; and, upon Jefferson's private authority, both Wirt and Girardin long afterward named Patrick Henry as the man who was intended for this profligate honor.[330] We need not here repeat what was said, in our narrative of the closing weeks of 1776, concerning this terrible posthumous imputation upon the public and private character of Patrick Henry. Nearly everything which then appeared to the discredit of this charge in connection with the earlier date, is equally applicable to it in connection with the later date also. Moreover, as regards this later date, there has recently been discovered a piece of contemporaneous testimony which shows that, whatever may have been the scheme for a dictators.h.i.+p in Virginia in 1781, it was a great military chieftain who was wanted for the position; and, apparently, that Patrick Henry was not then even mentioned in the affair. On the 9th of June, 1781, Captain H. Young, though not a member of the House of Delegates, writes from Staunton to Colonel William Davies as follows: "Two days ago, Mr. Nicholas gave notice that he should this day move to have a dictator appointed.

General Was.h.i.+ngton and General Greene are talked of. I dare say your knowledge of these worthy gentlemen will be sufficient to convince you that neither of them will, or ought to, accept of such an appointment.... We have but a thin House of Delegates; but they are zealous, I think, in the cause of virtue."[331] Furthermore, the journal of that House contains no record of any such motion having been made; and it is probable that it never was made, and that the subject never came before the legislature in any such form as to call for its notice.

Finally, with respect to both the dates mentioned by Jefferson for the appearance of the scheme, Edmund Randolph has left explicit testimony to the effect that such a scheme never had any substantial existence at all: "Mr. Jefferson, in his Notes on Virginia, speaks with great bitterness against those members of the a.s.sembly in the years 1776 and 1781, who espoused the erection of a dictator. Coming from such authority, the invective infects the character of the legislature, notwithstanding he has restricted the charge to less than a majority, and acknowledged the spotlessness of most of them.... The subject was never before them, except as an article of newspaper intelligence, and even then not in a form which called for their attention. Against this unfettered monster, which deserved all the impa.s.sioned reprobation of Mr. Jefferson, their tones, it may be affirmed, would have been loud and tremendous."[332]

For its autumn session, in 1781, the legislature did not reach an organization until the 19th of November,--just one month after the surrender of Cornwallis. Eight days after the organization of the House, Patrick Henry took his seat;[333] and after a service of less than four weeks, he obtained leave of absence for the remainder of the session.[334] During 1782 his attendance upon the House seems to have been limited to the spring session. At the organization of the House, on the 12th of May, 1783, he was in his place again, and during that session, as well as the autumnal one, his attendance was close and laborious. At both sessions of the House in 1784 he was present and in full force; but in the very midst of these employments he was interrupted by his election as governor, on the 17th of November,--shortly after which, he withdrew to his country-seat in order to remove his family thence to the capital.

In the course of all these labors in the legislature, and amid a mult.i.tude of topics merely local and temporary, Patrick Henry had occasion to deal publicly, and under the peculiar responsibilities of leaders.h.i.+p, with nearly all the most important and difficult questions that came before the American people during the later years of the war and the earlier years of the peace. The journal of the House for that period omits all mention of words spoken in debate; and although it does occasionally enable us to ascertain on which side of certain questions Patrick Henry stood, it leaves us in total ignorance of his reasons for any position which he chose to take. In trying, therefore, to estimate the quality of his statesmans.h.i.+p when dealing with these questions, we lack a part of the evidence which is essential to any just conclusion; and we are left peculiarly at the mercy of those sweeping censures which have been occasionally applied to his political conduct during that period.[335]

On the a.s.surance of peace, in the spring of 1783, perhaps the earliest and the knottiest problem which had to be taken up was the one relating to that vast body of Americans who then bore the contumelious name of Tories,--those Americans who, against all loss and ignominy, had steadily remained loyal to the unity of the British empire, unflinching in their rejection of the const.i.tutional heresy of American secession. How should these execrable beings--the defeated party in a long and most rancorous civil war--be treated by the party which was at last victorious? Many of them were already in exile: should they be kept there? Many were still in this country: should they be banished from it? As a matter of fact, the exasperation of public feeling against the Tories was, at that time, so universal and so fierce that no statesman could then lift up his voice in their favor without das.h.i.+ng himself against the angriest currents of popular opinion and pa.s.sion, and risking the loss of the public favor toward himself. Nevertheless, precisely this is what Patrick Henry had the courage to do. While the war lasted, no man spoke against the Tories more sternly than did he. The war being ended, and its great purpose secured, no man, excepting perhaps Alexander Hamilton, was so prompt and so energetic in urging that all animosities of the war should be laid aside, and that a policy of magnanimous forbearance should be pursued respecting these baffled opponents of American independence.

It was in this spirit that, as soon as possible after the cessation of hostilities, he introduced a bill for the repeal of an act "to prohibit intercourse with, and the admission of British subjects into" Virginia,[336]--language well understood to refer to the Tories.

This measure, we are told, not only excited surprise, but "was, at first, received with a repugnance apparently insuperable." Even his intimate friend John Tyler, the speaker of the House, hotly resisted it in the committee of the whole, and in the course of his argument, turning to Patrick Henry, asked "how he, above all other men, could think of inviting into his family an enemy from whose insults and injuries he had suffered so severely?"

In reply to this appeal, Patrick Henry declared that the question before them was not one of personal feeling; that it was a national question; and that in discussing it they should be willing to sacrifice all personal resentments, all private wrongs. He then proceeded to unfold the proposition that America had everything out of which to make a great nation--except people.

"Your great want, sir, is the want of men; and these you must have, and will have speedily, if you are wise. Do you ask how you are to get them? Open your doors, sir, and they will come in. The population of the Old World is full to overflowing; that population is ground, too, by the oppressions of the governments under which they live. Sir, they are already standing on tiptoe upon their native sh.o.r.es, and looking to your coasts with a wishful and longing eye.... But gentlemen object to any accession from Great Britain, and particularly to the return of the British refugees. Sir, I feel no objection to the return of those deluded people. They have, to be sure, mistaken their own interests most wofully, and most wofully have they suffered the punishment due to their offences. But the relations which we bear to them and to their native country are now changed. Their king hath acknowledged our independence. The quarrel is over. Peace hath returned, and found us a free people. Let us have the magnanimity, sir, to lay aside our antipathies and prejudices, and consider the subject in a political light. Those are an enterprising, moneyed people.

They will be serviceable in taking off the surplus produce of our lands, and supplying us with necessaries during the infant state of our manufactures. Even if they be inimical to us in point of feeling and principle, I can see no objection, in a political view, in making them tributary to our advantage. And, as I have no prejudices to prevent my making this use of them, so, sir, I have no fear of any mischief that they can do us. Afraid of them? What, sir [said he, rising to one of his loftiest att.i.tudes, and a.s.suming a look of the most indignant and sovereign contempt], shall we, who have laid the proud British lion at our feet, now be afraid of his whelps?"[337]

In the same spirit he dealt with the restraints on British commerce imposed during the war,--a question similar to the one just mentioned, at least in this particular, that it was enveloped in the angry prejudices born of the conflict just ended. The journal for the 13th of May, 1783, has this entry: "Mr. Henry presented, according to order, a bill 'to repeal the several Acts of a.s.sembly for seizure and condemnation of British goods found on land;' and the same was received and read the first time, and ordered to be read a second time." In advocating this measure, he seems to have lifted the discussion clear above all petty considerations to the plane of high and permanent principle, and, according to one of his chief antagonists in that debate, to have met all objections by arguments that were "beyond all expression eloquent and sublime." After describing the embarra.s.sments and distresses of the situation and their causes, he took the ground that perfect freedom was as necessary to the health and vigor of commerce as it was to the health and vigor of citizens.h.i.+p. "Why should we fetter commerce? If a man is in chains, he droops and bows to the earth, for his spirits are broken; but let him twist the fetters from his legs, and he will stand erect. Fetter not commerce, sir. Let her be as free as air; she will range the whole creation, and return on the wings of the four winds of heaven, to bless the land with plenty."[338]

Besides these and other problems in the foreign relations of the country, there remained, of course, at the end of the war, several vast domestic problems for American statesmans.h.i.+p to grapple with,--one of these being the relations of the white race to their perpetual neighbors, the Indians. In the autumn session of 1784, in a series of efforts said to have been marked by "irresistible earnestness and eloquence," he secured the favorable attention of the House to this ancient problem, and even to his own daring and statesmanlike solution of it. The whole subject, as he thought, had been commonly treated by the superior race in a spirit not only mean and hard, but superficial also; the result being nearly two centuries of mutual suspicion, hatred, and slaughter. At last the time had come for the superior race to put an end to this traditional disaster and disgrace. Instead of tampering with the difficulty by remedies applied merely to the surface, he was for striking at the root of it, namely, at the deep divergence in sympathy and in interest between the two races. There was but one way in which to do this: it was for the white race to treat the Indians, consistently, as human beings, and as fast as possible to identify their interests with our own along the entire range of personal concerns,--in property, government, society, and, especially, in domestic life. In short, he proposed to encourage, by a system of pecuniary bounties, the practice of marriage between members of the two races, believing that such ties, once formed, would be an inviolable pledge of mutual friends.h.i.+p, fidelity, and forbearance, and would gradually lead to the transformation of the Indians into a civilized and Christian people. His bill for this purpose, elaborately drawn up, was carried through its second reading and "engrossed for its final pa.s.sage," when, by his sudden removal from the floor of the House to the governor's chair, the measure was deprived of its all-conquering champion, and, on the third reading, it fell a sacrifice to the Caucasian rage and scorn of the members.

It is proper to note, also, that during this period of service in the legislature Patrick Henry marched straight against public opinion, and jeoparded his popularity, on two or three other subjects. For example, the ma.s.s of the people of Virginia were then so angrily opposed to the old connection between church and state that they occasionally saw danger even in projects which in no way involved such a connection.

This was the case with Patrick Henry's necessary and most innocent measure "for the incorporation of all societies of the Christian religion which may apply for the same;" likewise, his bill for the incorporation of the clergy of the Episcopal Church; and, finally, his more questionable and more offensive resolution for requiring all citizens of the State to contribute to the expense of supporting some form of religious wors.h.i.+p according to their own preference.

Whether, in these several measures, Patrick Henry was right or wrong, one thing, at least, is obvious: no politician who could thus beard in his very den the lion of public opinion can be accurately described as a demagogue.

With respect to those amazing gifts of speech by which, in the House of Delegates, he thus repeatedly swept all opposition out of his way, and made people think as he wished them to do, often in the very teeth of their own immediate interests or prepossessions, an amusing instance was mentioned, many years afterward, by President James Madison. During the war Virginia had paid her soldiers in certificates for the amounts due them, to be redeemed in cash at some future time.

In many cases, the poverty of the soldiers had induced them to sell these certificates, for trifling sums in ready money, to certain speculators, who were thus making a traffic out of the public distress. For the purpose of checking this cruel and harmful business, Madison brought forward a suitable bill, which, as he told the story, Patrick Henry supported with an eloquence so irresistible that it was carried through the House without an opposing vote; while a notorious speculator in these very certificates, having listened from the gallery to Patrick Henry's speech, at its conclusion so far forgot his own interest in the question as to exclaim, "That bill ought to pa.s.s."[339]

Concerning his appearance and his manner of speech in those days, a bit of testimony comes down to us from Spencer Roane, who, as he tells us, first "met with Patrick Henry in the a.s.sembly of 1783." He adds:--

"I also then met with R. H. Lee.... I lodged with Lee one or two sessions, and was perfectly acquainted with him, while I was yet a stranger to Mr. H. These two gentlemen were the great leaders in the House of Delegates, and were almost constantly opposed. Notwithstanding my habits of intimacy with Mr. Lee, I found myself obliged to vote with P. H.

against him in '83, and against Madison in '84, ... but with several important exceptions. I voted against him (P. H.), I recollect, on the subject of the refugees,--he was for permitting their return; on the subject of a general a.s.sessment; and the act incorporating the Episcopal Church.

I voted with him, in general, because he was, I thought, a more practical statesman than Madison (time has made Madison more practical), and a less selfish one than Lee. As an orator, Mr. Henry demolished Madison with as much ease as Samson did the cords that bound him before he was shorn. Mr.

Lee held a greater compet.i.tion.... Mr. Lee was a polished gentleman. His person was not very good; and he had lost the use of one of his hands; but his manner was perfectly graceful. His language was always chaste, and, although somewhat too monotonous, his speeches were always pleasing; yet he did not ravish your senses, nor carry away your judgment by storm.... Henry was almost always victorious. He was as much superior to Lee in temper as in eloquence....

Mr. Henry was inferior to Lee in the gracefulness of his action, and perhaps also in the chasteness of his language; yet his language was seldom incorrect, and his address always striking. He had a fine blue eye; and an earnest manner which made it impossible not to attend to him. His speaking was unequal, and always rose with the subject and the exigency. In this respect, he entirely differed from Mr.

Lee, who always was equal. At some times, Mr. Henry would seem to hobble, especially in the beginning of his speeches; and, at others, his tones would be almost disagreeable; yet it was by means of his tones, and the happy modulation of his voice, that his speaking perhaps had its greatest effect. He had a happy articulation, and a clear, distinct, strong voice; and every syllable was distinctly uttered. He was very una.s.suming as to himself, amounting almost to humility, and very respectful towards his compet.i.tor; the consequence was that no feeling of disgust or animosity was arrayed against him. His exordiums in particular were often hobbling and always una.s.suming. He knew mankind too well to promise much.... He was great at a reply, and greater in proportion to the pressure which was bearing upon him. The resources of his mind and of his eloquence were equal to any drafts which could be made upon them. He took but short notes of what fell from his adversaries, and disliked the drudgery of composition; yet it is a mistake to say that he could not write well."[340]

FOOTNOTES:

[311] Rives, _Life of Madison_, i. 189, note.

[312] _Jour. Va. House Del._ 54.

[313] _Jour. Va. House Del._ 27.

[314] MS.

[315] MS.

[316] _Jour. Va. House Del._ 14.

[317] _Jour. Va. House Del._ 14, 15, 18, 25, 28, 31, 39.

[318] _Jour. Va. House Del._ 7, 8, 10, 14, 24, 45, 50, 51.

[319] _Jour. Va. House Del._ 71.

[320] _Ibid._ 79.

[321] Burk, _Hist. Va._ iv. 491.

[322] _Jour. Va. House Del._ 1.

[323] Burk, _Hist. Va._ iv. 496-497.

[324] _Jour. Va. House Del._ 10.

[325] L. G. Tyler, _Letters and Times of the Tylers_, i. 81-83, where it is said to be taken from Abel's _Life of John Tyler_.

[326] Peyton, _Hist. Augusta Co._ 211.

[327] Peyton, _Hist. Augusta Co._ 211.

[328] Randall, _Life of Jefferson_, i. 352.

[329] _Jour. Va. House Del._ 15.

[330] _Jefferson's Writings_, viii. 368; Wirt, 231; Girardin, in Burk.

_Hist. Va._ iv. App. pp. xi.-xii.; Randall, _Life of Jefferson_, i.

348-352.

[331] _Calendar Va. State Papers_, ii. 152.