Patrick Henry

by Thomas S. Kidd

  39 George Washington to Richard Henry Lee, February 8, 1785, in Crackel, Papers of George Washington; Richard Henry Lee to George Washington, February 27, 1785, in Ballagh, Letters of Richard Henry Lee, 2:338–39.

  40 Edwin S. Gaustad, Sworn on the Altar of God: A Religious Biography of Thomas Jefferson (Grand Rapids, MI, 1995), 101.

  41 Patrick Henry to the County Lieutenant and Commanding Officer of Greenbrier County, June 23, 1785, in Calendar of Virginia State Papers, ed. William P. Palmer (Richmond, VA, 1884), 4:39; Patrick Henry to Joseph Martin, April 16, 1785, Samuel Brown to Patrick Henry, July 29, 1785, and Henry to Brown, August 11, 1785, in Henry, Patrick Henry, 3:294–95, 312–13; Daniel Boone to Patrick Henry, August 16, 1785, in Southern Literary Messenger, January 1, 1860, 52; John Mack Faragher, Daniel Boone: The Life and Legend of an American Pioneer (New York, 1992), 250.

  42 St. George Tucker to Patrick Henry, January 6, 1786, in McDonnell, Politics of War, 512; Patrick Henry to the Speaker of the House of Delegates, October 17, 1786, in Harrison Ethridge, “Governor Patrick Henry and the Reorganization of the Virginia Militia, 1784–1786,” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 85 (1977): 438.

  43 Patrick Henry to the Speaker of the House of Delegates, November 17, 1785, in Henry, Patrick Henry, 337; William Foushee to Patrick Henry, December 6, 1785, in Palmer, Virginia State Papers, 4:71.

  44 Richard Henry Lee to Patrick Henry, February 14, 1785, in Ballagh, Richard Henry Lee, 332.

  45 George Rogers Clark to Patrick Henry, May [?], 1786, in Palmer, Virginia State Papers, 122.

  46 Patrick Henry to the President of Congress, May 16, 1786, in Henry, Patrick Henry, 353.

  47 William Grayson, et al., to Patrick Henry, June 8, 1786, and Patrick Henry to Edward Carrington, et al., July 5, 1786, in The Papers of James Monroe, ed. Daniel Preston (Westport, CT, 2006), 2:309, 316.

  48 Eli Merritt, et al., “Sectional Conflict and Secret Compromise: The Mississippi River Question and the United States Constitution,” American Journal of Legal History 35, no. 2 (April 1991): 132.

  49 James Monroe to Patrick Henry, August 12, 1786, in Preston, Papers of James Monroe, 2:333–34.

  50 Patrick Henry to Anne Christian, October 20, 1786, in Henry, Patrick Henry, 3:380.

  51 James Madison to George Washington, December 7, 1786, in Crackel, Papers of George Washington.

  52 Patrick Henry to Anne Christian, October 20, 1786, in Henry, Patrick Henry, 3:380; Meade, Practical Revolutionary, 318–19; www.redhill.org/descendants_genealogy.html.

  53 Patrick Henry to Edmund Randolph, February 13, 1787, in Henry, Patrick Henry, 2:311.

  Chapter 9: “I Smelt a Rat”: Defending the

  Revolution by Opposing the Constitution

  1 Independent Gazetteer (Philadelphia), December 21, 1786, 3; Hugh Blair Grigsby, The History of the Virginia Federal Convention of 1788 (Richmond, VA: 1890), 1:32 n.36.

  2 William Wirt Henry, Patrick Henry: Life, Correspondence, and Speeches (New York, 1891), 2:301; James Madison to Thomas Jefferson, March 19, 1787, in The Papers of James Madison, ed. Robert A. Rutland and William M. E. Rachal (Chicago, 1975), 9:319; James Madison to George Washington, March 18, 1787, in ibid., 9:316.

  3 Jack N. Rakove, Original Meanings: Politics and Ideas in the Making of the Constitution (New York, 1996), 32–33; Richard R. Beeman, Patrick Henry: A Biography (New York, 1974), 140–41.

  4 Edmund Randolph to Patrick Henry, December 6, 1786, in Henry, Patrick Henry, 2:310–11.

  5 Joseph J. Ellis, His Excellency: George Washington (New York, 2004), 177.

  6 George Mason, “Objections to the Constitution of Government Formed by the Convention,” in The Complete Anti-Federalist, ed. Herbert J. Storing (Chicago, 1981), 2:11–13.

  7 George Washington to Patrick Henry, Benjamin Harrison, and Thomas Nelson, September 24, 1787, in The Papers of George Washington: Digital Edition, ed. Theodore J. Crackel (Charlottesville, VA, 2007); James Madison to George Washington, October 18, 1787, in The Documentary History of the Ratification of the Constitution, ed. John P. Kaminski and Gaspare J. Saladino (Madison, WI, 1990), 8:77; Robert Middlekauff, The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763–1789 (New York, 1982), 646–48.

  8 Patrick Henry to George Washington, October 19, 1787, in Crackel, Papers of George Washington.

  9 Benjamin Harrison to George Washington, October 4, 1787, in ibid.

  10 Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, December 20, 1787, in The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, ed. Julian P. Boyd (Princeton, NJ, 1955), 12:442; Joseph J. Ellis, American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson (New York, 1996), 122–24.

  11 “Petersburg, (Virginia), Nov. 1,” Pennsylvania Packet, November 10, 1787.

  12 Ibid.; Kaminski and Saladino, Documentary History, 8:110.

  13 James Madison to Thomas Jefferson, December 9, 1787, in Boyd, Papers of Thomas Jefferson, 12:410.

  14 James Madison, Federalist #51, in The Federalist, ed. George W. Carey and James McClellan (Indianapolis, 2001), 270.

  15 John Blair Smith to James Madison, June 12, 1788, in The Papers of James Madison, ed. Robert A. Rutland, et al. (Charlottesville, VA, 1977), 11:120; Pauline Maier, Ratification: The People Debate the Constitution, 1787–1788 (New York, 2010), 231–32; 1790 Census figures, at www2.census.gov/prod2/decennial/documents/1790m-02.pdf.

  16 Edward Carrington to Thomas Jefferson, April 24, 1788, in Kaminski and Saladino, Documentary History, 9:755.

  17 Patrick Henry to John Lamb, June 9, 1788, in Henry, Patrick Henry, 2:342–43.

  18 Tobias Lear to John Langdon, April 3, 1788, in Kaminski and Saladino, Documentary History, 9:699; Pauline Maier, Ratification, 216, 225–26.

  19 “The Virginia Convention, June 5, 1788,” in Kaminski and Saladino, Documentary History, 9:951.

  20 James Duncanson to James Maury, June 7 and 13, 1788, in Kaminski and Saladino, Documentary History, 10:1582–84; Maier, Ratification, 255–56.

  21 “The Virginia Convention, June 3, 1788,” in Kaminski and Saladino, Documentary History, 9:914; Andrew Burstein and Nancy Isenberg, Madison and Jefferson (New York, 2010), 181.

  22 “The Virginia Convention, June 4, 1788,” in Kaminski and Saladino, Documentary History, 9:929–30.

  23 Ibid., 9:930.

  24 “The Virginia Convention, June 5, 1788,” in ibid., 9:949.

  25 Alexander White to Mary Wood, June 10–11, 1788, in ibid., 10:1591; Henry speech in ibid., 9:952.

  26 George Washington to Henry Lee, October 31, 1786, in Crackel, Papers of George Washington; “Extract of a Letter from a Gentleman at Philadelphia, Dated 16th June 1788,” Independent Gazetteer, June 24, 1788.

  27 Kaminski and Saladino, Documentary History, 9:954, 959.

  28 “The Virginia Convention, June 5, 1788,” in ibid., 9:959.

  29 Ibid., 9:951.

  30 Ibid., 9:963.

  31 Alexander Hamilton, Federalist #67, in Carey and McClellan, The Federalist, 348.

  32 “The Virginia Convention, June 5, 1788,” in Kaminski and Saladino, Documentary History, 9:964.

  33 Ibid., 9:962, 967.

  34 Patrick Henry to Elizabeth Aylett, June 11, 1788, Hoxey Collection, Special Collections, University of Texas at Arlington Library; Robert Douthat Meade, Patrick Henry: Practical Revolutionary (Philadelphia, 1969), 357–58.

  35 Vermont Gazette, July 7, 1788, 3; “The Virginia Convention, Friday, June 6, 1788,” in Kaminski and Saladino, Documentary History, 9:975.

  36 Ibid., 9:989–90; Maier, Ratification, 271.

  37 Kaminski and Saladino, Documentary History, 9:1044–45; Gordon S. Wood, Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, 1789–1815 (New York, 2009), 35–36.

  38 “The Virginia Convention, June 7, 1788,” and “The Virginia Convention, June 12, 1788,” in Kaminski and Saladino, Documentary History, 9:1039, 10:1220; Lance Banning, The Sacred Fire of Liberty: James Madison and the Founding of the Federal Republic (Ithaca, NY, 1995), 268–69.

  39 Kaminski and Saladino, Do
cumentary History, 9:1044.

  40 “The Virginia Convention, June 9, 1788,” in ibid., 9:1062.

  41 “The Virginia Convention, June 17, 1788,”and “The Virginia Convention, June 24, 1788,” in ibid., 10:1341, 1503; Robin L. Einhorn, American Taxation, American Slavery (Chicago, 2006), 178–83; David Waldstreicher, Slavery’s Constitution: From Revolution to Ratification (New York, 2009), 142–45.

  42 “The Virginia Convention, June 24, 1788,” in Kaminski and Saladino, Documentary History, 10:1476–77. A reminiscence sixty years later held that Henry burst out at one point with the crass warning that, under the Constitution, “They’ll free your niggers!” Given Henry’s documented sober comments about slavery at the convention, and the belated nature of the source, I do not think this quote is authentic. Robin Einhorn, “Patrick Henry’s Case Against the Constitution: The Structural Problem with Slavery,” Journal of the Early Republic 22, no. 4 (Winter 2002): 554–55, n.10.

  43 “The Virginia Convention, June 23, 1788, in Kaminski and Saladino, Documentary History, 10:1468–69.

  44 “The Virginia Convention, June 17, 1788,” in ibid., 10:1345.

  45 Maier, Ratification, 305–07.

  46 “The Virginia Convention, June 24, 1788,” in Kaminski and Saladino, Documentary History, 10:1506, 1511.

  47 Extract of a Letter from Richmond, June 18,“ Pennsylvania Mercury, June 26, 1788; Burstein and Isenberg, Madison and Jefferson, 183; “The Virginia Convention, June 25, 1788,” in Kaminski and Saladino, Documentary History, 10:1537.

  48 “The Virginia Convention, June 27, 1788,” in Kaminski and Saladino, Documentary History, 10:1553.

  49 Maier, Ratification, 313; “Meeting of Antifederalist Convention Delegates, June 27, 1788,” in ibid., 10:1561–62; David J. Siemers, Ratifying the Republic: Antifederalists and Federalists in Constitutional Time (Stanford, CA, 2002), 32.

  50 James Madison to George Washington, June 27, 1788, in Crackel, Papers of George Washington.

  51 Henry Lee to James Madison, November 19, 1788, in Rutland, et al., Papers of James Madison, 11:356; Henry, Patrick Henry, 2:423–25.

  52 George Washington to James Madison, November 17, 1788, in Crackel, Papers of George Washington; Maier, Ratification, 440.

  53 Patrick Henry to Richard Henry Lee, November 15, 1788, Patrick Henry Papers, Library of Congress; Beeman, Patrick Henry, 169.

  54 Virginia Independent Chronicle, January 14, February 4, 1789.

  55 Patrick Henry to William Grayson, March 31, 1789, in Virginia Historical Magazine 14, 203.

  56 James Madison to George Eve, January 2, 1789, in Rutland, et al., Papers of James Madison, 11:405.

  Chapter 10: “To Care for the Crazy Machine”:

  Reconciling with the Republic

  1 Scene at Henry’s home in William Wirt Henry, Patrick Henry: Life, Correspondence, and Speeches (New York, 1891), 2:518; Patrick Henry to Elizabeth Aylett, September 8, 1794, in ibid., 3:424; “garden spots” in George Morgan, The True Patrick Henry (Philadelphia, 1907), 396.

  2 “William Loughton Smith Journal, 1790–1791,” Massachusetts Historical Society Proceedings 51 (October 1917–June 1918): 68.

  3 Theodore Sedgwick to Benjamin Lincoln, July 19, 1789, in Creating the Bill of Rights: The Documentary Record from the First Federal Congress, ed. Helen E. Veit, et al. (Baltimore, 1991), 263.

  4 Pennsylvania Packet, January 7, 1789, 2; Federal Gazette (Philadelphia), January 14, 1789, 3; Norwich Packet, January 26, 1789, 3.

  5 James Madison to Thomas Jefferson, December 8, 1788, in The Papers of James Madison, ed. Robert A. Rutland, et al. (Charlottesville, VA, 1977), 11:382.

  6 James Madison, speech of June 8, 1789, in Veit, et al., Creating the Bill of Rights, 78; Kenneth R. Bowling, “‘A Tub to the Whale’: The Founding Fathers and the Adoption of the Federal Bill of Rights,” Journal of the Early Republic 8, no. 3 (Autumn 1988): 223–24.

  7 Patrick Henry to Richard Henry Lee, August 28, 1789, Patrick Henry Papers, Library of Congress.

  8 Richard Henry Lee to Patrick Henry, September 14, 1789, and William Grayson to Patrick Henry, September 29, 1789, in Patrick Henry Papers, Library of Congress.

  9 Richard Henry Lee to Patrick Henry, September 27, 1789, Richard Henry Lee and William Grayson to the Speaker of the House of Representatives in Virginia, September 28, 1789, in The Letters of Richard Henry Lee, ed. James Curtis Ballagh (1911; New York, 1970), 2:506, 508; Edward Carrington to James Madison, December 20, 1789, in Rutland, et al., Papers of James Madison, 12:463.

  10 Henry, Patrick Henry, 2:449; Patrick Henry to Elizabeth Aylett, November 5, 1789, Virginia Historical Society, Richmond.

  11 Thomas P. Abernathy, The South in the New Nation, 1789–1819 (Baton Rouge, LA, 1961), 88–89.

  12 Patrick Henry to Richard Henry Lee, January 29, 1790, and Theodorick Bland to Patrick Henry, March 9, 1790, in Henry, Patrick Henry, 3:414, 419.

  13 Ibid., 3:415; Samuel Cole Williams, History of the Lost State of Franklin (Johnson City, TN, 1924), 243.

  14 Patrick Henry to [Francis Watkins?], November 12, 1790, Patrick Henry papers, Library of Congress; Richard R. Beeman, Patrick Henry: A Biography (New York, 1974), 184.

  15 Patrick Henry to James Townes, October 24, 1798, Patrick Henry Letters, Library of Virginia, Richmond.

  16 Spencer Roane quoted in Moses Coit Tyler, Patrick Henry (Boston, 1894), 267–68; Patrick Henry to Elizabeth Aylett, October 30, 1791, Virginia Historical Society; Henry’s son-in-law (Spencer Roane) quoted in George Morgan, Patrick Henry (Philadelphia, 1929), 449; Henry Mayer, A Son of Thunder: Patrick Henry and the American Republic (New York, 1986), 465.

  17 Patrick Henry, Memorandum of September 5, 1785, Henry Family Papers, Records of the Ante-Bellum Southern Plantations from the Revolution through the Civil War, ed. Kenneth Stampp, Series M, Selections from the Virginia Historical Society, Richmond, Part 5: Southside Virginia.

  18 “Great” quote in Edmund Pendleton to James Madison, December 9, 1791, in The Letters and Papers of Edmund Pendleton, 1734–1803, ed. David John Mays (Charlottesville, VA, 1967), 2:582; Beeman, Patrick Henry, 177–80.

  19 William Wirt, Sketches of the Life and Character of Patrick Henry (New York, 1857), 389–91.

  20 Beeman, Patrick Henry, 180–81.

  21 Patrick Henry to James Monroe, January 24, 1791, in The Papers of James Monroe, ed. Daniel Preston (Westport, CT, 2006), 2:493.

  22 Ibid.

  23 Journal of the House of Delegates (Richmond, VA, 1790), 36.

  24 Henry Lee to George Washington, August 17, 1794, in The Writings of George Washington, ed. Worthington Chauncey Ford (New York, 1891), 12:456 n.1; George Washington to Henry Lee, August 26, 1794, in Jared Sparks, The Writings of George Washington (Boston, 1836), 10:431. (Note that as of this writing, the Papers of George Washington, Presidential Series, runs only through April 1794. Thus, several letters to or from Washington in this chapter are quoted from older sources.)

  25 Henry Lee to Patrick Henry, July 11, 1794, Patrick Henry Papers, Library of Congress; Patrick Henry to Henry Lee, July 14, 1794, in Henry, Patrick Henry, 2:547; Gazette of the United States August 12, 1794, 3.

  26 Edmund Randolph to Patrick Henry, n.d. [1794], Henry Family Papers, Virginia Historical Society; Patrick Henry to Edmund Randolph, September 14, 1794, Henry, Patrick Henry, 2:548–49.

  27 Patrick Henry to Elizabeth Aylett, October 26, 1793, and Patrick Henry to Elizabeth Aylett, September 8, 1794, in Henry, Patrick Henry, 3:422–23.

  28 Robert Douthat Meade, Patrick Henry: Practical Revolutionary (Philadelphia, 1969), 433; Patrick Henry to Elizabeth Aylett, May 3, 1794, Princeton University Rare Books and Special Collections; Gordon S. Wood, Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, 1789–1815 (New York, 2009), 193–94.

  29 Thomas J. Farnham, “The Virginia Amendments of 1795: An Episode in the Opposition to Jay’s Treaty,” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 75, no. 1 (January 1967): 78, 82; Aurora General Advertiser, August 17, 1795, 3; T
odd Estes, The Jay Treaty Debate, Public Opinion, and the Evolution of Early American Political Culture (Amherst, MA, 2006), 104–26; Wood, Empire of Liberty, 198–99.

  30 Edward Carrington to George Washington, October 16, 1795, in Sparks, Writings of George Washington, 11:81; George Washington to Patrick Henry, October 9, 1795, in ibid., 11:82.

  31 Rufus King quoted in Ron Chernow, Washington: A Life (New York, 2010), 735.

  32 Patrick Henry to George Washington, October 16, 1795, Gratz Federal Convention papers, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. Several drafts of this letter exist, and I am using the HSP copy because it is clearly in Henry’s handwriting.

  33 Ibid.

  34 Patrick Henry to Elizabeth Aylett, August 20, 1796, in Henry Family Papers, Virginia Historical Society.

  35 George Washington to Henry Lee, January 11, 1796, in The Documentary History of the Supreme Court of the United States, 1789–1800, ed. Maeva Marcus and James R. Perry (New York, 1985), vol. 1, part 2: 829; George Washington to Timothy Pickering, July 8, 1796, in Ford, Writings of George Washington, 13:236.

  36 Thomas Jefferson to James Monroe, July 10, 1796, in The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, ed. Barbara B. Oberg (Princeton, NJ, 2002), 147–48.

  37 Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason (New York, 1827), 5; Gary B. Nash, “The American Clergy and the French Revolution,” William and Mary Quarterly 3rd series, 22, no. 3 (July 1965): 402.

  38 Patrick Henry to Elizabeth Aylett, August 20, 1796, in Henry Family Papers, Virginia Historical Society.

  39 Garry Wills, Cincinnatus: George Washington and the Enlightenment (New York, 1984), 13.

  40 Alexander Hamilton to Rufus King, May 4, 1796, in The Papers of Alexander Hamilton, ed. Harold C. Syrett (New York, 1974), 20:158; National Gazette (Philadelphia), June 18, 1792; James Roger Sharp, American Politics in the Early Republic: The New Nation in Crisis (New Haven, CT, 1993), 148; Patrick Daily, Patrick Henry: The Last Years, 1789–1799 (Bedford, VA, 1986), 155–56; Charles Simms, “To the Freeholders of the Counties of Prince William, Stafford, and Fairfax,” Federal Gazette (Baltimore), October 4, 1796.