Lion of Liberty

by Harlow Giles Unger

  Most Virginians owned small properties far from the centers of political power. Few expected independence to affect their lives. Almost all believed that the same powerful Tidewater planters who had taxed them before the war as burgesses under British rule had called for independence only to protect their own interests from British taxation, and would reclaim their seats after independence and tax them just as heavily as before.

  As the British evacuated Philadelphia, a week of heavy rains combined with searing summer heat and suffocating humidity to slow the huge British convoy to six miles a day. On June 26, the exhausted Redcoats encamped at Monmouth Courthouse (now Freehold), New Jersey, with the Patriots only six miles behind. Two small forces of 1,000 men each had been stalking the British, and Washington ordered a 4,000-man brigade under English-born General Charles Lee to attack the center of the British line from the rear, while the two smaller forces under “Mad” Anthony Wayne and the Marquis de Lafayette sliced into the British flanks. Washington would hold the main army, three miles back. If the attack succeeded, his army would join the battle; if the British proved too powerful, the main army would cover an orderly retreat by the forward brigade. After the attack began, Washington sent his aide Colonel Alexander Hamilton to reconnoiter. To Hamilton’s astonishment, Lee’s force was retreating in chaos, leaving Lafayette’s column trapped behind enemy lines. Outraged at Hamilton’s report, Washington galloped into Lee’s camp shouting “till the leaves shook on the trees.”7

  “You damned poltroon [coward],” he barked at Lee, then ordered him to the rear and took command himself. He galloped into the midst of the retreating troops, shifting his mount to the right, to the left, turning full circle and rearing up—gradually herding the men into line.

  “Stand fast, my boys!” he shouted. “The southern troops are advancing to support you!”8 As Washington’s men drove the British back, “Mad” Anthony Wayne lived up to his sobriquet by ordering an insane charge into the British flank that opened the way for Lafayette’s men to escape capture. With cannon blasts still blazing overhead, Washington reformed the lines and led a huge frontal attack. Great horseman that he was, he charged heroically atop his huge horse, calling to his men, inspiring them to follow. With a surge of energy, the Continentals repelled a British cavalry charge and sent enemy forces reeling back toward Monmouth Courthouse.

  “General Washington was never greater in battle than in this action,” Lafayette recalled. “His presence stopped the retreat; his strategy secured the victory. His stately appearance on horseback, his calm, his dignified courage . . . provoked a wave of enthusiasm among the troops.”9

  Before Washington could seal his victory, darkness set in and ended the day’s fighting. As Washington and his exhausted troops slept, the British quietly slipped away to Sandy Hook, a spit of land on the northern New Jersey shore at the entrance to New York Bay. Transports carried them away to New York and deprived the Americans of a clear-cut victory. Although Monmouth was not decisive, the Americans nonetheless claimed victory, with Washington writing to his brother John that Monmouth had “turned out to be a glorious and happy day. . . . ”10

  Washington wrote to Henry as if to America’s head of state: “I take the earliest opportunity of congratulating you on the success of our arms over the British on the 28th June near Monmouth Court House.”

  The enemy left 245 dead upon the field and 4 officers . . . but we found, besides, several graves and burial holes, in which they had deposited their dead before they were obliged to quit the ground. . . . I think I may without exaggeration assert that they will lose near one thousand men in this way before they quit Jersey, and that their army will be diminished two thousand by killed, wounded, desertion, and fatigue.11

  As Henry rejoiced over Washington’s victory, he received exhilarating news from the West. George Rogers Clark had sailed down the Ohio River with his small force disguised in Indian garb—buckskins, moccasins, and tomahawks. Leaving their craft at the junction with the Wabash River, they marched 120 miles overland through the wilderness to Kaskaskia for six days—two of them without food—and caught the British by surprise at night. Wading along the Mississippi River mud flats, they entered a gate left open for small river craft to float into the fort. Slipping into the British commander’s quarters as he slept, they surprised him in his bed and, with a knife at his throat, he surrendered the fort “without a drop of bloodshed.”

  In the weeks that followed, Clark’s force moved across the territory, capturing the fort at Cahokia, more than 200 miles north along the Mississippi, then crossing back through Illinois to Indiana to capture the British fort at Vincennes and nearby territories inhabited by French immigrants from Canada. Henry acted swiftly to bolster Clark’s forces, sending another expedition under Colonel Evan Shelby to attack a force of Tories and Indians and crush British hopes of inciting an Indian war in the West. Henry promoted Clark to commander in chief of the Virginia troops in the County of Illinois, and ordered him “to spare no pains to conciliate the affections of the French and Indians.”

  Let them see and feel the advantages of being fellow citizens and freemen. Guard most carefully against every infringement of their property, particularly with respect to land. . . . Strict and severe discipline with your soldiers may be essential to preserve from injury those whom they were sent to protect and conciliate. . . . I send you herewith some copies of the . . . [Virginia] Bill of Rights, together with the French alliance . . . to show our new friends the ground upon which they are to stand and the support to be expected from their countrymen of France. . . . I think it possible that they may be brought to expel their British masters and become fellow citizens of a free state.12

  Clark’s winning ways won him the allegiance of enough settlers and Indians to secure the territory for Virginia, which named it, simply, Illinois County. Still suffering the stings of his rejection as commander in chief of Virginia’s armies, Henry trumpeted the news of his and Clark’s superbly successful grand strategy and military triumph to the Virginia Assembly and to the Continental Congress: It appears that his success has equaled the most sanguine expectations. He has . . . struck such terror into the Indian tribes between that settlement and the lakes that no less than five of them . . . bound themselves with promises to be peaceful in the future. The great Blackbird, the Chappowow chief, has also sent a belt of peace to Colonel Clark, influenced . . . by the dread of Detroit’s being reduced by American arms.13

  Henry took advantage of the Virginia Assembly’s ebullient mood to win legislation that banned importation of slaves, thus resolving, in part, a moral dilemma that remained a continuing burden for him: his embrace of individual freedom and his continuing ownership of slaves. The ban on slave importation salved his conscience somewhat and accomplished a major priority of his social agenda to stem the growth of slavery.

  As Clark and his army moved to challenge other British pockets of resistance, the House of Delegates appointed Colonel John Todd chief administrator of the new County of Illinois. “You will take care to cultivate and conciliate the affections of the French and Indians,” Henry ordered Todd.

  You are on all occasions to inculcate on the people the value of liberty and the difference between the state of free citizens of this commonwealth and that slavery to which Illinois was destined. . . . Let it be your constant attention to see that the inhabitants have justice administered to them for any injuries received from the troops. . . . You will also discourage every attempt to violate the property of the Indians, particularly in their lands.14

  While managing the western campaign, Henry also provided George Washington with intelligence reports on campaigns in the western Carolinas, where Virginia militia were fighting Indians, and in southeastern Georgia, where they were battling a British advance from Florida. “My last accounts from the South are unfavorable,” he reported to Washington, in mid-March 1779:Georgia is said to be in full possession of the enemy, and South Carolina in great danger. One thousand milit
ia are ordered thither from our southern counties. . . . About five hundred militia are ordered down the Tennessee River to chastise some new settlements of renegade Cherokees that infest our southwestern frontier and prevent our navigation on that river. . . . Fort Natchez and Morishac are again in the enemy’s hands; and from thence they infest and ruin our trade on the Mississippi.15

  On July 4, 1778, a French fleet under General Vice Admiral Charles-Henri Comte d’Estaing sailed into Delaware Bay near Philadelphia with twelve ships of the line, five frigates, and an invasion force of 4,000.

  At the time, Washington’s army was marching northward through New Jersey in the aftermath of the Battle of Monmouth. He sent word to the French commander to sail up the New Jersey coast to Sandy Hook and seal the entrance to New York Bay, thus trapping the British fleet in New York Harbor and the British army on Manhattan Island. Washington, meanwhile, led his army to Paramus, New Jersey, across the Hudson River from New York. His initial plan was to attack New York from the west, while d’Estaing’s ships sailed in from the south, but the French ships drew too much water to cross the sandbars into New York Harbor, and, as the British ships bobbed tantalizingly in the waters beyond cannon range, d’Estaing had to abandon the planned assault. “It is terrible to be within sight of your object,” he fretted, “and yet be unable to attain it.”16

  Washington was ready with an alternative strategy, however: a joint, land-sea attack on the 6,000-man British fortification at Newport, Rhode Island—the last British stronghold in New England. D’Estaing agreed and sailed eastward. With cannons ablaze and marines firing from the top rails, the French frigates sprinted through the narrow channels that rimmed Newport and other islands of Narragansett Bay, capturing, burning, or ramming every British vessel they could find. The British themselves set fire to three of their frigates to prevent their capture by the French. Just as the French began celebrating their first victory in America, however, a cry from a crow’s nest heralded the approach of the British fleet, which had followed the French up from New York, laying just out of sight beyond the horizon. The French frigates needed all night to maneuver out of the tight channels, but by morning on August 10, they lay in position to repel a British attack. Then the winds shifted, and, seeing an opportunity to destroy the British fleet, d’Estaing sailed out to sea to attack.

  As the powerful French fleet approached, the British came about and sailed back towards New York with the French in pursuit under full canvas. The chase continued all day and night and most of the next day, with the French closing in by the hour. At the end of the second day, the British fleet had no choice but to come about and engage, but before the titanic battle could begin, the sea began churning angrily. Violent waves and winds gripped both fleets and tossed their ships about, spinning them in different directions, out of control, rolling and pitching violently, ripping sails and snapping masts like twigs. The gale roared relentlessly through the night. By morning both fleets lay crippled, barely able to steer, let alone engage in battle. D’Estaing’s flagship had lost its masts and rudder and bobbed about helplessly. A second man-of-war had lost two of its three masts, and a third was out of sight beyond the horizon or at the bottom of the sea. A British ship closed in to sink the crippled French ships, but the bigger French guns held it off, and the British abandoned the attack and limped off to safety in New York. The French fleet managed to reach Boston for refitting before sailing off to the French West Indies and reopening American waters to British depredations. Taking full advantage of the French departure, a British fleet with 3,500 marines sailed to Georgia and captured Savannah.

  Unlike the American North, the approach of winter weather in the milder climate of the South did not force British forces to retire to winter quarters as early or for as long. As Henry had reported to Washington, British troops in Florida had pushed northward and captured most of Georgia by mid-March. By May, they had overrun the entire state and reached the outskirts of Charleston. To the horror of farmers and plantation owners, the British freed indentured servants and slaves who were willing to swear allegiance to Britain and, if able, fight the rebels.

  As Henry’s third and last permissible term in office approached an end, he made preparations to move his family west to his Leatherwood plantation—far from the dangers of attack by British forces on the coast. Before he could leave office, however, the war took a turn for the worse: On May 10, a British fleet sailed into Hampton Roads and set fire to what was left of Norfolk, along with Portsmouth and nearby Suffolk. The threat of further British incursions sent Virginia’s government fleeing inland to Richmond. “The troops which landed,” Henry reported to the Assembly, “burnt, plundered, and destroyed Suffolk, committing various barbarities.”17

  On June 6, however, Henry had no choice but to put the cares of office behind him when the Assembly elected Thomas Jefferson to succeed him as governor. The Virginia Assembly tried to draft Henry into serving a fourth term until he rebuked them for violating the state constitution. He remained so popular, however, that less than three weeks after his retirement, the House of Delegates voted to send him to Congress. By then, however, he and his family had left for Leatherneck in far off Henry County, where his “tedious illness” made his attendance in Congress impossible.18

  High on a hill in the Blue Ridge Mountains at the center of Henry County, Leatherwood’s “manor house” boasted magnificent views of the surrounding country, but its size and condition devastated Henry’s wife, Dorothea. In sharp contrast to the Governor’s Palace, their new home was a two-room brick structure that Henry described as “a sort of camp.” Henry’s entourage numbered more than fifty people, including his wife and baby and five of his six children by his first wife. His oldest child, Martha, came with her husband, John Fontaine, and their three children. Although he had sold a few slaves to buy various properties, the new properties he bought came with resident slaves, and he now owned seventy-five slaves, along with thirty-three horses, seventy-nine cattle, and enough hogs and sheep to provide adequate supplies of meat and wool for the coming years.

  Henry, of course, was perfectly content camping in the wilderness, but his family had grown too used to the luxurious surroundings of the Governor’s Palace and Scotchtown, and his wife—already pregnant with her second child—had never tasted frontier life. Within days, however, the slaves helped Henry, his oldest son, William, and his son-in-law John Fontaine convert the interior of the house into a relatively comfortable dwelling, and, in the weeks that followed, they added a wing to the main house and several freestanding outbuildings—a kitchen, washhouse, storehouse, stable, grist mill, distillery, an overseer’s house, slave cabins, and, of course, a “necessary.” A separate spinning house with looms would provide the Henry family and their servants with clothes and blankets. Refusing to wear manufactured clothes from England, Henry would wear homespun or American-made clothing in public for the rest of the war and, indeed, the rest of his life.

  With the house complete, Dolly gave birth to her second child and Henry’s eighth—another daughter, whom they named Sarah. Somewhat fearful for his family’s safety, Henry, William, and John Fontaine set out on horseback to explore the huge property and search out squatters. The most mild-mannered squatters agreed to leave after they harvested their small crops in the fall—and the rest agreed to leave after Henry and the boys confronted them with cocked rifles and a squad of his most ferocious looking slaves. After expelling the squatters, Henry surveyed neighboring lands and quickly added nearly 4,000 more acres to his original 10,000 and planted tobacco, corn, and wheat.

  Henry and the boys also rode across the hills to meet their widely dispersed neighbors—most of them owners of small farms under 1,000 acres each. Unlike owners of large Tidewater plantations in the east, most hill-country farmers worked their own lands, helped only, perhaps, by one or two slaves picked up at bargain prices at auction. Instead of incentives such as extra clothes and food with which Tidewater planters usually induced slaves
to work harder, most hill-country farmers saw slaves as workhorses to be driven by the whip. The ubiquitous “crack” of the whip heard across the South earned the region’s farmers the pejorative nickname of “cracker.” The brutality of mountain life in the South spawned an atmosphere of violence and lawlessness that lasted into the last half of the twentieth century.

  Living as they did in the county that bore his name, the farmers of Henry County thought it only right to elect Patrick Henry to the Assembly, and, after nearly a year’s retirement, Henry returned to the House of Delegates for the spring session in May 1780. By then, the British had captured Charleston in what was the worst defeat of the war for the Americans since the Battle of Long Island. Attacking with 14,000 troops, the British captured the 5,400-man American army and its commanding general Benjamin Lincoln. Among the captured troops were 1,400 Virginians from the First, Second, and Third Virginia regiments, under the command of General William Woodford, Henry’s former rival in Williamsburg. As the British swept northward, they added to the terrors of military conquest and plunder by freeing an estimated 30,000 slaves—one-sixth of South Carolina’s entire slave population—and at least that number of indentured servants. As the Assembly debated measures to defend Virginia against invasion, another attack of malarial fever forced Henry to return home on June 7, after only two weeks in the capital.

  Although George Washington warned Governor Jefferson of a possible British attack on the Virginia coast, Jefferson decided that, with the fall of Charleston, the British armies to the south posed a greater menace, and he sent 2,500 militiamen to the Carolinas. Meanwhile, Washington sent General Gates to take command of the Southern Army, and ignoring intelligence reports of a possible trap, Gates ordered his force to move against the British supply base at Camden, South Carolina. As the Americans approached Camden from the north on the morning of August 16, 2,400 British infantrymen under Major General Lord Cornwallis attacked from the south, while a company of ferocious British dragoons under the legendary Colonel Banastre Tarleton, galloped in from the rear. Tarleton’s cavalry slaughtered nearly 900 Americans and captured 1,000.