Patrick Henry Part 19

With great regard, I have the honor to be, Sir, your most obedient servant,

P. HENRY.[303]

On the first of June, Thomas Jefferson was elected to succeed him in office, but by a majority of only six votes out of one hundred and twenty-eight.[304] On the following day Patrick Henry, having received certain resolutions from the General a.s.sembly[305] commending him for his conduct while governor, graciously closed this chapter of his official life by the following letter:--

GENTLEMEN,--The House of Delegates have done me very great honor in the vote expressive of their approbation of my public conduct. I beg the favor of you, gentlemen, to convey to that honorable house my most cordial acknowledgments, and to a.s.sure them that I shall ever retain a grateful remembrance of the high honor they have now conferred on me.[306]

In the midst of these frank voices of public appreciation over the fidelity and efficiency of his service as governor, there were doubtless the usual murmurs of partisan criticism or of personal ill-will. For example, a few days after Jefferson had taken his seat in the stately chair which Patrick Henry had just vacated, St. George Tucker, in a letter to Theophilus Bland, gave expression to this sneer: "_Sub rosa_, I wish his excellency's activity may be equal to the abilities he possesses in so eminent a degree.... But if he should tread in the steps of his predecessor, there is not much to be expected from the brightest talents."[307] Over against a taunt like this, one can scarcely help placing the fact that the general of the armies who, for three stern years, had been accustomed to lean heavily for help on this governor of Virginia, and who never paid idle compliments, nevertheless paid many a tribute to the intelligence, zeal, and vigorous activity of Governor Henry's administration. Thus, on the 27th of December, 1777, Washington writes to him: "In several of my late letters I addressed you on the distress of the troops for want of clothing. Your ready exertions to relieve them have given me the highest satisfaction."[308] On the 19th of February, 1778, Washington again writes to him: "I address myself to you, convinced that our alarming distresses will engage your most serious consideration, and that the full force of that zeal and vigor you have manifested upon every other occasion, will now operate for our relief, in a matter that so nearly affects the very existence of our contest."[309] On the 19th of April, 1778, Washington once more writes to him: "I hold myself infinitely obliged to the legislature for the ready attention which they have paid to my representation of the wants of the army, and to you for the strenuous manner in which you have recommended to the people an observance of my request."[310] Finally, if any men had even better opportunities than Washington for estimating correctly Governor Henry's efficiency in his great office, surely those men were his intimate a.s.sociates, the members of the Virginia legislature. It is quite possible that their first election of him as governor may have been in ignorance of his real qualities as an executive officer; but this cannot be said of their second and of their third elections of him, each one of which was made, as we have seen, without one audible lisp of opposition. Is it to be believed that, if he had really shown that lack of executive efficiency which St. George Tucker's sneer implies, such a body of men, in such a crisis of public danger, would have twice and thrice elected him to the highest executive office in the State, and that, too, without one dissenting vote? To say so, indeed, is to fix a far more d.a.m.ning censure upon them than upon him.

FOOTNOTES:

[293] Clark's _Campaign in the Illinois_, 95-97, where Governor Henry's public and private instructions are given in full.

[294] MS.

[295] _Jour. Va. House Del._ 30, 36, 66; also Hening, ix. 474-476; 477-478; 530-532; 584-585.

[296] MS.

[297] Sparks, _Corr. Rev_. ii. 261-262.

[298] MS.

[299] MS.

[300] Burk, _Hist. Va._ iv. 338.

[301] MS.

[302] Burk, _Hist. Va._ iv. 350.

[303] Wirt, 225.

[304] _Jour. Va. House Del._ 29.

[305] Burk, _Hist. Va._ 350.

[306] _Jour. Va. House Del._ 32.

[307] _Bland Papers_, ii. 11.

[308] MS.

[309] MS.

[310] MS.

CHAPTER XVI

AT HOME AND IN THE HOUSE OF DELEGATES

The high official rank which Governor Henry had borne during the first three years of American independence was so impressive to the imaginations of the French allies who were then in the country, that some of them addressed their letters to him as "Son Altesse Royale, Monsieur Patrick Henri, Gouverneur de l'Etat de Virginie."[311] From this t.i.tular royalty he descended, as we have seen, about the 1st of June, 1779; and for the subsequent five and a half years, until his recall to the governorship, he is to be viewed by us as a very retired country gentleman in delicate health, with episodes of labor and of leadership in the Virginia House of Delegates.

A little more than a fortnight after his descent from the governor's chair, he was elected by the General a.s.sembly as a delegate in Congress.[312] It is not known whether he at any time thought it possible for him to accept this appointment; but, on the 28th of the following October, the body that had elected him received from him a letter declining the service.[313] Moreover, in spite of all invitations and entreaties, Patrick Henry never afterwards served in any public capacity outside the State of Virginia.

During his three years in the governorship, he had lived in the palace at Williamsburg. In the course of that time, also, he had sold his estate of Scotchtown, in Hanover County, and had purchased a large tract of land in the new county of Henry,--a county situated about two hundred miles southwest from Richmond, along the North Carolina boundary, and named, of course, in honor of himself. To his new estate there, called Leatherwood, consisting of about ten thousand acres, he removed early in the summer of 1779. This continued to be his home until he resumed the office of governor in November, 1784.[314]

After the storm and stress of so many years of public life, and of public life in an epoch of revolution, the invalid body, the care-burdened spirit, of Patrick Henry must have found great refreshment in this removal to a distant, wild, and mountainous solitude. In undisturbed seclusion, he there remained during the summer and autumn of 1779, and even the succeeding winter and spring,--scarcely able to hear the far-off noises of the great struggle in which he had hitherto borne so rugged a part, and of which the victorious issue was then to be seen by him, though dimly, through many a murky rack of selfishness, cowardice, and crime.

His successor in the office of governor was Thomas Jefferson, the jovial friend of his own jovial youth, bound to him still by that hearty friendship which was founded on congeniality of political sentiment, but was afterward to die away, at least on Jefferson's side, into alienation and hate. To this dear friend Patrick Henry wrote late in that winter, from his hermitage among the eastward fastnesses of the Blue Ridge, a remarkable letter, which has never before been in print, and which is full of interest for us on account of its impulsive and self-revealing words. Its tone of despondency, almost of misanthropy,--so unnatural to Patrick Henry,--is perhaps a token of that sickness of body which had made the soul sick too, and had then driven the writer into the wilderness, and still kept him there:--

TO THOMAS JEFFERSON.

LEATHERWOOD, 15th Feby., 1780.

DEAR SIR,--I return you many thanks for your favor by Mr.

Sanders. The kind notice you were pleased to take of me was particularly obliging, as I have scarcely heard a word of public matters since I moved up in the retirement where I live.

I have had many anxieties for our commonwealth, princ.i.p.ally occasioned by the depreciation of our money. To judge by this, which somebody has called the pulse of the state, I have feared that our body politic was dangerously sick. G.o.d grant it may not be unto death. But I cannot forbear thinking, the present increase of prices is in great part owing to a kind of habit, which is now of four or five years' growth, which is fostered by a mistaken avarice, and like other habits hard to part with. For there is really very little money hereabouts.

What you say of the practice of our distinguished Tories perfectly agrees with my own observation, and the attempts to raise prejudices against the French, I know, were begun when I lived below. What gave me the utmost pain was to see some men, indeed very many, who were thought good Whigs, keep company with the miscreants,--wretches who, I am satisfied, were laboring our destruction. This countenance shown them is of fatal tendency. They should be shunned and execrated, and this is the only way to supply the place of legal conviction and punishment. But this is an effort of virtue, small as it seems, of which our countrymen are not capable.

Indeed, I will own to you, my dear Sir, that observing this impunity and even respect, which some wicked individuals have met with while their guilt was clear as the sun, has sickened me, and made me sometimes wish to be in retirement for the rest of my life. I will, however, be down, on the next a.s.sembly, if I am chosen. My health, I am satisfied, will never again permit a close application to sedentary business, and I even doubt whether I can remain below long enough to serve in the a.s.sembly. I will, however, make the trial.

But tell me, do you remember any instance where tyranny was destroyed and freedom established on its ruins, among a people possessing so small a share of virtue and public spirit? I recollect none, and this, more than the British arms, makes me fearful of final success without a reform.

But when or how this is to be effected, I have not the means of judging. I most sincerely wish you health and prosperity.

If you can spare time to drop me a line now and then, it will be highly obliging to, dear Sir, your affectionate friend and obedient servant,

P. HENRY.[315]

The next General a.s.sembly, which he thus promised to attend in case he should be chosen, met at Richmond on the 1st of May, 1780. It hardly needs to be mentioned that the people of Henry County were proud to choose him as one of their members in that body; but he seems not to have taken his seat there until about the 19th of May.[316] From the moment of his arrival in the House of Delegates, every kind of responsibility and honor was laid upon him. This was his first appearance in such an a.s.sembly since the proclamation of independence; and the prestige attaching to his name, as well as his own undimmed genius for leadership, made him not only the most conspicuous person in the house, but the nearly absolute director of its business in every detail of opinion and of procedure on which he should choose to express himself,--his only rival, in any particular, being Richard Henry Lee. It helps one now to understand the real reputation he had among his contemporaries for practical ability, and for a habit of shrinking from none of the commonplace drudgeries of legislative work, that during the first few days after his accession to the House he was placed on the committee of ways and means; on a committee "to inquire into the present state of the account of the commonwealth against the United States, and the most speedy and effectual method of finally settling the same;" on a committee to prepare a bill for the repeal of a part of the act "for sequestering British property, enabling those indebted to British subjects to pay off such debts, and directing the proceedings in suits where such subjects are parties;"

on three several committees respecting the powers and duties of high sheriffs and of grand juries; and, finally, on a committee to notify Jefferson of his reelection as governor, and to report his answer to the House. On the 7th of June, however, after a service of little more than two weeks, his own sad apprehensions respecting his health seem to have been realized, and he was obliged to ask leave to withdraw from the House for the remainder of the session.[317]

At the autumn session of the legislature he was once more in his place. On the 6th of November, the day on which the House was organized, he was made chairman of the committee on privileges and elections, and also of a committee "for the better defence of the southern frontier," and was likewise placed on the committee on propositions and grievances, as well as on the committee on courts of justice. On the following day he was made a member of a committee for the defence of the eastern frontier. On the 10th of November he was placed on a committee to bring in a bill relating to the enlistment of Virginia troops, and to the redemption of the state bills of credit then in circulation, and the emission of new bills. On the 22d of November he was made a member of a committee to which was again referred the account between the State and the United States. On the 9th of December he was made a member of a committee to draw up bills for the organization and maintenance of a navy for the State, and the protection of navigation and commerce upon its waters. On the 14th of December he was made chairman of a committee to draw up a bill for the better regulation and discipline of the militia, and of still another committee to prepare a bill "for supplying the army with clothes and provisions."[318] On the 28th of December, the House having knowledge of the arrival in town of poor General Gates, then drooping under the burden of those Southern willows which he had so plentifully gathered at Camden, Patrick Henry introduced the following magnanimous resolution:--

"That a committee of four be appointed to wait on Major General Gates, and to a.s.sure him of the high regard and esteem of this House; that the remembrance of his former glorious services cannot be obliterated by any reverse of fortune; but that this House, ever mindful of his great merit, will omit no opportunity of testifying to the world the grat.i.tude which, as a member of the American Union, this country owes to him in his military character."[319]

On the 2d of January, 1781, the last day of the session, the House adopted, on Patrick Henry's motion, a resolution authorizing the governor to convene the next meeting of the legislature at some other place than Richmond, in case its a.s.sembling in that city should "be rendered inconvenient by the operations of an invading enemy,"[320] a resolution reflecting their sense of the peril then hanging over the State.

Before the legislature could again meet, events proved that it was no imaginary danger against which Patrick Henry's resolution had been intended to provide. On the 2d of January, 1781, the very day on which the legislature had adjourned, a hostile fleet conveyed into the James River a force of about eight hundred men under command of Benedict Arnold, whose eagerness to ravage Virginia was still further facilitated by the arrival, on the 26th of March, of two thousand men under General Phillips. Moreover, Lord Cornwallis, having beaten General Greene at Guilford, in North Carolina, on the 15th of March, seemed to be gathering force for a speedy advance into Virginia. That the roar of his guns would soon be heard in the outskirts of their capital, was what all Virginians then felt to be inevitable.

Under such circ.u.mstances, it is not strange that a session of the legislature, which is said to have been held on the 1st of March,[321]

should have been a very brief one, or that when the 7th of May arrived--the day for its rea.s.sembling at Richmond--no quorum should have been present; or that, on the 10th of May, the few members who had arrived in Richmond should have voted, in deference to "the approach of an hostile army,"[322] to adjourn to Charlottesville,--a place of far greater security, ninety-seven miles to the northwest, among the mountains of Albemarle. By the 20th of May, Cornwallis reached Petersburg, twenty-three miles south of Richmond; and shortly afterward, pushing across the James and the Chickahominy, he encamped on the North Anna, in the county of Hanover. Thus, at last, the single county of Louisa then separated him from that county in which was the home of the governor of the State, and where was then convened its legislature,--Patrick Henry himself being present and in obvious direction of all its business. The opportunity to bag such game, Lord Cornwallis was not the man to let slip. Accordingly, on Sunday, the 3d of June, he dispatched a swift expedition under Tarleton, to surprise and capture the members of the legislature, "to seize on the person of the governor," and "to spread on his route devastation and terror."[323] In this entire scheme, doubtless, Tarleton would have succeeded, had it not been that as he and his troopers, on that fair Sabbath day, were hurrying past the Cuckoo tavern in Louisa, one Captain John Jouette, watching from behind the windows, espied them, divined their object, and mounting a fleet horse, and taking a shorter route, got into Charlottesville a few hours in advance of them, just in time to give the alarm, and to set the imperiled legislators a-flying to the mountains for safety.