Lion of Liberty (15 page)

After signing the document, Patrick Henry, Richard Henry Lee, and George Washington saddled up for the long ride home. John Adams approached them to say good-bye and showed them a letter he had received from the mayor of Northampton, Massachusetts, saying, “We must fight if we can't otherwise rid ourselves of British taxation . . . enacted for us by the British parliament.”

“By God,” Henry interrupted, “I am of that man's mind. We must fight.”

Richard Henry Lee disagreed: “We shall infallibly carry all our points; you will be completely relieved; all the offensive acts will be repealed; the army and fleet will be recalled, and Britain will give up her foolish project.”

“Only Washington was in doubt,” Adams noted.
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When Henry arrived home, his Hanover County neighbors asked him the prospects of reconciliation with Britain. Already furious at the intrusions of the British government in his life, Henry asserted that Britain “will drive us to extremities—no accommodation will take place—hostilities will soon commence—and a desperate and bloody touch it will be.”
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In his heart and soul, Patrick Henry had already declared war.

Chapter 7

Virginia was preparing for war when Henry rode home from the First Continental Congress in September 1774. “Every county is now arming a company of men whom they call an independent company,” Royal Governor Lord Dunmore wrote to the secretary of state for the colonies on Christmas Eve. In fact, almost every state was arming or planning to do so. Maryland had resolved two weeks earlier to organize a militia to eliminate the need for protection by regular British troops. Delaware followed suit two weeks later, and in early January, George Washington took command of the hundred-man Fairfax Independent Company in Alexandria—Virginia's first such force.

When Henry reached Scotchtown after the Continental Congress, he learned that his wife had attempted suicide during his absence and had deteriorated into deep depression. His oldest daughter, Martha, and her husband, John Fontaine, who had been caring for the five younger Henry children, had brought the entire brood to Scotchtown for the Christmas holidays in hopes of lifting Sarah Henry's spirits. Henry had little time for his family, however. Stirred by fears of imminent British attack, he rode into Hanover town to call together the men of the county. He “addressed them in a very animated speech, pointing out the necessity of our having recourse to arms in defense of our rights, and recommending in strong
terms that we should immediately form ourselves into a volunteer company.”
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Abetted by a few jugs of white lightning, Henry's emotional appeal sent the mountain men into a frenzy of patriotic fervor that left them pushing and shoving to volunteer in his company. After they'd finished signing up, they elected him their captain by unanimous vote, and Henry rode home to spend what remained of the Christmas holidays with his family. They proved to be melancholy days indeed. After plunging into an abyss of depression, Sarah Henry died early in the new year.

After burying his wife, Henry buried himself in nonstop political and military activities, drilling his volunteers and preparing for the Second Virginia Convention. Only six or seven other counties across the colony had managed to raise companies of any consequence. In fact, most Virginians agreed with Richard Henry Lee that the king and Parliament would respond favorably to the Continental Congress petition for redress—much as they had responded by repealing most of the Townshend Acts in 1770 in the aftermath of the Boston Massacre.

Indeed, all England seemed to support the American petition. When Parliament reconvened in January 1775, petitions from London, Bristol, Birmingham, Liverpool, Manchester, and almost every other trading city asked for restoration of normal relations with the colonies.

On January 12, however, George III dashed their hopes. After reading the petition of the Continental Congress, he responded with a broad, cynical smile, complimented its eloquence, and laid it aside. A fortnight later, he rejected it and demanded that Parliament halt trade with the colonies, provide army protection for Loyalists, and arrest colonist protesters as traitors. As the House of Commons debated passage of legislation to transform the king's pronouncements into law, Edmund Burke again pleaded with his colleagues to reconsider. “The use of force alone is but temporary,” he protested. “It may subdue for a moment; but it does not remove the necessity of subduing again, and a nation is not governed which is perpetually being conquered.”
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Parliament relented only slightly after Burke's speech by offering a blanket pardon to repentant rebels—with the exception of such “principal Gentlemen who . . . are to be brought over to England . . . for an inquiry . . . into their conduct.” Among them were George Washington,
Patrick Henry, John Hancock, Samuel Adams, John Adams, and other radicals the government believed were in “a traitorous conspiracy” against a monarch seated by “Divine Providence.” As punishment for such a crime, British law dictated hanging by the neck and “while you are still living your bodies are to be taken down, your bowels torn out . . . your head then cut off, and your bodies divided each into four quarters. ...”
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Although news had reached America that the king had smiled at the Continental Congress petition, word of his subsequent rejection and Parliament's trade embargo had yet to reach the former burgesses when they called for a Second Virginia Convention. They picked Richmond as their site rather than Williamsburg, where a buildup of British naval strength in nearby waters raised the menace of Lord Dunmore's arresting Henry, Richard Henry Lee, and other Virginia political leaders. A town of only 600 residents and 150 homes, Richmond had no assembly hall, as such. The largest seating area was in St. John's Anglican Church on Richmond Hill, with space in its pews for about 120 people.

On March 20, 1775, the delegates sidled into the pews—Washington, Jefferson, Richard Henry Lee and other renowned Virginians. Henry took a seat in the third pew on the gospel, or left, side of the church facing the front. Almost all wanted to believe rumors, born of the king's smile, that Parliament would repeal most of the Intolerable Acts and restore calm in America. Every delegate seemed in a good mood as the convention opened—every delegate but Henry. Confident again in his regional political pond, he reclaimed his Demosthenic airs and “in the sacred place of meeting, launched forth in solemn tones.”
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He proposed three resolutions, with the first two merely parroting the Maryland resolutions of the previous December: “That a well regulated militia, composed of gentlemen and yeomen, is the natural strength and only security of a free government; that such a militia in this colony would forever render it unnecessary for the mother country to keep among us, for the purpose of our defense, any standing army of mercenary soldiers . . . and would obviate the pretext of taxing us for their support.”
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Henry's third resolution, however, broke new ground with nothing less than a declaration of war: “That this colony be immediately put into
a state of defense, and . . . prepare a plan for embodying, arming, and disciplining such a number of men, as may be sufficient for that purpose.”
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Spectators standing at the rear of the church applauded, as Peyton Randolph, the president of the convention, stood at the front trying to bring his “congregation” to order.

St. John's Church in Richmond, Virginia, where Patrick Henry delivered his stirring speech ending, “Give me liberty, or give me death.”
(LIBRARY OF CONGRESS)

Richard Henry Lee immediately seconded Henry, and in the debate that followed, many delegates insisted that peace was imminent and that Henry's resolutions were premature. “Washington was prominent, though silent,” recalled Edmund Randolph, who had chosen to remain in America while his father, a staunch Tory, prepared to return to England. “His [Washington's] looks bespoke . . . a positive concert between him and Henry.”
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When all the delegates had finished expressing their views, Henry stood to speak. A clergyman at the church described the scene: