Lion of Liberty (19 page)

“Good God,” Washington cried out. “Are these the men with which I am to defend America?”
²⁰

As the British landed, Washington and his aides galloped off to safety, as British buglers mocked them with the call of hunters on a fox chase. “I never felt such a sensation before,” said a Washington aide. “It seemed to crown our disgrace.”
²¹

Connecticut militiamen continued disappearing, reducing one regiment to only fourteen men, another to fewer than thirty. With his troop strength disintegrating, Washington withdrew from Manhattan northward towards White Plains, on the mainland in Westchester County—only to have another British force scatter the Continental Army in three directions. While some of his men moved northward into the Hudson River Highlands, Washington led a contingent of about 5,000 men in full flight across the Hudson to New Jersey.

Despite Washington's desperate situation, the Virginia state constitution left Henry without authority to help, and the lengthy debates that rent the House of Delegates over each decision left the state's military in limbo. As titular leader of America's largest, most powerful state, Henry decided to ignore the constitution and simply assume the powers he needed to act. Gambling that his popularity was too broad based for the House of Delegates to challenge him, he ordered men and materials sent to Washington, then issued orders to improve state defenses against British attacks in the East and South and Anglo-Indian raids in the West. He wrote to Washington of his decisions and received this reply: “Your correspondence will confer honor and satisfaction, and, whenever it is in my power, I shall write to you with pleasure.”

Washington gave Henry details of his recent military defeat and the status of the army, calling “our defeat on Long Island . . . and the evacuation of New York . . . [acts] of prudence and necessity.” He reported the troops “in some measure dispirited by these successive retreats,” and he complained about “the evils of short enlistments,” urging establishment of “a permanent body of forces.” To help Henry defend Virginia, he suggested that Henry act to create

He reminded Henry that he expected Virginia to furnish the Continental Army with fifteen battalions.
²²

Henry immediately acted on Washington's advice, winning Privy Council approval to arm six sloops to protect entrances to inland waterways and prevent British ships from sailing upstream to pillage river-front villages and plantations. Seeking more sweeping powers, he bullied the House of Delegates with vague threats of resignation to win appointment as chairman of a new Navy Board. He used his new authority to open six new shipyards and assemble a navy of seventy ships—refitting some captured British ships, but building many from scratch. In addition to 600 seamen, Henry's Virginia Navy recruited 300 marines to repel British hit-and-run assaults on coastal towns and plantations. Henry ordered the swiftest of the ships to slice through the British blockade at the entrance to Chesapeake Bay and carry tobacco to the West Indies to exchange for badly needed supplies such as gunpowder and salt.

As head of state, Henry invested himself with powers over the conduct of foreign affairs and established trade relations with the governors of Cuba and New Orleans, and through them the king of Spain. “I need not inform your excellency,” he wrote to the governor of Cuba (and much the same to the governor of New Orleans), “that these states are now free and independent, capable of forming alliances and of making treaties.

At Henry's request, the Spanish king approved shipment to Virginia of “a quantity of goods” to Havana and from there to New Orleans, for overland shipment to Williamsburg.

With the House of Delegates unable or unwilling to stop him, Henry inserted himself into every area of Virginia's war effort, unilaterally ordering counties that had yet to supply troops to the Continental Army to
muster twenty-six companies of militia. Washington had asked the states for eighty-eight battalions, of which Virginia and Massachusetts were to supply fifteen each, Pennsylvania twelve, and other states the rest, in proportion to their populations. Virginia, however, had not been able to assemble enough men and materials to protect its own territory, let alone contribute more troops to the Continental Army.

As Washington's army retreated across New Jersey, Henry acted to send reinforcements. “I have issued the necessary orders this morning that the Troops of Horse (six) shall be marched to join General Washington,”
²⁴
Henry notified the War Office in Philadelphia.

Besides creating Virginia's Navy and raising troops for Washington's Continental Army, Henry took charge of procurement of war materiel for both Virginia's militia and the Continental Army. “There are now ten tons of lead, which are ready to be delivered for the use of the Continental Congress,” he wrote to Richard Henry Lee and Virginia's other delegates in Congress.
²⁵
And he informed John Hancock, the president of Congress, that “we have a gun factory at Fredericksburg.”
²⁶
Henry also ordered the evacuation of cattle and other food stores, as well as military supplies, from coastal areas, where British raiders might capture them, and he wrote to the governors of neighboring states such as Maryland and North Carolina to coordinate defense measures. Fearful that Tories in coastal towns might facilitate landings of British raiders, he set about “removing out of the country certain natives of Great Britain.”
²⁷

Henry faced serious problems in the western reaches of Virginia, where Indian tribes had taken advantage of the conflict with Britain to attack white settlements and reclaim lands that settlers and various land companies had staked out in Kentucky and the Ohio Valley. One group of Kentucky settlers retaliated by massacring an entire peaceful Shawnee village—men, women, and children. The atrocity threatened to set the frontier ablaze just as Henry needed more troops to fight the British. Henry was furious, as he ordered militia commanders in two western counties

Henry ordered “trusty scouts” into Shawnee country and told the militia commander to build “proper stockades or defenses to receive the more helpless part of the people.” As he would later explain,

As the war against the Shawnees dragged on, Henry told commanders, “I mean bringing the murderers of the Indians to justice,” accusing them of being “traitors . . . agents for the enemy who have taken this method to find employment for the brave back woodsmen at home, and prevent their joining General Washington to strike a decisive stroke for independency. ...”
²⁸

He had no sooner ordered troops west when he received another request from Washington for more troops. Working almost twenty-four hours a day, he managed to organize an officer corps and report to Congress that “one full battalion of troops of this state are under orders to march to Jersey.”
²⁹
With that, however, he all but collapsed, pushed to exhaustion in his dawn-to-dusk efforts to raise troops and locate military supplies. In addition, he contracted malaria and now had no choice but to go home to Scotchtown to recuperate. He remained bedridden for nearly six weeks—so sick at times that rumors of his death began to circulate. Not uncommon in an era when swarms of mosquitoes infested Virginia's wet lowlands, malaria produced periodic bouts of chills, fever, debilitating fatigue, and anemia. When they could get some, victims treated themselves with the bark of the cinchona tree, which contained quinine. Others
relied on rum laced with garlic, red pepper, or other strong ingredients. Unable to tolerate alcohol, however, Henry simply suffered much of the time. His drink of choice was spring water, whose bacterial contamination often aggravated his condition.

Henry did not remain totally idle during his illness, however. Already interested in promoting higher education, he helped Hampden-Sydney Academy obtain a charter as a college—the first to serve Henry's beloved Piedmont. Named a founding trustee, he would hold his trusteeship the rest of his life and send six of his sons and many of their boys to study there.

The war followed Henry to Scotchtown when George Rogers Clark, a twenty-three-year-old Kentucky frontiersman, appeared at his door, saying he had been elected to the Virginia Convention by Kentucky settlers and needed 500 pounds of gunpowder to fight the Indians. Born and raised in Charlottesville, Clark had gone to the Kentucky wilderness as a surveyor for early settlers and metamorphosed into their political leader. When Clark arrived, Henry had already received intelligence reports of a British plan to incite a full-scale Indian war against colonists in the West and force Washington to dilute his army and fight on two fronts. Henry quickly approved Clark's request and sent him on to Williamsburg for Privy Council approval.

After six weeks of convalescence, Henry returned to Williamsburg in September 1776, this time bringing his two sisters, Anne and Elizabeth, to care for him and assume responsibilities as hostesses in the Governor's Palace. Within days, however, Henry longed for his children, and his daughter Martha brought twelve-year-old William and nine-year-old Anne, along with her own infant son Patrick Henry Fontaine, to enliven the governor's mansion with the shouts of children. Henry needed play as much as his children. Henry's two youngest, only five and seven, were staying with Henry's sister, Jane Meredith, at the time, and his oldest, John, had marched north with the First Virginia Regiment.

During Henry's absence, Thomas Jefferson had emerged as the foremost young political leader in the House. He succeeded in furthering Henry's agenda to expand individual liberties by repealing laws that forced dissenters to pay taxes to the Anglican church and made membership a
prerequisite for voting. The Assembly also abolished fines for failure to attend church at least once a month—and the punishment of ten whip lashes for refusal to pay those fines. Jefferson was curiously unconcerned with military affairs, however, and left Virginia's coastline “naked and defenseless” after the Williamsburg regiments marched north to join the Continental Army. The House of Delegates, therefore, drew considerable comfort from Henry's return—so much so that they honored him by slicing off the western half of Pittsylvania County and renaming it Henry County. When the toasts had ended, however, Henry turned to neglected military affairs and learned of grim news from northern battlefields: Winter had enveloped the Northeast earlier than usual, and, with the powerful British army in close pursuit, Washington's men had fled westward across New Jersey through sheets of icy autumn rains towards the Delaware River. They barely made it to safety on the opposite bank in Pennsylvania. By early December, desertions had reduced his army to only about 3,000 men. Sickness left 500 of the 700 Virginians unfit for duty.

Rather than risk a water crossing, the British commander ordered 1,400 Hessians to remain in Trenton to keep a watch on the Americans on the opposite bank, while he led British troops to settle into comfortable winter quarters at nearby Princeton and await an opportunity in the spring to wipe out Washington's crippled army and end the Revolution. The British advance left New York and most of New Jersey in British hands—and the Redcoats almost in sight of the American rebel capital. On December 12, Congress fled Philadelphia for Baltimore and, all but conceding defeat in the struggle for independence, began debating terms of capitulation. The American Revolution seemed at an end.