Lion of Liberty (46 page)

42
Wirt, 363.

43
Morgan, 433.

44
Mark Couvillon,
Patrick Henry's Virginia
(Brookneal, VA: The Patrick Henry Memorial Foundation, 2001), 87.

45
Henry, II:475.

46
Tyler, 369-370.

47
Henry, II:488.

1
Roane memorandum to William Wirt, in Morgan, 439.

2
Beeman, 183.

3
Theodore Bland to Patrick Henry, March 9, 1790, Henry, III:417-420.

4
Patrick Henry to Governor Edward Telfair, October 14, 1790, Henry II:507.

5
Although Henry died in 1799, many Yazoo shareholders sued for compensation. When Georgia ceded the territory to the federal government in 1802, they took their claims to the United States Supreme Court and, in 1810, won their case. Although the court conceded the fraudulent basis of the original contract, it ruled that the fraud committed by participants did not affect the obligations of the contract. In 1814, Congress voted $4 million to settle with the Yazoo investors—eight times their original investment.

6
Henry Lee to James Madison, April 3, 1790, in Beeman, 174.

7
Couvillon, 95.

8
Kentucky Gazette
(Lexington), April 5, 1794.

9
George Washington to Edmund Pendleton, January 22, 1795, in Fitzpatrick,
Writings . . .
, 34:98-101.

10
Patrick Henry to Elizabeth Aylett, August 30, 1796, in Henry, II:568-571.

11
Edmund Randolph to George Washington, June 24, 1793, PGW Pres., 13:137-142.

12
Patrick Henry to Elizabeth Aylett, August 20, 1796, Henry II:568-571.

13
Patrick Henry to Henry Lee, July 14, 1794, ibid., II:547.

14
Patrick Henry to Edmund Randolph, September 14, 1794, ibid., II:548-549.

15
George Washington to Patrick Henry, October 9, 1795, ibid., II:556-557.

16
Patrick Henry to George Washington, October 16, 1795, ibid., II:558-559.

17
Henry, II:519.

18
Ibid., II:518.

19
Thomas Jefferson to James Monroe, July 10, 1796, cited in Henry, II:572.

20
John Marshall to Rufus King, May 24, 1796, Smith,
John Marshall
, 148n.

21
Patrick Henry to Elizabeth Aylet, August 20, 1796, in Daily, 156.

22
Virginia Gazette
, September 15, 1796.

23
Virginia Gazette and General Advertiser
, November 16, 1796.

24
Morris,
Encyclopedia of American History
, 130.

25
John C. Miller,
The Federalist Era, 1789-1801
(New York: Harper & Brothers, 1960), 240-241.

26
Patrick Henry to George Washington, October 16, 1795, Henry, II:558-559.

27
George Washington to Patrick Henry, January 15, 1799, ibid., II:601-604.

28
Henry, II:607-610; Edward Fontaine, “Patrick Henry—A Patrick Henry Essay by Patrick Henry's great-grandson,” published by the Patrick Henry Memorial Foundation, 2008.

29
Patrick Henry to George Washington, April 16, 1799, Henry, II:623-624.

30
Ibid., II:625.

31
Ibid., II:610, citing John H. Rice.

1
John Locke,
Second Treatise of Government
(1690), as cited in
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations
, 277; Plutarch,
Lives, Life of Solon
, cited in
Bartlett's
, 56; Jonathan Swift,
A Critical Essay upon the Faculties of the Mind
(1707): “Laws are like cobwebs, which may catch small flies, but let wasps and hornets break through.”
Bartlett's
, 288.

1
As stated earlier, no actual transcript of Henry's speech exists, and the words shown here represent a reconstruction by Henry's first biographer, William Wirt, who extrapolated its contents from recollections—forty years after the event—by those present at St. Paul's, including John Tyler, an intimate of Henry's, Thomas Jefferson, Edmund Randolph, and St. George Tucker, among others. Hardly a friend of Henry, Jefferson did not alter a word in Wirt's reconstruction of the speech and reiterated his
appraisal of Henry as the greatest orator in history. I believe, however, that word-for-word accuracy is less important than what I believe to be an accurate presentation of Henry's meaning, his passion, and his eloquence.

2
Tyler, 140-145, citing Peter Force, ed.,
American Archives
(Washington: 1837-1853, 9 vols.), II:167 ff.

1
Patrick Henry to Robert Pleasants, January 18, 1773, in Meade, I:299-300.

1
Morgan, 455, 459.

Three principal sources of original Patrick Henry materials that are listed below in the bibliography deserve more complete identification. Henry's grandson, William Wirt Henry (1831-1900), accumulated as much as remained of his grandfather's papers—from more than one hundred of his grandfather's descendants, relatives, and friends. The result was the three-volume epic,
Patrick Henry: Life Correspondence and Speeches
(New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1891), which contains the largest trove of original, authenticated manuscripts of Patrick Henry's speeches and correspondence. Although biased in his grandfather's favor, William Wirt Henry was nonetheless a serious scholar and historian. A graduate of the University of Virginia, he passed his bar exams in 1853, served in the Confederate Army during the Civil War, then practiced law in Richmond and served in both houses of the Virginia state legislature. At various times, he was president of the Virginia Bar Association, vice president of the American Bar Association, president of the Virginia Historical Society and the American Historical Association. Besides his biography of Patrick Henry, he was author of
The Trial of Aaron Burr and the Trials of Jefferson Davis
, along with many magazine articles on American history.

Patrick Henry's first biographer actually knew Henry. A prominent attorney and member of Virginia's Tidewater social elite, William Wirt (1772-1834) collected long “memoirs,” as they were called, from many of Henry's relatives, in-laws, friends, and political friends and foes. Although he had access to original manuscripts, he let his own patriotic bias—and those of Henry's friends and enemies—color his work, forcing today's researcher to pick carefully among the pages of his 450-plus-page
biography to filter factual material from biased interpretations of actual events and documents. Although a valuable resource, Wirt's
Life of Patrick Henry
, which he published in 1817, was but a pastime. He was, above all else, a lawyer, who gained national prominence as a prosecutor in the treason trial of Aaron Burr in 1807. President James Monroe appointed him U.S. attorney general in 1817, a post he retained through Monroe's two terms and President John Quincy Adams's one-term presidency. Thomas Jefferson offered Wirt the presidency of the University of Virginia in 1826, but Wirt declined in favor of remaining attorney general.

Moses Coit Tyler (1835-1900) was a contemporary of William Wirt Henry and one of America's first American history scholars. He was a clergyman as a young man, but his scholarship earned him a professorship in English at the University of Michigan and, later, appointment at Cornell University as America's first professor of history. His 450-page biography,
Patrick Henry,
relies on his own examinations of original manuscripts in the hands of Henry family members—including William Wirt Henry, who cooperated with Tyler. More than William Wirt Henry, however, Tyler often exposed the flaws in the William Wirt biography and tries to separate the actuality of Henry's life from exaggerations, inventions, and biases of his contemporaries. A founder of the American Historical Association, Tyler was author of
A History of American Literature During the Colonial Time, 1607-1765
(1878, 2 vols.),
The Literary History of the American Revolution, 1763-1783
(1897, 2 vols.), and
Three Men of Letters
(1895)—the biographies of George Berkeley, Timothy Dwight, and Joel Barlow.

Few original Henry manuscripts survive. In the first place, he was not a prolific letter writer. Second, he seldom wrote out his speeches, preferring to speak from notes. Thirdly, his wife burned all his letters after his death—a common practice in eighteenth-century America, when widows and widowers routinely remarried after the death of a spouse to ensure continuing care and sustenance for their children. And finally, the few papers that did survive burned in a 1917 fire that leveled the house at Red Hill, his last home. His law office still stands, as does the site of his and Dorothea's graves. The property is now the National Memorial to Patrick Henry and includes reconstructed buildings and an extensive collection of Patrick Henry artifacts.

There never was a manuscript of his famous “liberty or death” speech in St. John's Church. The speech quoted in these pages represents a reconstruction by Henry's first biographer, William Wirt, who extrapolated its contents from recollections—forty years after the event—by those present at St. John's, including Judge John Tyler, an intimate of Henry's, along with Thomas Jefferson, Edmund Randolph, and Judge St. George Tucker, among others.

W. W. Abbot, ed.,
The Papers of George Washington, Presidential Series
(Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1987-in progress, 15 vols. to date).

W. W. Abbott and Dorothy Twohig, eds.,
The Papers of George Washington, Colonial Series, 1748-August 1755
(Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1983- 1995, 10 vols.).

W. W. Abbot and Dorothy Twohig, eds.,
The Papers of George Washington, Confederation Series
(Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 6 vols.).

W. W. Abbott, Dorothy Twohig, Philander D. Chase, eds.,
The Papers of George Washington, Revolutionary War Series, June 1775-April 1778
(Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1984-2004 [in progress], 19 vols.).

Charles F. Adams, ed.,
The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: With a Life of the Author
(Boston: Little, Brown & Company, 1850-1856, 10 vols.).

John Adams,
Thoughts on Government
(Philadelphia: John Dunlop, 1776).

John R. Alden,
History of the American Revolution
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1969).

James Curtis Ballagh,
The Letters of Richard Henry Lee
(New York, 1911-1914, 2 vols.).

Richard R. Beeman,
Patrick Henry: A Biography
(New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1974).

Charlene Bangs Bickford et al., eds.,
Documentary History of the First Federal Congress
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992).

Mark May Boatner III,
Encyclopedia of the American Revolution
(New York: David McKay Company, Inc., 1966).

Benson Bobrick,
Angel in the Whirlwind: The Triumph of the American Revolution
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997).

Claude G. Bowers,
The Young Jefferson, 1743-1789
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1945).

Julian P. Boyd et al., eds.,
The Papers of Thomas Jefferson
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1950, 34 vols.).

John Buchanan,
The Road to Guilford Courthouse: The American Revolution in the Carolinas
(New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1997).

Lester J. Cappon, ed.,
The Adams-Jefferson Letters: The Complete Correspondence between Thomas Jefferson and Abigail and John Adams
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1959).

Mark Couvillon,
Patrick Henry's Virginia
(Brookneal, VA: The Patrick Henry Memorial Foundation, 2001).

Lawrence A. Cremin,
American Education: The Colonial Experience, 1607-1783
(New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1970).

W. P. Cresson,
James Monroe
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1946).

George Washington Parke Custis,
Recollections and Private Memoirs of Washington
(New York: Derby & Jackson, 1860).

Patrick Daily,
Patrick Henry: The Last Years, 1789-1799
(Bedford, VA: Patrick Henry Memorial Foundation, 1987).

Henri Doniol,
Histoire de la Participation de la France à l'Établissement des États-Unis d'Amérique
(Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1886, 5 vols., quarto).

Alice Morse Earle,
Child Life in Colonial Days
(Stockbridge, MA: Berkshire House Publishers, 1993).

Max Farrand,
The Fathers of the Constitution: A Chronicle of the Establishment of the Union
(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1921).

———, ed.,
The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787
(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1911, 4 vols.).

William Findley,
History of the Insurrection in the Four Western Counties of Pennsylvania in the year M.DCC.XCIV
(Philadelphia: Samuel Harrison Smith, 1796).

John C. Fitzpatrick, ed.,
The Writings of George Washington, from the Original Manuscript Sources, 1745-1799
(Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1931-1944, 39 vols.).

Paul Leicester Ford,
The Writings of Thomas Jefferson
(New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1892-1899, 10 vols.).