We now approach that brilliant passage in the life of Patrick Henry when, in the presence of the second revolutionary convention of Virginia, he proclaimed the futility of all further efforts for peace, and the instant necessity of preparing for war.

The speech which he is said to have made on that occasion has been committed to memory and declaimed by several generations of American schoolboys, and is now perhaps familiarly known to a larger number of the American people than any other considerable bit of secular prose in our language. The old church at Richmond, in which he made this marvelous speech, is in our time visited every year, as a patriotic shrine, by thousands of pilgrims, who seek curiously the very spot upon the floor where the orator is believed to have stood when he uttered those words of flame. It is chiefly the tradition of that one speech which to-day keeps alive, in millions of American homes, the name of Patrick Henry, and which lifts him, in the popular faith, almost to the rank of some mythical hero of romance.[Pg 129]

In reality, that speech, and the resolutions in support of which that speech was made, constituted Patrick Henry’s individual declaration of war against Great Britain. But the question is: To what extent, if any, was he therein original, or even in advance of his fellow-countrymen, and particularly of his associates in the Virginia convention?

It is essential to a just understanding of the history of that crisis in revolutionary thought, and it is of very high importance, likewise, to the historic position of Patrick Henry, that no mistake be committed here; especially that he be not made the victim of a disastrous reaction from any overstatement[136] respecting the precise nature and extent of the service then rendered by him to the cause of the Revolution.

We need, therefore, to glance for a moment at the period between October, 1774, and March, 1775, with the purpose of tracing therein the more important tokens of the growth of the popular conviction that a war with Great Britain had become inevitable, and was to be immediately prepared for by the several colonies,—two propositions which form the substance of all that Patrick Henry said on the great occasion now before us.

As early as the 21st of October, 1774, the first Continental Congress, after having suggested all [Pg 130] possible methods for averting war, made this solemn declaration to the people of the colonies: “We think ourselves bound in duty to observe to you that the schemes agitated against these colonies have been so conducted as to render it prudent that you should extend your views to mournful events, and be in all respects prepared for every emergency.”[137] Just six days later, John Dickinson, a most conservative and peace-loving member of that Congress, wrote to an American friend in England: “I wish for peace ardently; but must say, delightful as it is, it will come more grateful by being unexpected. The first act of violence on the part of administration in America, or the attempt to reinforce General Gage this winter or next year, will put the whole continent in arms, from Nova Scotia to Georgia.”[138] On the following day, the same prudent statesman wrote to another American friend, also in England: “The most peaceful provinces are now animated; and a civil war is unavoidable, unless there be a quick change of British measures.”[139] On the 29th of October, the eccentric Charles Lee, who was keenly watching the symptoms of colonial discontent and resistance, wrote from Philadelphia to an English nobleman: “Virginia, Rhode Island, and Carolina are forming corps. Massachusetts Bay has long had a sufficient number instructed to become instructive of the rest. Even this Quakering province is [Pg 131] following the example.… In short, unless the banditti at Westminster speedily undo everything they have done, their royal paymaster will hear of reviews and manoeuvres not quite so entertaining as those he is presented with in Hyde Park and Wimbledon Common.”[140] On the 1st of November, a gentleman in Maryland wrote to a kinsman in Glasgow: “The province of Virginia is raising one company in every county.… This province has taken the hint, and has begun to raise men in every county also; and to the northward they have large bodies, capable of acquitting themselves with honor in the field.”[141] At about the same time, the General Assembly of Connecticut ordered that every town should at once supply itself with “double the quantity of powder, balls, and flints” that had been hitherto required by law.[142] On the 5th of November, the officers of the Virginia troops accompanying Lord Dunmore on his campaign against the Indians held a meeting at Fort Gower, on the Ohio River, and passed this resolution: “That we will exert every power within us for the defence of American liberty, and for the support of her just rights and privileges, not in any precipitate, riotous, or tumultuous manner, but when regularly called forth by the unanimous voice of our countrymen.”[143] Not far from the same time, the people of Rhode Island carried off to Providence from the batteries at Newport forty-four [Pg 132] pieces of cannon; and the governor frankly told the commander of a British naval force near at hand that they had done this in order to prevent these cannon from falling into his hands, and with the purpose of using them against “any power that might offer to molest the colony.”[144] Early in December, the Provincial Convention of Maryland recommended that all persons between sixteen and fifty years of age should form themselves into military companies, and “be in readiness to act on any emergency,”—with a sort of grim humor prefacing their recommendation by this exquisite morsel of argumentative irony:—

The shrewdness of this courteous political thrust on the part of the convention of Maryland seems to have been so heartily relished by others that it was thenceforward used again and again by similar conventions elsewhere; and in fact, for the next few months, these sentences became almost the stereotyped formula by which revolutionary assemblages justified the arming and drilling of the militia,—as,[Pg 133] for example, that of Newcastle County, Delaware,[146] on the 21st of December; that of Fairfax County, Virginia,[147] on the 17th of January, 1775; and that of Augusta County, Virginia,[148] on the 22d of February.

In the mean time Lord Dunmore was not blind to all these military preparations in Virginia; and so early as the 24th of December, 1774, he had written to the Earl of Dartmouth: “Every county, besides, is now arming a company of men, whom they call an independent company, for the avowed purpose of protecting their committees, and to be employed against government, if occasion require.”[149] Moreover, this alarming fact of military preparation, which Lord Dunmore had thus reported concerning Virginia, could have been reported with equal truth concerning nearly every other colony. In the early part of January, 1775, the Assembly of Connecticut gave order that the entire militia of that colony should be mustered every week.[150] In the latter part of January, the provincial convention of Pennsylvania, though representing a colony of Quakers, boldly proclaimed that, if the administration “should determine by force to effect a submission to the late arbitrary acts of the British Parliament,” it would “resist such force, and at every hazard … defend the rights and liberties of America.”[151] On the 15th [Pg 134] of February, the Provincial Congress of Massachusetts urged the people to “spare neither time, pains, nor expense, at so critical a juncture, in perfecting themselves forthwith in military discipline.”[152]

When, therefore, so late as Monday, the 20th of March, 1775, the second revolutionary convention of Virginia assembled at Richmond, its members were well aware that one of the chief measures to come before them for consideration must be that of recognizing the local military preparations among their own constituents, and of placing them all under some common organization and control. Accordingly, on Thursday, the 23d of March, after three days had been given to necessary preliminary subjects, the inevitable subject of military preparations was reached. Then it was that Patrick Henry took the floor and moved the adoption of the following resolutions, supporting his motion, undoubtedly, with a speech:—

No one who reads these resolutions in the light of the facts just given, can find in them anything by which to account for the opposition which they are known to have met with in that assemblage. For that assemblage, it must be remembered, was not the Virginia legislature: it was a mere convention, and a revolutionary convention at that, gathered in spite of the objections of Lord Dunmore, representing simply the deliberate purpose of those Virginians who meant not finally to submit to unjust laws; some of its members, likewise, being under express instructions from their constituents to take measures for the immediate and adequate military organization of the colony. Not a man, probably, was sent to that convention, not a man [Pg 136] surely would have gone to it, who was not in substantial sympathy with the prevailing revolutionary spirit.

Of course, even they who were in sympathy with that spirit might have objected to Patrick Henry’s resolutions, had those resolutions been marked by any startling novelty in doctrine, or by anything extreme or violent in expression. But, plainly, they were neither extreme nor violent; they were not even novel. They contained nothing essential which had not been approved, in almost the same words, more than three months before, by similar conventions in Maryland and in Delaware; which had not been approved, in almost the same words, many weeks before, by county conventions in Virginia,—in one instance, by a county convention presided over by Washington himself; which had not been approved, in other language, either weeks or months before, by Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, and other colonies; which was not sanctioned by the plainest prudence on the part of all persons who intended to make any further stand whatsoever against the encroachments of Parliament. It is safe to say that no man who had within him enough of the revolutionary spirit to have prompted his attendance at a revolutionary convention could have objected to any essential item in Patrick Henry’s resolutions.

Why, then, were they objected to? Why was their immediate passage resisted? The official journal of the convention throws no light upon the [Pg 137] question: it records merely the adoption of the resolutions, and is entirely silent respecting any discussion that they may have provoked. Thirty years afterward, however, St. George Tucker, who, though not a member of this convention, had yet as a visitor watched its proceedings that day, gave from memory some account of them; and to him we are indebted for the names of the principal men who stood out against Patrick Henry’s motion. “This produced,” he says, “an animated debate, in which Colonel Richard Bland, Mr. Nicholas, the treasurer, and I think Colonel Harrison, of Berkeley, and Mr. Pendleton, were opposed to the resolution, as conceiving it to be premature;”[154] all these men being prudent politicians, indeed, but all fully committed to the cause of the Revolution.

At first, this testimony may seem to leave us as much in the dark as before; and yet all who are familiar with the politics of Virginia at that period will see in this cluster of names some clew to the secret of their opposition. It was an opposition to Patrick Henry himself, and as far as possible to any measure of which he should be the leading champion. Yet even this is not enough. Whatever may have been their private motives in resisting a measure advocated by Patrick Henry, they must still have had some reason which they would be willing to assign. St. George Tucker tells us that they conceived his resolutions to be “premature.”[Pg 138] But in themselves his resolutions, so far from being premature, were rather tardy; they lagged weeks and even months behind many of the best counties in Virginia itself, as well as behind those other colonies to which in political feeling Virginia was always most nearly akin.

The only possible explanation of the case seems to be found, not in the resolutions themselves, but in the special interpretation put upon them by Patrick Henry in the speech which, according to parliamentary usage, he seems to have made in moving their adoption. What was that interpretation? In the true answer to that question, no doubt, lies the secret of the resistance which his motion encountered. For, down to that day, no public body in America, and no public man, had openly spoken of a war with Great Britain in any more decisive way than as a thing highly probable, indeed, but still not inevitable. At last Patrick Henry spoke of it, and he wanted to induce the convention of Virginia to speak of it, as a thing inevitable. Others had said, “The war must come, and will come,—unless certain things are done.” Patrick Henry, brushing away every prefix or suffix of uncertainty, every half-despairing “if,” every fragile and pathetic “unless,” exclaimed, in the hearing of all men: “Why talk of things being now done which can avert the war? Such things will not be done. The war is coming: it has come already.” Accordingly, other conventions in the colonies, in adopting similar resolutions, had merely [Pg 139] announced the probability of war. Patrick Henry would have this convention, by adopting his resolutions, virtually declare war itself.

In this alone, it is apparent, consisted the real priority and offensiveness of Patrick Henry’s position as a revolutionary statesman on the 23d of March, 1775. In this alone were his resolutions “premature.” The very men who opposed them because they were to be understood as closing the door against the possibility of peace, would have favored them had they only left that door open, or even ajar. But Patrick Henry demanded of the people of Virginia that they should treat all further talk of peace as mere prattle; that they should seize the actual situation by a bold grasp of it in front; that, looking upon the war as a fact, they should instantly proceed to get ready for it. And therein, once more, in revolutionary ideas, was Patrick Henry one full step in advance of his contemporaries. Therein, once more, did he justify the reluctant praise of Jefferson, who was a member of that convention, and who, nearly fifty years afterward, said concerning Patrick Henry to a great statesman from Massachusetts: “After all, it must be allowed that he was our leader in the measures of the Revolution in Virginia, and in that respect more is due to him than to any other person.… He left all of us far behind.”[155]

Such, at any rate, we have a right to suppose, was the substantial issue presented by the resolutions [Pg 140] of Patrick Henry, and by his introductory speech in support of them; and upon this issue the little group of politicians—able and patriotic men, who always opposed his leadership—then arrayed themselves against him, making the most, doubtless, of everything favoring the possibility and the desirableness of a peaceful adjustment of the great dispute. But their opposition to him only produced the usual result,—of arousing him to an effort which simply overpowered and scattered all further resistance. It was in review of their whole quivering platoon of hopes and fears, of doubts, cautions, and delays, that he then made the speech which seems to have wrought astonishing effects upon those who heard it, and which, though preserved in a most inadequate report, now fills so great a space in the traditions of revolutionary eloquence:—

Up to this point in his address, the orator seems to have spoken with great deliberation and self-restraint. St. George Tucker, who was present, and who has left a written statement of his recollections both of the speech and of the scene, says:—

Then follows, in Tucker’s narrative, the passage included in the last two paragraphs of the speech as given above, after which he adds:—

But, by a comparison of this testimony of St. George Tucker with that of others who heard the speech, it is made evident that, as the orator then advanced toward the conclusion and real climax of his argument, he no longer maintained “the calm dignity of Cato of Utica,” but that his manner gradually deepened into an intensity of passion and a dramatic power which were overwhelming. He thus continued:—

Of this tremendous speech there are in existence two traditional descriptions, neither of which is inconsistent with the testimony given by St. George Tucker. He, as a lawyer and a judge, seems to have retained the impression of that portion of the speech which was the more argumentative and unimpassioned: the two other reporters seem to have remembered especially its later and more emotional [Pg 146] passages. Our first traditional description was obtained by Henry Stephens Randall from a clergyman, who had it from an aged friend, also a clergyman, who heard the speech itself:—

The second traditional description of the speech is here given from a manuscript[158] of Edward Fontaine, who obtained it in 1834 from John Roane, who himself heard the speech. Roane told Fontaine that the orator’s “voice, countenance, and gestures gave an irresistible force to his words,[Pg 147] which no description could make intelligible to one who had never seen him, nor heard him speak;” but, in order to convey some notion of the orator’s manner, Roane described the delivery of the closing sentences of the speech:—

Before passing from this celebrated speech, it is proper to say something respecting the authenticity of the version of it which has come down to us, and which is now so universally known in America. The speech is given in these pages substantially as it was given by Wirt in his “Life of Henry.” Wirt himself does not mention whence he obtained his version; and all efforts to discover that version as a whole, in any writing prior to Wirt’s book, have thus far been unsuccessful. These facts have led even so genial a critic as Grigsby to incline to the opinion that “much of the speech published by Wirt is apocryphal.”[160] It would, indeed, be an odd thing, and a source of no little disturbance to many minds, if such should turn out to be the case, and if we should have to conclude that an apocryphal speech written by Wirt, and attributed by him to Patrick Henry fifteen years after the great orator’s death, had done more to perpetuate the renown of Patrick Henry’s oratory than had been done by any and all the words actually spoken by the orator himself during his lifetime. On the other hand, it should be said that Grigsby himself admits that “the outline of the argument” and “some of its [Pg 150] expressions” are undoubtedly “authentic.” That this is so is apparent, likewise, from the written recollections of St. George Tucker, wherein the substance of the speech is given, besides one entire passage in almost the exact language of the version by Wirt. Finally, John Roane, in 1834, in his conversation with Edward Fontaine, is said to have “verified the correctness of the speech as it was written by Judge Tyler for Mr. Wirt.”[161] This, unfortunately, is the only intimation that has anywhere been found attributing Wirt’s version to the excellent authority of Judge John Tyler. If the statement could be confirmed, it would dispel every difficulty at once. But, even though the statement should be set aside, enough would still remain to justify us in thinking that Wirt’s version of the famous speech by no means deserves to be called “apocryphal,” in any such sense as that word has when applied, for example, to the speeches in Livy and in Thucydides, or in Botta. In the first place, Wirt’s version certainly gives the substance of the speech as actually made by Patrick Henry on the occasion named; and, for the form of it, Wirt seems to have gathered testimony from all available living witnesses, and then, from such sentences or snatches of sentences as these witnesses could remember, as well as from his own conception of the orator’s method of expression, to have constructed the version which he has handed down to us. Even in that case, it is [Pg 151] probably far more accurate and authentic than are most of the famous speeches attributed to public characters before reporters’ galleries were opened, and before the art of reporting was brought to its present perfection.

Returning, now, from this long account of Patrick Henry’s most celebrated speech, to the assemblage in which it was made, it remains to be mentioned that the resolutions, as offered by Patrick Henry, were carried; and that the committee, called for by those resolutions, to prepare a plan for “embodying, arming, and disciplining” the militia,[162] was at once appointed. Of this committee Patrick Henry was chairman; and with him were associated Richard Henry Lee, Nicholas, Harrison, Riddick, Washington, Stephen, Lewis, Christian, Pendleton, Jefferson, and Zane. On the following day, Friday, the 24th of March, the committee brought in its report, which was laid over for one day, and then, after some amendment, was unanimously adopted.

The convention did not close its labors until Monday, the 27th of March. The contemporaneous estimate of Patrick Henry, not merely as a leader in debate, but as a constitutional lawyer, and as a man of affairs, may be partly gathered from the fact of his connection with each of the two other important committees of this convention,—the committee “to inquire whether his majesty may of right advance the terms of granting lands [Pg 152] in this colony,”[163] on which his associates were the great lawyers, Bland, Jefferson, Nicholas, and Pendleton; and the committee “to prepare a plan for the encouragement of arts and manufactures in this colony,”[164] on which his associates were Nicholas, Bland, Mercer, Pendleton, Cary, Carter of Stafford, Harrison, Richard Henry Lee, Clapham, Washington, Holt, and Newton.

[136] For an example of such overstatement, see Wirt, 114-123. See, also, the damaging comments thereon by Rives, Life of Madison, i. 63, 64.