Moses Coit Tyler

On Thursday, the 18th of May, Patrick Henry took his seat in the second Continental Congress; and he appears thenceforward to have continued in attendance until the very end of the session, which occurred on the 1st of August. From the official journal of this Congress, it is impossible to ascertain the full extent of any member’s participation in its work. Its proceedings were transacted in secret; and only such results were announced to the public as, in the opinion of Congress, it was desirable that the public should know. Then, too, from the private correspondence and the diaries of its members but little help can be got. As affecting Patrick Henry, almost the only non-official testimony that has been found is that of Jefferson, who, however, did not enter this Congress until its session was half gone, and who, forty years afterward, wrote what he probably supposed to be his recollections concerning his old friend’s deportment and influence in that body:—

“I found Mr. Henry to be a silent and almost unmeddling member in Congress. On the original opening of that body, while general grievances were the topic, he [Pg 169] was in his element, and captivated all by his bold and splendid eloquence. But as soon as they came to specific matters, to sober reasoning and solid argumentation, he had the good sense to perceive that his declamation, however excellent in its proper place, had no weight at all in such an assembly as that, of cool-headed, reflecting, judicious men. He ceased, therefore, in a great measure, to take any part in the business. He seemed, indeed, very tired of the place, and wonderfully relieved when, by appointment of the Virginia convention to be colonel of their first regiment, he was permitted to leave Congress about the last of July.”[195]

Perhaps the principal value of this testimony is to serve as an illustration of the extreme fragility of any man’s memory respecting events long passed, even in his own experience. Thus, Jefferson here remembers how “wonderfully relieved” Patrick Henry was at being “permitted to leave Congress” on account of his appointment by the Virginia convention “to be colonel of their first regiment.” But, from the official records of the time, it can now be shown that neither of the things which Jefferson thus remembers, ever had any existence in fact. In the first place, the journal of the Virginia convention[196] indicates that Patrick Henry’s appointment as colonel could not have been the occasion of any such relief from congressional duties as Jefferson speaks of; for that appointment was not made until five days after Congress itself [Pg 170] had adjourned, when, of course, Patrick Henry and his fellow delegates, including Jefferson, were already far advanced on their journey back to Virginia. In the second place, the journal of Congress[197] indicates that Patrick Henry had no such relief from congressional duties, on any account, but was bearing his full share in its business, even in the plainest and most practical details, down to the very end of the session.

Any one who now recalls the tremendous events that were taking place in the land while the second Continental Congress was in session, and the immense questions of policy and of administration with which it had to deal, will find it hard to believe that its deliberations were out of the range of Patrick Henry’s sympathies or capacities, or that he could have been the listless, speechless, and ineffective member depicted by the later pen of Jefferson. When that Congress first came together, the blood was as yet hardly dry on the grass in Lexington Common; on the very morning on which its session opened, the colonial troops burst into the stronghold at Ticonderoga; and when the session had lasted but six weeks, its members were conferring together over the ghastly news from Bunker Hill. The organization of some kind of national government for thirteen colonies precipitated into a state of war; the creation of a national army; the selection of a commander-in-chief, and of the officers to serve under him; the [Pg 171] hurried fortification of coasts, harbors, cities; the supply of the troops with clothes, tents, weapons, ammunition, food, medicine; protection against the Indian tribes along the frontier of nearly every colony; the goodwill of the people of Canada, and of Jamaica; a solemn, final appeal to the king and to the people of England; an appeal to the people of Ireland; finally, a grave statement to all mankind of “the causes and necessity of their taking up arms,”—these were among the weighty and soul-stirring matters which the second Continental Congress had to consider and to decide upon. For any man to say, forty years afterward, even though he say it with all the authority of the renown of Thomas Jefferson, that, in the presence of such questions, the spirit of Patrick Henry was dull or unconcerned, and that, in a Congress which had to deal with such questions, he was “a silent and almost unmeddling member,” is to put a strain upon human confidence which it is unable to bear.

The formula by which the daily labors of this Congress are frequently described in its own journal is, that “Congress met according to adjournment, and, agreeable to the order of the day, again resolved itself into a committee of the whole to take into consideration the state of America; and after some time spent therein, the president resumed the chair, and Mr. Ward, from the committee, reported that they had proceeded in the business, but, not having completed it, desired him to move for leave to sit again.”[198] And although,[Pg 172] from the beginning to the end of the session, no mention is made of any word spoken in debate by any member, we can yet glean, even from that meagre record, enough to prove that upon Patrick Henry was laid about as much labor in the form of committee-work as upon any other member of the House,—a fair test, it is believed, of any man’s zeal, industry, and influence in any legislative body.

Further, it will be noted that the committee-work to which he was thus assigned was often of the homeliest and most prosaic kind, calling not for declamatory gifts, but for common sense, discrimination, experience, and knowledge of men and things. He seems, also, to have had special interest and authority in the several anxious phases of the Indian question as presented by the exigencies of that awful crisis, and to have been placed on every committee that was appointed to deal with any branch of the subject. Thus, on the 16th of June, he was placed with General Schuyler, James Duane, James Wilson, and Philip Livingston, on a committee “to take into consideration the papers transmitted from the convention of New York, relative to Indian affairs, and report what steps, in their opinion, are necessary to be taken for securing and preserving the friendship of the Indian nations.”[199] On the 19th of June, he served with John Adams and Thomas Lynch on a committee to inform Charles Lee of [Pg 173] his appointment as second major-general; and when Lee’s answer imported that his situation and circumstances as a British officer required some further and very careful negotiations with Congress, Patrick Henry was placed upon the special committee to which this delicate business was intrusted.[200] On the 21st of June, the very day on which, according to the journal, “Mr. Thomas Jefferson appeared as a delegate for the colony of Virginia, and produced his credentials,” his colleague, Patrick Henry, rose in his place and stated that Washington “had put into his hand sundry queries, to which he desired the Congress would give an answer.” These queries necessarily involved subjects of serious concern to the cause for which they were about to plunge into war, and would certainly require for their consideration “cool-headed, reflecting, and judicious men.” The committee appointed for the purpose consisted of Silas Deane, Patrick Henry, John Rutledge, Samuel Adams, and Richard Henry Lee.[201] On the 10th of July, “Mr. Alsop informed the Congress that he had an invoice of Indian goods, which a gentleman in this town had delivered to him, and which the said gentleman was willing to dispose of to the Congress.” The committee “to examine the said invoice and report to the Congress” was composed of Philip Livingston, Patrick Henry, and John Alsop.[202] On the 12th of July, it was resolved to [Pg 174] organize three departments for the management of Indian affairs, the commissioners to “have power to treat with the Indians in their respective departments, in the name and on behalf of the United Colonies, in order to preserve peace and friendship with the said Indians, and to prevent their taking any part in the present commotions.” On the following day the commissioners for the middle department were elected, namely, Franklin, Patrick Henry, and James Wilson.[203] On the 17th of July, a committee was appointed to negotiate with the Indian missionary, the Rev. Samuel Kirkland, respecting his past and future services among the Six Nations, “in order to secure their friendship, and to continue them in a state of neutrality with respect to the present controversy between Great Britain and these colonies.” This committee consisted of Thomas Cushing, Patrick Henry, and Silas Deane.[204] Finally, on the 31st of July, next to the last day of the session, a committee consisting of one member for each colony was appointed to serve in the recess of Congress, for the very practical and urgent purpose of inquiring “in all the colonies after virgin lead and leaden ore, and the best methods of collecting, smelting, and refining it;” also, after “the cheapest and easiest methods of making salt in these colonies.” This was not a committee on which any man could be useful who had only “declamation” to contribute to its work; and the several colonies were represented [Pg 175] upon it by their most sagacious and their weightiest men,—as New Hampshire by Langdon, Massachusetts by John Adams, Rhode Island by Stephen Hopkins, Pennsylvania by Franklin, Delaware by Rodney, South Carolina by Gadsden, Virginia by Patrick Henry.[205]

On the day on which this committee was appointed, Patrick Henry wrote to Washington, then at the headquarters of the army near Boston, a letter which denoted on the part of the writer a perception, unusual at that time, of the gravity and duration of the struggle on which the colonies were just entering:—

Philadelphia, July 31st, 1775.

Sir,—Give me leave to recommend the bearer, M^r. Frazer, to your notice and regard. He means to enter the American camp, and there to gain that experience, of which the general cause may be avail’d. It is my earnest wish that many Virginians might see service. It is not unlikely that in the fluctuation of things our country may have occasion for great military exertions. For this reason I have taken the liberty to trouble you with this and a few others of the same tendency. The public good which you, sir, have so eminently promoted, is my only motive. That you may enjoy the protection of Heaven and live long and happy is the ardent wish of,

Sir,
Y^r. mo. ob^t. hbl. serv.,
P. Henry, Jr.[206]

His Excellency, Genl. Washington.

[Pg 176] On the following day Congress adjourned. As soon as possible after its adjournment, the Virginia delegates seem to have departed for home, to take their places in the convention then in session at Richmond; for the journal of that convention mentions that on Wednesday, August the 9th, “Patrick Henry, Edmund Pendleton, Benjamin Harrison, and Thomas Jefferson, Esquires, appeared in convention, and took their seats.”[207] On the next day an incident occurred in the convention implying that Patrick Henry, during his absence in Congress, had been able to serve his colony by other gifts as well as by those of “bold and splendid eloquence:” it was resolved that “the powder purchased by Patrick Henry, Esquire, for the use of this colony, be immediately sent for.”[208] On the day following that, the convention resolved unanimously that “the thanks of this convention are justly due to his excellency, George Washington, Esquire, Patrick Henry, and Edmund Pendleton, Esquires, three of the worthy delegates who represented this colony in the late Continental Congress, for their faithful discharge of that important trust; and this body are only induced to dispense with their future services of the like kind, by the appointment of the two former to other offices in the public service, incompatible with their attendance on this, and the infirm state of health of the latter.”[209]

[Pg 177] Of course, the two appointments here referred to are of Washington as commander-in-chief of the forces of the United Colonies, and of Patrick Henry as commander-in-chief of the forces of Virginia,—the latter appointment having been made by the Virginia convention on the 5th of August. The commission, which passed the convention on the 28th of that month, constituted Patrick Henry “colonel of the first regiment of regulars, and commander-in-chief of all the forces to be raised for the protection and defence of this colony;” and while it required “all officers and soldiers, and every person whatsoever, in any way concerned, to be obedient” to him, “in all things touching the due execution of this commission,” it also required him to be obedient to “all orders and instructions which, from time to time,” he might “receive from the convention or Committee of Safety.”[210] Accordingly, Patrick Henry’s control of military proceedings in Virginia was, as it proved, nothing more than nominal: it was a supreme command on paper, tempered in actual experience by the incessant and distrustful interference of an ever-present body of civilians, who had all power over him.

A newspaper of Williamsburg for the 23d of September announces the arrival there, two days before, of “Patrick Henry, Esquire, commander-in-chief of the Virginia forces. He was met and escorted to town by the whole body of volunteers,[Pg 178] who paid him every mark of respect and distinction in their power.”[211] Thereupon he inspected the grounds about the city; and as a place suitable for the encampment, he fixed upon a site in the rear of the College of William and Mary. Soon troops began to arrive in considerable numbers, and to prepare themselves for whatever service might be required of them.[212] There was, however, a sad lack of arms and ammunition. On the 15th of October, Pendleton, who was at the head of the Committee of Safety, gave this account of the situation in a letter to Richard Henry Lee, then in Congress at Philadelphia:—

On the 30th of November, Lord Dunmore, who had been compelled by the smallness of his land force to take refuge upon his armed vessels off the coast, thus described the situation, in a letter to General Sir William Howe, then in command at Boston:—

But who were these “thousand chosen men belonging to the rebels,” who, on their march to attack Lord Dunmore at Norfolk, had thus been held in check by his little fort at the Great Bridge? We are told by Dunmore himself that they were Virginia troops. But why was not Patrick Henry in immediate command of them? Why was Patrick Henry held back from this service,—the only active service then to be had in the field? And why was the direction of this important enterprise given to his subordinate, Colonel William Woodford, of the second regiment? There is abundant [Pg 180] evidence that Patrick Henry had eagerly desired to conduct this expedition; that he had even solicited the Committee of Safety to permit him to do so; but that they, distrusting his military capacity, overruled his wishes, and gave this fine opportunity for military distinction to the officer next below him in command. Moreover, no sooner had Colonel Woodford departed upon the service, than he began to ignore altogether the commander-in-chief, and to make his communications directly to the Committee of Safety,—a course in which he was virtually sustained by that body, on appeal being made to them. Furthermore, on the 9th of December, Colonel Woodford won a brilliant victory over the enemy at the Great Bridge,[215] thus apparently justifying to the public the wisdom of the committee in assigning the work to him, and also throwing still more into the background the commander-in-chief, who was then chafing in camp over his enforced retirement from this duty. But this was not the only cup of humiliation which was pressed to his lips. Not long afterward, there arrived at the seat of war a few hundred North Carolina troops, under command of Colonel Robert Howe; and the latter, with the full consent of Woodford, at once took command of their united forces, and thenceforward addressed his official letters solely to the convention of Virginia, or to the Committee of Safety, paying not the slightest [Pg 181] attention to the commander-in-chief.[216] Finally, on the 28th of December, Congress decided to raise in Virginia six battalions to be taken into continental pay;[217] and, by a subsequent vote, it likewise resolved to include within these six battalions the first and the second Virginia regiments already raised.[218] A commission was accordingly sent to Patrick Henry as colonel of the first Virginia battalion,[219]—an official intimation that the expected commission of a brigadier-general for Virginia was to be given to some one else.

On receiving this last affront, Patrick Henry determined to lay down his military appointments, which he did on the 28th of February, 1776, and at once prepared to leave the camp. As soon as this news got abroad among the troops, they all, according to a contemporary account,[220] “went into mourning, and, under arms, waited on him at his lodgings,” when his officers presented to him an affectionate address:—

His reply to this warm-hearted message was in the following words:—

The grief and indignation thus exhibited by the officers who had served under Patrick Henry soon showed itself in a somewhat violent manner among the men. The “Virginia Gazette” for that time states that, “after the officers had received Colonel Henry’s kind answer to their address, they insisted upon his dining with them at the Raleigh Tavern, before his departure; and after the dinner, a number [Pg 183] of them proposed escorting him out of town, but were prevented by some uneasiness getting among the soldiery, who assembled in a tumultuous manner and demanded their discharge, and declared their unwillingness to serve under any other commander. Upon which Colonel Henry found it necessary to stay a night longer in town, which he spent in visiting the several barracks; and used every argument in his power with the soldiery to lay aside their imprudent resolution, and to continue in the service, which he had quitted from motives in which his honor alone was concerned.”[222] Moreover, several days after he had left the camp altogether and had returned to his home, he was followed by an address signed by ninety officers belonging not only to his own regiment, but to that of Colonel Woodford,—a document which has no little value as presenting strongly one side of contemporary military opinion respecting Patrick Henry’s career as a soldier, and the treatment to which he had been subjected.

The public agitation over the alleged wrong which had thus been done to Patrick Henry during his brief military career, and which had brought that career to its abrupt and painful close, seems to have continued for a considerable time. Throughout the colony the blame was openly and bluntly laid upon the Committee of Safety, who, on account of envy, it was said, had tried “to bury in obscurity his martial talents.”[224] On the other hand, the course pursued by that committee was [Pg 185] ably defended by many, on the ground that Patrick Henry, with all his great gifts for civil life, really had no fitness for a leading military position. One writer asserted that even in the convention which had elected Patrick Henry as commander-in-chief, it was objected that “his studies had been directed to civil and not to military pursuits; that he was totally unacquainted with the art of war, and had no knowledge of military discipline; and that such a person was very unfit to be at the head of troops who were likely to be engaged with a well-disciplined army, commanded by experienced and able generals.”[225] In the very middle of the period of his nominal military service, this opinion of his unfitness was still more strongly urged by the chairman of the Committee of Safety, who, on the 24th of December, 1775, said in a letter to Colonel Woodford:—

This seems to have been, in substance, the impression [Pg 186] concerning Patrick Henry held at that time by at least two friendly and most competent observers, who were then looking on from a distance, and who, of course, were beyond the range of any personal or partisan prejudice upon the subject. Writing from Cambridge, on the 7th of March, 1776, before he had received the news of Henry’s resignation, Washington said to Joseph Reed, then at Philadelphia: “I think my countrymen made a capital mistake when they took Henry out of the senate to place him in the field; and pity it is that he does not see this, and remove every difficulty by a voluntary resignation.”[227] On the 15th of that month, Reed, in reply, gave to Washington this bit of news: “We have some accounts from Virginia that Colonel Henry has resigned in disgust at not being made a general officer; but it rather gives satisfaction than otherwise, as his abilities seem better calculated for the senate than the field.”[228]

Nevertheless, in all these contemporary judgments upon the alleged military defects of Patrick Henry, no reader can now fail to note an embarrassing lack of definiteness, and a tendency to infer that, because that great man was so great in civil life, as a matter of course, he could not be great, also, in military life,—a proposition that could be overthrown by numberless historical examples to the contrary. It would greatly aid us if we [Pg 187] could know precisely what, in actual experience, were the defects found in Patrick Henry as a military man, and precisely how these defects were exhibited by him in the camp at Williamsburg. In the writings of that period, no satisfaction upon this point seems thus far to have been obtained. There is, however, a piece of later testimony, derived by authentic tradition from a prominent member of the Virginia Committee of Safety, which really helps one to understand what may have been the exact difficulty with the military character of Patrick Henry, and just why, also, it could not be more plainly stated at the time. Clement Carrington, a son of Paul Carrington, told Hugh Blair Grigsby that the real ground of the action of the Committee of Safety “was the want of discipline in the regiment under the command of Colonel Henry. None doubted his courage, or his alacrity to hasten to the field; but it was plain that he did not seem to be conscious of the importance of strict discipline in the army, but regarded his soldiers as so many gentlemen who had met to defend their country, and exacted from them little more than the courtesy that was proper among equals. To have marched to the sea-board at that time with a regiment of such men, would have been to insure their destruction; and it was a thorough conviction of this truth that prompted the decision of the committee.”[229]

Yet, even with this explanation, the truth remains [Pg 188] that Patrick Henry, as commander-in-chief of the Virginia forces, never was permitted to take command, or to see any real service in the field, or to look upon the face of an armed enemy, or to show, in the only way in which it could be shown, whether or not he had the gifts of a military leader in action. As an accomplished and noble-minded Virginian of our own time has said:—

[Pg 189]
ToC