We have now arrived at the second period of Patrick Henry’s service as governor of Virginia, beginning with the 30th of November, 1784. For the four or five years immediately following that date, the salient facts in his career seem to group themselves around the story of his relation to that vast national movement which ended in an entire reorganization of the American Republic under a new Constitution. Whoever will take the trouble to examine the evidence now at hand bearing upon the case, can hardly fail to convince himself that the true story of Patrick Henry’s opposition to that great movement has never yet been told. Men have usually misconceived, when they have not altogether overlooked, the motives for his opposition, the spirit in which he conducted it, and the beneficent effects which were accomplished by it; while his ultimate and firm approval of the new Constitution, after it had received the chief amendments called for by his criticisms, has been passionately described as an example of gross political fickleness and inconsistency, instead of being, as it really was, a most logical proceeding on his part, and in Before entering on a story so fascinating for the light it throws on the man and on the epoch, it is well that we should stay long enough to glance at what we may call the incidental facts in his life, for these four or five years now to be looked into. Not far from the time of his thus entering once more upon the office of governor, occurred the death of his aged mother, at the home of his brother-in-law, Colonel Samuel Meredith of Winton, who, in a letter to the governor, dated November 22, 1784, speaks tenderly of the long illness which had preceded the death of the venerable lady, and especially of the strength and beauty of her character:— “She has been in my family upwards of eleven years; and from the beginning of that time to the end, her life appeared to me most evidently to be a continued manifestation of piety and devotion, guided by such a great share of good sense as rendered her amiable and agreeable to all who were so happy as to be acquainted with her. Never have I known a Christian character equal to hers.” On bringing his family to the capital, in November, 1784, from the far-away solitude of Leatherwood, the governor established them, not within the city itself, but across the James River, at a place called Salisbury. What with children and with grandchildren, his family had now become During his two years in the governorship, his duties concerned matters of much local importance, indeed, but of no particular interest at present. To this remark one exception may be found in some passages of friendly correspondence between the governor and Washington,—the latter then enjoying the long-coveted repose of Mt. Vernon. In January, 1785, the Assembly of Virginia vested in Washington certain shares in two companies, just then formed, for opening and extending the navigation Richmond, March 12th, 1785. Dear Sir,—The honor you are pleased to do me, in your favor of the 27th ultimo, in which you desire my opinion in a friendly way concerning the act enclosed you lately, is very flattering to me. I did not receive the letter till Thursday, and since that my family has been very sickly. My oldest grandson, a fine boy indeed, about nine years old, lays at the point of death. Under this state of uneasiness and perturbation, I feel some unfitness to consider a subject of so delicate a nature as that you have desired my thoughts on. Besides, I have some expectation of a conveyance more proper, it may be, than the present, when I would wish to send you some packets received from Ireland, which I fear the post cannot carry at once. If he does not take them free, I shan’t send them, for they are heavy. Captain Boyle, who had them from Sir Edward Newenham, wishes for the honor of a line from you, which I have promised to forward to him. I will give you the trouble of hearing from me next P. Henry. General Washington. The promise contained in this letter was fulfilled on the 19th of the same month, when the governor wrote to Washington a long and careful statement of the whole case, urging him to accept the shares, and closing his letter with an assurance of his “unalterable affection” and “most sincere attachment,” On the 30th of November, 1786, having declined to be put in nomination for a third year, as permitted by the Constitution, he finally retired from the office of governor. The House of Delegates, about the same time, by unanimous vote, crowned him with the public thanks, “for his wise, prudent, and upright administration, during his last appointment of chief magistrate of this Commonwealth; assuring him that they retain a perfect sense of his abilities in the discharge of the duties of that high and important office, and wish him all domestic happiness on his return to private life.” This return to private life meant, among other As regards his attitude toward that great business, we need, first of all, to clear away some obscurity which has gathered about the question of his habitual views respecting the relations of the several States to the general government. It has been common to suppose that, even prior to the movement for the new Constitution, Patrick Henry had always been an extreme advocate of the rights of the States as opposed to the central authority In general it may be said that, at the very outset of the Revolution, Patrick Henry was one of the first of our statesmen to recognize the existence and the imperial character of a certain cohesive central authority, arising from the very nature of the revolutionary act which the several colonies were then taking. As early as 1774, in the first Continental Congress, it was he who exclaimed: “All distinctions are thrown down. All America is thrown into one mass.” “The distinctions between Virginians, Pennsylvanians, New Yorkers, and New Englanders are no more. I am not a Virginian, but an American.” In the spring of 1776, at the approach of the question of independence, it was he who even incurred reproach by his anxiety to defer independence until after the basis for a general government should have been established, lest the several States, in separating from England, should lapse into a separation from one another also. As governor of Virginia from 1776 to 1779, his official correspondence with the president of Congress, with the board of war, and with the general of the army is pervaded by proofs of Not far, however, from the date last mentioned Patrick Henry ceased to be “the champion of the federal cause,” and became its chief antagonist, and so remained until some time during Washington’s first term in the presidency. What brought about this sudden and total revolution? It can be explained only by the discovery of some new influence which came into his life between 1784 and 1786, and which was powerful enough to reverse entirely the habitual direction of his political thought and conduct. Just what that influence was can now be easily shown. On the 3d of August, 1786, John Jay, as secretary for foreign affairs, presented to Congress some results of his negotiations with the Spanish envoy, Gardoqui, respecting a treaty with Spain; and he then urged that Congress, in view of certain vast advantages to our foreign commerce, should consent to surrender the navigation of the Mississippi for twenty-five or thirty years, On the same day that Monroe was writing from New York that letter to Governor Henry, Madison was writing from Philadelphia a letter to Jefferson. Having mentioned a plan for strengthening the Confederation, Madison says:— “Though my wishes are in favor of such an event, yet I despair so much of its accomplishment at the present crisis, that I do not extend my views beyond a commercial reform. To speak the truth, I almost despair even of this. You will find the cause in a measure now before Congress, … a proposed treaty with Spain, one article of which shuts the Mississippi for twenty or thirty years. Passing by the other Southern States, figure to yourself the effect of such a stipulation on the Assembly of Virginia, already jealous of Northern politics, and which will be composed of thirty members from the Western waters,—of a majority of others attached to the Western country from interests of their own, of their friends, or their constituents.… Figure to yourself its effect on the people at large on the Western waters, who are impatiently waiting for a favorable result to the negotiation with Gardoqui, and who will consider themselves sold by their Atlantic brethren. Will it be an unnatural consequence if they consider themselves absolved from every federal tie, and court some protection for their betrayed rights?” How truly Madison predicted the fatal construction which in the South, and particularly in Virginia, would be put upon the proposed surrender of the Mississippi, may be seen by a glance at some of the resolutions which passed the Virginia House of Delegates on the 29th of the following November:— “That the common right of navigating the river Mississippi, and of communicating with other nations through that channel, ought to be considered as the “That the Confederacy, having been formed on the broad basis of equal rights, in every part thereof, to the protection and guardianship of the whole, a sacrifice of the rights of any one part, to the supposed or real interest of another part, would be a flagrant violation of justice, a direct contravention of the end for which the federal government was instituted, and an alarming innovation in the system of the Union.” One day after the passage of those resolutions, Patrick Henry ceased to be the governor of Virginia; and five days afterward he was chosen by Virginia as one of its seven delegates to a convention to be held at Philadelphia in the following May for the purpose of revising the federal Constitution. But amid the widespread excitement, amid the anger and the suspicion then prevailing as to the liability of the Southern States, even under a weak confederation, to be slaughtered, in all their most important concerns, by the superior weight and number of the Northern States, it is easy to see how little inclined many Southern statesmen would be to increase that liability by making this weak confederation a strong one. In the list of such Southern statesmen Patrick Henry must henceforth be reckoned; and, as it was never his nature to do anything tepidly or by halves, his “I am entirely convinced from what I observe here, that unless the project of Congress can be reversed, the hopes of carrying this State into a proper federal system will be demolished. Many of our most federal leading men are extremely soured with what has already passed. Mr. Henry, who has been hitherto the champion of the federal cause, has become a cold advocate, and, in the event of an actual sacrifice of the Mississippi by Congress, will unquestionably go over to the opposite side.” But in spite of this change in his attitude toward the federal cause, perhaps he would still go to the great convention. On that subject he appears to have kept his own counsel for several weeks; but by the 1st of March, 1787, Edmund Randolph, at Richmond, was able to send this word to Madison, who was back in his place in Congress: “Mr. Henry peremptorily refuses to go;” and Randolph mentions as Henry’s reasons for this refusal, not only his urgent professional duties, but his repugnance to the proceedings of Congress in the matter of the Mississippi. That Patrick Henry did not attend the great convention, everybody knows; but the whole meaning of his refusal to do so, everybody may now understand somewhat more clearly, perhaps, than before. FOOTNOTES:
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