Henry, Patrick (1736-1799)

views updated

Patrick Henry (1736-1799)

Lawyer and orator

Family. Patrick Henry, probably the most eloquent orator of the Revolution, was born on 29 May 1736, the second son of John and Sarah Henry. John had emigrated from Scotland in 1727 and befriended a countryman who had become a successful farmer and gentleman. Upon the friend’s death John married his widow. Patrick and his brother were schooled at home, and when they came of age their father set them up as shopkeepers, but they quickly failed.

Alternate Vocation. When he was eighteen Henry married Sarah Shelton, and together they had six children. He tried unsuccessfully to farm the three hundred acres that were his wife’s dowry. He opened another shop and then an inn and tavern. His establishments were located near the courthouse, and Henry decided to become a lawyer. He had to pass oral examinations given by two lawyers who had been appointed by the colony’s Privy Court. Henry spent about six weeks immersed in the study of the laws of Virginia and Sir Edward Coke’s A Commentary upon Littleton (1628-1644), an enormous treatise on the common law. (Most prospective lawyers spent a year or more mastering this material.) In April 1760 Henry passed several hours of rigorous oral examination and was admitted to the bar. For the next three years Henry rode the circuit, from county seat to county seat, handling the small cases that came the way of a country lawyer—enough to keep him busy and to support his family, but no more.

The Parsons’ Cause. Henry won fame in 1761 for his argument on behalf of a church treasurer sued by a clergyman. Colonial law had set clergy salaries at sixteen thousand pounds of tobacco per year. When the tobacco crop failed in 1758, Virginia’s assembly passed the Twopenny Act providing that debts payable in tobacco could be paid in paper currency at the rate of two pence per pound of tobacco. Since tobacco sold for six pence per pound at the time, creditors such as clergymen objected. Britain’s Privy Council declared the law void. Several clergymen sued their churches for the difference due them. Henry, representing one church treasurer, held the jurors and the courtroom audience spellbound for an hour. The real issue, he argued, was the power of the colonial assembly to pass laws for the benefit of the people of the colony. The British constitution put limits on the King’s power, and Henry questioned the power of the Privy Council to nullify a law passed by the colonial legislature. He described the compact that existed between a king and his subjects and suggested that the king could not violate that compact by nullifying an act by the people’s assembly. Henry also argued that the clergy were not concerned with the welfare of all the people of Virginia, who would benefit from the Twopenny Act, but were concerned only with their own salaries. He denounced as “rapacious harpies” those clergy who were enemies of the people they were supposed to serve. Henry acknowledged that the jury had to find for the clergyman in this case because the Privy Council had nullified the Twopenny Act. However, he urged the jurors to teach the clergy a lesson for opposing an act of the colonial assembly. As soon as Henry finished his argument, the jurors returned a verdict. They upheld the clergyman and awarded him only one penny. Henry immediately became famous and was shortly afterward elected to the House of Burgesses.

“Treason!” Henry became a member of the House of Burgesses, the lower house of the Virginia assembly, in the spring of 1765, just as it was reacting to Parliament’s passage of the Stamp Act. In 1764, when the Stamp Act was first proposed, the House of Burgesses petitioned Parliament, begging that the tax not be imposed. Henry joined a small group of members who urged the House to file a briefer, more forceful statement that would stir popular opinion against the Stamp Act. Henry proposed a resolution specifically denying Parliament’s power to tax the colonies. More-cautious members argued against including such bold assertions in the resolution, as they thought it bordered on treason. Henry reportedly warned: “Caesar had his Brutus, Charles I his Cromwell, and George III. . . .,” at which point the Speaker, horrified, shouted “Treason!” Henry paused, then finished his sentence: “... may profit by their example. If this be treason, make the most of it.” Parliament rescinded the Stamp Act, but as the issue of Parliament’s power over the colonies recurred during the next nine years, Henry became increasingly bold. He was among the first members of the House of Burgesses to talk about separation from, instead of reconciliation with, England. His political fame boosted his law practice. He was one of the colony’s leading political voices and one of its most successful trial attorneys.

Virginia Convention. In March 1775 Virginians convened to choose and instruct their delegates to the Second Continental Congress, to be held in August. Henry urged the formation, equipping, and training of a local militia for the purpose of defending the colony if needed. In his view the convention was now acting as the governing body and was preparing for war. Some delegates suggested reconciliation with Britain was still possible, but others argued that separation was inevitable. It was in the course of this debate, on the subject of forming a militia, that Henry made one of his most famous speeches. He reviewed the developing dispute with Britain, especially Parliament’s tightening of restrictions as it sought to exert its control. This showed, Henry said:

There is no longer any room for hope. . . . If we wish to be free we must fight. . . . An appeal to arms . . .is all that is left . . . . Gentlemen may cry “peace, peace” but there is no peace. [If war is coming, he said] let it come! Let it come!... Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it Almighty God. I know not what course others may take, but as for me—give me liberty or give me death.

Governorship. In May 1776, at the next colonial convention, Henry proposed a resolution that Virginia’s delegates to the next session of the Second Continental Congress move for independence. His resolution also called for Virginia to draft a declaration of rights and to prepare a plan for its own government. In June he drafted a constitution for the new Commonwealth of Virginia, and by the end of that month the convention adopted a constitution and elected Henry the Commonwealth’s first governor. He served for three years, creating an administrative and judicial system while simultaneously supporting the war effort. In 1777, two years after his first wife’s death, Henry married Dorothea Dandridge, and he fathered eleven more children. By 1779 he was ready to retire from public life. After only one year he returned to the assembly, where he served for four years. In 1784 he was elected governor again and served three more years. During this period Henry helped pass a religious freedom law in Virginia. When the Constitution was presented to the states for ratification, Henry opposed it because of the lack of a bill of rights. He devoted his final years to his law practice and to western land speculations until his death in 1799.