Founding Myths (25 page)

Sir, we are not weak, if we make a proper use of those means which the God of nature hath placed in our power. Three millions of people armed in the holy cause of liberty, and in such a country as that which we possess, are invincible by any force which our enemy can send against us.

Besides, sir, we have no election. If we were base enough to desire it, it is now too late to retire from the contest. There is no retreat, but in submission and slavery! Our chains are forged. Their clanking may be heard on the plains of Boston! The war is inevitable—and let it come!! I repeat it, sir, let it come!!!

It is in vain, sir, to extenuate the matter. Gentlemen may cry
peace, peace—but there is no peace. The war is actually begun! The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms! Our brethren are already in the field! Why stand we here idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? 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!
¹

These words are stirring indeed, but it is highly unlikely that Patrick Henry uttered them. The speech was invented many years later, based on distant recollections of those who were present at the time. Although we know people were moved by Patrick Henry's oratory on March 23, 1775, we have no text of what he actually said.

In 1805 an attorney named William Wirt resolved to write about the life of Patrick Henry. This would not be an easy task. Although Henry had figured prominently in the events leading up to the Revolution, and although he went on to become governor of the nation's then-largest state, he left few records for historians or biographers to ponder. He was an orator, not a writer, and there are no transcriptions, recorded at the time, for any of his flamboyant prewar speeches, including this one, that led to his renown.

In 1815 Wirt wrote to a friend of the difficulties he was having in finding reliable material about the subject of his book:

It was all speaking, speaking, speaking. 'Tis true he could talk—Gods how he
could
talk! but there is no acting the while. . . . And then, to make the matter worse, from 1763 to 1789 . . . not one of his speeches lives in print, writing or memory. All that is told me is, that on such and such an occasion, he made a distinguished speech. . . . [T]here are some ugly traits in H's character, and some pretty nearly as ugly blanks. He was a blank military commander, a blank governor, and a blank politician, in all those useful points which depend on composition and detail.
In short, it is, verily, as hopeless a subject as man could well desire.
²

Undaunted, Wirt filled in the blanks according to his own discretion. He wanted to write a tale that would inspire American youth, and for that he did not need to stick too closely to the historical record. “The present and future generations of our country can never be better employed than in studying the models set before them by the fathers of the Revolution,” he wrote to John Adams.
³

In 1817, twelve years after he started his project, William Wirt published the first biography of Virginia's Revolutionary folk hero:
Sketches of the Life and Character of Patrick Henry
.
⁴
He dedicated his book “to the young men of Virginia,” whom he hoped would emulate the hero of his tale. No matter that he invoked poetic license; his goals were to stimulate patriotism and sell books, and he was successful on both counts. Wirt's book immediately became a mainstay of popular history. Reprinted twenty-five times in the next half century, it furnished much material that would be used in promoting a nationalist spirit—including the famous “liberty or death” speech, which finally appeared in print forty-two years after it was delivered and eighteen years after the great orator's death.
⁵

How accurate is Wirt's rendition?

Three decades after Henry delivered his inspirational call to arms, Wirt corresponded with men who had heard the speech firsthand and others who were acquainted with men who were there at the time. All agreed that the speech had produced a profound impact, but it seems that only one of Wirt's correspondents, Judge St. George Tucker, tried to render an actual text. Tucker's letter to Wirt has been lost, but we do have a letter from Wirt to Tucker that states, “I have taken almost entirely Mr. Henry's speech in the Convention of '75 from you, as well as your description of its effect on you verbatim.”
⁶

Scholars have argued for years whether the speech we know is primarily the work of William Wirt or St. George Tucker.
⁷
But what about Patrick Henry? How much of the speech is his?

Some of those favoring the Tucker hypothesis suggest that the speech published by Wirt is a fairly accurate rendering, since Tucker himself was there at the time. By his own admission, however, Tucker's account of the speech was based on “recollections,” not recorded notes. “In vain should I attempt to give any idea of his speech,” he wrote. Tucker attempted a reconstruction of only two paragraphs (the first two in the selection included here), which constitute less than one-fifth of the speech.
⁸
Even this much is suspect. It seems improbable that St. George Tucker could commit Henry's words to memory, then reproduce them accurately several decades later. He might have captured the basic gist, but what about the diction and cadence, so crucial to the art of oratory? And what about the rest of the speech, which amounted to 1,217 words? Where did all those words originate?

Imagine, in our own times, the task of trying to re-create the words of a speech delivered forty-two years ago if we had no written record. That was the same amount of time between the first printing of
Founding Myths
in 2004 and when John F. Kennedy, on October 22, 1962, delivered one of the most striking and fateful addresses in the history of this or any nation. Then, President Kennedy told the American people that the Soviet Union was trying to place missiles in Cuba, just ninety miles from the United States shore, and that he had just ordered a “quarantine” of Cuban waters. If Soviet ships attempted to make any deliveries, they would have to fight American ships. Kennedy's action, which brought the world to the brink of a nuclear holocaust, was a pivotal moment of the Cold War and among the scariest moments in history, when the very existence of human life on earth seemed threatened.

But forty-two years later, who, without prompting from the record, could remember Kennedy's exact words? They too were stirring—something about the path being full of hazards, but the greatest danger would be to do nothing at all—but was that really the way he said it? And what else did he say? Millions watched and heard the speech, some might have even jotted down some notes, but who could
reconstruct the speech decades later if they had not taken notes at the time?
⁹

Those of us old enough to remember the speech will recall the emotions—the fears and apprehensions of the moment—much better than the words. We might also recall Kennedy's deportment and tone. So it was with Patrick Henry. He had delivered an inspiring and very hawkish speech with great dramatic flair—people could remember that. But to recall the exact words he used to excite those patriotic feelings is another matter altogether.

FEAR AND LOATHING

Henry's speech, as we know it, owes much to the oratorical genius of William Wirt and St. George Tucker, in some combination, and it reflects the agendas of nineteenth-century nationalists who were fond of romanticizing war. To idealize war, however, much has to be left out. In the “liberty or death” speech that these men supposedly resurrected, key components of Patrick Henry's popular appeal are mysteriously absent. Henry's sentiments, and those of the men he addressed, were not always so noble as Wirt wanted his readers to believe.

In fact, we do have one account of Henry's speech that was recorded at the moment, not years later—and this version is seriously out of sync with Wirt's later rendition. In a letter dated April 6, 1775, James Parker wrote to Charles Stewart,

You never heard anything more infamously insolent than P. Henry's speech: he called the K——a Tyrant, a fool, a puppet, and a tool to the ministry. Said there was no Englishmen, no Scots, no Britons, but a set of wretches sunk in Luxury, that they had lost their native courage and (were) unable to look the brave Americans in the face. . . . This Creature is so infatuated, that he goes about I am told, praying and preaching amongst the common people.
¹⁰

Even allowing for the bias of an unsympathetic observer, Parker's account is plausible. As in any era, hawkish patriots during the American Revolution probably questioned the enemy's courage, descended to name-calling, and appealed to widespread fear. Demagoguery is the underbelly of oratory, yet “wretches sunk in Luxury” did not make it into Wirt's rendition.

Less than one month after Henry delivered his “liberty or death” speech, fear of slave uprisings helped trigger the onset of the Revolution in the South. In the spring of 1775, white citizens of Virginia believed that African Americans held in bondage were planning to rise up, rebel, and go on a murderous rampage against them. Fearful whites panicked and prepared for the worst—and Patrick Henry, one of the largest slaveholders of his county, was among them. Before dawn on April 21 the royal governor of Virginia, Lord Dunmore, dispatched a party of marines to seize gunpowder stored in the magazine at Williamsburg. Later that day, infuriated patriots gathered to protest. One newspaper reported their reasoning:

The monstrous absurdity that the Governor can deprive the people of the necessary means of defense at a time when the colony is actually threatened with an insurrection of their slaves . . . has worked up the passions of the people . . . almost to a frenzy.
¹¹

Governor Dunmore at first claimed he had seized the powder so the slaves couldn't get to it. Shortly afterward, however, he changed his stance: if the patriots harmed a single British official, he pronounced, he would “declare Freedom to the Slaves, and reduce the City of Williamsburg to Ashes.”
¹²

This only kindled the flames of rebellion. Within the next few days at least seven counties hastily formed “independent companies,” partly because the British had just shed blood at Lexington and Concord, but also in response to Dunmore's threat. In Fredericksburg on April 29, more than six hundred members of these companies prepared to march against the governor in Williamsburg. Dunmore
reiterated his threat to raise the slaves, saying he would do so immediately if the companies proceeded with their plans.

Moderates convinced most of these companies to disband, but two companies persisted: Albemarle and Hanover. The Albemarle volunteers voted to continue to Williamsburg “to demand satisfaction of Dunmore for the powder, and his threatening to fix his standard and call over the negroes.”
¹³
But they too soon turned back, leaving the field to the company from Hanover—under the leadership of Patrick Henry, a slave owner with much to lose.
¹⁴

The Hanover County committeemen were not of one mind, but Henry, with many friends and relatives on the committee, carried the day. Because of “apprehension for their persons and property,” they decided to march on the capital. Since Dunmore had threatened to raise the slaves while simultaneously seizing gunpowder that whites could use to defend themselves, Henry and the majority of the Hanover men felt they were likely to suffer “calamities of the greatest magnitude, and most fatal consequences to this colony” unless they went on the offensive.
¹⁵
In the end, the incipient rebellion triggered by Dunmore's actions reached a negotiated (albeit temporary) settlement: the British paid for the powder they had seized, and the Hanover company went home.

Later that year, when Lord Dunmore formally offered to free any slaves who joined the British army, Colonel Patrick Henry of the First Virginia Regiment took it upon himself to publicize Dunmore's action far and wide. (For more on Dunmore's offer of freedom, see
chapter 11
.) This time Henry's exact words were set in writing, and there can be no doubt he used fear as a rallying cry:

As the Committee of Safety is not sitting, I take the Liberty to enclose you a Copy of the Proclamation issued by Lord Dunmore; the Design and Tendency of which, you will observe, is fatal to the publick Safety. An early and unremitting Attention to the Government of the SLAVES may, I hope, counteract this
dangerous Attempt. Constant, and well directed Patrols, seem indispensably necessary.
¹⁶

Slaves were not the only objects of fear—Indians might cause trouble as well. One of the independent companies that threatened to march on Williamsburg noted that Dunmore had tried “to render (at least as far as in his power so to do) this colony defenceless, and lay it open to the attacks of a savage invasion, or a domestick foe [a common euphemism for enslaved people].”
¹⁷
This theme was repeated often in complaints about British policies issuing from the Southern states: the king, Parliament, and royal governors were inciting Indian attacks as well as slave insurrections. The following summer, Congress formalized these complaints in the Declaration of Independence. The king, it said, “has excited domestic insurrections amongst us and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers the merciless Indian savages.”