Patrick Henry (15 page)

Many Virginians saw his threat, along with the fighting in Massachusetts, as the final phase of the plot to destroy the colonists' liberties. Some of the volunteer militia companies, only recently called up by Henry's resolutions, began to assemble for a march on Williamsburg. The Albemarle County militia departed from Charlottesville, prepared to “demand satisfaction of Dunmore for the powder, and his threatening to fix his standard and call over the negroes.” Moderate leaders, such as Peyton Randolph, began circulating letters forbidding these companies to assault the capital.
²⁵

One militia company the moderates could not stop was Patrick Henry's, the volunteers of Hanover County. Henry had returned to Hanover from Richmond and helped organize the militia by giving a passionate speech, as one participant recalled, “pointing out the necessity of our having recourse to arms in defense of our rights.” Many volunteered for the company. Henry knew the gunpowder episode presented a new opportunity to radicalize the population against the British. He told his cousin George Dabney that Dunmore's action
was a “fortunate circumstance, which would rouse the people from North to South. You may in vain mention the duties to them upon tea and these things they will say do not affect them, but tell them of the robbery of the magazine and that the next step will be to disarm them, and they will be then ready to fly to arms to defend themselves.” Henry summoned the Hanover volunteers to recapture the gunpowder. Understandably, some moderates criticized his plan as “imprudent and impolitic,” but the Hanover County committee approved the plan, and Henry became commander of the company. Perhaps chastened by the mounting pressure against him from fellow Virginians, he decided to seek reimbursement for the gunpowder from royal officials. He extracted a promise of such compensation from Carter Braxton, a moderate patriot who had been dispatched by the governor as a peacemaker.
²⁶

Henry sent the receipt of payment to Virginia's treasurer, Robert Carter Nicholas, assuring him that if the public treasury needed protection from plundering by Dunmore, the Hanover militia would gladly provide it. Nicholas replied that “he had no apprehension of the necessity or propriety of the proffered service.” In taking charge of his own militia to confront Dunmore, Henry had clearly begun to test the limits of the Virginia moderates' tolerance. The Hanover volunteers returned home, awaiting further instructions after Henry's attendance at the second meeting of the Continental Congress.
²⁷

Responses to Henry's expedition were mixed. Hesitant Virginians agonized that the colonists might not be able to avoid violence and popular unrest in pursuing rights and redress from Britain. “A True Patriot,” writing in the
Virginia Gazette
, acknowledged that Dunmore's actions were wrongheaded, but he chastised the volunteers for acting without proper government authority. Unchecked zeal for liberty and wild rumors about British intentions were threatening
the rule of law, and Henry's acts might become as “pernicious in their consequences as they were intended to be salutary,” the True Patriot worried. From the royal perspective, Henry had become a rebel and a terrorist, and on May 6, Dunmore issued a proclamation denouncing him and his followers: “I have been informed, from undoubted authority, that a certain Patrick Henry, of the County of Hanover, and a number of deluded followers, have taken up arms, chosen their officers, and styling themselves an independent company, have marched out of their county, encamped, and put themselves in a posture of war . . . to the great terror of all his majesty's faithful subjects, and in open defiance of law and government.” Dunmore warned Virginians not to give any aid to Henry and his ruffians.
²⁸

Other Virginians congratulated Henry and the Hanover volunteers, however. From Orange County, a committee chaired by James Madison deplored Dunmore's seizure of the gunpowder. Fifteen years younger than Henry, Madison was the son of an elite tobacco-growing family from northern Virginia. He had graduated from the College of New Jersey at Princeton only in 1771, where he studied political philosophy under the renowned Presbyterian pastor and scholar John Witherspoon. In 1775, the twenty-four-year-old Madison was just emerging as a political leader in Orange County. His committee declared that the fighting in Massachusetts represented an attack on Virginia as well, further justifying Henry's actions. The battles at Lexington and Concord were “sufficient warrant to use violence and reprisal, in all cases where it may be expedient for our security and welfare.” To radical patriots, threats of violence like Henry's had become necessary because of the British government's flagrant actions against them.
²⁹

In the days after Dunmore denounced him, Henry remained unapologetic. He scoffed at Dunmore's claim that the gunpowder
belonged to the royal government. “His Majesty can have no right to convert the houses or other conveniences necessary for our defense into repositories for engines of our destruction,” Henry wrote. He hoped most Virginians would support him, despite the grumblings of moderates, and even hinted that in light of events in Massachusetts, “greater reprisals” could have been justified but that he had declined to pursue them. With such missives, Henry was positioning himself not only as a resistance leader but as a commander of a rebellion.
³⁰

By the second week of May, Henry had departed for the Second Continental Congress, accompanied by an armed escort to prevent his arrest. His cheering guards sent him across the Potomac, while “committing him to the gracious and wise disposer of all human events, to guide and protect while contending for a restitution of our dearest rights and liberties.” Henry's supporters believed that God had raised up Henry and other patriot leaders to face this crisis, and would protect them accordingly. The controversy in Virginia continued to worsen in Henry's absence, and Dunmore abandoned Williamsburg in June, taking refuge on a British frigate near Yorktown.
³¹

We do not have detailed records of Henry's activities at the Second Continental Congress, but the relative silence about his impact there seems to confirm Thomas Jefferson's later assertion that Henry played only a supporting role. Jefferson had joined the Congress (replacing Peyton Randolph, who returned to Virginia to help manage the crisis there), and he found Henry “to be a silent, and almost un-meddling member.” Jefferson portrayed Henry as at his best when he was debating fundamental issues of liberty and freedom; he did not shine when it came to deliberating over the policies and elements of the new government the Congress had set itself to institute. Henry was a visionary motivator, not a man of organization. As he participated in planning the independent government, Henry was competent, but easily bored.
³²

Moderates at the Second Continental Congress pushed through one more attempt at reconciliation, the “Olive Branch Petition” that reaffirmed loyalty to the king despite the fighting in Massachusetts, and Dunmore's seizure of Virginia's gunpowder. Henry undoubtedly squirmed in frustration as the Congress passed the last-ditch appeal to the British, but he may have recognized that it was useful to have the colonies on record as favoring reconciliation, if possible.

Even as it offered the possibility of peace, Congress planned for war. The delegates created the Continental army, naming George Washington commander in chief of the American forces. Divisions within the Congress at this point ran along moderate and radical lines, not regional ones, with Washington facing opposition from some Virginia delegates, especially Edmund Pendleton, who believed Washington's appointment would signal eagerness for armed conflict beyond Massachusetts. The Virginia moderates supported Artemas Ward of Massachusetts as the top general, to direct a war they hoped would stay in New England. Samuel and John Adams supported Washington not only because of his experience and dignity, but also to raise up a Southern patriot commander, helping to make this an American war.

With characteristic humility, Washington wrote to his brother that he had “embarked on a wide ocean, boundless in its prospect and from whence, perhaps, no safe harbour is to be found. I have been called upon by the unanimous voice of the colonies to take the command of the Continental Army—an honour I neither sought after, nor desired, as I am thoroughly convinced that it requires greater abilities, and much more experience, than I am master of.” Henry enthusiastically supported his colleague Washington out of personal loyalty developed during a decade of legislative service together. The choice also complemented Henry's growing partnership with the Massachusetts radicals.
³³

Henry returned to Virginia in August and found himself summoned to his own military command. Remarkably, despite his lack of military experience, the Virginia Convention named him commander in chief of Virginia's regular forces. Patrick Henry had won immense popularity in Virginia because of his advocacy of war. Now he would lead Virginia into that war against the greatest military power of the eighteenth century.

 

 

 

 

 

 

O
N SEPTEMBER 18, 1775, Patrick Henry was commissioned as a colonel and as the leader of Virginia's armed forces. Standing before the Virginia Committee of Safety, con-Standing before the Virginia Committee of Safety, convened in Hanover, he solemnly declared, “I, Patrick Henry, do swear that I will be faithful and true to the colony and dominion of Virginia; that I will serve the same to the utmost of my power, in defense of the just rights of America, against all enemies whatsoever.” He further promised to lay down arms when instructed by the assembly. “So help me God,” he intoned.
¹

Edmund Pendleton, president of the committee, presented Henry with a signed commission on parchment, directing him to “resist and repel all hostile invasions, and quell and suppress any insurrections which may be made or attempted against the peace and safety of this his majesty's colony and dominion.” Even in this document of rebellion, the commission still acknowledged Virginia as the dominion of “his majesty,” the British king. With George Washington
out of the colony, serving with the army in the North, that radical advocate for liberty, Patrick Henry, had become the most powerful man in Virginia. And, some thought, the most dangerous.
²

 

OTHERS SAW LORD DUNMORE, the royal governor, as the colony's most dangerous man. On November 7, 1775, Dunmore irredeemably alienated many of the remaining colonists who still supported him or sought to negotiate with him. Ever since Henry's “Liberty or Death” speech in March, Dunmore had been threatening to free Virginia's slaves. Now, in what he called “a most disagreeable but absolutely necessary step,” Dunmore declared “all indented servants, negroes, or others, (appertaining to rebels,) free that are able and willing to bear arms, they joining His Majesty's troops as soon as may be.” Even though Dunmore (a slave owner himself) offered freedom only to those slaves who took up arms for the king, this was an unprecedented step toward emancipation. White Virginians were horrified. As colonel over Virginia's armed forces, Henry warned county officers that the proclamation was “fatal to the public safety.” He called on all masters to monitor their slaves carefully, and advised slave patrols to watch for runaways.
³

Even though Virginians such as Henry and Thomas Jefferson were fighting for liberty for Anglo-Americans, they could not fathom Dunmore's declaration of liberty for slaves. In the Virginia of fall 1775, there existed no greater catalyst for independence than Dunmore's proclamation; it convinced even reluctant rebels that the British meant to destroy them. The conflict between the colonists' ideals of freedom and the realities of slave-owning and war produced contradictory positions in white Virginians. In the short term, freedom for white southerners meant keeping the slaves under control. At the same time, the patriots' rhetoric of human liberty also forged the argument for the eventual freedom of slaves. Whatever slaveholding patriots, such as Jefferson, meant when they said “all men
are created equal,” they could not keep their words from implicating slavery. The Revolution, in this ironic sense, set the stage for the Civil War and emancipation.

 

THE VIRGINIA CONVENTION DID NOT OFFER Henry his colonelship without reservation. Moderates such as Robert W. Carter worried that Henry was too radical. “I really fear trusting him, as he is very popular, and I know his principles,” Carter wrote to his father. Henry actually lost the first vote for command of Virginia's First Regiment, but won a majority in a runoff. The convention made it clear to Henry that he was authorized to act only on their orders and that he was forbidden from taking off on any more unauthorized expeditions like the one following Dunmore's seizure of the gunpowder. The convention believed that because of his popularity, Henry was the right choice for the job, and indeed he would find it relatively easy to recruit soldiers for his regiment, encamped near the College of William and Mary. Still, Henry's radical tendencies worried them. To control their new military leader, the convention appointed a Committee of Safety to direct the war effort, with the moderate Edmund Pendleton as its chair. Henry would continuously clash with this committee during his brief tenure in charge of Virginia's military.
⁴

Henry's exclusive command quickly came into question. In late October, the Committee of Safety ordered Colonel William Woodford, an officer with experience from the Seven Years' War, to go to Norfolk to head off a British attack they feared would be launched there. They even granted Woodford authority to “give notice” to Henry if Woodford needed more men. Woodford's regiment prevented the British from burning the town of Hampton, but the colonel's action incited controversy over Henry's precise role in the Virginia militia. By early November, a group of Henry's officers complained to the Committee of Safety, a move that
elicited a rebuke from Pendleton and the committee, who blamed Henry for his officers' “irregular” meeting, which they viewed as a “mark of [the officers'] suspicion of our judgment and prudence in providing for the safety of this place.”
⁵