Patrick Henry (32 page)

Some have suggested that religion might have become more important to Henry as he grew older (at the time of the publication of
The Age of Reason
, Henry was fifty-eight). He seemingly had become more reflective about his faith, and about his country's religious commitments. We might also speculate that he was concerned that his personal business had not always reflected spotless Christian character. But Henry also believed that with Paine's writings and Jefferson's well-known skepticism challenging the nation's spiritual foundations, Americans could no longer take their religious heritage for granted. He feared that without fidelity to long-established religious precepts, the United States would spin apart in an atheistic whirlwind, just like Revolutionary France.

Henry might have wished he had shown himself to be more of a Christian leader, but in the 1790s his fellow Americans increasingly honored him as an exemplar of virtue. His reluctance to enter national politics only enhanced his popularity. Some newspapers even began calling him “Saint Patrick.” Just as they admired Washington for his resignation from military service in 1783, Americans loved Henry's willingness to give up power to pursue the private life. Both Washington and Henry, in the popular view, fulfilled the ancient ideal of Cincinnatus, the Roman leader who wielded power only so long as it took to defeat Rome's enemies, then returned to his simple life on the farm. Henry's withdrawal from the public arena charmed the American people, buttressing his image as a classic hero.
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Henry may never have been so admired nationally as in 1796, when some Federalists tried to convince him to run for president to replace the retiring Washington. Despite their old differences over the Constitution and debt financing plan, even Alexander Hamilton briefly
pursued the idea of supporting Henry. John Marshall and Harry Lee spoke with Henry in Richmond in May 1796 about whether he would be willing to run. Unsurprisingly, he was not. Hamilton quickly decided “to be rid of P.H.” and moved on to Thomas Pinckney of South Carolina as his preferred candidate. Nationally circulated editorials made the case for Henry as president well into the fall. One Virginia writer promoted Henry as a better candidate than Jefferson because of Henry's courage and patriotism, recalling his leadership during the Revolution, his excellent service as Virginia governor, and his “praise-worthy conduct since the adoption of the federal constitution” (apparently this person did not approve of Henry's opposition to the Constitution). Conversely, the writer denounced Jefferson primarily because of the notorious episode in 1781 when he abandoned his office in the face of British invasion.
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In a letter circulated just before the election, Henry reiterated his unwillingness to serve as president. He did not explain why he would not accept the office, but we may assume that the same reasons as before guided his choice: his health, debts, and desire to stay out of politics. He also had watched with disgust how Washington had been treated like an ordinary politician in his last years in office. “If he whose character as our leader during the whole war was above all praise is so roughly handled in his old age, what may be expected to men of the common standard of character?” he wondered. If he entered national politics, Henry suspected that he would face the same kind of opprobrium when public opinion turned against him. He concluded his letter with the hope that “wisdom and virtue may mark the choice about to be made of a President.” Henry certainly approved of the election of his old friend John Adams over his rival Thomas Jefferson.
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Attempts to bring Henry back into office remained relentless. In November the Virginia legislature voted to make Henry the governor for a sixth term. It is difficult to know whether Henry grew tired
of these invitations, or whether he was flattered by the unceasing attention. In any case, he declined the governorship, just as he had refused the other enticements, writing that his “advanced age and decayed faculties” made acceptance impossible. He wrote bluntly that he could not see “any important political good in reach of the office of governor,” noting that Virginia's chief executive could make little difference in confronting the gravest crisis of the day, which was in foreign affairs.
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Henry averred that regardless of who was serving in public office, the United States' most important ally should be virtue. Without that trait, the nation would not last long. Selfishness would ruin the country, and factional squabbling would lead to disunion. Part of Henry's reluctance about serving in office lay in his doubts about the efficacy of politics itself. Government could suppress vice and encourage morality, but it could never change the hearts of people. France was not America's real enemy. “The enemy we have to fear,” Henry wrote, “is the degeneracy, luxury, and vices of the present times. Let us be allied against these and we secure the happiness and liberty of our country.”
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Henry's commitment to the Federalists was tested by the adoption of the Alien and Sedition Acts in 1798. Fears about the French immigrant population in America, and anger over Republican attacks on the Federalists, led to these controversial, suppressive laws. The Alien Act allowed the president to summarily expel noncitizen foreigners deemed dangerous to the safety of the country. This ominous law was never enforced, but the Sedition Act was, which made it illegal to say or publish anything of a “false, scandalous, or malicious” nature against the government. Fourteen people were eventually prosecuted under the law, and one Republican congressman from Vermont was actually jailed for sedition. The Sedition Act revealed how fragile the First Amendment's protection of free speech was and exacerbated sectional tensions, with
almost all southern congressmen opposing the measure. Just as Henry had contemplated the possibility of secession a decade earlier, some southern political leaders again discussed the viability of a separate southern republic that would remove itself from a tyrannical national government intent on suppressing dissent. Led by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, respectively, Kentucky and Virginia passed resolutions against the Alien and Sedition Acts. (Even though Jefferson was Adams's vice president, the state legislature of Kentucky recruited him to pen its resolution. He agreed to do so anonymously.) The resolutions argued that the acts represented an unconstitutional confiscation of power by the national government and that the Sedition Act violated the First Amendment. Asserting states' right to check usurpations by the national government, Jefferson's resolution declared the acts void.

The Sedition Act showed that the Federalist-dominated government could indeed run roughshod over the First Amendment's protection of free speech. Henry's predictions about the national government's unstoppable power seemed to be coming true. Given this outrageous intrusion on the people's rights, it would seem likely that Henry would issue a self-satisfied, cautionary “I told you so.” But by 1798, the nation's political alignments had changed so dramatically that Henry chose to maintain circumspection. Although he could never bring himself to support the Alien and Sedition Acts, he did endorse the Virginia Federalist candidate John Marshall for Congress, convinced that for all its avowal of the power of national government, the party of Washington still represented the path of political virtue.

As a fellow Virginia Federalist, Henry found John Marshall a sympathetic character. Twenty years younger than Henry, Marshall was a cousin of Thomas Jefferson, but he had opposed Jefferson on most major issues. He had returned in 1798 from service as an envoy to France, where his delegation found themselves subject to demands
for bribes from French agents dubbed W, X, Y, and Z in the newspapers. The affair worsened tensions with the French and positioned Marshall for a run for Congress from the Richmond district, which included Henry's old home of Hanover County. Despite the Federalists' growing unpopularity in the South, Marshall made it known that he would not have supported the Alien and Sedition Acts had he been in Congress, a stance that elicited the ire of New England Federalists. But Marshall also came out against the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions, because he believed that the Alien and Sedition Acts were simply bad laws, not unconstitutional ones. Having stood against both French corruption and the Alien and Sedition Acts, Marshall was the only kind of Federalist who could win election in Virginia in 1799. Yet he would still have a hard time winning, thanks to his lack of support for the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions. Some Republicans even circulated the rumor that Henry opposed Marshall. Doubting the truth of these reports, and looking to tip the balance in their candidate's favor, Virginia Federalists approached Henry about endorsing Marshall.
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Wishing to crush the rumor, Henry publicly recommended Marshall for Congress. In his endorsement—in the form of a letter to the Virginia Federalist Archibald Blair—Henry explained that his support for Marshall turned upon the Federalists' advocacy for American union and traditional virtue. He said he suspected that certain Republicans (Jefferson and Madison?) were seeking to either overturn the government or dissolve the Union. (This was an ironic charge, given the identical accusations of antinationalism leveled against Henry for the past decade.) He expressed perplexity about the state of foreign affairs but agreed that the French government had behaved intolerably. France's intrigues were dangerous, but not as dangerous as its anti-Christianism. The French Revolution, he wrote, was “destroying the great pillars of all government and of
social life; I mean virtue, morality, and religion.... Infidelity in its broadest sense under the name of philosophy is fast spreading and that under the patronage of French manners and principles.” In light of the French threat, and Marshall's calm resolve in the face of their insults and requests for bribes, Henry gave him his highest endorsement: “tell Marshall I love him because he felt and acted as a Republican, as an American.” In the end, Marshall won by a thin margin. Patrick Henry's support was essential to the victory.
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For Virginia Federalists, the crisis over France and the Union warranted more from Henry than an endorsement of Marshall. The times called for Henry to return from retirement and to fight the friends of France as a legislator. Archibald Blair told Henry that his services were desperately needed, as “your presence alone in our assembly, would put opposition to flight, and save us from impending misery.” To Blair, the Republicans' actions augured the possibility not just of secession, but of civil war. Only someone of Henry's stature could hope to make a difference in this impasse.
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Real pressure to reenter public life came when George Washington wrote to him, expressing deep concern for the fate of the Union and lamenting that the harshest critics of the government came from Virginia. He saw the Republicans as fanatics who charged the government with the worst crimes at every turn. Behind every action of the Federalists, the Republicans saw attempts to ally with Britain and to destroy the Constitution. In such a crisis, the nation could not afford to have leaders such as Henry remain in retirement, the former president said. Washington then pointedly asked him to run for the state legislature again. “Your weight of character and influence in the House of [Delegates] would be a bulwark against such dangerous sentiments as are delivered there at present. It would be a rallying point for the timid, and an attraction of the wavering. In a word, I conceive it to be of immense importance at this crisis that you should be there.”
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Ever devoted to Washington, Henry could not refuse this request. At least this job would require little travel far from home, he reasoned, and by returning to public office, he would honor his old friend Washington. He agreed to run. Writing to Washington, he commended the president's long-standing resistance to a deeper alliance with France, an entanglement that even Henry had supported in the early stages of the French Revolution. He now saw the error of this position, he said, and saluted Washington for saving the country, once from Britain, and once from France. Henry went on to blame atheistic French principles for undermining Americans' morality and their devotion to Washington's and Adams's administrations. Henry accepted Washington's challenge—he did not want to lose his reputation as the first among patriots. “I am ashamed to refuse the little boon you ask of me, when your example is before my eyes—my children would blush to know, that you and their father were contemporaries, and that when you asked him to throw in his mite for the public happiness, he refused to do it. In conformity with these feelings, I have declared myself a candidate for this county at the next election.”
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News of Henry's return sent his Republican enemies into apoplexy. John Taylor of Caroline, a Republican in the House of Delegates, wrote frantically to James Madison, begging him to run for the Virginia legislature. Only someone like Madison could be an effective counterweight to Henry, Taylor said. (Madison had retired from the U.S. Congress in 1797.) Taylor believed that Henry was running only out of spite toward Madison and Jefferson and that he was ultimately positioning himself for a run for president in 1800. “What other motive can he have, but a desire to gratify hatred or ambition, for joining a party [the Federalists], who have carried a constitution, which he pronounced bad, even under the construction of its friends, beyond the worst construction of its enemies, and of himself its greatest enemy?” For Taylor, the fate
of liberty, Virginia, and the Union all relied on the outcome of the contest between Federalists and Republicans in Virginia.
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Even before he could open his campaign for the statehouse, Henry was nominated—yet again—for a diplomatic position, this time as envoy to France under the Adams administration. Henry's friend Joseph Martin wrote, “With heartfelt pleasure I see your appointment as one of our plenipotentiaries to France but am in doubt whether you will accept or not.” Martin's doubts were correct, because nominating Henry for an international posting was silly at this point in his life. He had refused such positions many times, and his health was in massive decline. In his letter turning down the appointment, Henry told President Adams that he was almost too sick to write.
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