[1280] Ib., 412-15.
[1281] Ib., 415-18.
[1282] Elliott, iii, 419-20.
[1283] Elliott, iii, 419-21.
[1284] Ib., 421-22.
[1285] Ib., 422-24.
[1286] Henry turned the tide in Marshall's favor in the latter's hard fight for Congress in 1798. (Infra, vol. II, chap. X.)
[1287] Elliott, iii, 434.
[1288] Elliott, iii, 431. Throughout the entire debate Henry often sounded his loudest alarms on the supreme power of Congress over the ten miles square where the National Capital was to be located; and, indeed, this seems to have been one of the chief sources of popular apprehension. The fact that the people at large looked upon the proposed National Government as something foreign, something akin to the British rule which had been overthrown, stares the student in the face wherever he turns among the records of the Constitutional period. It is so important that it cannot too often be repeated.
Patrick Henry, of course, who was the supreme popular orator of our history and who drew his strength from his perfect knowledge of the public mind and heart, might have been expected to make appeals based on this general fear. But when such men as George Mason and William Grayson, who belonged to Virginia's highest classes and who were carefully educated men of conservative temper, did the same thing, we see how deep and strong was the general feeling against any central National power.