“I am so uncharitable as to suspect that the ill-will to the Constitution will produce every peaceable effort to disgrace and destroy it. Mr. Henry declared … that he should wait with impatience for the favorable moment of regaining, in a constitutional way, the lost liberties of his country.”[400]
Two days afterward, by which time, doubtless, Madison’s letter had reached Mount Vernon, Washington wrote to Benjamin Lincoln of Massachusetts, respecting the result of the convention:—
“Our accounts from Richmond are that … the final decision exhibited a solemn scene, and that there is every reason to expect a perfect acquiescence therein by the minority. Mr. Henry, the great leader of it, has signified that, though he can never be reconciled to the Constitution in its present form, and shall give it every constitutional opposition in his power, yet he will submit to it peaceably.”[401]
Thus, about the end of June, 1788, there came down upon the fierce political strife in Virginia a [Pg 345] lull, which lasted until the 20th of October, at which time the legislature assembled for its autumnal session. Meantime, however, the convention of New York had adopted the Constitution, but after a most bitter fight, and by a majority of only three votes, and only in consequence of the pledge that every possible effort should be made to obtain speedily those great amendments that were at last called for by a determined public demand. One of the efforts contemplated by the New York convention took the form of a circular letter to the governors of the several States, urging almost pathetically that “effectual measures be immediately taken for calling a convention” to propose those amendments which are necessary for allaying “the apprehensions and discontents” then so prevalent.[402]
This circular letter “rekindled,” as Madison then wrote to Jefferson, “an ardor among the opponents of the federal Constitution for an immediate revision of it by another general convention, … Mr. Henry and his friends in Virginia enter with great zeal into the scheme.”[403] In a letter written by Washington, nearly a month before the meeting of the legislature, it is plainly indicated that his mind was then grievously burdened by the anxieties of the situation, and that he was disposed to put the very worst construction upon the expected conduct of Patrick Henry and his party in the approaching session:—
“Their expedient will now probably be an attempt to procure the election of so many of their own junto under the new government, as, by the introduction of local and embarrassing disputes, to impede or frustrate its operation.… I assure you I am under painful apprehensions from the single circumstance of Mr. H. having the whole game to play in the Assembly of this State; and the effect it may have in others should be counteracted if possible.”[404]
No sooner had the Assembly met, than Patrick Henry’s ascendency became apparent. His sway over that body was such that it was described as “omnipotent.” And by the time the session had been in progress not quite a month, Washington informed Madison that “the accounts from Richmond” were “very unpropitious to federal measures.” “In one word,” he added, “it is said that the edicts of Mr. H. are enregistered with less opposition in the Virginia Assembly than those of the grand monarch by his parliaments. He has only to say, Let this be law, and it is law.”[405] Within ten days from the opening of the session, the House showed its sensitive response to Patrick Henry’s leadership by adopting a series of resolutions, the chief purpose of which was to ask Congress to call immediately a national convention for proposing to the States the required amendments. In the debate on the subject, he is said to have declared “that he should oppose every measure tending to [Pg 347] the organization of the government, unless accompanied with measures for the amendment of the Constitution.”[406]
Some phrases in one of his resolutions were most offensive to those members of the House who had “befriended the new Constitution,” and who, by implication at least, were held forth as “betrayers of the dearest rights of the people.” “If Mr. Henry pleases,” so wrote a correspondent of Washington, “he will carry the resolution in its present terms, than which none, in my opinion, can be more exceptionable or inflammatory; though, as he is sometimes kind and condescending, he may perhaps be induced to alter it.”[407]
In accordance with these resolutions, a formal application to Congress for a national convention was prepared by Patrick Henry, and adopted by the House on the 14th of November. Every word of that document deserves now to be read, as his own account of the spirit and purpose of a measure then and since then so profoundly and so cruelly misinterpreted:—