This great speech from Patrick Henry, which certainly was not made on that occasion, and probably was never made at all, Wirt causes to be followed by a great speech from Richard Henry Lee, although the journal could have informed him that [Pg 122] Lee was not even in the House on that day. Moreover, he makes Patrick Henry to be the author of the unfortunate first draft of the address to the king,—a document which was written by another man; and on this fiction he founds two or three pages of lamentation and of homily with reference to Patrick Henry’s inability to express himself in writing, in consequence of “his early neglect of literature.” Finally, he thinks it due “to historic truth to record that the superior powers” of Patrick Henry “were manifested only in debate;” and that, although he and Richard Henry Lee “took the undisputed lead in the Assembly,” “during the first days of the session, while general grievances were the topic,” yet they were both “completely thrown into the shade” “when called down from the heights of declamation to that severer test of intellectual excellence, the details of business,”—the writer here seeming to forget that “general grievances” were not the topic “during the first days of the session,” and that the very speeches by which these two men are said to have made their mark there, were speeches on mere rules of the House relating to methods of procedure.[129]
Since the death of Wirt, and the publication of the biography of him by Kennedy, it has been possible for us to ascertain just how the genial author of “The Life and Character of Patrick [Pg 123] Henry” came to be so gravely misled in this part of his book. “The whole passage relative to the first Congress” appears to have been composed from data furnished by Jefferson, who, however, was not a member of that Congress; and in the original manuscript the very words of Jefferson were surrounded with quotation marks, and were attributed to him by name. When, however, that great man, who loved not to send out calumnies into the world with his own name attached to them, came to inspect this portion of Wirt’s manuscript, he was moved by his usual prudence to write such a letter as drew from Wirt the following consolatory assurance:—
“Your repose shall never be endangered by any act of mine, if I can help it. Immediately on the receipt of your last letter, and before the manuscript had met any other eye, I wrote over again the whole passage relative to the first Congress, omitting the marks of quotation, and removing your name altogether from the communication.”[130]
The final adjournment of the first Continental Congress, it will be remembered, did not occur until its members had spent together more than seven weeks of the closest intellectual intimacy. Surely, no mere declaimer however enchanting, no sublime babbler on the rights of man, no political charlatan strutting about for the display of his preternatural gift of articulate wind, could have grappled in keen debate, for all those weeks, on [Pg 124] the greatest of earthly subjects, with fifty of the ablest men in America, without exposing to their view all his own intellectual poverty, and without losing the very last shred of their intellectual respect for him. Whatever may have been the impression formed of Patrick Henry as a mere orator by his associates in that Congress, nothing can be plainer than that those men carried with them to their homes that report of him as a man of extraordinary intelligence, integrity, and power, which was the basis of his subsequent fame for many years among the American people. Long afterward, John Adams, who formed his estimate of Patrick Henry chiefly from what he saw of him in that Congress, and who was never much addicted to bestowing eulogiums on any man but John Adams, wrote to Jefferson that “in the Congress of 1774 there was not one member, except Patrick Henry, who appeared … sensible of the precipice, or rather the pinnacle, on which we stood, and had candor and courage enough to acknowledge it.”[131] To Wirt likewise, a few years later, the same hard critic of men testified that Patrick Henry always impressed him as a person “of deep reflection, keen sagacity, clear foresight, daring enterprise, inflexible intrepidity, and untainted integrity, with an ardent zeal for the liberties, the honor, and felicity of his country and his species.”[132]
Of the parting interview between these two men, at the close of that first period of thorough [Pg 125] personal acquaintance, there remains from the hand of one of them a graphic account that reveals to us something of the conscious kinship which seems ever afterward to have bound together their robust and impetuous natures.
“When Congress,” says John Adams, “had finished their business, as they thought, in the autumn of 1774, I had with Mr. Henry, before we took leave of each other, some familiar conversation, in which I expressed a full conviction that our resolves, declarations of rights, enumeration of wrongs, petitions, remonstrances, and addresses, associations, and non-importation agreements, however they might be expected by the people in America, and however necessary to cement the union of the colonies, would be but waste paper in England. Mr. Henry said they might make some impression among the people of England, but agreed with me that they would be totally lost upon the government. I had but just received a short and hasty letter, written to me by Major Hawley, of Northampton, containing ‘a few broken hints,’ as he called them, of what he thought was proper to be done, and concluding[133] with these words: ‘After all, we must fight.’ This letter I read to Mr. Henry, who listened with great attention; and as soon as I had pronounced the words, ‘After all, we must fight,’ he raised his head, and with an energy and vehemence that I can never forget, broke out with: ‘By God, I am of that man’s mind!’”[134]
[Pg 126] This anecdote, it may be mentioned, contains the only instance on record, for any period of Patrick Henry’s life, implying his use of what at first may seem a profane oath. John Adams, upon whose very fallible memory in old age the story rests, declares that he did not at the time regard Patrick Henry’s words as an oath, but rather as a solemn asseveration, affirmed religiously, upon a very great occasion. At any rate, that asseveration proved to be a prophecy; for from it there then leaped a flame that lighted up for an instant the next inevitable stage in the evolution of events,—the tragic and bloody outcome of all these wary lucubrations and devices of the assembled political wizards of America.
It is interesting to note that, at the very time when the Congress at Philadelphia was busy with its stern work, the people of Virginia were grappling with the peril of an Indian war assailing them from beyond their western mountains. There has recently been brought to light a letter written at Hanover, on the 15th of October, 1774, by the aged mother of Patrick Henry, to a friend living far out towards the exposed district; and this letter is a touching memorial both of the general anxiety over the two concurrent events, and of the motherly pride and piety of the writer:—
“My son Patrick has been gone to Philadelphia near seven weeks. The affairs of Congress are kept with great secrecy, nobody being allowed to be present. I [Pg 127] assure you we have our lowland troubles and fears with respect to Great Britain. Perhaps our good God may bring good to us out of these many evils which threaten us, not only from the mountains but from the seas.”[135]