“You are again traduced by a certain set who have drawn in others, who say that you are engaged in a scheme to discard General Washington. I know you too well to suppose that you would engage in anything not evidently calculated to serve the cause of whiggism.… But it is your fate to suffer the constant attacks of disguised Tories who take this measure to lessen you. Farewell, my dear friend. In praying for your welfare, I pray for that of my country, to which your life and service are of the last moment.”[287]
Furthermore, on the 30th of May, the General Assembly made choice of their delegates in Congress for the following year. Lee was again elected, but by so small a vote that his name stood next to the lowest on the list.[288] Concerning this stinging slight, he appears to have spoken in his next letters to the governor; for, on the 18th of June, the latter addressed to him, from Williamsburg, this reply:—
My dear Sir,—Both your last letters came to hand to-day. I felt for you, on seeing the order in which the balloting placed the delegates in Congress. It is an effect of that rancorous malice that has so long followed you, through that arduous path of duty which you have invariably travelled, since America resolved to resist her oppressors.
Is it any pleasure to you to remark, that at the same era in which these men figure against you, public spirit seems to have taken its flight from Virginia? It is too [Pg 254] much the case; for the quota of our troops is not half made up, and no chance seems to remain for completing it. The Assembly voted three hundred and fifty horse, and two thousand men, to be forthwith raised, and to join the grand army. Great bounties are offered; but, I fear, the only effect will be to expose our state to contempt,—for I believe no soldiers will enlist, especially in the infantry.
Can you credit it?—no effort was made for supporting or restoring public credit. I pressed it warmly on some, but in vain. This is the reason we get no soldiers.
We shall issue fifty or sixty thousand dollars in cash to equip the cavalry, and their time is to expire at Christmas. I believe they will not be in the field before that time.
Let not Congress rely on Virginia for soldiers. I tell you my opinion: they will not be got here, until a different spirit prevails.
In the next paragraph of his letter, the governor passes from these local matters to what was then the one commanding topic in national affairs. Lord North’s peace commissioners had already arrived, and were seeking to win back the Americans into free colonial relations with the mother country, and away from their new-formed friendship with perfidious France. With what energy Patrick Henry was prepared to reject all these British blandishments, may be read in the passionate sentences which conclude his letter:—
I look at the past condition of America, as at a dreadful precipice, from which we have escaped by [Pg 255] means of the generous French, to whom I will be ever-lastingly bound by the most heartfelt gratitude. But I must mistake matters, if some of those men who traduce you, do not prefer the offers of Britain. You will have a different game to play now with the commissioners. How comes Governor Johnstone there? I do not see how it comports with his past life.
Surely Congress will never recede from our French friends. Salvation to America depends upon our holding fast our attachment to them. I shall date our ruin from the moment that it is exchanged for anything Great Britain can say, or do. She can never be cordial with us. Baffled, defeated, disgraced by her colonies, she will ever meditate revenge. We can find no safety but in her ruin, or, at least, in her extreme humiliation; which has not happened, and cannot happen, until she is deluged with blood, or thoroughly purged by a revolution, which shall wipe from existence the present king with his connections, and the present system with those who aid and abet it.