The true Patrick Henry

Front matter

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Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

I. — Introduction 9

II. — By No Means a Model Boy 24

II

Topographically, their spacious tidewater region is easy to grasp. Four rivers, flowing east by south, come out of the Blue Ridge ; traverse a fertile piedmont ; take their fall and pass on to the bay, broadening as they go. On the piney shores were the plantations, reaching back for miles. Some of the houses were brick, some frame — with green lawns and much life about. English ships came to the landings, and black men rolled hogsheads of tobacco on board. These and similar things by the score are well enough known. We know, too, that there was a downright sun-sparkle on the rivers ; that the Eighteenth Century mocking-

to circumvent the reformers ; and that the King and Court party, overcoming the Patriot party, proceeded to confiscate and destroy all documents squinting at constitutionalism, thus corrupting and falsifying history to their own ends. Brown would revolutionize Virginia history. His premises once admitted, the foundations of the colonial writers, Berkeley and Keith, crack under them ; and even Stith, " the accurate," slightly suffers. Virginia, born with a soul, passes down the torch flared by the rebel Bacon in 1676 and the rebel Patrick Henry in 1776. The research of Edward Duffield Neill and the studies of Philip Alexander Bruce have been thorough, but Brown writes of the Seventeenth Century as if he had lived in it. He looks upon the books of John Smith and Samuel Purchas as ex parte records — Court documents. His extreme anti-Smith bias is unfortunate. It was generated during the long '' John Smith Controversy," begun by Charles Deane in i860. But his Smith vagaries are of slight moment in comparison with the clear moral perspective that would result should his main proposition be sustained. His estimate of the work of Sandys, Southampton, and the Ferrars has high support. See John Fiske's " Old Virginia and her Neighbors." See especially " The Records of the Virginia Company of London — The Court Book from the manuscript in the Library of Congress," with an introduction by Susan Myra Kingsbury. The manuscript Court Book, 2 vols., 741 folio pages, was attested for the Earl of Southampton ; bought by Col. Byrd ; used by Stith, and studied by Patrick Henry's friend Richard Bland.

birds actually sang, and that the people were all alive from the Potomac on the north to the Nottoway and Roanoke far below. But direct documentary evidence is so much more to the point than either generalization or particularization that it is well to bring forward a contemporary voucher as to the human warmth and liveliness, not to say friskiness, of the time we are considering. When Washington was a boy five years old, this notice appeared in the Virginia Gazette, published at Williamsburg:

" We have advice from Hanover County, that on Saint Andrew's Day, there arc to be Horse-Races and several other Diversions for the Entertainment of the Gentlemen and Ladies at the Old Field near Captain John Bickerton's in that county (if permitted by the Hon. Wm. Byrd, esquire. Proprietor of the said Land,) the substance of which is as follows, viz. :

" It is proposed that 20 Horses or Mares do run round a three miles Course for a Prize of Five Pounds. . . .

" That a Hat of the value of 20 s. be cudgelled for, and that after the first challenge made, the Drums are to beat every Quarter of an Hour for three Challenges round the ring, and none to play with their left hand.

" That a Violin be played for by 20 Fiddlers ; no person to have the liberty of playing unless he bring a fiddle with him. After the prize is won, they are all to play together and each a different tune, and to be treated by the company.

"That 12 Boys, of 12 years of age, do run 112 yards, for a Hat of the cost of 12 shillings.

" That a Flag be flying on said Day 30 feet high. ^

" That a handsome Entertainment be provided for the subscribers and their wives ; and such of them as are not so happy as to have wives, may treat any other lady.

" That Drums, Trumpets, Hautboys, etc., be provided, to play at said Entertainment.

"That after Dinner, the Royal Health, His Honor the Governor's, etc., are to be drunk.

" That a Quire of Ballads be sung for by a number of Songsters, all of them to have Liquor sufficient to clear their Wind-Pipes.

" That a pair of Silver Buckles be wrestled for by a number of brisk young men.

" That a pair of handsome Shoes be danced for.

" That a pair of handsome Silk Stockings of one Pistole value be given to the handsomest young Country Maid that appears in the field. With many other Whimsical and Comical Diversions, too numerous to mention. . . ."

There is a reminder of old England in all this. One may see in fancy the day and the people and the scene. It is such a scene as might come bodily out of Scott, Robin Hood and all ; and it suggests the Shakespearean world as well. When we reflect upon the possible antics of those twenty merry fiddlers of Hanover, we are borne back to that particular portion of Shakespeare's world which has to do with merry-making on the green and with the impounding of a certain blithe, elusive spirit that droops and dies when caged by anybody but the great Englishman himself. Long had he been gone when this comedy was enacted in Captain John Bickerton's " Old Field," but if he had been alive and had put the fiddlers in a play as he did " Snout," " Quince," and " Bottom," the chances are they would have fiddled on through the ages, in spite of the coming of Tarleton's Dragoons, and in spite of the wrestling of enormous armies to and fro during the later years when terrible things happened in Patrick Henry's Hanover. For, a few miles to the south, Richmond was about to rise; and much of the ground in this vicinity was to become battle-ground.

Just as the sportive bent of these transplanted Britons reminds us of Shakespeare, so the land-ow^ner mentioned recalls the author of '' Henry Esmond " and " The Virginians." " If permitted by the Hon. Wm. • Byrd, esquire. Proprietor of the said Land," notes the Gazette. Colonel William Byrd, son, namesake, and heir of the founder of " Westover " on the James, was a man after Thackeray's own heart. He was a character ready to step into a novel, and it is a pity that

Thackeray missed him. Without changing a button or a buckle or a hair, Colonel Byrd, founder of Richmond, would have passed from '' preface " to " finis," enlivening the book by his wit, lending it charm by his grace, humanizing it by his regard for the welfare of his fellow-creatures, and giving it throughout the texture and stamp of sound common-sense. Educated in England, called to the bar in the Middle Temple, Receiver-General of His Majesty's revenues and President of the Council of the Colony, this lord of a hundred thousand acres was not spoiled by his mastery of many slaves, by his celebrity as the possessor of the greatest private library in the colonies, by his comeliness of person, or by his pride as the father of the beautiful Evelyn Byrd. On the contrary, he took the humorist's view of life and made a joy of it and a joke, and doubtless laughed at the twenty fiddlers fiddling in the " Old Field " in Hanover. He should rank as one of the earliest of the American literary lights, and would unquestionably do so on a sharp and comprehensive readjustment of honors. " The Quakers," he wrote, ** flocked to this country in shoals, being averse to go to Heaven the same way with the Bishops." Again we quote him: *' I reached Shockoe's (Richmond) before two o'clock, and crossed the river to the mills. I had the grief to find them both stand as still, for want of water, as a dead woman's tongue for want of breath." But it is a Hanover County passage, in his " Progress to the Mines," that chiefly concerns us here. Thomas Tinsley, one of his overseers, was with him.

" In the evening [October 7, 1732] Tinsley conducted me to Mrs. Syme's house, where I intended to take up my quarters. This lady, at first suspecting I was some lover, put on a gravity which becomes a w-eed, but as soon as she learned who I was, brightened up into an unusual cheerfulness and serenity. She was a portly, handsome dame of the family of Esau, and seemed

IS not to pine too much for the death of her husband, who was of the family of the Saracens. He left a son by her, who has all the strong features of his sire, not softened in the least by any of hers.

"This widow is«a person of lively and cheerful conversation, with much less reserve than most of her countrywomen. It becomes her well, and sets off her other agreeable qualities to advantage. We tossed off a bottle of port, which we relished with a broiled chicken."

On the next day, he adds :

" I moistened my clay with a quart of milk and tea, which I found altogether as great a help to discourse as the juice of the grape. The courteous widow invited me to rest myself there that good day, and go to church with her, but I excused myself by telling her she would certainly spoil my devotions. Then she civilly entreated me to make her house my home whenever I visited my plantations, which made me bow low and thank her very kindly."

Thus, at the age of fifty-eight, appeared the gallant and sprightly Colonel Byrd, '' the black swan of his family," whose portrait is freely sketched here for a double reason — he stands for the aristocratic Virginian of the period, and, in the person of the '' portly, handsome dame," he has introduced us to the woman who, three and a half years later, became the mother of Patrick Henry.

That there was appreciation of widows in those parts at that day, is clear enough to any one who dips into Virginia genealogy. Such a one assures us : '' It was not an unusual thing for a later husband to submit for probate the will of his predecessor." As in Bibli-' cal times, families were large. Governor Page's children numbered twenty. General Robert E. Lee's grandfather in the maternal line, Colonel Charles Carter of " Shirley," one of Washington's friends and correspondents, was the father of twenty-three. " King "

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Carter's father, Colonel John Carter of Corotoman, was five times a bridegroom ; and in the same family there was a lady who, like the " Wife of Bath " in the " Canterbury Tales," was five times a bride — five times a widow.

These facts would be satisfying to those who enjoy the discovery of piquancies in the colonial records, if they did not in themselves presuppose a sorrowful side. To realize this sad side, one has but to look upon the portraits of handsome men in scarlet coats and great white perukes and lovely ladies in like elegance of raiment who passed from earth before their time. Swamps and tuckahoe marshes under the dog-day sun bred into the air a something that made both widows and widowers. Of course there were men of sense who practised medicine ; but Dr. Slop also rode about in his gig, and, worse still, Dr. Phlebotomy, to whose zealous attentions the death of no less a man than General Washington is -clearly traceable. But whether the lowland miasma or the doctors be to blame, the widow became a force and a factor in colonial economics. Like tobacco, she was sure to be talked about when court met. The wink, the mischievous remark, the raillery of unmarried men, had a meaning that was well understood. If the widow were rich, if she were comely, if she were of repute for charm of character or domestic skill, she was sure of a suitor from near or far. Frequently she united famous families and great estates. Bantering gallantly as he journalizes, Byrd accurately takes the tone of his time in regard to her. If, as is most likely, he read the passage in " Tristram Shandy " wherein the Widow Wadman causes Uncle Toby to do her the service of peeking into her eye, Vv^e may be sure he paid to Laurence Sterne the compliment of a hearty Westover laugh.

It is fair to assume that the discreet Mrs. Syme

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(pronounced " Sim ") had the best of reasons for giving her supposed suitor a guarded greeting. Bereft the year before of a good mate in the person of Colonel John Syme,* a member from Hanover in the House of Burgesses, she had already chosen her path out of widowhood. He who, within a few months, was to lead her thence lived under her own roof — a Scotchman, a scholar, a man of character; and not only so, but a friend of the lamented master of " Studley." But it is in order to keep our Scotch scholar in abeyance for a few moment* until we shall have said something about this " Studley " place — a frame structure, backed by cool spring-houses on a minty slope and fronted by spacious and beautiful grounds. The approach was along an avenue bordered by double rows of locust trees. The plantation is on the Tottipottimoy, made famous by Captain Smith and more famous still by Samuel Butler in '' Hudibras." Butler, declaring that

" Justice gives sentence many times On one man for another's crimes,"

proceeds to find his proof in the case of a colonial cobbler :

" This precious brother having slain In times of peace an Indian, Not out of malice, but mere zeal Because he was an infidel, The mighty Tottipottimoy Sent to our elders an envoy Complaining sorely of the breach Of league ..."

* In 1731, the Widow Syme " petitioned the Council for pay for the services of her husband, Colonel Syme, who died while laying out the boundaries of Hanover and Louisa." Colonel Syme was a Scotch immigrant.

But the wise " elders " were loath to hang the useful and pious preacher-cobbler ; so they

" Resolved to spare him ; yet to do The Indian Hoghan Moghan, too, Impartial justice, in his stead did Hang an old weaver that was bed-rid."

" Hottitottipottimoy," Grant's soldiers called the stream, because they found it hot in the bordering bottom-lands. The widow of "Studley," Sarah Winston Syme, was the daughter of Isaac Winston and Mary Dabney. Great is genealogy — especially as it enables one to puncture the bubbles of such as seek to put borrowed blue into good red blood. Within a few months past there was an attempt of the sort to outrage plain Patrick Henry — to set up a king 'as his ancestor. In getting at his genealogical tap-root, we shall see what nonsense such a notion is, and we shall dissipate at least one popular error concerning him. Had he Irish blood in his veins? Certainly he should have had, considering his Christian name, native eloquence, combative spirit, and whole-souled readiness to risk his all as a rebel. Yet, if there were an Irish trickle in his heart, it came percolating to him by way of some forebear whose name and race were hidden in the merging. Through Mary Dabney he got good Huguenot blood. Her people belonged to a congregation of refugees who colonized at Manakin, on the upper James, where their leader, the clergyman Claude Philippe de Richebourg, found the Monacan Indians less ferocious by far than had been his kinsmen and neighbors in the Christian kingdom of France. As for the Hanover Winstons, their old home was in Yorkshire, England ; and the immigrants had reached Virginia at a much later date than the founders of the so-called " Tuckahoe " families. Hence the Winstons did not belong to the cavalier aristocracy ; they were small landholders — sturdy men all. Dolly Madison was Isaac Winston's great-granddaughter, and his descendants are at this day well abroad in many of the States. But it is Isaac's son William, or " Langloo," whose portrait must now be drawn. He was a fresh type of Virginian — not a tidewater man, but a lover of the hills and the wilderness. At his hunting quarter by the mountains, he camped with the Indians ; dressed as one ; shot deer. In a word, he was a '' buckskin " — a " long knife," like Christopher Gist.

Nathaniel Pope,* a gallant light horseman of the Revolution, wrote this about him:

" I have often heard my father, who was intimately acquainted with William Winston, say that he was the greatest orator whom he had ever heard, Patrick Henry excepted ; that during the last French and Indian War, and soon after Braddock's defeat, when the militia were marched to the frontiers of Virginia against the enemy, this William Winston was a lieutenant of a company ; that the men were indifferently clothed, without tents, and exposed to the rigour and inclemency of the weather, discovered great aversion to the service, and were anxious and even clamorous to return to their families ; when this same William Winston, mounting a stump (the common rostrum, you know, of the field orator of Virginia), addressed them with such keenness of invective, and declaimed with such force of eloquence on liberty and patriotism, that when he concluded the general cry was : ' Let us march on ! Lead us against the enemy ! ' and they were now willing, nay anxious, to encounter all those difficulties and dangers which, but a few moments before, had almost produced a mutiny."

Upon reading this, he who believes in transmitted tendencies is apt to say : '^ Now we know where our

* This Nathaniel Pope, of " Chilton," Hanover County, was mortally wounded in a duel, near Taylorsville ; " and died smoking his pipe, having requested his son not to prosecute the matter."

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Patrick got his trick of tongue ; " but let us suspend judgment and pass for a few moments across the water into the presence of Henry, Lord Brougham, and hear what he has to urge with respect to the origin of his own oratorical fire. Oddly enough, at the very outset of Brougham's " Life and Times " we meet with another Widow Syme, his grandmother, sister to the Scottish historian Robertson. Imagine this " Mally " Robertson, a beauty, sitting in a garden on a summer day; her surprise when a swarm of honey-bees clustered in masses upon her head, neck, and shoulders ; her sensations, impelling to terror; her self-control, enabling her to remain motionless, and her relief when they once more took wing. At her house in Edinburgh, when she had become the Widow Syme, there one day appeared the heir of Brougham, grieving because of the sudden death, on her wedding eve, of his cousin and bride-elect,,^ Mary Whelpdale, "the last of a perfectly pure Saxon race." But the distracted lover married Eleanor, daughter of the Widow Syme; and Lord Brougham, felicitating himself with naive egotism upon his escape from Saxon mediocrity, concludes : " I, at least, owe much to the Celtic blood which my mother brought from the clans of Struan and Kinloch-Moidart."

Now Jean Robertson, an aunt of " Mally " Robertson Syme, married Alexander Henry. Their son John, born in Aberdeen, became the second husband of the mistress of '' Studley " in Hanover and was the father of our Patrick.

So here is a pretty problem in heredity: Did the American orator inherit his peculiar genius by way of the Winston line, or did he get it through the Robertson strain, which put such vehemence and power into the tongue of Lord Brougham as to enable him to destroy the slave-trade of Great Britain? Or may there not have been a blending of qualities inherited from both? At any rate, we here find the Celt, if not the Irishman, in Patrick Henry.

For some reason, John Henry does not pulsate under the biographer's hand. Not that he is shadowy — the outlines of his forty years in Hanover are as clear as need be. We have assurance that he was county surveyor, colonel of militia, presiding magistrate, adherent of the Anglican Church, and a faithful supporter of the regal government. " Respectable," " plain," " solid " — all are used in describing him. He " knew his Horace better than his Bible " ; and he must have known something about the Bible too, for when he got into an argument on the subject of eternal punishment, he turned to his Greek Testament and disputed from the depths of that. He made a map of Virginia. He brought up his two sons and seven daughters * in the way they should go. He did much besides ; yet his wig is never sufficiently in disarray to satisfy a seeker after a strong portrait. When George Whitefield, the pioneer Methodist preacher and revivalist, whom Chesterfield pronounced the most eloquent man he had ever heard, was in Virginia, he saw a little girl staring at him as if he were unreal to her. Thereupon the kind man, who had been through much, stooped, lifted his wig, and,

* Genealogists show that more than seventy substantial Southern families are in cousinship through the ramifications of the John and Sarah stock. They are spread wide over Dixieland from old Roanoke to the Rockies. General Joseph E. Johnston was a descendant. So was the wife of General Wade Hampton. R. A. Brock says : " In vigor of intellect in its various exemplifications, in true manhood, and in illustrious and material service in the one sex, and in the typical exhibition of womanly graces and virtues characteristic of Virginia and the South in the other, no citizen of the Old Dominion within its annals or traditions has been more honored in his descendants, to the present generation, than John Henry."

pointing to a gash in his scalp, said : " See ! There is where the brick-bat hit me." We may not Hft the wig of John Henry; but later in these pages we shall find him in a dramatic situation, and may even now behold him in this bit of a sketch by Nathaniel Pope :

" There are those yet alive who have seen him at the head of his regiment, celebrating the birthday of George III. with as much enthusiasm as his son Patrick afterward displayed in resisting the encroachments of that monarch."

John Burk made a curious error in his " History of Virginia." Misled by our Patrick's custom of writing " junior " after his name, Burk said that Patrick was the son of Patrick. The '' senior " in the case was Colonel John Henry's brother Patrick,* also bred in the old university town of Aberdeen, who, twelve days after his namesake's birth, became rector of St. Paul's parish, Hanover. The glebe tract of " Mount Pleasant " was near " Mount Brilliant " — later known as " The Retreat " — whither Colonel John Henry soon removed; and the two lived in tender attachment and close brotherhood for the rest of their days. Each spoke with the Scotch accent. Colonel John was amiable; the reverend Patrick was irascible.

* Patrick was a common name in Scotland. From that

country, for instance, came Colonel Patrick Ferguson, the best

sabreur in the British army during the Revolution. He was killed at King's Mountain.

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II

As these pages multiply, it will be remarked that May and June were peculiarly eventful months in the life of Patrick Henry. He was born at " Studley," sixteen miles from Richmond, on the 29th of May, 1736. When he was a few months old, his parents removed to *' Mount Brilliant " farm, twentv-two miles from Richmond. Near the house ran the South Anna River. Rocky Mills, not far away, gave a name to the neighborhood. Forests then covered the country.

All of Sarah Syme Henry's boys were born at " Studley " — John Syme, William Henry, and Patrick Henry. At '' Mount Brilliant " so many daughters were born to her that she must have feared lest she should use up all the good old feminine names — ^Jane, Sarah, Susannah, Mary, Anne, Elizabeth, and Lucy.

There were no free schools in Hanover; and the pay schools were poor. Anybody could teach. One merely put up his sign, " John Jones, Teacher " ; placed some benches in a room ; cut a hickory switch ; and all was ready for the torture and the flogging. Judge John Tyler used to say of a teacher of the type : " It was a wonder he did not whip all the senses out of his scholars." A few, however, were efficient. Such, for instance, was Devereux Jarratt, who became a celebrated clergyman. He was of a stratum of society below the Winstons, Dabneys, and Henrys, and far below the " Tuckahoes." " A periwig in those days," says Jarratt, " was a distinguishing badge of the gentlefolk, and when I saw a man with a wig on, riding the road near our house, it would so alarm my fears and give me such a disagreeable feeling that I dare say I would run off as for my life." One of his boyhood duties was to take care of game-cocks and get them ready for a fight. Racing, dancing, and card-playing were common Sunday amusements. Jarratt taught in Hanover, but probably did not have our Patrick as a pupil. That Patrick attended " a common English school " until he was ten years old we learn from the memorandum of Colonel Samuel Meredith,''' who was older by four years, who lived but four miles away, and who married Patrick's sister Jane. Meredith adds : '' He never went to any other school, public or private, but remained with his father, who was his only tutor." He learned some Latin and a little Greek, and got a good grounding in mathematics. At fifteen he was " well versed in both ancient and modern history." He was '' quiet." He was "thoughtful," "mild," "benevolent," "humane." He was fond of his gun. Being housed, when about twelve, because of a broken collar-bone, he learned to play on the flute. He could handle the fiddle-bow. Careless as to outside garb, he " was unusually attentive in having clean linen and stockings." He loved his sisters, and was a dutiful son.

Now, if this be not a flattering leaf from the family album, where did tradition and William Wirt find their good-for-nothing boy Patrick? In preparing his eulogistic " Life " — a labor of love for many years — what motive could Wirt have had in writing his hero down as an idler and a truant? This is the way Wirt treats the boy:

" He was too idle to gain any solid advantages from the opportunities which were thrown in his way. He was passionately addicted to the sports of the field, and could not support the confinement and toil which education required. Hence,

* See Appendix A for Meredith's detailed statement.

instead of system or any semblance of regularity in his studies, his efforts were always desultory, and became more and more rare, until at length, when the hour of his school exercises arrived, Patrick was scarcely ever to be found. He was in the forest with his gun, or over the brook with his angle-rod; and, in these frivolous occupations, when not controlled by the authority of his father (which was rarely exercised) he would, it is said, spend whole days and weeks, with an appetite rather whetted than cloyed by enjoyment. His school-fellows, having observed his growing passion for these amusements, and having remarked that its progress was not checked either by the want of companions or the want of success, have frequently watched his movements to discover, if they could, the secret source of that delight which they seemed to afford him. But they made no discovery which led them to any other conclusion than (to use their own expression) 'that he loved idleness for its own sake.' "

Again does Mr. Wirt hold up the lad to shame:

" His person is represented as having been coarse, his manners uncommonly awkward, his dress slovenly, his conversation very plain, his aversion to study invincible, and his faculties almost entirely benumbed by indolence. No persuasion could bring him to read or work. On the contrary, he ran wild in the forest, like one of the aborigines of _^the country, and divided his life between the dissipation and uproar of the chase and the languor of inaction."

A little more and Patrick would have been a Pamunkey, indeed ! On his hunting trips he must have met some of the Pamunkey tribe, for, as Thomas Jefferson tells us, they lived just down the river, on land " so encompassed by water that a gate shuts in the whole."