Evening Star Newspaper, June 29, 1930, Page 92

e —— 80 s o - ' 'THE SUNDAY 'STAR, WASHINGTON, D. C, JUNE 2, 1930, e ey . M IS OF LIBERTY - HIS WORDS WERE FLAMES Patrick Henty, the “Humble Backeoods La%uyer, Whose “Caesar had his Briutus, Charles the First his Cromwell, and George the Third’— ‘here cries of “Treason!” shook the House—“may profit by their example. lltfi:bgtmmn.mke_themo]i‘.’” Fiery Speeches Burned a Blazing Trail to Revolution and American Inde- pendence — The Rise to Fame and . the Coming of War. EDITOR'S NOTE: In the week of the Fourth of July the figure of ‘Patyrsck Henry comes vindly to mend. - [For no man in the history of the country stands out wmore clearly in the cause of. lsberty than the voung lawyer whose flaming speeches stung the Thirteen Colonies to action and. played so powerful & “part in bringing about the American Revolution and the Declaration of _ Independence. BY GEORGE CREEL. Y the time Patrick Henry rose to speak Hanover Cowrt House was ' packed to the doors, and mud-stained planters filled the yard. Many of throughout his boyhood, chiefly spent in hunt- ing snd fishing—they had watched him fail twice as a storekeeper—and while there was general agreement that “Pat would never amount to much,” all loved him and had warm- bearted interest in this brave attempt to build & law practice. -'r.u m?v-boned, his sallow face only saved -from mediocrity by a broad brow and brilliant oyes, the young counsel floundered o his feet, plainly the victim of a painful nervousness beyond control. There were, in truth, many things to catch at his throat, for success meant sn gnd to poverty, a roof for his wife and babies, the respect of men instead of affec- tionate tolerance, the restoration of his own belief in himself, so sadly shaken by bitter . Words came confusedly, disjointedly—his - fether dropped his face in his hands to hide grief and humiliation—and a wave of sympa- thetic dismay swept the court room. Poor Pat! Suddenly the tall form straightened, the voice swelled to richest volume, awkwardness and embarrassment fell away, and it was as if the apeaker caught fire from some inner flame. Patrick Henry had found himself,. and from that moment until his death the souls of men were his to mold. | case itself was of rare importance, for ‘ tt hit the pocket of every Virginian. PFrom v fl’.g beginning of the colony the Church of Eng- lend had been established by law and the pay of its ministers fixed at so many pounds of tobacco, a tax that fell on every adult regard- less of his faith. Tobacco rising in price and paper money falling, the House of Burgesses oannily legislated that the ministers might be paid in currency, whereupon the outraged dominies carried their protests to London. The English King, always looking for chances to assert the royal prerogative, vetoed the Virginia act, and now jubilant Parson Maury was seek- ing a formal court order for the difference in ?I'mpat.iently sweeping aside the legal aspects of the case, Henry aimed his passion at_ two fundamental principles—the King’s right to wveto the laws of a tolony, and the fact of an established church. The monarch’s tyrannous abuse of power, he declared, had dissolved the compact between ruler” and people and forfeited all claim to the obedience of Virginians. : Well were the conservatives entitled to shout *Treason,” for not since Nathaniel Bacon had any man ventured to preach rebellion. Here »as no whine or snarl as to whether such and such a law was gocd or bad, but a bold assertion that the making of laws was the business of the colonies, in no wise dependent upon the whims of kings. There in old Hanover Court: House, on that gray December day of 1763, the alarm bell of revolution was first rung, and the hand that jerked it so boldly was never to leave the rope. -Patrick Henry's local fame was instant, and & wave of popular adoration swept him into the House of Burgesses. - Here he found himself in the presence of the aristocratic oligarchy that ruled Virginia—broadcloth gentry with" profound contempt for homespun—and it was as if he had been pitch-forked into Olympus. Edmund Pendleton, R'chasvi Bland, Benjamin Harrison, the Lees and Peyton Randolph—rich, cultured and educated in England for the most part—sat in the seats of power, august as Ro- man senators. George Washington, more sol- dier than orator, looked on in silence from the floor, and young Thomas Jefferson was oftener in the gallery than at his law books. It was now 1765 and events had moved apace. Pedantic Grenville, determined to bring the colonies to their knees, limited their currency, tightened every act designed to crush manu- facture and monopolize trade, and at the Iast devised stamp duties to leech new revenues. Bl'l'l‘lt was the outcry, but when the stamp act passed the oolonies prepared to accept it, even flery James Otis declaring, “It is the duty of all humbly and silently to acquiesce in all the decisions of the supreme legislature.” Such was the attitude of Virginia, and from his obscure seat Patrick Henry listened to the spineless debates—humble and unnoticed. If any petrician tossed a glance in his direction ltmwmsthlmforubnckvoo&l-_wnr, rude and unlettered. Member after member droned the necessity of patience and submission, and suddenly, sick- ening of mealy-mouthed phrases, Patrick Henry sprang to his feet with a set of resolutions scribbled on the back of a page torn from an old law book. ' In words that rang as clarions, the justice of the stamp act was denied, King and Commons were denounced as lawless and despotic, and the people summoned to resist. Supporting the resolutions with a masterly analysis of American charters and the British Constitution, Henry soon left the field of argu- ment, and, plunging into a discourse on the natural rights of man, ended with the flaming phrases that every school child learns today; “Caesar had his Brutus, Charles the First his Cromwell, and George the Third"—here cries of “Treason!” shook the House—“may profit by their example. If this be treason, make the most of it.” The aristocratic bloc, furious at the presump- tion of this homespun upstart, resisted: strenu- ously, but not only did they lose the fight but also their leadership, for from that moment - Patrick Henry dominated -the House. . Modern historians seem determined to make the American Revolution a mean and sordid thing. All emphasis is put upon economic causes, and, as if in love with mud, men and motives are grimed over with charges of self- interest. Granted that the chief grievances of the' commercial class were burdensome laws, what had sugar bills and ‘navigation acts to do with Patrick Henry and Samuel Adams, the one a poor Virginia lawyer and the other so careless of gain that friends had to buy him clothes? Or with the ragged, starving com- moners they drove into rebellion? Propertied men, for the most part, fled at the first gun, praying for ° British victory from their safe refuge behind the redcoat lines; those who left bloody footprints in the snow at Valley Forge were humble “ souls. Had the quarrel between England and Amer- " ica concerned itself merely with restrictive legislation, compromises would have been + effected. Just as thé stamp act was repealed, so would tax laws and revenue measures have been adjusted and amended. Not only were Pitt, Burke, Camden and Barre at the head of a vigorous liberal following, but to-the very Declaration of Independence Washington, Pranklin, Jay, Dickinson and John * Adams stood like fron’against a rupture with the mother country. ' Only two men—Ilandless men—thought in terms of freedom, defeated attempts at reconciliastion and thrilled the hearts of the masses with their own dream of independence. Samuel Adams, master agitator, laid the pile; Patrick Henry struck the match. Never did two men work in truer unison. With a people thrilling to the great Virginian's eloquence, the shrewd Bostonian now took up the work of keeping discontentment alive. Charles ' Townshend, that brilliant, unstable near-statesman, played directly into his hands, for not only did he go further than George Grenville in enforcing the trade and navigation acts, but he had the stupidity to put heavy taxes- on a selected list of commodities. STRAIOHTWAY Adams oconceived the idea of & boycott, and his famous circular letter secured the consent of the colonies tc a mon- importation and non-consumption agreement, Americans suffering every privation rather than buy what England had to sell. The quartering act, compelling the colonists to support the 10,000 soldiers sent to coerce them, and King George’s folly in suspending various legis- latures, all furnished Adams with material for new pamphlets and more furious agitation. By now the Massachusetts leader was King George’s favorite nightmare and Townshend, to save his royal master from apoplexy, revived an ancient statute of Henry VIII, and announced an intention to arrest Adams and bring him back to England for trial on treason charges, Whereupon Patrick Henry introduced the Vir- ginia Resolves, branding the proposal as bar- barous, illegal and unconstitutional —daring Townshend to do it. . Again in 1773, when Adams conceived the idea of committees of correspondence to bring the towns of Massachusetts into closer touch, we find Henry's eloquence driving through a resolution to apply the idea to the legislatures of the colonies. Well might William Lee write from London that “it struck a greater panic into the ministers than anything that had taken place since the stamp act.” From the beginning English policy had been to keep. the colonies apart, creating and inflaming divisive prejudices. Now the vision of Adams and Henry had found the way to weld them. Lord North, succeeding Townshend as King George's rubber stamp, re- pealed taxes on everything but tea, maintaining this as an assertion of England’s “right” to tax. Adams, seizing the new opportunity, used it as a lash to whip the flagging Spirit of New England, and the result was the Boston Tea Party, when 342 chests of choice bohea were tossed into the harbor. . Lord North's answer was an order closing the port of Boston, and the answer to Lord North was another batch of Virginia resolutions that set aside June 1, 1774, as a ‘day of fasting, humiliation and prayer, together with many furious words against King and Commons. Lord Dunmore, that lewd old dandy, now gover- nor, dissolved the House, as had become his habit, and Patrick Henry, leading his fellow rebels to the Raleigh Tavern, judged the time ripe to take the” last step in. his plan for co- lonial union. Sweeping the timid with him, he carried his proposal for an annual congress “to deliberate on those generaf measures which the united interests of America may from time to time require.” The bold idea captured the colonies, and a Virginia convention elected Henry, Washing- ton, Harrison, Bland, Peyton Randolph, Ed- mund Pendleton and Richard Henry Lee as delegates to the.first Continental Congress. Henry stopped at Mount Vernon for a night with Washington and the two rode on to Phila-~ delphia in company. Totally unlike in train- ing and temperament, each bore the other im love and admiration, and & must have hurt them that they could not see eye to eye im the present crisis. Washington, as slow to form judgments as he was tenacious in holding them, still thought in terms of petition and remonstrance, relying largely on Burke and Pitt and the English Lib- erals. As a matter of fact, when the various delegates gathered in Carpenter’s Hall on Sep- tember 5, only Patrick Henry and Samuel Adams were blessed with the vision of inde- pendence. E A’I‘ the very outset Henry struck a powerful s blow for unity, putting an end to mean sec- tional wrangling with this noble delcaration: “All America is thrown into oné mass. The distinctions between Virginians, Pennsylvanians, New Yorkers and New Englanders are no more. I am not a Virginian, but an American.” And when the subtle Galloway came forward with a plan for continuation of British rule—a Co- lonial union under the control of the king— it was Patrick Henry's eloquence that defeated the cunning scheme. . At the end of the session, however, Adams and Henry had small cause for enthusiasm— Galloway'’s trick had been defeated by one vote only and the temper of Congress was over- whelmingly conservative—but Henry was not downcast. In a conversation recorded by Col. John Overton, he declared that war was cer- tain, and prophesied Prance’s aid. . When Virginia's second revolutionary con- vention met in Richmond in the Spring of the following year, he set to work to make his prophecy come true. There in old St. John's Church were the same forces. that stood op- posed at Williamsburg in 1765, just 10 years before—on one side the patricians, fearful of precipitate action, and on the other Patrick Henry and plain men that he had fired- with his love of liberty. * A resolution of hems and haws was proposed, full' of pro‘estations of loyalty to the King. Henry, attacking it as servile and absurd, called for the colony to put itself immediately into a posture of defense, and moved the organization of a militia. Pendleton led his conservatives in instant opposition, insisting that it would be “time enough to resort to measures of despair when every well founded hope was entirely van- ished,” but Henry crushed them in the speech that has come to be the loved heritage of every American child. What heart has not thrilled to those tremendous periods that bade a people put by their fears and mean servilities? “We must fight. I repeat it, sir, we must fght. An appeal to arms and to the God of Hosts is all that is left us. . . . Shall we gather strength by irresolution and inaction? . . . There is no retreat but in submission ond slavery. . . . Gentlemen may cry peace, peace, but there is mo peace. . . Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Al- mighty God! I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty or give me death.” Up to this time no man had done more than hint that war might come unless England did this or that. Henry's boldness lay in the fact that he swept hesitancies aside and declared that war must come. Nor was he wanting in deeds to back his words. When Lord Dunmore raided the public powder magazines on April 20, the very day after Pitcairn fired upon the farmers at Lexington, Henry took the field with 5,000 volunteers and forced the governor te make compensation. His back turned, however,