Part 19 (2/2)
The high official rank which Governor Henry had borne during the first three years of Ainations of the French allies ere then in the country, that some of them addressed their letters to him as ”Son Altesse Royale, Monsieur Patrick Henri, Gouverneur de l'Etat de Virginie”[311] From this titular royalty he descended, as we have seen, about the 1st of June, 1779; and for the subsequent five and a half years, until his recall to the governorshi+p, he is to be viewed by us as a very retired country gentleman in delicate health, with episodes of labor and of leadershi+p in the Virginia House of Delegates
A little overnor's chair, he was elected by the General asseress[312] It is not knohether he at any tiht it possible for him to accept this appoint October, the body that had elected hi the service[313] Moreover, in spite of all invitations and entreaties, Patrick Henry never afterwards served in any public capacity outside the State of Virginia
During his three years in the governorshi+p, he had lived in the palace at Willia In the course of that time, also, he had sold his estate of Scotchtown, in Hanover County, and had purchased a large tract of land in the new county of Henry,--a county situated about two hundredthe North Carolina boundary, and named, of course, in honor of hi of about ten thousand acres, he removed early in the summer of 1779 This continued to be his hoovernor in November, 1784[314]
After the storm and stress of so many years of public life, and of public life in an epoch of revolution, the invalid body, the care-burdened spirit, of Patrick Henry reat refreshment in this removal to a distant, wild, and mountainous solitude In undisturbed seclusion, he there re the su winter and spring,--scarcely able to hear the far-off noises of the great struggle in which he had hitherto borne so rugged a part, and of which the victorious issue was then to be seen by hih many a murky rack of selfishness, cowardice, and criovernor was Thomas Jefferson, the jovial friend of his own jovial youth, bound to him still by that hearty friendshi+p which was founded on congeniality of political sentiment, but was afterward to die away, at least on Jefferson's side, into alienation and hate To this dear friend Patrick Henry wrote late in that winter, froe, a remarkable letter, which has never before been in print, and which is full of interest for us on account of its i words Its tone of despondency, almost of misanthropy,--so unnatural to Patrick Henry,--is perhaps a token of that sickness of body which had made the soul sick too, and had then driven the writer into the wilderness, and still kept him there:--
TO THOMAS JEFFERSON
LEATHERWOOD, 15th Feby, 1780
DEAR SIR,--I return you many thanks for your favor by Mr
Sanders The kind notice you were pleased to take of , as I have scarcely heard a word of public matters since I moved up in the retirement where I live
I have had many anxieties for our commonwealth, principally occasioned by the depreciation of our e by this, which somebody has called the pulse of the state, I have feared that our body politic was dangerously sick God grant it , the present increase of prices is in great part owing to a kind of habit, which is now of four or five years' grohich is fostered by a mistaken avarice, and like other habits hard to part with For there is really very little money hereabouts
What you say of the practice of our distinguished Tories perfectly agrees with ainst the French, I knoere begun when I lived below What gave me the utmost pain was to see sos, keep company with theour destruction This countenance shown them is of fatal tendency They should be shunned and execrated, and this is the only way to supply the place of legal conviction and punishment But this is an effort of virtue, small as it seems, of which our countrymen are not capable
Indeed, I will own to you,this impunity and even respect, which souilt was clear as the sun, has sickened me, and made me sometimes wish to be in retirement for the rest of my life I will, however, be down, on the next asseain permit a close application to sedentary business, and I even doubt whether I can reh to serve in the assembly I will, however, make the trial
But tell me, do you remember any instance where tyranny was destroyed and freedo so small a share of virtue and public spirit? I recollect none, and this, more than the British arms, makes me fearful of final success without a reform
But when or how this is to be effected, I have not theI most sincerely wish you health and prosperity
If you can spare ti to, dear Sir, your affectionate friend and obedient servant,
P HENRY[315]
The next General assembly, which he thus promised to attend in case he should be chosen, met at Richmond on the 1st of May, 1780 It hardly needs to be mentioned that the people of Henry County were proud to choose him as one of their members in that body; but he seems not to have taken his seat there until about the 19th of May[316] Froates, every kind of responsibility and honor was laid upon him This was his first appearance in such an assee attaching to his naenius for leadershi+p, made him not only the most conspicuous person in the house, but the nearly absolute director of its business in every detail of opinion and of procedure on which he should choose to express hi Richard Henry Lee It helps one now to understand the real reputation he had a his conte froislative work, that during the first few days after his accession to the House he was placed on the committee of ways and means; on a committee ”to inquire into the present state of the account of the coainst the United States, and thethe same;” on a committee to prepare a bill for the repeal of a part of the act ”for sequestering British property, enabling those indebted to British subjects to pay off such debts, and directing the proceedings in suits where such subjects are parties;”
on three several coh sheriffs and of grand juries; and, finally, on a coovernor, and to report his answer to the House On the 7th of June, however, after a service of littlehis health seeed to ask leave to withdraw from the House for the remainder of the session[317]
At the autuislature he was once more in his place On the 6th of Noveanized, he was es and elections, and also of a committee ”for the better defence of the southern frontier,” and was likewise placed on the corievances, as well as on the co day he was made a member of a committee for the defence of the eastern frontier On the 10th of Nove to the enlistinia troops, and to the redemption of the state bills of credit then in circulation, and the emission of new bills On the 22d of Noveain referred the account between the State and the United States On the 9th of December he was anization and maintenance of a navy for the State, and the protection of navigation and commerce upon its waters On the 14th of December he was made chairulation and discipline of the militia, and of still another co the army with clothes and provisions”[318] On the 28th of Decee of the arrival in town of poor General Gates, then drooping under the burden of those Southern hich he had so plentifully gathered at Cananimous resolution:--
”That a committee of four be appointed to wait on Major General Gates, and to assure hiard and esteelorious services cannot be obliterated by any reverse of fortune; but that this House, ever reatto the world the gratitude which, as a member of the American Union, this country owes to him in his military character”[319]
On the 2d of January, 1781, the last day of the session, the House adopted, on Patrick Henry's overnor to convene the next islature at so in that city should ”be rendered inconvenient by the operations of an invading ene their sense of the peril then hanging over the State
Before the legislature could again ainst which Patrick Henry's resolution had been intended to provide On the 2d of January, 1781, the very day on which the legislature had adjourned, a hostile fleet conveyed into the Jaht hundred e Virginia was still further facilitated by the arrival, on the 26th of March, of two thousandbeaten General Greene at Guilford, in North Carolina, on the 15th of March, seeinia That the roar of his guns would soon be heard in the outskirts of their capital, hat all Virginians then felt to be inevitable
Under such circuislature, which is said to have been held on the 1st of March,[321]
should have been a very brief one, or that when the 7th of May arrived--the day for its reasse at Richmond--no quorum should have been present; or that, on the 10th of May, the few members who had arrived in Richmond should have voted, in deference to ”the approach of an hostile arreater security, ninety-seventhe mountains of Albe, twenty-threeacross the James and the Chickahominy, he encamped on the North Anna, in the county of Hanover Thus, at last, the single county of Louisa then separated hiovernor of the State, and where was then convened its legislature,--Patrick Henry hi present and in obvious direction of all its business The opportunity to bag such galy, on Sunday, the 3d of June, he dispatched a swift expedition under Tarleton, to surprise and capture the overnor,” and ”to spread on his route devastation and terror”[323] In this entire scheme, doubtless, Tarleton would have succeeded, had it not been that as he and his troopers, on that fair Sabbath day, were hurrying past the Cuckoo tavern in Louisa, one Captain John Jouette, watching from behind the s, espied the a fleet horse, and taking a shorter route, got into Charlottesville a few hours in advance of theive the alar to the mountains for safety