Part 27 (1/2)
Of course the house-servants and the field-servants justto the end of his life, Patrick Henry was a slaveholder He bought slaves, he sold slaves, and, along with the other property--the lands, the houses, the cattle--bequeathed by his of the African race
What, then, was the opinion respecting slavery held by this great cha”--thus he wrote in 1773--”that, at a tihts of humanity are defined and understood with precision, in a country above all others fond of liberty, in such an age, we find entle, and generous, adopting a principle as repugnant to humanity as it is inconsistent with the Bible and destructive to liberty? Would any one believe that I a by the general inconvenience of living without them I will not, I cannot, justify it; however culpable my conduct, I will so far pay my 'devoir' to virtue as to own the excellence and rectitude of her precepts, and to lament my want of conformity to them I believe a time will come when an opportunity will be offered to abolish this la we can do is to improve it, if it happens in our day; if not, let us transether with our slaves, a pity for their unhappy lot, and an abhorrence of slavery We owe to the purity of our religion, to show that it is at variance with that lahich warrants slavery”[443] After the Revolution, and before the adoption of the Constitution, he earnestly advocated, in the Virginia House of Delegates, some method of emancipation; and even in the Convention of 1788, where he argued against the Constitution on the ground that it obviously conferred upon the general governency, that power of emancipation which, in his opinion, should be retained by the States, he still avowed his hostility to slavery, and at the sa it: ”Slavery is detested: we feel its fatal effects,--we deplore it with all the pity of huratitude to ad the free, we ought to la our fellow-e But is it practicable, by any hu theall the years of his retireers, who cae to hiuests were always received by him with a cordiality that was unmistakable, and so modest and simple as to put them at once at their ease Of course they desired most of all to hear hireat events in which he had borne so brilliant a part; but whenever he was persuaded to do so, it was alith the most quiet references to himself ”No man,” says one who knew him well, ”ever vaunted less of his achievereat achieveraphy As for boasting, he was entirely a stranger to it, unless it be that, in his latter days, he seeoodness of his lands, and, I believe, wished to be thought wealthy It is my opinion that he was better pleased to be flattered as to his wealth than as to his great talents This I have accounted for by recollecting that he had long been under narrow and difficult circuth happily relieved; whereas there never was a tih he always seemed unconscious of them”[445]
It should not be supposed that, in his final withdrawal from public and professional labors, he surrendered himself to the enjoyment of domestic happiness, without any positive occupation of the randsons, as much with him in those days, the tradition is derived that, besides ”setting a good example of honesty, benevolence, hospitality, and every social virtue,” he assisted ”in the education of his younger children,” and especially devoted much time ”to earnest efforts to establish true Christianity in our country”[446] He gave himself more than ever to the study of the Bible, as well as of two or three of the great English divines, particularly Tillotson, Butler, and Sherlock The sermons of the latter, he declared, had removed ”all his doubts of the truth of Christianity;” and from a volume which contained them, and which was full of his pencilled notes, he was accusto to his family; after which they all joined in sacred music, while he accompanied them on the violin”[447]
There seems to have been no time in his life, after his arrival at arded by his private acquaintances as a positively religious person Moreover, while he was ion, and was on peculiarly friendly ter he often listened, it is inaccurate to say, as Wirt has done, that, though he was a Christian, he was so ”after a form of his own;” that ”he was never attached to any particular religious society, and nevercorandson who spent many years in his household comes the tradition that ”his parents were members of the Protestant Episcopal Church, of which his uncle, Patrick Henry, was a minister;” that ”he was baptized and made a member of it in early life;” and that ”he lived and died an exemplary member of it”[449] Furthermore, in 1830, the Rev Charles Dresser, rector of Antriinia, wrote that theof Patrick Henry told him that her husband used to receive ”the communion as often as an opportunity was offered, and on such occasions always fasted until after he had coreatest retireovernor and afterward”[450] In a letter to one of his daughters, written in 1796, he e things said of me, I hear it is said by the deists that I aood people think I aives me much ion of infinitely higher importance than politics; and I find , and have given no decided and public proofs ofa Christian But, indeed, my dear child, this is a character which I prize far above all this world has, or can boast”[451]
While he thus spoke, hu so little known to the public that it could be entirely misunderstood by a portion of them, it is plain that no one who had seen him in the privacy of his life at ho upon that subject For years before his retirement from the law, it had been his custom, we are told, to spend ”one hour every dayin private devotion His hour of prayer was the close of the day, including sunset;and during that sacred hour, none of his faards his religious faith, Patrick Henry, while never ostentatious of it, was always ready to avow it, and to defend it The French alliance during our Revolution, and our close intercourse with France i us the introduction of certain French writers ere assailants of Christianity, and who soon set up ahteroff, as parts of an outworn and pitiful superstition, the religious ideas of their childhood, and even the est sanctions in those ideas Upon all this, Patrick Henry looked with grief and alarm In his opinion, a far deeper, a far wiser and nobler handling of all the immense questions involved in the problelish writers as Sherlock and Bishop Butler, and, for popular use, even Soa the Virginia lawyers and politicians its diligent y and directness that always characterized him, he deterence; and he then deliberately inia lawyer and politician, a htened Christian faith Thus during his second terovernor he caused to be printed, on his own account, an edition of Soame Jenyns's ”View of the Internal Evidence of Christianity;” likewise, an edition of Butler's ”analogy;” and thenceforward, particularly ainia, assailed as they were by the fashi+onable scepticism, this illustrious colporteur was active in the defence of Christianity, not only by his own subliuments, but by the distribution, as the fit occasion offered, of one or the other of these two books
Accordingly when, during the first two years of his retiree of Reason” made its appearance, the old statesman was moved to write out a somewhat elaborate treatise in defence of the truth of Christianity This treatise it was his purpose to have published ”He read the ressed with it, and completed it a short ti ”diffident about his oork,” and ireat ability of the replies to Paine which were then appearing in England, ”he directed his wife to destroy” what he had written She ”complied literally with his directions,” and thus put beyond the chance of publication a hich seemed, to soument in the defence of the Bible which was ever written”[453]
Finally, in his last will and testa the date of Novehout, as he says, ”withaffirmation of his own deep faith in Christianity After distributing his estate a his descendants, he thus concludes: ”This is all the inheritance I can give to ive them one which will ined that this deep seclusion and these eager religious studies ietfulness of the political concerns of his own country, or any indifference to thoseplace in Europe, and were reacting with treht, the emotion, and even the material interests of A the retire to resist the atteain into official life All these matters, indeed, are involved in the story of his political attitude fro the Constitution down to the very close of his life,--a story which used to be told with angry vituperation on one side, perhaps with soies on the other Certainly, the day for such co past In the disinterestedness which the lapse of time has now h, that such ungentle words as ”apostate” and ”turncoat,”
hich his name used to be plentifully assaulted, were but the missiles of partisan excitement; and that by his act of intellectual readjustment with respect to the new conditions forced upon human society, on both sides of the Atlantic, by the French Revolution, he developed no occasion for apologies, since he therein did nothing that was unusual at that ti that was inconsistent with the professions or the tendencies of his own previous life It becoain, as concisely as possible, but in the light of much historical evidence that has never hitherto been presented in connection with it
Upon the adoption, in 1791, of the first ten amendments to the Constitution, every essential objection which he had forainst that instruood reason why he should any longer hold hiovernton, and afterward by John Adams,--two men horeat harle inal fored on that question had been so hot and so bitter that, even after it was ended, some time would be required for his recovery from the soreness of spirit, from the tone of suspicion and even of enly, in the correspondence and other records of the tiliress had passed the great amendments, and after their approval by the States had beco assured, he still looked askance at the administration, and particularly at some of the financial measures proposed by Hamilton[455] Nevertheless, as year by year went on, and as Washi+ngton and his associates continued to deal fairly, wisely, and, on the whole, successfully, with the enormous problems which they encountered; radually drew off froton, and formed a party in opposition, which seee the for us of political clubs in apparent sympathy with the wildest andinto words and into deeds in the streets of Paris, it happened that Patrick Henry found himself, like Richard Henry Lee, and ainst the Constitution, drawn overnment
In this fra of 1793, when, during the session of the federal court at Richmond, he had frequent conversations with Chief Justice Jay and with Judge Iredell The latter, having never before reat dislike of hiainst the Constitution; but afterhireeably disappointed than in my acquaintance with him I have been , and hisadditional reason I have, added to h detestation violent party prejudice”[456]
In the following year, General Henry Lee, then governor of Virginia, appointed Patrick Henry as a senator of the United States, to fill out an unexpired term This honor he felt compelled to decline
In the course of the sah in virtual sympathy with the adton had cast off their old friendshi+p, determined to act the part of a peaceether once more two old friends who had been parted by political differences that no longer existed On the 17th of August, 1794, Lee, at Richmond, thus wrote to the President:--
”When I saw you in Philadelphia, I hadMr Henry, and since my return I have talked very freely and confidentially with that gentleman I plainly perceive that he has credited some information, which he has received (from whom I know not), which induces him to believe that you consider him a factious, seditious character assured in roundless, I have uniformly co He seeretted; for he is a man of positive virtue as well as of transcendent talents; and were it not for his feelings above expressed, I verily believe, he would be found a the most active supporters of your ad thiswished to do it, in the hope that it would lead to a refutation of the sentiments entertained by Mr Henry”[457]
To this letter Washi+ngton sent a reply which expressed unabated regard for his old friend; and this reply, having been shown by Lee to Henry, drew from him this noble-minded answer:--
TO GENERAL HENRY LEE
RED HILL, 27 June, 1795
MY DEAR SIR,--Your very friendly communication of so much of the President's letter as relates to me, demands my sincere thanks Retired as I arateful to st my countrymen; especially those of thee, who is conte indeed
The Arand operation, which seee in our country, over and above the coh rate the superior privilege of being one in that chosen age, to which Providence intrusted its favorite work With this impression, it was impossible for me to resist the i that event, which in future will give a superior aspect to the men of these times To the ; and it is not in nature for one withhim who stood foreht e, to whoood and great, ivemy character both in public and in private life The intiround to believe I had incurred his censure, gives very great pleasure
Since the adoption of the present Constitution, I have generally moved in a narrow circle But in that I have never omitted to inculcate a strict adherence to the principles of it And I have the satisfaction to think, that in no part of the Union have the laws been more pointedly obeyed, than in that where I have resided and spent my time Projects, indeed, of a contrary tendency have been hinted to me; but the treatment of the projectors has been such as to prevent all intercourse with theh a democrat myself, I like not the late democratic societies
As little do I like their suppression by law Silly things may amuse for awhile, but in a little time men will perceive their delusions The way to preserve in ainst them
My present views are to spendmy life, so to order the course of events as to render my feeble efforts necessary for the safety of the country, in any, even the sree, that little which I can do shall be done
Whenever you ed by your presentinghiratitude for his favorable sentiments towards ard hich I a this letter, Washi+ngton took an opportunity to convey to Patrick Henry a strong practical proof of his confidence in him, and of his cordial friendshi+p The office of secretary of state having becoton thus tendered the place to Patrick Henry:--