73 lines
3.9 KiB
Plaintext
73 lines
3.9 KiB
Plaintext
Newsgroups: freenet.shrine.songs
|
|
From: aa300 (Jerry Murphy)
|
|
Subject: Patrick Henry, biography
|
|
Date: Wed, 24 Jan 90 15:51:52 EST
|
|
|
|
|
|
Henry, Patrick
|
|
|
|
The American political leader Patrick Henry was the most celebrated orator of
|
|
the American Revolution. He was born on May 29, 1736, in Hanover County,
|
|
Virginia. Henry failed as both a storekeeper and a farmer before being admitted
|
|
to the Virginia bar in 1760. However, he won fame in 1763 after his impassioned
|
|
pleading in the Parsons' Cause, a case in which he defended the right of the
|
|
colony to fix the price of the tobacco in which the clergy were paid, despite a
|
|
contrary ruling from London.
|
|
|
|
When Henry entered the House of Burgesses in 1765, he and Richard Henry Lee
|
|
successfully compelled the entrenched oligarchy to share power with them.
|
|
Henry's effectiveness as an orator gave him a commanding influence in the
|
|
legislature throughout his life. After the passage of the Stamp Act (1765) he
|
|
introduced a set of radical resolutions denouncing the British Parliament's
|
|
usurpation of powers vested in the colonial legislature, which alone had the
|
|
power to tax. He supported the resolves in a speech ending "Caesar had his
|
|
Brutus--Charles the first his Cromwell--and George III--may he profit from their
|
|
example." Widely circulated throughout the colonies, the resolves made Henry
|
|
famous.
|
|
|
|
Henry was the focal point of Virginia's opposition to British policy. When the
|
|
royal governor, Lord Dunmore, dissolved the Virginia legislature after the
|
|
closing of the port of Boston in 1774, Henry organized a rump session of the
|
|
legislature, which met in the Raleigh Tavern in Williamsburg. It issued an
|
|
invitation to the other colonies to send delegates to a Continental Congress. As
|
|
a member of the Congress, Henry was an outspoken advocate of strong measures of
|
|
resistance. At a meeting of the Virginia assembly in Richmond on Mar. 23, 1775,
|
|
he called on the colonists to arm themselves, with the words: "Give me liberty,
|
|
or give me death." Soon after, he led the militia of Hanover to force Governor
|
|
Dunmore to surrender munitions belonging to the colony.
|
|
|
|
With the outbreak of the Revolution, Henry became commander in chief of the
|
|
Virginia troops, but he was prevented from actively exercising his command by
|
|
state leaders who considered him too erratic. He continued in the legislature,
|
|
fostering the move for independence and helping draft the first state constitu-
|
|
tion. In June 1776 he was elected governor. In this position, which he held till
|
|
1779, he vigorously supported the war effort, dispatching George Rogers Clark to
|
|
secure the western regions. After the war Henry's influence in the legislature
|
|
tended to be sporadic because of his habit of leaving before the end of the
|
|
session. He astonished his contemporaries by advocating state support of
|
|
religion and amnesty for Loyalists.
|
|
|
|
Henry served as governor again from 1784 to 1786 but declined to attend the
|
|
Constitutional Convention of 1787. An ardent supporter of state rights, he led
|
|
the Virginia opposition to ratification of the federal Constitution, losing the
|
|
vote by a small margin. His hostility to centralized government and to measures
|
|
favoring commercial interests led him initially to protest the Federalist
|
|
program of the Washington administration. As the years passed, however, his fear
|
|
that the radicalism of the French Revolution would infect the nation brought him
|
|
to support the Federalist party. Just before his death, on June 6, 1799, he was
|
|
elected to the state legislature as a Federalist.
|
|
|
|
HARRY AMMON
|
|
|
|
BIBLIOGRAPHY
|
|
|
|
Beeman, Richard - PATRICK HENRY (1974)
|
|
Henry, William Wirt - PATRICK HENRY: LIFE, CORRESPONDENCE, AND SPEECHES,
|
|
3 vols. (1891)
|
|
Mead, Robert Douthat - PATRICK HENRY, 2 vols. (1957-62).
|
|
|
|
'Copyright 1987, Grolier Inc, Academic American Encyclopedia,
|
|
Electronic Version'
|
|
|
|
USED BY PERMISSION, granted January 9, 1988
|
|
|