Henry Mayer - A Son of Thunder: Patrick Henry and the American Republic
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An in-depth biography of the iconic American revolutionary that helps us understand the significance of Henrys enduring image (The New York Times Book Review).
Patrick Henry was a charismatic orator whose devotion to the pursuit of liberty fueled the fire of the American Revolution and laid the groundwork for the United States. As a lawyer and a member of the Virginia House of Burgess, Henry championed the inalienable rights with which all men are born. His philosophy inspired the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and, most significantly, the Bill of Rights.
Famous for the line Give me liberty or give me death! Patrick Henry was a man who stirred souls and whose dedication to individual liberty became the voice for thousands. In A Son of Thunder, Henry Mayer offers a biography as [Patrick] Henry himself would have wanted it writtena readable style, informal, engaging, and entertaining (Southern Historian).
This is history and biography at its best. Charleston Evening Post
A fine job of placing Henrys idea of republican rectitude in context without ignoring the many ironies of his life as a mediator between the yeomanry and the elite. The New York Times Book Review
A narrative that eases the reader with seemingly effortless grace into the rough-and-tumble world of eighteenth-century Virginia. Patrick Henry, patriot, emerges . . . a lion of a man, proud, earnest, melancholy, eloquent. The biographer has done his job; one sets this book down having heard the lions roar and having felt the sorrow that he is no more. San Francisco Examiner
Patrick Henry was a charismatic orator whose devotion to the pursuit of liberty fueled the fire of the American Revolution and laid the groundwork for the United States. As a lawyer and a member of the Virginia House of Burgess, Henry championed the inalienable rights with which all men are born. His philosophy inspired the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and, most significantly, the Bill of Rights.
Famous for the line Give me liberty or give me death! Patrick Henry was a man who stirred souls and whose dedication to individual liberty became the voice for thousands. In A Son of Thunder, Henry Mayer offers a biography as [Patrick] Henry himself would have wanted it writtena readable style, informal, engaging, and entertaining (Southern Historian).
This is history and biography at its best. Charleston Evening Post
A fine job of placing Henrys idea of republican rectitude in context without ignoring the many ironies of his life as a mediator between the yeomanry and the elite. The New York Times Book Review
A narrative that eases the reader with seemingly effortless grace into the rough-and-tumble world of eighteenth-century Virginia. Patrick Henry, patriot, emerges . . . a lion of a man, proud, earnest, melancholy, eloquent. The biographer has done his job; one sets this book down having heard the lions roar and having felt the sorrow that he is no more. San Francisco Examiner
Henry Mayer: author's other books
Who wrote A Son of Thunder: Patrick Henry and the American Republic? Find out the surname, the name of the author of the book and a list of all author's works by series.
John Ragosta
Patrick Henry
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A SON OF THUNDER
A Son of Thunder
HENRY MAYER
PATRICK HENRY
AND THE
AMERICAN REPUBLIC
AND THE
AMERICAN REPUBLIC
Copyright 1991 by Henry Mayer
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, or the facilitation thereof, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the pubclisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Any members of educational institutions wishing to photocopy part or all of the work for classroom use, or publishers who would like to obtain permission to include the work in an anthology, should send their inquiries to Grove/Atlantic, Inc., 841 Broadway, New York, NY 10003.
First published in 1986 by Franklin Watts, New York and Toronto
This Grove Press edition is published by special arrangement with the
University Press of Virginia from their 1991 edition.
University Press of Virginia from their 1991 edition.
Printed in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Mayer, Henry, 1941
A son of thunder : Patrick Henry and the American Republic / Henry Mayer.
p. cm.
Originally published : New York : Franklin Watts, 1986.
eBook ISBN-13: 978-0-8021-9809-9
1. Henry, Patrick, 17361799. 2. VirginiaPolitics and government17751783. 3. United StatesPolitics and government17751783. 4. United StatesPolitics and government17831789. 5. LegislatorsUnited StatesBiography. 6. United States. Continental CongressBiography. I. Title.
E302.6.H5 M35 2001
973.3092dc21
[B]
00-066344
Grove Press
an imprint of Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
841 Broadway
New York, NY 10003
an imprint of Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
841 Broadway
New York, NY 10003
Distributed by Publishers Group West
www.groveatlantic.com
For Betsy
and
For Eleanor and Tommy
and
For Eleanor and Tommy
CONTENTS
Prologue
The Great Adversary
The Great Adversary
Chapter One
Backcountry Gentry
Backcountry Gentry
Chapter Two
The Dilapidated Colonels Son
The Dilapidated Colonels Son
Chapter Three
Bold License
Bold License
Chapter Four
Ancient Rights and Privileges
Ancient Rights and Privileges
Chapter Five
Young, Hot, and Giddy
Young, Hot, and Giddy
Chapter Six
We Are All in Parties
We Are All in Parties
Chapter Seven
Hunting Out Good Land
Hunting Out Good Land
Chapter Eight
Virtual Obedience
Virtual Obedience
Chapter Nine
The New Boanerges
The New Boanerges
Chapter Ten
Hurrying to an Alarming Crisis
Hurrying to an Alarming Crisis
Chapter Eleven
The Present Measures Lead to War
The Present Measures Lead to War
Chapter Twelve
The Busy Voice of Preparation
The Busy Voice of Preparation
Chapter Thirteen
A Man of Desperate Circumstances
A Man of Desperate Circumstances
Chapter Fourteen
From the Senate to the Field
From the Senate to the Field
Chapter Fifteen
I Own Myself a Democrat
I Own Myself a Democrat
Chapter Sixteen
A Thousand Things to Mend, to Begin
A Thousand Things to Mend, to Begin
Chapter Seventeen
To Do Good and Prevent Mischief
To Do Good and Prevent Mischief
Chapter Eighteen
Great Divisions Are Likes to Happen
Great Divisions Are Likes to Happen
Chapter Nineteen
I Speak the Language of Thousands
I Speak the Language of Thousands
Chapter Twenty
Overpowered in a Good Cause
Overpowered in a Good Cause
Chapter Twenty-One
Playing the After Game
Playing the After Game
Epilogue
My Secluded Corner
My Secluded Corner
A SON OF THUNDER
PREFACE
We dont really know much about him. Patrick Henrys fame rests upon a single resounding sentence that rattles somewhat emptily in our heads, devoid of context and separated from the man. We know, vaguely, that his oratory helped propel the colonies toward independence, but we have forgotten that a dozen years later his dissenting voice, directed against the proposed Constitution of 1787, nearly defeated the measure and forced its proponents to adopt the conciliatory amendments known as the Bill of Rights.
Patrick Henry survives in memory as an agitator, not as a statesman, even though he served three busy terms as Virginias first governor and dominated the state assembly for a decade longer. In an age of reason he was emotional; in an era of aristocratic stewardship he voiced the demands of the inarticulate. In a time when men regarded statecraft as a science he remained indifferent to theory and impulsively reached for whatever argument best suited his immediate need.
Henry combined an actors flair with a preachers fervor, and he evoked a rapport with ordinary folk that changed the face of Virginiasand later, Americaspolitics. An ambitious, self-made man who aspired to gentry status while challenging the style of gentry politics, Henry seemed to thrive upon controversy, and his career moved explosively from one confrontation to another. His rivals, who included Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, considered him a schemer and a demagogue. They deprecated his narrow education and his country manners; they disparaged his character as too grasping, too eager for fame and money, and they found something shameful in the way Henry could mobilize popular passion toward political ends. Their antagonism has become historys vantage point, although it more properly forms a subject for analysis.
Understanding a man as unusual as Patrick Henry is made more difficult by the failure to recognize the high degree of partisan and philosophic controversy within the American Revolution, the struggle wisely described many years ago as a question both of home rule and of who should rule at home. The Revolution had a dimension of violent confrontation and internal quarreling that two centuries of myth-making have done much to obscure. Like the other great engineer of the Revolution, Samuel Adams of Boston, Henry was a new man in politics, the son of an undistinguished family who rose to power in the imperial crisis and brought a newer, more plebeian element into the political coalition required to oppose the British ministry. Adamss constituents were Boston craftsmen and mechanics; Henrys were Virginias poor white farmers and religious dissenters. Within the old aristocratic forms of colonial politics, then, Henrys success heralded the changes that would shape the more democratic politics of the half century that followed independence.
Tension, however, existed from the beginning. A volatile alliance of aristocrats and commoners made the Revolution together, but this uneasy combination of elite and democratic tendencies had to strike some new balance of power. Good revolutionaries found themselves at odds with one another in the effort to determine the extent of democratic participation in government, to define the pace and direction of economic growth, and to sift the conflicting claims of personal liberty and energetic government. Each party claimed liberty as its polestar and presented itself as the faithful guardian of revolutionary values.
The struggle over the Constitution and the Bill of Rights caught up all these issues and became in truth the last battle of the American Revolution. Two hundred years later, however, the constitutional convention is draped in legend and its proposal venerated as the miracle of Philadelphia. The violent, bitter contest over ratification has shrunk into a peevish minor quarrel mounted by men of little faith. But Patrick Henry did not think himself sacrilegious in opposing what issued from Philadelphia. The delegates had violated their instructions and instead of amending the existing form of government had proposed a more ambitious, more aristocratic plan that sacrificed the rights of man for the dignity of government. In Henrys view the convention delegates were the men with insufficient faith in self-government and the state governments a revolutionary people had created for themselves.
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