How Patrick Henry Saved America From Its First Civil War

On this episode of Our American Stories, George Washington led America's army to independence. He needed help to avoid leading it into our first civil war.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:10):
And we continue here with our American stories. Our next
story comes to us from John Regasta. He's an historian
at the International Center for Jefferson Studies at Monticello and
is a Jack Miller Center Fellow. This is the story
of the pivotal role that Patrick Henry played in holding
together the American Union in seventeen ninety nine when it

(00:33):
seemed that partisan bickering would put an end to the
American experiment. Let's take a listen.

Speaker 2 (00:42):
January fifteenth, seventeen ninety nine. George Washington is living in
retirement at Mount Vernon. On this particular date, it is
mild and sunny outside, but it is becoming very stormy inside.
You can almost sense George Washington pacing the why pine boars. Finally,

(01:04):
the man that we know as the Sword of the
American Revolution sits down, picks up a stack of paper
in a quill pen to write a long letter to
the man we know as the trumpet of the American Revolution,
Patrick Henry, the former General Rights and Desperation. There is

(01:24):
a crisis when everything dear and valuable to us is assailed.
He rails at people, putting party over country to create
the crisis. Measures are systematically and pertinaciously pursued, which must
eventually dissolve the union or produce coercion, by which Washington

(01:47):
meant the US army marching on its own people. The
nation was at risk, civil war loomed. Washington asked Patrick
Henry to come out of retirement to help to save
the nation that they had helped the found. Henry had
previously been offered positions as Senator, Supreme Court Justice, Secretary

(02:10):
of State, ambassador of France or Spain, but he had
sworn that he would only come out of retirement if
the nation itself was at risk, if we faced the
horrors of anarchy. Receiving Washington's letter, Patrick Henry writes, I
accord with every sentiment you expressed to me. Henry agrees

(02:33):
to run for office for the people causing the threat
to the new nation, putting personal political ambition and partisanship
above the country. Thomas Jefferson and James Madison in the
Radical States Rights Agenda of the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions,

(02:53):
Patrick Henry won his election. Patrick Henry always won his election,
but he dies before he takes office. Had Henry lived,
Thomas Jefferson likely would not have been elected president in
eighteen hundred. What had Jefferson and Madison done that ignited
such concern? We need to look back to the partisan

(03:15):
battles of the seventeen nineties. The Federalists, led by Alexander
Hamilton and John Adams, had adopted the Sedition Act, making
it illegal to criticize Congress or the president. Scores of
newspaper editors were being jailed. Jefferson and Madison believed that
the nation couldn't work without a free press, fair elections

(03:39):
would be impossible. Jefferson called it a reign of witches desperation.
Jefferson and Madison adopted an equally disturbing response, the Kentucky
and Virginia Resolutions, claiming that states were independent sovereigns that
could ignore, nullify, to use Jefferson's term, federal laws in

(04:01):
their states. Under this radical states rights theory, each state
would have different federal law. Succession was a real possibility,
and Jefferson was talking about that. Several Virginia militia officers
said that if the United States was dragged into the
raging European Wars and a French army landed on our shores,

(04:23):
they would take their troops to the French banner rather
than to the stars and stripes carried by a political opponent. Treason.
This was the constitutional crisis that worried George Washington and
Patrick Henry, States against the federal government, state against state,
civil war. When it was announced that Patrick Henry would

(04:47):
speak on March fourth, seventeen ninety nine at Charlotte Courthouse,
thousands gathered. When Henry rose to speak, it was said
that he was bent, He appeared tired, He had a
gray cat. But as he began to speak, a wonderful
transformation came over him. He rose up to his full height.

(05:08):
His voice boomed out across to the gathered thousands. Henry
told the throng that political infighting had planted thorns upon
his pillow. He told the people that Virginia was to
the Union like Charlotte County was to Virginia. Virginia had
no more right to block federal laws than Charlotte had

(05:29):
to block the laws of Virginia. Such opposition on the
part of Virginia to the acts of the general government
must beget their enforcement by military power, civil war, foreign alliances.
Henry Warren that Virginia would face a federal army led
by George Washington, who will dare to lift his hand

(05:52):
against the father of his country, to point a weapon
at the breast of the man who often led them
to battle and victory. Now, this being an eighteenth century election,
people had been drinking, and a drunk in the crowd
raising a hands I would Henry rose up, turned on him, glaring,

(06:12):
you dare not do it in such a parricidal attempt.
The steal would drop from your nerveless arm. This was
classic Patrick Henry. He tells the crowd. If the administration
has done wrong, let us all go wrong together. Let
us trust God and our better judgment to set us

(06:34):
right hereafter united, we stand, divided, we fall. Henry reminds
the people that he had opposed the Constitution. He had
warned the federal government would become too powerful and would
interfere with the rights of the people. I warned you,
I warned you, he seems to say. But we agreed.

(06:59):
I didn't agree, Henry explains, But we the people agreed
to the Constitution. It was necessary to submit to the
constitutional exercise of that power. He warned the people, if
we cannot abide by the government, that we the people created,
tyranny would result. You can never exchange the present government,

(07:23):
but for a monarchy. Henry is saying, if you disapprove
of government policy, go to the ballot box. Go to
the ballot box. Henry won his election, but he dies
on June sixth before he could take office. John Randolph
of Roanoke, a leading politician, says that had Henry lived,

(07:46):
Jefferson would not have been elected president. Now, to their credit,
Jefferson and Madison, after the outcry, and after losing badly
in the seventeen ninety nine congressional elections because people believed
that they were threatening the Union, back pedaled strongly. Chastened,
Jefferson and Madison seemed to realize that the hyperpartisanship of

(08:10):
the seventeen nineties in which they had participated, brought the
nation to the brink of collapse. They realized that what
unites us is more important than what devised us, and
this was the theme of Jefferson's first inaugural address. They
wouldn't publicly admit that they had been wrong, that they
had gone too far, but they pulled back. President Jefferson

(08:35):
has been accused for two centuries of hypocrisy for not
implementing some of the radical ideas that he floated in
the seventeen nineties. But this reassessment is a far better
explanation than hypocrisy. Jefferson's idea of nullification was tabled until
it was dredged up by Southern fire eaters in the

(08:55):
eighteen twenties and exploded over Fort Sumter in eighteen sixty one.
We often point to the Revolution of eighteen hundred, a
peaceful change of parties after an election, which was an
American hallmark until twenty twenty, but it almost wasn't. Henry
helped create the idea of a loyal opposition. If you

(09:18):
disagree with government policy, you go to the ballot box.
The first rule in a democracy is the majority rules.
The second rule is equally important. The minority must accept
the first rule at least until the next election.

Speaker 1 (09:36):
And a terrific job on the production, editing and storytelling
by our own Greg Hengler. And a special thanks to
John Augusta. He's an historian at the International Center for
Jefferson Studies at Monticello and he's a Jack Miller Center fellow,
And what a story he told about Patrick Henry bringing
Americans at the brink of partisan crisis and at the

(10:00):
edge of perhaps our first civil war. Will bringing people
down off the cliff and by the way, time and
again on this show we get at the fact that
America has been bitterly divided as it is now and
perhaps even worse. One example right here, the Civil War
sixty years after this, perhaps the worst manifestation of them all,

(10:25):
the story of how Patrick Henry calmed down a divided nation.
Here on our American Stories,