Lion of Liberty (36 page)

After a brief rest at his Prince Edward County plantation, Henry returned to the Virginia legislature on October 20, determined to oppose every measure to organize the new government without prior passage of a bill of rights. He then moved that the Virginia Assembly issue a formal request to the new Congress “to call a convention for proposing amendments . . . as soon as practicable.”
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Of all people, young Corbin stood to oppose Henry's motion, arguing in aristocratically coated words, with gestures learned at Cambridge, that “the gentleman tells us that he bows to the majesty of the people.”

With that, according to William Wirt, Corbin bowed deeply “in so exaggerated a way as to elicit laughs.” Henry sat stone-faced, staring at Corbin in disbelief and rage.

“Yet,” Corbin continued unperturbed,

According to Wirt, “He made another deep bow, sweeping one arm gracefully out to the side.”

Corbin added a bit of arrogance to his irritatingly haughty English accent: “It is of little importance whether a country was ruled by a despot with a tiara on his head or by a demagogue in a red cloak and a caul-bare wig, although he should profess on all occasions to bow to the majesty of the people.”
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And still another bow . . . thirteen in all—“graceful and deep as those before a magisterial throne,” according to Wirt. Although Corbin finally took his seat “with the gayest of triumph,” Henry was not amused. Indeed, Corbin's performance left Henry deeply hurt and delegates all but gasping. “The friends of Mr. Henry,” his grandson commented, “considered such an attack on a man of his years and high character as . . . sacrilege.”
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The old patriot rose slowly, “heavily . . . awkwardly,” according to his grandson, who was familiar with his grandfather's huge repertoire of acting tricks. After a long silence, Henry spoke, contorting his face in apparent pain.

Now it was Henry's turn, and he made “one elegant, but most obsequious and sycophantic bow,” according to Mecklenberg delegate William L. Tabb.

Henry then caricatured Corbin by making a bow “so ludicrously awkward and clownish” that the house exploded with laughter.

“The gentleman, I hope,” Henry croaked in a voice he used to feign the helplessness of old age, “will commiserate the disadvantages of education under which I have labored and will be pleased to remember that I have never been a favorite with that monarch, whose gracious smile he has had the happiness to enjoy.”

Another roar from the members who remembered George III's death sentence on Henry, among others. “I believe there was not a person,” William Tabb recalled, “who did not feel every risible [laughter-inducing] nerve affected. His adversary meantime hung down his head, and sinking lower and lower until he was almost concealed behind the interposing forms.”
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Henry's son-in-law Judge Spencer Roane confirmed that “it exceeded anything of the kind I ever heard. He spoke and acted his reply, and Corbin sank at least a foot in his seat.”
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Having underestimated the reverence of friends and foes alike for Patrick Henry, Corbin could only watch in embarrassment as his crude—and cruel—assault produced the opposite of its intended effect. Virginia's House of Delegates—Federalists and Antifederalists—voted overwhelmingly to endorse Henry's proposals and send them to Congress. In acknowledging Virginia's ratification of the Constitution, the message of the House of Delegates to Congress asserted that

With that, Henry proposed a series of amendments that drew wild cheers from Antifederalists—among them the requirement that three-fourths of the members of
both
houses (instead of two-thirds of the senators) approve a treaty before it can take effect. He demanded that the passage of
any
federal law require a two-thirds majority instead of a simple majority—and that a similar two-thirds majority be required for Congress to raise a standing army in peacetime. Most significantly, however, was an amendment that would force Congress to requisition funds from each state before it could tax the people of that state directly. Henry would thus have denied Congress and the federal government the power of direct taxation unless a state government failed to meet its financial obligations to the federal government.

“We are told the sword and purse are necessary for the national defense,” he said thoughtfully, then answered his own postulate. “The junction of these without limitations in the same hands is . . . the description of despotism. . . . It is easier to supply deficiencies of power than to take back excess of power. This no man can deny!”
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Rather than appear to endorse young Corbin's attack on Henry, Madison and other Federalists ceded the battleground over what were nothing more than suggestions to the First Congress—if indeed it decided to amend the Constitution. Madison then set about thwarting the second part of Henry's plan to undermine ratification by stacking Congress with Antifederalists pledged to amend or undo the Constitution. Madison declared himself a candidate for the first U.S. Senate. Henry was too savvy a politician, however, and enlisted two of the state's most beloved Antifederalists to run against Madison—Richard Henry Lee, a “father” of independence, and William Grayson, a prominent attorney and devoted Patrick Henry supporter, who had fought gallantly in the Revolution, served as a Washington aide-de-camp, and helped defeat the Jay-Gardoqui negotiations in the Confederation Congress. Comparing the patriotism of Lee and Grayson to Madison's failure even to lift a rifle in the Revolution, Henry's Antifederalists warned the House of Delegates that Madison was untrustworthy. Having betrayed his own Federalist friends, including Washington, by pledging to support a bill of rights, he would almost certainly betray Antifederalists in the Senate, where a six-year tenure would immunize him from retaliation by his constituents. A Madison victory, Henry warned, would ensure a Federalist victory, and a Federalist victory would ensure civil war and send “rivulets of blood” flowing across the country.

Henry's Antifederalists crushed Madison's bid and sent Richard Henry Lee and William Grayson to the first U.S. Senate with substantial pluralities. Antifederalists even gave Henry twenty-six unsolicited votes rather than seat Madison in the national capitol.

Pleased by Madison's defeat—and his own role in contributing to it—Henry was eager to go home to rest, embrace his wife, and romp with his children, but, as he wrote to his daughter Elizabeth Aylett, he realized that “I have not a moment to spare” to ensure Antifederalist control of the new Congress. Indeed, he did not even have time to see his own latest newborn.

Henry wrote to congratulate his old friend and ally Richard Henry Lee on the latter's election to the Senate and told him he had cast aside all ambitions for public office under the new Constitution. “I mean not to take any part in deliberations held out of this state, unless in Carolina, from which I am not very distant and to whose politics I wish to be attentive.” He told Lee that parts of Virginia, North Carolina and Kentucky might secede if the new Congress “do not give us substantial amendments” to the Constitution—and that he might then move to North Carolina. Although he did not say he would encourage secession, he conceded that he had invested in large tracts of land in the Carolina and Kentucky frontier areas contiguous to western Virginia and that he was in close contact with western leaders.

Undeterred by his defeat in the Senate election, James Madison declared for the House of Representatives—only to have Henry direct the Assembly to redraw boundaries of Madison's congressional district to include counties with large enough Antifederalist majorities to offset the Federalist majority in Madison's home county.

“In plain English,” Washington's private secretary Tobias Lear wrote from Mount Vernon to his friend the governor of New Hampshire, “he
[Henry] ruled a majority of the Assembly, and his edicts were registered by that body with less opposition than those the Grand Monarch has met from his parliaments. . . . And after he settled everything relative to the government . . . to his satisfaction, he mounted his horse and rode home, leaving the little business of the state to be done by anybody who chose to give themselves the trouble of attending to it.”
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Madison countered Henry's political tactic by repeating his earlier pledge to champion a bill of rights in Congress. Hoping to woo moderate Antifederalists, the coauthor of
The Federalist
essays pledged to fight for religious freedom, a major issue among Virginia's Baptists and other dissenters. He stopped short, however, of espousing Henry's call for another constitutional convention and the structural amendments that Henry favored to change the form of government under the Constitution.

Before leaving Richmond for home, Henry made the political misjudgment of coaxing James Monroe to run against Madison for the House of Representatives. Monroe and Madison were not only close friends, they shared close political and personal ties to the same political mentor—Thomas Jefferson. Monroe expressed his reluctance to Henry, but Henry “pressed me to come forward in this government on its commencement . . . and that I might not lose an opportunity of . . . forwarding an amendment of its defects . . . I yielded.”
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The result of the Monroe-Madison matchup was a less than vigorous campaign, with Monroe refusing to attack Madison personally and even traveling with Madison on the campaign trail, sharing the same room at inns and private homes—and echoing his pledges to champion a bill of rights.

On February 2, 1789, Madison easily defeated Monroe and joined nine other Virginians—six other Federalists and three Antifederalists—as the largest delegation in the House. Irate Federalists called Madison a turncoat for pledging to work for passage of a bill of rights, and even some moderates thought him disingenuous. But Jefferson and Monroe called Madison's shift a courageous political gesture aimed at reconciling legitimate differences between Americans. By supporting the most important Antifederalist demands for a bill of rights, Madison extended a hand of compromise that separated moderates from Patrick Henry's radicals, who sought to emasculate
the new national government. Madison was not unmindful that a strong central authority might infringe on individual liberties, but the years of the Continental Congress and Confederation Congress had persuaded him—as it had once persuaded Henry—of the need for a stronger national government to organize a collective military response by the states to attacks by foreign enemies.