Patrick Henry (9 page)

Henry's fifth resolution, which appears to have passed the House of Burgesses by the narrowest of margins, was more provocative. It contended that “the General Assembly of this colony have the only and sole exclusive right and power to lay taxes and impositions upon the inhabitants of this colony and that every attempt to vest such power in any other person or persons whatsoever other than the General Assembly aforesaid has a manifest tendency to destroy British as well as American freedom.” This assertion of the House's supremacy in tax law was so bold that it generated second thoughts among the delegates, and the legislature subsequently rescinded it.

All of Henry's resolutions faced opposition from the established leaders of the House, including Speaker John Robinson, Richard
Bland, and George Wythe, who apparently felt that the first four resolutions were unnecessary because they restated arguments made in the petitions of 1764; the fifth resolution they may have viewed as too inflammatory. They also resented Henry's brash leadership. As the governor of Virginia wrote, Henry had led the “young hot and giddy members” to overwhelm the old-time gentry, at least for the moment.
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The senior leaders of the House managed to repeal the fifth resolution the day after it passed, when Henry had apparently left Williamsburg to return home. The freshman legislator may have assumed, naively, that the debate was settled. The House also considered two other resolutions by Henry and other radicals, but they were not adopted, probably because even the fifth had proven so difficult to pass. But all the resolutions, including the sixth and seventh, ended up reported in regional newspapers, which tallied differing numbers of resolutions introduced by the young delegate: five, six, or even seven.

The sixth and seventh resolutions Henry put before the House, as reported in the
Maryland Gazette
, were nothing short of revolutionary. The sixth asserted that the colonists were “not bound to yield obedience to any law or ordinance whatsoever, designed to impose any taxation upon them, other than the laws or ordinances of the General Assembly.” The seventh declared in capital letters that anyone who promoted the right of Parliament to tax the colonists should be “deemed, AN ENEMY TO THIS HIS MAJESTY'S COLONY.” The resolutions called for open resistance against the Stamp Act, and called the act's defenders traitors.
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Henry's resolutions electrified the colonies, especially when newspapers printed all seven of them. Most of the other colonies crafted resolutions similar to those that Virginia adopted or considered. In Massachusetts, the Virginia resolutions shamed the colony's radical patriots into assuming a more assertive stance. A Boston editorial
praised the Virginians and denounced Massachusetts's pro-British conservatives: “The people of Virginia have spoke very sensibly, and the frozen politicians of a more northern government say they have spoke treason.... These dirty sycophants, these ministerial hacks, would fain have us believe that his sacred Majesty, ever loved by his American subjects, would be displeased to hear their murmurs at the sight of chains!” Many Americans like this radical Boston editorialist blamed the crisis on bureaucrats within the British government, not the king. They believed that colonial protests would elicit sympathy from George III, who was still widely revered among Americans in 1765.
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The organized outcry against the Stamp Act ultimately led delegates from nine of the thirteen colonies, inspired by hope of relief from the king, to meet in New York City in October 1765, in what historians call the Stamp Act Congress. Henry did not attend. Indeed, Virginia did not send delegates at all, because the governor refused to convene the House of Burgesses to elect representatives to the Congress. Even as protests arose in colonies from Massachusetts to the Carolinas, the thirteen resolutions the Stamp Act Congress issued took a relatively moderate tone, affirming the colonies' allegiance to King George and their “due subordination” to Parliament. At the same time, they asserted that the colonists had the same rights as the people of Britain, saying that no one should impose taxes on them but their own representatives, and called for the repeal of the Stamp Act.
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The Stamp Act Congress exhibited nearly unprecedented unity among a majority of the colonies. But the Congress also reflected a broad, restrained consensus, not Henry's revolutionary zeal. And the Stamp Act Congress did not force the repeal of the Stamp Act. The Americans' most effective resistance to the act came through violence and rioting in the cities, instigated by new patriot organizations called the “Sons of Liberty,” a name derived from Isaac
Barré's speech in Parliament. In August, a mob in Boston burned in effigy the newly appointed stamp agent, Andrew Oliver, and destroyed his home. Because the act was not scheduled to take effect until November 1, Oliver had not even begun his duties yet. Oliver was no fool; he promptly informed London that he would not collect the taxes.
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Virginia's experience with the collection of the stamp tax was similar to that of Massachusetts. Colonel George Mercer, the stamp agent, was a native Virginian with deep connections to George Washington; he had been an aide-de-camp to Washington during the Seven Years' War and was wounded at the Battle of Fort Necessity in 1754. Mercer also served in the House of Burgesses in the early 1760s, but he resigned to work as an agent of the Ohio Company in London, where he was living when the Stamp Act was passed.
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Apparently perceiving the post of stamp collector as a path to political advancement, Mercer accepted the job and returned to Virginia on October 30, just before the act was to take effect. His arrival coincided with a meeting of the General Court, the colony's high court, so Williamsburg was filled with merchants and lawyers. Governor Francis Fauquier, a native Englishman who strongly supported the Stamp Act, would report later that a crowd assembled when word came of Mercer's arrival. Fauquier wrote that he would have called the group a “mob, did I not know that it was chiefly if not altogether composed of gentlemen of property in the colony.” The throng met Mercer in front of the capitol and demanded that he resign instantly as stamp agent. He tried to put them off and went to a local coffeehouse, where he met the governor and Speaker John Robinson. The crowd followed, surging at the steps of the coffeehouse, yelling, “Let us rush in!” Governor Fauquier found himself in the unnerving position of having to stand at the “top of the steps, knowing the advantage our situation gave us to repel those who should attempt to mount them.” A few bold souls threatened to drag
down the governor, but Fauquier's grave, aristocratic presence seemed to calm most of the crowd. Mercer promised that he would answer demands for his resignation the next day, and the governor personally led him through the muttering host to his house. “I believe I saved him from being insulted at least,” Fauquier wrote.
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The governor urged Mercer not to resign unless he feared for his life. But the prospective stamp agent's hostile reception in Williamsburg had accomplished its purpose; Mercer quit the next day. As for the governor, he despaired of the colonies' future and believed that “disorder, confusion and misery are before us, unless this poor unhappy deluded people in the colonies in general, should change their plan.” But the colonists did not change their plan. From New Hampshire to Georgia, stamp agents were systematically intimidated; a number resigned and fled the colonies. By the end of the year, the Stamp Act had become unenforceable.
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When news of the unrest in America reached England, the Stamp Act's architect, George Grenville, had already been removed from the prime ministership because of personal animosity between him and the king. Into his place came Charles Watson-Wentworth, the Marquis of Rockingham. The Marquis thought the Stamp Act was a foolish scheme—harmful to both the colonists and the British economy—and he banded with British merchants to work for its repeal. The Stamp Act had hurt many merchants with transatlantic business, particularly when the colonists implemented voluntary nonimportation agreements to get around the tax. British businessmen sent petitions to Parliament calling for the Stamp Act to be repealed.
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In London, Benjamin Franklin was summoned to testify before Parliament against the Stamp Act. Franklin had initially advised colonial compliance with the tax, a stance that almost ruined his reputation in America. By early 1766 he had reversed course and begun to work against the tax. His testimony, published in England and America,
succinctly articulated the enormous change in colonial attitudes brought about by the controversy. Franklin asserted that the Stamp Act had wrecked decades of goodwill toward England in America:

Americans cheered Franklin's denunciation of the act. He became recognized as America's key defender in England, and besides representing Pennsylvania, he soon also became the agent for Georgia, New Jersey, and Massachusetts.
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Faced with an act unenforceable in the colonies, and strong pressure from business interests and a new administration at home, Parliament reluctantly repealed the Stamp Act in February 1766. But they sought to establish their legal authority by passing the Declaratory Act, which asserted that the king and Parliament had the right to “make laws and statutes of sufficient force and validity to bind the colonies and people
of America, subjects of the crown of Great Britain, in all cases whatsoever.” Although this statement did not explicitly refer to taxes, the debate in Parliament suggested that the body meant to claim its right to tax the colonies again in the future.
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Colonists rejoiced at news of the repeal; they saw it as a victory not only for their economic welfare but for liberty as well. Americans were not sure, however, how to interpret the Declaratory Act's assertion of authority “in all cases whatsoever.” Some argued that their claim referred not to taxation, but only to legitimate parliamentary actions, such as regulating trade. Some felt that the Declaratory Act evinced England's patronizing attitude toward the colonies, as did warnings from British merchants that the colonists should not gloat over the repeal. Patrick Henry's fellow Virginian George Mason parodied the tone of the British, as if they were parents addressing a child: “we have, with infinite difficulty and fatigue got you excused this one time; pray be a good boy for the future, do what your papa and mama bid you, and hasten to return them your most grateful acknowledgements for condescending to let you keep what is your own; and then all your acquaintance will love you, and praise you, and give you pretty things.”
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The repeal pleased the colonists, but the Declaratory Act worried them. Nothing had been solved with regard to Parliament's right to tax the colonists. That issue would in fact never be solved peacefully.

 

PATRICK HENRY'S ROLE IN THE later stages of the revolt against the Stamp Act is largely unknown. He did not want to make politics a full-time career, so he often labored at home at times we might have expected the historical record to show him as being in Williamsburg. Indeed, we do not know whether Henry was in the crowd that confronted Colonel Mercer and Governor Fauquier in October 1765. He probably was not there, because his presence certainly would have warranted mention.

In the short time he had been in the House of Burgesses, Henry's boldness had won him celebrity in Virginia and notoriety in the broader Anglo-American world. The anonymous French traveler who had witnessed his speech in May passed through Louisa County the following month and found the place abuzz with talk of the “noble patriot Mr. Henery.” Some of his constituents declared that “if the least injury was offered to [Henry] they'd stand by him to the last drop of blood.” Henry's bold stance against the Stamp Act had begun to spur a revolutionary way of thinking among ordinary Virginians. Yet even as he was becoming an avatar of the emerging movement for American liberty, Henry remained preoccupied in maintaining his livelihood as lawyer and planter. His concern for his own financial welfare partly accounts for his lifetime of comings and goings from the political stage.
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Henry might have won the admiration of the voters in Louisa and Hanover Counties and liberty-minded Americans in all thirteen colonies, but the Anglican authorities in Virginia lamented his leadership in denouncing the Stamp Act, which they connected to his attack on the clergy in the Parsons' Cause. Anglican Commissary William Robinson wrote to London in August 1765 to explain that Henry had become a hero in the backcountry because of his disdain for royal and clerical authority. Since his speech in the House that May, Robinson wrote, Henry had “gone quietly into the upper parts of the country to recommend himself to his constituents by spreading treason.” Robinson feared that Virginians like Henry intended to create “an arbitrary aristocratical power of [Virginia's] own with the name of liberty.” Based on the evidence of letters like Robinson's, even authorities in England had begun to hear of the young lawyer's agitation against parliamentary power.
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