Patrick Henry: Resolutions in Opposition to the Stamp Act

About the Author

Patrick Henry was one of the most admired leaders of the American Revolution, considered by contemporaries as an indispensible instigator of revolution. He is remembered best for his passionate speeches calling his countrymen to defense of liberty against what he saw as British oppression. Both contemporary and modern observers have noted that Henry's style tended to mimic that of the “New Light” evangelical ministers who were making progress against Virginia's established Anglican Church in the mid-eighteenth century. Unfortunately, Henry does not enjoy the reputation that he probably deserves as a Founding Father for two reasons. First, since Henry's greatest influence was in his dramatic oratory and his speeches were at best imperfectly recorded—and by all accounts even a full transcript could not do justice to his eloquence—the warp and woof of his contribution began to dissipate with his words. Second, and perhaps even more important, when the Philadelphia Convention drafted the Constitution in 1787 to address growing fiscal and administrative problems under the Articles of Confederation, Henry opposed the Constitution in its excessive concentration of power (declaring, so it is said, that he refused a seat in the Convention because “I smelt a rat”). He never served in a national office under the Constitution, although he was offered a position in George Washington's cabinet and on the Supreme Court. With the new nation's success, Henry's opposition seemed anachronistic. Yet, even in this role, his contribution was significant, with the opposition of Henry and others to the new Constitution playing a key part in encouraging adoption of the Bill of Rights in 1791.

Henry was born on May 29, 1736, the second son of John Henry, a member of the lesser gentry. John Henry's success never matched his ambition, and Patrick grew up without a formal education and with a persistent aspiration to maintain himself in the manner of Virginia's landed gentry but also a deep sympathy for the common man. Henry initially failed as a merchant and farmer, spending some time keeping tavern with his father-in-law before he read the law and recognized his oratorical genius. In later life, as a successful planter, Henry was a slave owner, but as his 1773 letter to Robert Pleasants makes clear, he recognized the moral reprehensibility of the practice and its inconsistency with the professed principles of the Revolution. Still, like many of his fellow gentry, Henry only bewailed his own failure to address slavery.

As an unknown lawyer, Henry came to fame in 1763 in his statement to the jury in the Parson's Cause by arguing against an Anglican minister seeking compensation for back pay under Virginia's system of state-supported religion. Using the philosopher John Locke's “social compact” theory, Henry urged that a king who acted against his people's interest by refusing consent to a law that limited clergy salaries in times of economic distress was a “Tyrant”—not for the last time to cries of “treason” from the assembled audience—and ministers who demanded excessive pay were “rapacious harpies.” Henry persuaded the jury to award one penny in damages. This populist success launched Henry's political career. In 1765, in his first term in office, Henry led the effort to introduce resolutions in the Virginia House of Burgesses condemning the Stamp Act. The Stamp Act, passed by the British Parliament, required that any formally written or printed document appear on stamped paper issued by English agents. While only five of the seven resolutions Henry had prepared were adopted (the most vehement not being considered) and the next day, after Henry departed, the House withdrew the fifth resolution as excessive, all or most of the resolutions were published throughout the colonies, propelling Henry to even greater prominence.

Henry joined Virginia's delegation to the First Continental Congress in 1774 and there unsuccessfully urged military preparedness. Back in Virginia, he renewed that theme in early 1775 with his famous “give me liberty or give me death” speech. Henry played a key role in formation of the Commonwealth of Virginia and, as Virginia's first governor, from 1776 to 1779, was forced to grapple with the difficulty of mobilizing America's most populous state for a strenuous war effort. After the war, when the new Constitution was proposed to remedy defects in the Articles of Confederation, Henry opposed it as an excessive consolidation of power and urged at least that amendments be adopted to protect individual freedoms. Henry was called out of retirement in 1799 by George Washington to counter threats to the union posed by the opposition of radical Republicans—including Thomas Jefferson and James Madison—to Federalist policies, particularly the Alien and Sedition Acts, enacted during the so-called Quasi-War with France precipitated by French attacks on U.S. shipping, at a time of international crisis in a climate of fear of domestic subversion. The acts gave the president the authority to deport “dangerous” aliens and imposed criminal penalties for scandalous or false writings against the government. Henry died before he could again take his seat in the Assembly. After his death, a note was found with Henry's papers giving his last admonition to the American people: “Whether this [American independence] will prove a blessing or a curse, will depend upon the use our people make of the blessings which a gracious God hath bestowed on us.… Righteousness alone can exalt them as a nation. Reader! whoever thou art, remember this; and in thy sphere practise virtue thyself, and encourage it in others” (Henry, 1891, vol. 2, p. 632).