Bright or dark? In a speech entitled "The Enigma of Patrick Henry" given at Georgia's Mercer University in 1958, University of Virginia philosopher, historian, and lecturer Bernard Mayo spoke about the very different views that scholarly historians and the lay public have of Patrick Henry.

Much of what is popularly known about Patrick Henry is "bright". He is remembered as a revolutionary war hero who is most famous for his fierce patriotism and for giving fiery speeches. School children learn that he said, "Give me liberty, or give me death." College students learn of Henry's "If this be treason, make the most of it!" That he was an able orator is not doubted. Fellow Virginian Thomas Jefferson, who was sometimes Henry's admirer and sometimes Henry's detractor, once referred to Henry's oratory as "torrents of sublime eloquence" (Wirt p. 60).

The "bright" part of Henry's reputation, Mayo said, is largely due to the work of one man - William Wirt - who wrote a biography of Henry in 1817. The task of this writing employed Wirt from 1805 to 1817, and the end product, "Sketches of the Life and Character of Patrick Henry," contained the first publication of Henry's two famous speeches.

In reading, one finds Wirt's work on Henry "bright" indeed. According to Mayo, Wirt so desired that the book serve as a splendid example for the young men of Virginia (to whom the book is dedicated) that Wirt, troubled by "some ugly traits in Henry's character," decided that he would hold up "the brighter side of [Henry's] character, only, to imitation" (Mayo 6).

Wirt, used glowing, flowery language to describe his subject. Henry, unlike his later contemporaries Jefferson and Washington, was born into near poverty. About Henry's early life, Wirt asserted that Henry "with the assistance of one or two slaves... had to delve the earth, with his own hands, for subsistence" (Wirt 11).

Later in life, after Henry was elected to the Virginia House of Burgesses and his popularity grew, he was respected by his fellow house members. In Wirt's verbiage, the lower ranks "regarded him as a sturdy and wide spreading oak, beneath whose cool and refreshing shade they might take refuge from those beams of aristocracy, that had played upon them so long, with rather an unpleasant heat" (Wirt 56).

The brightness was at its height on March 23, 1775 at an old church in Richmond, Virginia. It was there, as Wirt reconstructs, that Henry stood and gave his "war inevitable" speech that produced the closing lines that are so remembered today.

It is also here that one encounters the "dark." As Mayo explains: "Scholars, understandably, are troubled by the way Wirt brought into print Henry's classic Liberty or Death speech, of which like his other Revolutionary orations there is no contemporary text" (Mayo 4).

It is not known if minutes were taken at this convention or if Henry spoke from prepared notes. How, then, did Wirt reconstruct the content and style of the speeches attributed to Henry?

One way he did so was by corresponding with people who remembered Henry and who were there during these events. Thomas Jefferson was one such correspondent, and many of the letters between Jefferson and Wirt have been preserved. About Henry, Jefferson said that he "through a long and active life had been the idol of his country beyond any man who ever lived" (Mayo 13). Another correspondent was a Judge Winston, who had married Henry's widow. Wirt also obtained information about Henry from newspapers (from 1763 on) and court documents.

In fact, Thomas Jefferson himself contributed to the "dark". According to Mayo, in 1781, "Henry had supported an enquiry into Jefferson's conduct as war governor during the British invasion of Virginia; and Jefferson, in anguish at being the target of intense criticism bitterly turned on his political tutor..."(Mayo 10).

Jefferson's view of Henry became even darker in 1799. It was in 1799 that Washington, fearful of an undeclared war with France, and fearful that the Virginia Resolutions that denied the constitutionality of the Alien and Sedition Acts might lead to revolt and anarchy, called Henry out of retirement to run for the Virginia assembly in opposition to the Madison-Jefferson forces. Henry was willing, but his health was poor. He gave what was to be his last speech on the steps of the courthouse in Richmond. Mary Harland, in her autobiography, described the scene as told to her:

    From the porch of this, Patrick Henry delivered his last
    speech to his adoring constituents. He was tottering
    upon the verge of the grave, into which he sank gently
    a few weeks later. A crisis of national and state
    importance had called him from his home at Red Hill,
    a dozen miles away. Keyed up by a sense of the imminence
    of the peril to the country he had saved, his magnificent
    will-power responded to the call; the dying fire leaped
    high. He had never reasoned more cogently, never
    pleaded with more power than on that day. But as the
    last word fell from his lips, he sank fainting into the
    arms of his attendants.  (Harland 316)

After this, Jefferson wrote in 1799 that Henry was "avaricious and rotten hearted. His two passions were love of money and of fame" (Mayo 10). After receiving a preview of Wirt's book in 1816, Jefferson had softened. He wrote and compared Henry with Demosthenes, the Greek orator and statesman who was said to practice his oratory at the seashore.

Another seemingly dark moment had occurred in 1788, when Henry opposed ratification of the new constitution, even to the point of refusing to attend the constitutional convention. He was concerned about the lack of a Bill of Rights, and his speeches against ratification dominated the Virginia state convention. "On eighteen of the Virginia Convention's twenty-three days, the Son of Thunder battled Madison's formidable nationalists. His speeches... amounted to one-fourth of all those recorded" (Mayo 19).

By stubbornly and loudly demanding amendments that protected the basic liberties of the citizens of the young nation Henry set the stage for the amendments that comprised the Bill of Rights in 1789. Yet though he had refused to attend the constitutional convention, after it was done he remained a supporter of the republic. He told Washington, "I should be unworthy the character of a republican or an honest man if I withheld from the government my best and most zealous efforts because in its adoption I opposed it in its unamended form" (Mayo 22). Ironically, Madison's model for the first eight amendments was Virginia's Bill of Rights (Tindall 218).

Bright or dark? Have the lay public in general, and William Wirt in particular, painted Patrick Henry too brightly?

Probably so. Even today, it is surprising to discover that two of the most famous speeches in United States history were not recorded at the time of their demonstration. Instead, they were reconstructed some sixty years later by an avid biographer that chose to only uphold "the brighter side of [Henry's] character" (Mayo 6).

Harland, Marion.  Marion Harland's Autobiography: The Story of a Long Life. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1910. Online: July 26, 1998.

Jefferson, Thomas.   A Detailed Guide to The Jefferson Papers of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.  Online: November 1999.

Mayo, Bernard.  Myths and Men: Patrick Henry, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson. Athens:  The University of Georgia Press, 1959.

Tindall, George and Shi, David.  America: A Narrative History. New York:  W.W. Norton & Company, 1997.

Wirt, William.  Sketches of the Life and Character of Patrick Henry.  Philadelphia: James Webster, 1817. Online: July 26, 1998.