Patrick Henry Read Free Page A

religions, but on the gospel of Jesus Christ!” David Barton of the WallBuilders organization once used this quote regularly in writings and speeches, but in 2000 he issued a statement in which he described this and a number of other Founders’ quotes as “unconfirmed.” Barton’s retraction has hardly slowed the use of the quotation; it still appears all over the Internet and in books such as David Limbaugh’s Persecution: How Liberals Are Waging War Against Christianity . 10
    We do not need such apocryphal quotes to establish that Henry’s political thought was based on Christian principles. If anything, Henry’s faith seems to have become even stronger and more heartfelt over time. In his will, drafted in 1798, he wrote of his bequests that “this is all the inheritance I can give to my dear family. The religion of Christ can give them one which will make them rich
indeed.” But we should also remember that Henry was very much a man of his time, and he had his shortcomings. He struggled with issues common to those who function as private individuals and public figures, such as the tension between political service and personal gain, and the typical ethical conundrums of lawyers who defend clients who are almost certainly guilty. Like many other Christians of his time, Henry worked to reconcile his religious principles with owning slaves. In the same will in which he prayed for his family’s eternal inheritance, Henry did not manumit his slaves; instead, he declared that his slaves should be divided equally among his remaining family. In the inventory of Henry’s estate, taken a year later, we see his sixty-seven slaves: men, women, and children with names like Tom, Pegg, and Anny. 11
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    ASSESSING WHAT THE FOUNDERS would think about contemporary issues is always a difficult, if not foolhardy, enterprise. Academic historians normally refuse to engage in such speculation. But it is no great leap to imagine that Patrick Henry would fundamentally object to nearly every feature of today’s titanic national government. This statement is not to place Henry on either side of today’s political spectrum: he would disapprove equally of the massive, top-down social programs championed by the Left, the globetrotting military power championed by the Right, and the bailouts of financial companies championed by a majority of national politicians in 2008. Unlike many of his Christian conservative admirers today, he would not approve of America’s recent ventures associated with the War on Terrorism, both in Iraq and in Afghanistan, a conflict that has become America’s longest war. Henry would probably find that today’s America has almost nothing in common with the republic of liberty he envisioned in 1776. On one hand, the national government has seemingly burst all bounds of power on the domestic and international stages, and on the other, the notion of a virtuous
republic has been almost entirely abandoned in favor of what people of Henry’s age would have called “license.” To him, consolidated political power and ethical license historically triggered the loss of true liberty and the rise of moral and political tyranny.
    If Henry were to travel through time to ascend the rostrum in the Virginia House of Delegates, or to address Philadelphia’s Independence Hall, or to let his voice resound again into the rafters of St. John’s Church, where he demanded liberty or death, he would no doubt exhort us to reconsider the value of public morality. He would caution us not just about the usual hot-button social and cultural issues, but also regarding matters such as greed and financial deception, issues that lay at the heart of America’s financial meltdown that began in 2008. True freedom, he might warn us, lies not in doing whatever we want. Freedom is doing what we should do, for the sake of community and the republic.
    Of course, Henry was not