Jon Kukla's "Patrick Henry: Champion of Liberty" (Simon & Schuster, 2017; image courtesy the publisher)
Do we really need another biography of Patrick Henry?
Historian Jon Kukla asked himself that question, too. But as often happens when writing one book, it turns into another. And his compelling “Patrick Henry: Champion of Liberty” is already going into its second printing, with its official release just a few days away.
From 5:30 to 7 p.m., Thursday, July 6, at the Library of Virginia, Kukla gives a book talk and signing. On June 29, 1776 (the same day I spoke with the author this year), the Virginia Revolutionary Convention elected Henry the first governor of the Commonwealth. He held the position five times, and declined a sixth.
“Patrick Henry: Champion of Liberty” came about during Kukla’s research for what he thought might become a book he called “Mr. Henry’s Revolution.” The several chapters for that book that Kukla submitted in 2007 to Robert Bender, Simon & Schuster’s vice president and executive editor, at Bender's urging grew into a full-blown biography.
“And here’s the funny part,” Kukla says. “Ten years ago I had basically thought there was no reason in hell to do a biography of Henry. It had all been said.”
Then, the internet offered catalogues of manuscript collections either not previously detailed or known to exist. Then there is the wonderful case of “extra-illustrated editions.”
During the latter 19th century, proud possessors of favorite books would go to some expense to have them unbound and additional pages inserted, with illustrations or special matter. “Kind of like a scrapbook of thoughts pertaining to the subject,” Kukla explains. Think of it as proto-hyperlinks. And in some of these, Kukla turned up Henry letters not referenced before. Kukla wrote in 2016 about his exploration of these surprise troves for the Library of Virginia’s Broadside magazine.
Kukla, still sounding surprised and enthusiastic, says, “I kept finding new stuff. A letter turned up — Henry’s handwriting is sufficiently distinctive — and some of these things are so obscure who’d want to forget them, anyway?” One related to gold mining in Botetourt County, but, more important, Henry’s correspondence with Quaker abolitionist Robert Pleasants continued longer than was previously thought, into the 1790s. “One of the threads of this book is tracking Henry’s involvement with and attitudes on slavery from his Hanover youth through the 1790s and after the Haitian revolution.”
This means going from accepting slavery as a matter of natural course to believing it a moral wrong and yet being unable to advocate for general emancipation as a solution. Henry, however, wasn’t part of the movement to send freed slaves to Africa, like John Marshall and James Monroe. “Henry never thought that was the answer,” Kukla says.
A reductive joke is that Henry served so many terms as governor because his colleagues wanted to keep him out of the legislature. James Madison, so the story goes, masterfully manipulated Henry back into the governor’s role in 1785 to derail Henry's bill to support teachers of the Christian religion. The idea fell into the line of contemporary thinking that moral training served as a way to bolster the state and reminded people under oath in court that their eternal punishment or reward depended on their testimony.
This argument stood somewhat at odds with Henry, who became famous for his 1763 “Parson’s Cause” argument — that the state had no business propping up an established religion. Henry also had a long relationship with religious dissenters, especially Baptists, whose street corner preaching got them tossed in county jails. Henry defended them. Henry’s proposed bill went into wide circulation through the press, as did Thomas Jefferson’s Statute for Religious Freedom that Madison supported. Henry's bill didn't gain traction.
Henry favored tolerance where Jefferson sought the free practice of any or no religion. Kukla explains that public opinion meant a great deal to Henry, and, also, he realized that implementing a self-taxing system to support the teachers “would be a mess. Madison may have tried to maneuver him into the governorship, but, frankly, I think Henry was just as happy to let his bill die.”
Historian Jon Kukla and his latest book, "Patrick Henry: Champion of Liberty" (provided photo)
Henry is remembered as an orator — his “Give me liberty or give me death” speech at St. John’s Episcopal Church is reenacted there (and will be again on July 4, at 10:45 a.m. and 1 p.m.).
Henry didn’t rely on notes, and historians have only recollections of a few ear-witnesses. While not ideal, Kukla says, “I feel that the 18th-century mind had better memory for oratory.”
If you miss Kukla on July 6, here is a list of upcoming appearances.
You can also visit nearby Scotchtown, home to the Henry family from 1771-77. The house and grounds are managed by Preservation Virginia and feature an exhibition detailing Henry's worldwide influence.
