Madison and Jefferson by Nancy Isenberg, Andrew Burstein Read Free Book Online

intellectual weakness. Yet he saw Henry as an ally in the years leading up to the Revolution. “The exact conformity of our political opinions strengthened our friendship,” he wrote. What that friendship consisted in, Jefferson did not say. But he did say that as his reputation built, Henry capitalized on every opportunity: “His powers over a jury were so irresistible that he received great fees for his services, & had the reputation of being insatiable in money.” Jefferson repeatedly damned Henry with faint praise.
    Henry specialized in criminal law, where his obvious passion swayed juries. If we take Jefferson at his word, Henry only preferred jury trials because he sensed that well-educated judges would be able to see through him and expose his limited knowledge of the law. Jefferson dated his break with Henry to 1780, but his extant notes of 1773 (when he observed Henry argue for one side in a marital dispute) already suggest friction: “Henry for the plaintiff avoided, as was his custom, entering the lists of the law … running wild in the field of fact.” Jefferson’s phrasing was colorful but dismissive. A gifted student never celebrated for his public performances, Jefferson disliked Henry’s unorthodox manner and was frustrated by the success of style over substance. In this case Henry bested the opposing attorney—none other than Edmund Pendleton, whom Jefferson lavishly praised for his legal erudition.
    To the vast majority of Virginians, Henry was a champion. Even an old and begrudging Jefferson was to admit that it was Henry “who gave the first impulse to the ball of revolution.” His strength lay in his prophetic power. He sensed what the royal court was up to and made certain that America understood the inevitability of war. He prepared his countrymen for it, risking treason in justifying rebellion. 19
    All recollect Jefferson’s role in the Second Continental Congress, in 1776, but he was also among fourteen notables considered in 1774 for inclusion in the seven-member Virginia delegation to the First Continental Congress. In the balloting, Henry tied for third with George Washington. Jefferson came in a distant ninth. He was, at this point, a leader of the second tier only. Whether he expected something more, or felt the slightest bit hurt by the vote that excluded him from the First Continental Congress, is pure conjecture. 20
    Nor can we know precisely who James Madison was referring to when he wrote to his friend Bradford: “This Colony has appointed seven delegates to represent it on this grand occasion, most of them glowing patriots & men of Learning & penetration. It is however the opinion of some good Judges that one or two might be exchanged for the better.” The unanimous first-place finisher, Peyton Randolph, and the graceful, classically trained Richard Henry Lee (whom Jefferson later described as “frothy”) are unlikely to have struck Madison as lesser lights; nor Pendleton, of course. Richard Bland was advanced in years, and suggestions in Madison’s later correspondence point to him as one he considered expendable. The relatively conservative Benjamin Harrison, a man of known veracity noted more for his wide girth and his dark humor than for his scholarly credentials, may have been the other.
    Then there was George Washington, who possessed an intellect no better than average. He did not protest the Tea Act at the time it passed Parliament, and he focused his frustration with London on an issue where he stood to lose personally: the military’s refusal to award five thousand acres to American officers of the French and Indian War. (He had already paid another Virginia officer for his share and anticipated receiving ten thousand acres.) Beyond this evidence of self-interested behavior, Washington expressed his open concern over Britain’s divide-and-conquer approach, its punishing Massachusetts first while hoping to minimize dissent in other, unaffected colonies. It is