Read Online Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power by Jon Meacham - Free Book Online Page A

emotional rhetoric, imperial tension, generational division, and legislative sleight of hand. There were principles at stake and ideas to be refined and applied to the real world—and there were raw political and human calculations. It was a perfect laboratory for the struggles that concerned Jefferson for the rest of his life.
    A significant number of the members of the Virginia House of Burgesses wanted to take a stand against Parliament’s assertion of power. But how far should the Americans push the Whig interpretation of the rights of the colonies and of individuals? At this point, in 1765, the notion of a full clash of arms with Great Britain was remote, even to men like Patrick Henry, whom Jefferson watched speak in the House on Thursday, May 30, 1765.
    I t was already late in the House of Burgesses’ spring session. Many members had left Williamsburg for home. Jefferson, “yet a student,” as he recalled, was there to watch the action. A number of anti–Stamp Act resolutions—seven in all—were in play. On the floor, Patrick Henry, the self-taught lawyer and charmer whom Jefferson had first met at Nathan Dandridge’s house, was pressing for the boldest of the measures.
    Jefferson stood at the door of the House, listening to Henry in wonder. With eloquence Jefferson believed “great indeed,” Henry said Tarquin and Caesar had had their Brutus, Charles his Cromwell, and Henry, according to the single contemporaneous account of the debate, “did not doubt but some good American would stand up in favor of his country.” Jefferson was swept away. “He appeared to me to speak as Homer wrote,” Jefferson said of Henry.
    A French traveler who was watching with Jefferson recorded that the Speaker of the House, hearing Henry invoke Brutus and Cromwell, said that Henry had “spoke treason.”
    Henry backed down. According to the French observer, Henry said “he was ready to ask pardon, and he would show his loyalty to His Majesty King George III at the expense of the last drop of his blood, but what he had said must be attributed to the interest of his country’s dying liberty which he had at heart.”
    With Henry’s rhetorical flight ending, a divided House took up the resolutions. The struggle on the floor, Jefferson said, was “most bloody.” Records of the deliberations are scant, but the formulation at issue seems to have been this, which was apparently framed as the “Fifth Resolution” put forward by Henry:
    Resolved Therefore that the General Assembly of this colony have the only and sole exclusive right and power to lay taxes and impositions upon the inhabitants of this colony and that every attempt to vest such power in any other person or persons whatsoever other than the General Assembly aforesaid has a manifest tendency to destroy British as well as AMERICAN FREEDOM .
    Men such as Peyton Randolph wanted to strike a more moderate tone for the moment, but the stronger language passed by the narrowest of margins, 20–19. “By God, I would have given 500 guineas for a single vote,” Randolph said afterward. One more vote against the resolution would have tied the count, and the Speaker, John Robinson, would have voted no, defeating it.
    Instead, the radicals had won. Going on record against London was, itself, not as disturbing to the more moderate members as was the sense that they had lost control. Patrick Henry had taken on the establishment and succeeded.
    As night fell in Williamsburg, a triumphant Henry left the capital. He had won. Or so he thought.
    T he next morning—it was now Friday, May 31, 1765—Jefferson could not wait to return to the House. Intrigued by the cut and thrust, he arrived at the chamber early. Once there he discovered another Randolph cousin, Peter Randolph, already at work. Randolph was examining the records of the House to find a precedent for what the leadership hoped to