No more than nine days as a freshman representative, and references to treason had now been made against him. Treason, for arguing that Virginia should assert its rights! Patrick didn’t see his words in this way at all.
“How’s it treason for a free man to act on his rights, or protest in earnest the withholding of those rights?” He asked the question with a civil tongue, out of respect for his accuser’s age and experience. “The vote, as you saw, was by a fair and honest majority.”
“I won’t fall into word games with a junior representative,” John Robinson said. “The fact that you deliberately waited until this body was weakened by the absence of its most senior members—.”
“Mr. Robinson.” Mr. Lee—less a junior to Robinson then the newbie Patrick Henry—now spoke up. “This body is already weakened by the chains it accepts from the crown. If we don’t resist the cuffs, they’ll continue to grow in size and burden until we can neither move purposefully nor rest comfortably.”
It was true that Lee and Henry had waited until the more conservative representatives were gone from the chamber before they conspired to make their proclamation. Doing it any other way would’ve resulted in being silenced before they could speak. With the conservatives gone, it was possible to get something done. The conservatives, true to their name, were always the blockade—always acting against improvement and impeding progress.
John Robinson sensed an air of threat from the two younger men standing so near. Although he didn’t fear actual physical injury, he saw no reason to invite it. “I’m not suggesting that the gentleman from Louisa County has committed, or even argued for treason. It’s his choice of historical references used to threaten a sitting monarch that have offended me, and this body of His Majesty the King’s government.”
“Do you question the historical significance of Brutus standing against Caesar?” Patrick, now forgetting any sense of decorum to office, stood very, very close to Robinson as he spoke. “Or is there some lie to the result of Cromwell’s signature on the warrant for Charles the First—or to it’s cause in the first place?”
This very action itself, of physically intimidating him in public, was grounds for a challenge of honor. Robinson was considering the need to demand satisfaction through duel. For the moment, he decided to ignore the slight.
Robinson was confident that when the others returned to the session at Williamsburg, another vote, better represented by all the members being present, would nullify today’s. Whether or not Patrick Henry would still be free, and able to cast his vote, was of no concern to Speaker Robinson. He would see to it that these so called, “Stamp Act,” resolutions would be failed before any word of it reached even a clerk’s desk at the office of Lord Botetourt, Governor of the Colony of Virginia.
Although Patrick had succeeded, through arduous debate and persuasion, in getting his proposal passed by a majority—twenty votes to nineteen—opponents that day had called it the most treasonous political action in colony history; some going so far as to imply that it was an act of revolt. While he didn’t agree with their assertion, before asking them to vote, Patrick did offer his apologies to the House and assured them that he remained loyal to the king. These assurances not withstanding, Patrick felt it would invite less trouble for him to stay away from the city, to allow tempers to cool overnight. Treason was punished by incarceration and death; both conditions would prevent him from seeing that his Colony of Virginia would not be taxed illegally, nor interfered with indiscriminately. At the close of the day’s business, Patrick didn’t remain in the town proper.
