Note 311 — Chapter I · (continued 3)

Henry was a character of which, as time goes on, there is an appreciating estimate. His grandson, William Wirt Henry, is preparing an extended memoir, having already sketched his career in the Hist. Mag., xii. 90, 368, xxii. 272, 346; Penna. Mag. of Hist., p. 78. Professor Moses Coit Tyler has embodied new material in his Patrick Henry of the "American Statesmen Series." Cf. Frothingham's Rise, etc., 179; Mahon, v. 89; and references in Poole's Index. For contemporary judgments, see John Adams's Works, i. 208, x. 277; and Jefferson's letter in Hist. Mag., Aug., 1867, and comments in Ibid., Dec., 1867. Alexander Johnston, in his Representative American Orations (vol. i.), selects Henry's speech in the House of Delegates, March 28, 1775, as the leading specimen of Revolutionary oratory. The usual portrait of Patrick Henry is the one by Sully, representing him with his spectacles raised upon his forehead. It was engraved by W. S. Leney in 1817. There is a woodcut in Lossing's Field-Book, ii. 439. His is one of the portraits in Independence Hall. On the class rank of the leading agitators in Virginia, compare Rives's Madison, i. 71; Grigsby on The Virginia Convention of 1776; and John Tyler's Address at Jamestown, May, 1857.