Free American Sphinx by Joseph J. Ellis Page A

independence and whose combination of legal learning and sheer oratorical energy had overwhelmed more moderate delegates in a powerful style that seemed part bulldog and part volcano. 24
    Meanwhile the elevated status of the Virginia delegation derived primarily from its reputation for oratorical brilliance. Edmund Pendleton was the silver-haired and silver-tongued master of the elegant style. Jefferson later described him as the “ablest man in debate I have ever met with.” Pendleton’s specialty was the cool and low-key peroration that hypnotized the audience, while his arguments waged a silent guerrilla war against its better judgment, until the matter at issue came around to his way of thinking almost inadvertently, like a natural aristocrat winning a race without ever appearing to exert himself. 25
    Richard Henry Lee was more inflammable and ostentatious. If Pendleton’s technique suggested a peaceful occupation, Lee was a proponent of the all-out invasion. Opponents winced whenever he rose to speak, knowing as they did that their arguments were about to be carried off to oblivion in a whirlwind of words. Lee’s theatricality was somewhat contrived; he liked to wrap his hand in a silk handkerchief as he spoke, explaining that he wished to shield onlookers from the unsightly appearance of his mangled hand, missing several fingers because of a hunting accident. Or was it a duel? Lee was to Pendleton as a bomb was to a pistol. But both men were famous on their feet. 26
    The undisputed oratorical champion of Virginia of course was Patrick Henry, whose presence in the Virginia delegation generated more public attention than anyone else except George Washington. Henry’s speech against the Stamp Act had been widely publicized throughout the colonies, so he already carried a national reputation for incandescence. As Edmund Randolph put it, “for grand impressions in the defense of liberty, the Western world has not yet been able to exhibit a rival.” If Pendleton was the suave aristocrat and Lee the mannered dramatist, Henry was the evangelical preacher, who came at an audience in waves of emotional inspiration, each separated by exaggerated pauses that seemed to most listeners like the silence preceding divine judgment.
    All of Jefferson’s surviving observations on Henry date from a later time, when their friendship had turned sour (Jefferson claimed that Henry was “avaritious & rotten hearted” and always spoke “without logic, without arrangement . . .”). But even Jefferson’s criticisms betrayed a certain admiration for Henry’s capacity to sway a crowd by emotional appeals unencumbered with any learning or evidence. In 1784 he warned James Madison that Henry’s opposition to constitutional reforms in Virginia must not be taken lightly since one of his spellbinders could undo weeks of careful work behind the scenes. There was no way to account for his mysterious influence over others or to deal with him in full flight. “What we have to do,” lamented Jefferson to Madison, “is devoutly pray for his death.” In the Continental Congress, of course, Henry’s oratorical brilliance was still a priceless asset rather than a formidable liability. Like Jefferson, Henry was a product of Virginia’s western frontier who had won acceptance from the Tidewater elite, but unlike Jefferson, he always retained the primal quality of a natural force, like the Natural Bridge that Jefferson so admired, one of those spontaneous creations of the gods spawned in the western mountains. 27
    Compared with Henry, Jefferson epitomized the diametrically different sensibility of the refined and disciplined scholar. As far as we know, he never rose to deliver a single speech in the Continental Congress. Even within the more intimate atmosphere of committees, he preferred to let others do the talking. John Adams recalled, with a mingled sense of admiration and astonishment, that “during the whole Time I sat with him in