Free Patriots by A. J. Langguth Page B

sounding the alarm in Boston against taxes on sugar and stamps, Patrick Henry in Virginia also had been gliding toward politics. The two years since he had triumphed over the parsons had been the best time of Henry’s life. Thomas Jefferson, who was now midway through his own rigorous law training with George Wythe, preferred to believe that Henry was far too lazy to succeed as a lawyer and that he spent all of his time in the woods hunting deer. But Henry had built up a healthy practice. He was being called—mostly around Hanover—“the Orator of Nature,” and in the fall of 1764 he went to Williamsburg as the lawyer for Colonel Nathaniel Dandridge, his host at the Christmas house party five years before. On Dandridge’s behalf, Henry was challenging the seat of James Littlepage in the House of Burgesses. Littlepage was charged with having used undue influence during the last election,when he had gone about the county knocking on doors and pledging to change the regulations over tobacco warehouses. In Virginia, candidates were expected to behave like gentlemen and refrain from asking for votes or making campaign promises. Littlepage was also accused of buying drinks for a man named Grubbs.
    That last charge smacked of hypocrisy. On election day, Virginians stepped forward one at a time at the polls and named their choices out loud. Grubbs had come reeling over the courthouse green, bawling out his promise to vote for anyone who would give him another dram. Littlepage’s men had reached him first. But, like every other candidate, Dandridge had also provided refreshments that day. A man running for office set out near the polls several barrels of rum and neat whiskey, along with applejack and beer. Any candidate who didn’t offer a few drinks was considered too stingy or lacking in respect for his neighbors to deserve their votes. Several years earlier, a planter named George Washington had been rejected for failing to provide decent drink and a roast pig. Washington learned from that defeat, and the next time he ran he bought a quart and a half of liquor for each of his 361 supporters and won his seat in the Burgesses.
    When members of the Committee on Privileges and Elections saw Henry’s coarse clothes, they treated him with a casualness just short of contempt. As he presented Dandridge’s case, however, their mood changed. They agreed that he put the case brilliantly, but they found Dandridge’s complaint frivolous and vexatious and ordered him to pay all costs.
    The next year, with agitation over the Stamp Act spreading through the colony, Henry decided to run for his own seat in the Burgesses. His impatience made him skip over the usual path of serving first on a county court. When the House member from Louisa County resigned to become coroner, Henry hoped to vault directly to the Burgesses. He still lived in Hanover County, but he bought land in nearby Louisa to make himself eligible. Henry spent more than eight pounds sterling to get elected—seven pounds to buy twenty-eight gallons of rum, the rest for carrying it to the polls.
    As he entered the House in May 1765, Patrick Henry was not a typical member. His colleagues owned an average of eighteen hundred acres—to Henry’s six hundred acres of poor land—and held forty slaves. Usually their holdings were inherited. Half of theHouse leadership had been to college, most often William and Mary. But Boston’s division between Whigs and Tories was blurred in Williamsburg. Some of the one hundred and sixteen Burgesses who always supported the crown were called the Old Field Nags. Younger and more rebellious members were the High-Blooded Colts. Members of both groups might be from established Tidewater families, while others were called “Qo’hees,” came from the upper counties and wore buckskin to House sessions. Yet at home on their plantations, men from both factions spent their days out of doors and on horseback. They were often land poor, and they