Of Deathless Remarks… (June 1970 | Volume: 21, Issue: 4)

Of Deathless Remarks…

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Authors: Richard Hanser

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June 1970 | Volume 21, Issue 4

One day in 1921 a researcher rummaging through the archives of the Service Hydrographique de la Marine in Paris chanced upon a surprising document. What it was doing there and who wrote it have never been explained, but the paper turned out to be the only eyewitness account known to history of one of the high moments of the American Revolution. And it shockingly alters the picture America has always cherished ofthat great moment.

The document was a diary written in English by a Frenchman who had been visiting the American colonies. He may have been an agent of his government, but neither his name nor his mission is now known. The validity of the document itself, however, is not in doubt. It is full of detailed and intelligent comment on the geography, accommodations, customs, and people of the country its author passed through, and it is written objectively and without bias. The writer had no idea that he was damaging an American tradition at its birth.

On May 30, 1765, the diarist happened to be in Williamsburg, Virginia, when the House of Burgesses was in session. “I went immediately to the assembly,” he wrote, “where I was entertained with very strong Debates Concerning Dutys that the parlement wants to lay on the American Colonys, which they Call or Stile stamp Dutys.”

This, of course, was the day and the occasion when Patrick Henry, as tradition tells us, spoke the flaming words that every schoolboy knows, or should. “In a voice of thunder, and with the look of a god,” his first and most famous biographer tells us, Patrick Henry rose in his seat and said: “Caesar had his Brutus—Charles the First, his Cromwell, and George the Third——”

Here came cries of “Treason! Treason!” from the assemblage. But, we are told, Henry “faltered not for an instant … [and] finished his sentence with the firmest emphasis—‘ may profit by their example . If this be treason, make the most of it.’”

It was a grand and unforgettable moment, a milestone on the glory road to rebellion, war, and independence. Unfortunately, nobody took notes on the speech at the time—except our French traveller. And as the only eye-(or ear) witness on record, he gives us an ending different, and distinctly less thrilling, than the traditional one.

After the cries of “Treason!” according to our diarist, “…the Same member stood up again (his name is henery) and said that if he had afronted the speaker, or the house, he was ready to ask pardon, and he would shew his loyalty to his majesty King G. the third, at the Expence of the last Drop of his blood, but what he had said must be atributed to the Interest of his Countrys Dying liberty which he had at heart, and the heat of passion might have lead him to have said something more than