more
strongly urged by the chairman of the Committee of Safety, who, on the
24th of December, 1775, said in a letter to Colonel Woodford:--

"Believe me, sir, the unlucky step of calling that gentleman
from our councils, where he was useful, into the field, in
an important station, the duties of which he must, in the
nature of things, be an entire stranger to, has given me
many an anxious and uneasy moment. In consequence of this
mistaken step, which can't now be retracted or
remedied,--for he has done nothing worthy of degradation,
and must keep his rank,--we must be deprived of the service
of some able officers, whose honor and former ranks will not
suffer them to act under him in this juncture, when we so
much need their services."[226]

This seems to have been, in substance, the impression concerning
Patrick Henry held at that time by at least two friendly and most
competent observers, who were then looking on from a distance, and
who, of course, were beyond the range of any personal or partisan
prejudice upon the subject. Writing from Cambridge, on the 7th of
March, 1776, before he had received the news of Henry's resignation,
Washington said to Joseph Reed, then at Philadelphia: "I think my
countrymen made a capital mistake when they took Henry out of the
senate to place him in the field; and pity it is that he does not see
this, and remove every difficulty by a voluntary resignation."[227] On
the 15th of that month, Reed, in reply, gave to Washington this bit of
news: "We have some accounts from Virginia that Colonel Henry has
resigned in disgust at not being made a general officer; but it rather
gives satisfaction than otherwise, as his abilities seem better
calculated for the senate than the field."[228]

Nevertheless, in all these contemporary judgments upon the alleged
military defects of Patrick Henry, no reader can now fail to note an
embarrassing lack of definiteness, and a tendency to infer that,
because that great man was so great in civil life, as a matter of
course, he could not be great, also, in military life,--a proposition
that could be overthrown by numberless historical examples to the
contrary. It would greatly aid us if we could know precisely what, in
actual experience, were the defects found in Patrick Henry as a
military man, and precisely how these defects were exhibited by him in
the camp at Williamsburg. In the writings of that pe