book,--a book of six hundred and sixty-three
pages.[376]

Any one who has fallen under the impression, so industriously
propagated by the ingenious enmity of Jefferson's old age, that
Patrick Henry was a man of but meagre information and of extremely
slender intellectual resources, ignorant especially of law, of
political science, and of history, totally lacking in logical power
and in precision of statement, with nothing to offset these
deficiencies excepting a strange gift of overpowering, dithyrambic
eloquence, will find it hard, as he turns over the leaves on which are
recorded the debates of the Virginia convention, to understand just
how such a person could have made the speeches which are there
attributed to Patrick Henry, or how a mere rhapsodist could have thus
held his ground, in close hand-to-hand combat, for twenty-three days,
against such antagonists, on all the difficult subjects of law,
political science, and history involved in the Constitution of the
United States,--while showing at the same time every quality of good
generalship as a tactician and as a party leader. "There has been, I
am aware," says an eminent historian of the Constitution, "a modern
scepticism concerning Patrick Henry's abilities; but I cannot share
it.... The manner in which he carried on the opposition to the
Constitution in the convention of Virginia, for nearly a whole month,
shows that he possessed other powers besides those of great natural
eloquence."[377]

But, now, what were Patrick Henry's objections to the new
Constitution?

First of all, let it be noted that his objections did not spring from
any hostility to the union of the thirteen States, or from any
preference for a separate union of the Southern States. Undoubtedly
there had been a time, especially under the provocations connected
with the Mississippi business, when he and many other Southern
statesmen sincerely thought that there might be no security for their
interests even under the Confederation, and that this lack of security
would be even more glaring and disastrous under the new Constitution.
Such, for example, seems to have been the opinion of Governor Benjamin
Harrison, as late as October the 4th, 1787, on which date he thus
wrote to Washington: "I cannot divest myself of an opinion that ... if
the Constitution is carried into effect, the States south of the
Potomac will be little more than appendages to those to the northward
of it."[378] It is very p