oming: it has come already." Accordingly, other conventions in the
colonies, in adopting similar resolutions, had merely announced the
probability of war. Patrick Henry would have this convention, by
adopting his resolutions, virtually declare war itself.

In this alone, it is apparent, consisted the real priority and
offensiveness of Patrick Henry's position as a revolutionary statesman
on the 23d of March, 1775. In this alone were his resolutions
"premature." The very men who opposed them because they were to be
understood as closing the door against the possibility of peace, would
have favored them had they only left that door open, or even ajar. But
Patrick Henry demanded of the people of Virginia that they should
treat all further talk of peace as mere prattle; that they should
seize the actual situation by a bold grasp of it in front; that,
looking upon the war as a fact, they should instantly proceed to get
ready for it. And therein, once more, in revolutionary ideas, was
Patrick Henry one full step in advance of his contemporaries. Therein,
once more, did he justify the reluctant praise of Jefferson, who was a
member of that convention, and who, nearly fifty years afterward, said
concerning Patrick Henry to a great statesman from Massachusetts:
"After all, it must be allowed that he was our leader in the measures
of the Revolution in Virginia, and in that respect more is due to him
than to any other person.... He left all of us far behind."[155]

Such, at any rate, we have a right to suppose, was the substantial
issue presented by the resolutions of Patrick Henry, and by his
introductory speech in support of them; and upon this issue the little
group of politicians--able and patriotic men, who always opposed his
leadership--then arrayed themselves against him, making the most,
doubtless, of everything favoring the possibility and the
desirableness of a peaceful adjustment of the great dispute. But their
opposition to him only produced the usual result,--of arousing him to
an effort which simply overpowered and scattered all further
resistance. It was in review of their whole quivering platoon of hopes
and fears, of doubts, cautions, and delays, that he then made the
speech which seems to have wrought astonishing effects upon those who
heard it, and which, though preserved in a most inadequate report, now
fills so great a space in the traditions of revolutionary eloquence:--

"'No man, Mr. President, think