very nature of the revolutionary act which
the several colonies were then taking. As early as 1774, in the first
Continental Congress, it was he who exclaimed: "All distinctions are
thrown down. All America is thrown into one mass." "The distinctions
between Virginians, Pennsylvanians, New Yorkers, and New Englanders
are no more. I am not a Virginian, but an American." In the spring of
1776, at the approach of the question of independence, it was he who
even incurred reproach by his anxiety to defer independence until
after the basis for a general government should have been established,
lest the several States, in separating from England, should lapse into
a separation from one another also. As governor of Virginia from 1776
to 1779, his official correspondence with the president of Congress,
with the board of war, and with the general of the army is pervaded
by proofs of his respect for the supreme authority of the general
government within its proper sphere. Finally, as a leader in the
Virginia House of Delegates from 1780 to 1784, he was in the main a
supporter of the policy of giving more strength and dignity to the
general government. During all that period, according to the admission
of his most unfriendly modern critic, Patrick Henry showed himself
"much more disposed to sustain and strengthen the federal authority"
than did, for example, his great rival in the House, Richard Henry
Lee; and for the time those two great men became "the living and
active exponents of two adverse political systems in both state and
national questions."[348] In 1784, by which time the weakness of the
general government had become alarming, Patrick Henry was among the
foremost in Virginia to express alarm, and to propose the only
appropriate remedy. For example, on the assembling of the legislature,
in May of that year, he took pains to seek an early interview with two
of his prominent associates in the House of Delegates, Madison and
Jones, for the express purpose of devising with them some method of
giving greater strength to the Confederation. "I find him," wrote
Madison to Jefferson immediately after the interview, "strenuous for
invigorating the federal government, though without any precise
plan."[349] A more detailed account of the same interview was sent to
Jefferson by another correspondent. According to the latter, Patrick
Henry then declared that "he saw ruin inevitable, unless something was
done to give Congress a compuls