they had planted thorns upon his pillow; that they had drawn
him from that happy retirement which it had pleased a
bountiful Providence to bestow, and in which he had hoped to
pass, in quiet, the remainder of his days; that the State
had quitted the sphere in which she had been placed by the
Constitution, and, in daring to pronounce upon the validity
of federal laws, had gone out of her jurisdiction in a
manner not warranted by any authority, and in the highest
degree alarming to every considerate man; that such
opposition, on the part of Virginia, to the acts of the
general government, must beget their enforcement by military
power; that this would probably produce civil war, civil war
foreign alliances, and that foreign alliances must
necessarily end in subjugation to the powers called in. He
conjured the people to pause and consider well, before they
rushed into such a desperate condition, from which there
could be no retreat. He painted to their imaginations
Washington, at the head of a numerous and well-appointed
army, inflicting upon them military execution. 'And where,'
he asked, 'are our resources to meet such a conflict? Where
is the citizen of America who will dare to lift his hand
against the father of his country?' A drunken man in the
crowd threw up his arm, and exclaimed that he dared to do
it. 'No,' answered Mr. Henry, rising aloft in all his
majesty, 'you dare not do it: in such a parricidal attempt,
the steel would drop from your nerveless arm!' ... Mr.
Henry, proceeding in his address to the people, asked
whether the county of Charlotte would have any authority to
dispute an obedience to the laws of Virginia; and he
pronounced Virginia to be to the Union what the county of
Charlotte was to her. Having denied the right of a State to
decide upon the constitutionality of federal laws, he added,
that perhaps it might be necessary to say something of the
merits of the laws in question.[471] His private opinion was
that they were good and proper. But whatever might be their
merits, it belonged to the people, who held the reins over
the head of Congress, and to them alone, to say whether they
were acceptable or otherwise to Virginians; and that this
must be done by way of petition; that Congress were as much
our