By GENERAL BRADLEY T. JOHNSON

(1736-1799)

[Footnote 3: Copyright, 1894, by Selmar Hess.]

[Illustration: Patrick Henry. [TN]]

Patrick Henry was born in Hanover County, Virginia, May 29, 1736; died
in Charlotte County, Virginia, June 6, 1799. He was the son of Colonel
John Henry, of Mount Brilliant, a Scotchman by birth, who was the nephew
of Dr. William Robertson, the historian. Henry received only the limited
education accessible in the rural locality in which he was born,
consisting of the rudiments of an English training and absolutely no
acquaintance with the classics. His early youth was spent on the
plantation, occupied with the amusements of his age and his epoch;
fishing and hunting gave him acquaintance with the fields, the streams,
and the forests, and the observation of nature, her changes, her forces,
and her moods. The habits thus formed evolved in part the great power of
introspection and analysis of the feelings of men which afterward gave
him such control of them.

At the age of fifteen he was placed in a country store as assistant
salesman, or clerk. After a year's experience, his father purchased a
small stock of goods for him, and set him up on his own account in
partnership with his brother William.

This adventure came to grief in a year, and then Henry, at the age of
eighteen, married Miss Shelton, the daughter of a neighboring farmer.

The young couple were settled on a farm by the joint efforts of their
parents, where they endeavored to win a subsistence with the assistance
of two or three servants. In two years he sold out and invested in
another mercantile undertaking. In a few years this ended in bankruptcy,
leaving him without a dollar and with a wife and an increasing family to
support. He was devoted to music, dancing, and amusement, and was
incapable of continuous physical or intellectual labor. He had devoted
himself to desultory reading of the best kind, and made himself
acquainted with the history of England, of Greece, and of Rome. He
therefore undertook to win a support by the profession and the practice
of the law, and after a brief pretence of preparation, by the generosity
of the bar at that period, was admitted to practice. The vigor of his
intellect, his powerful logic, and his acute analysis induced the
examining committee to sign his certificate.

That committee consisted of Mr. Lyons, then the leader of the Provincial
bar, afterward president-judge of