between them decided,
and the committee decided in favor of Colonel Henry. Yet when brigadiers
were selected by Congress to command the troops of Virginia in the
Continental Army, Andrew Lewis was made brigadier, Henry colonel of the
first regiment. He promptly refused the Continental commission, and
resigned the one held in the service of Virginia. Henry's conduct was
justified in the opinion of his contemporaries and of posterity. He had
led the colony at the risk of life and fortune, he had organized and led
the first movement of troops against the royal authority, he had been
appointed commander-in-chief and colonel of the First Regiment, and then
had been superseded in command by another, without excuse or
justification. He was thus driven out of the military service by petty
intrigues and small jealousies of smaller men, and the country deprived
of his great abilities in the military field.

On May 15, 1776, the Virginia Convention instructed their deputies in
Congress "to declare the United Colonies free and independent States,"
and on June 29th adopted a form of State government and elected Mr.
Henry governor. During the winter of 1776-77 was the darkest period of
the revolution, and it has been charged that it was proposed to create
him dictator; but his friends have always denied this, and it seems with
truth, for he was re-elected governor, May 30th, 1777. He was a firm
supporter of General Washington through all the trials of that period,
and firmly stood by him against the intrigue in the army to supersede
him with Gates. He was again elected governor in the spring of 1778, and
the next year declined a re-election because in his opinion he was
ineligible. His wife, Miss Shelton, died in 1775, leaving him the father
of six children, and in 1777 he married Dorothea, daughter of Nathaniel
W. Dandridge.

After the expiration of his gubernatorial service he retired to his
estate in Henry County. He was elected to the General Assembly for that
County in 1780, and he continued to represent it until after the
revolution. He took the ground of amnesty to the Tories and the
resumption of commercial intercourse with Great Britain. In 1784, he
introduced and urged the passage of a bill to promote inter-marriages
with the Indians, which failed to pass from his being again elected
governor on November 17, 1784, for the term of three years.

He declined a re-election, and was appointed one of the deputies from
Virginia