Description

Easton Press leather edition of Moses Coit Tyler's "Patrick Henry," a COLLECTOR'S edition, one of the LIBRARY OF AMERICAN HISTORY series, Frontispiece Portrait of Patrick Henry from the painting by Scully, published in 1989. COLLECTOR'S NOTES is included. Bound in pea green leather, the book has paper end leaves, acid-free paper, satin book marker, hubbed spine, gold gilt on three edges---in FINE condition. Patrick Henry, who lived from 1736-1799, was an American politician, planter and orator who declared at the Second Virginia Convention in 1775, "Give me liberty or give me death!" A Founding Father, he served as the sixth colonial governor of Virginia from 1776-1779 and from 1784-1786. The youthful Patrick and education never took kindly to each other, and public schools were sporadic and irregular. At age twenty-four, having failed in every pursuit, Henry turned for bread to the profession of law. He had a good memory and became a lawyer through self-study. Jefferson met Henry in 1760 when Henry came to Williamsburg having been elected to the Virginia House of Burgesses while Jefferson was a student at William and Mary. In Williamsburg, Henry quickly became notably for his inflammatory rhetoric against the STAMP ACT in 1765. Lord Dunmore, the royal governor in Williamsburg denounced Henry who signed the Petition to the King and was involved in the Gunpowder incident in Williamsburg. Henry became a delegate to the 1787 Constitutional Convention but opposed the ratification of the U.S. Constitution, fearing a powerful central government because there was as yet no Bill of Rights. A slaveholder throughout his adult life, he hoped to see the institution ended but had no plan except ending the importation of slaves. Henry married SARAH SKELTON, daughter of a small farmer and later a tavern-keeper. She brought a dowry of 600 acres and six slaves. They became parents to six children. Sexy Patrick Henry fathered seventeen children, 11 with his second wife, Dorthea Dandridge. She was 22 when they married and he was 41. Henry fathered the last when he was 62-years old. All but one child lived to adulthood. Patrick Henry knew and interacted with John Adams, George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, John Jay James Madison, James Monroe, and Thomas Jefferson---who was particularly envious-- called Henry vulgar and almost illiterate. Tyler includes the alliances, hostilities, and jealousies that existed between these extraordinary men as they hammered out the structure of American democracy. On the strength of Henry's ideas and his political and oratorical skills, he often triumphed and was five times elected governor of Virginia. Henry often appeared in a dressed wig, black small-clothes, and a scarlet cloak. Henry, who stood six feet tall, had "fine blue eyes" and an earnest manner. In the last chapters, Tyler shows a disheartened man quietly retiring amidst the increasing bitterness of partisan politics. 454 pages, including an index. I offer combined shipping.