And I certainly know the difference between the greatest leaders America ever produced: Washington, Hamilton, Adams, Madison, Marshall and their trivial opponents whose names will become more obscure as the ages and the glory of their antagonists progress.
Hamilton and Madison were so far above the antis it is laughable. The document they produced and implemented is the greatest political work ever conceived by man. Federalist is the greatest work of policical science in the last millenium at least, no, make it the last two millenia.
I agere with all except the underlined statements, which reveal extreme and unwarranted predudice. Would the Federalist papers be the great work that they are without having to deal with anti-fed arguments. Would there even be a BILL OF RIGHTS WITHOUT HENRY?
Rights: Patrick Henry, Virginia Ratifying Convention A Bill of Rights
NARA | Exhibit Hall | The Founding Fathers
The original states, except Rhode Island, collectively appointed 70 individuals to the Constitutional Convention, but a number did not accept or could not attend. Those who did not attend included Richard Henry Lee, Patrick Henry, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Samuel Adams and, John Hancock.
In all, 55 delegates attended the Constitutional Convention sessions, but only 39 actually signed the Constitution. The delegates ranged in age from Jonathan Dayton, aged 26, to Benjamin Franklin, aged 81, who was so infirm that he had to be carried to sessions in a sedan chair. You can also read a general biographical overview of the delegates.
Patrick Henry, lawyer, patriot, and orator, was a living symbol of the American struggle for liberty and self-government. From the day in 1760 when he appeared in Williamsburg to take his attorney's examination before Robert Carter Nicholas, Edmund Pendleton, John and Peyton Randolph, and George Wythe, Patrick Henry's story is inseparable from the stream of Virginia history.
OFFICES HELD: Delegate, Virginia House of Burgesses, 1765-1775; Member, Virginia Committee of Correspondence, 1773; Delegate, Continental Congress, 1774-1775; Delegate, Virginia Convention, 1776; Governor of Virginia, 1776-1779, 1784-1786; Delegate, Virginia Constitution Ratification Convention, 1788
MISCELLANEOUS: Patrick Henry was one of the most outspoken opponents of the Stamp Act. On May 29, 1765, he introduced seven radical resolutions in the Virginia House of Burgesses. Five of the seven resolutions were adopted on May 30, though one was reconsidered the next day (after Henry's departure) and removed.
In May 1774, a message from the Massachusetts Committee of Correspondence informed Virginians of the closing of the port of Boston. The Virginia House of Burgesses set aside June 1, 1774, as a day of "Fasting, Humiliation, and Prayer" in support of the citizens of Boston. Governor Dunmore dissolved the assembly, but 89 of the Burgesses gathered at the Raleigh Tavern and, under Henry's leadership, proposed that all the colonies meet in a Continental congress.
In April 1775, shortly after news reached Virginia that American colonists had clashed with British troops in Lexington, Massachusetts, Henry learned that Governor Dunmore had seized gunpowder from the Magazine in Williamsburg. Henry collected the militia of Hanover County and marched toward Williamsburg. He sent a message to the governor demanding that the gunpowder be returned to representatives of the colony. Governor Dunmore paid the Virginians money equal to the value of the powder, then issued a proclamation outlawing "a certain Patrick Henry" for disturbing the peace of the colony.