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Patrick Henry ALS as Native American activist, promoter of unification & peace
Patrick Henry ALS as Native American activist, promoter of unification & peace
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Henry Patrick 1736 - 1799 Patrick Henry ALS as Native American activist, promoter of unification and peaceful relations
Single page ALS, heavily scripted in strong contrasting ink on both sides entirely in Henry's hand, 7.25" x 9.5". Loss to paper with professional infills affecting some text. Dated "Charlotte Dec 1792" and signed by Patrick Henry as "P Henry".


Patrick Henry's opening statement in his letter completely mesmerizes the reader "It gives me no small degree of regret that in return for your agreable communication I am about only to give you Truble (Trouble)".

It has been 20 years since Patrick Henry let out his war cry "Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death", but now in this ALS he impresses yet another vision of liberty and freedom. An extraordinary vision, one which clearly was before its time. The US had been in the throws of a long running war with the Native Americans, and Patrick Henry, along with only a handful of others from our budding government, were aware that the only way to make peace and co-exist together was to fully embrace them. A difficult task requiring not only the integration of our cultures, but also the integration of our heritages. This required culturally combining both our lives and our families. He had a vision of unity between, and a co-existence between the Native Americans and the immigrant whites who descended upon the New World and simply put, took Indian land that was not theirs to take. The white man was pushing out the Native Americans, and in the process marginalized their homes, their lands, and their lifestyle. Henry believed that we needed to comingle our existences and heavily pushed intermarriage as a way to further peace. The perfect remedy suggested by Patrick Henry was to encourage marriages between these coterminous enemies. Henry procured a report of a resolution to this effect which he used to prepare a bill for presentation to the House of Representatives. His oration of his bill was said to have been advocated with eloquence. The inducements held out by his bill to promote these intermarriages included financial bounties to be given on the certificate of the marriage, additional financial bounties which were to be repeated at the birth of each child, exemption from taxes, and the free use of a seminary of learning.

At the time of this letter, Patrick Henry was entrenched in this new "war"- but this war was internal, this war was spiritual, and this war required the creation of a unified America. We needed to stop the hostilities and constant state of animosity and brutality in which we lived with the Native Americans. He envisioned a policy to produce a deep and beneficial changed that was mediated, one which must have respect on both sides and be calculated to implant kind affections. The revolutionary war did not help our relations with the Indians. They were used by both sides, lied to, and were put it the middle. Henry's ALS, although somewhat worn, frayed and rubbed still holds enough legible content to grasp the passion and urgency he was promoting (most especially noted on the second page). His letter shows a perseverance to use perhaps unique, out-of-the box tactics to appease the relations with the Cherokees.

The letter in part is shown below:

"... be highly gratifyed because thereby future contentions will be avoided.

... leave to trouble you further by recommending General Martin as a proper person to be trusted with Indians, and especially those which relate to the Cherokees. He was agent for this state during the War ...... persevered so as to prevent if any material damage from that Tribe altho (illegible) backed by cant' presents were once (illegible) used by our Enemies to incite them to hostilities -- He tells me he can influence Watt their leader to go to congress + is very sanguine in his opinion that a War with that (illegible) may be avoided by proper (management) of them. This I know he is capable of or I would not recommend him. ......now you see how much truble I have given you - But I (illegible) to you not to be discouraged from corresponding with me .......progress to render it ...the same. Believe me my dear sir with every sentiment of regard + attachment your friend + Servent

P Henry"

Patrick Henry's letter advocates the use of General Martin, a Brigadier General in the Virginia Militia during the American Revolutionary War. Martin's frontier diplomacy with the Cherokee people was credited with not only averting Indian attacks but with also helping to keep the Indians' position neutral and from siding with the British troops during those crucial battles. Historians agree that the settlers' success during these battles signaled the turning of the tide of the Revolutionary War—in favor of the Americans. Both General Martin and Patrick Henry held similar views about working with the Indians and obtaining peace. However, Martin lost his appointment as 'chief Indian agent' as it was believed he was siding too heavily with the Native Americans. Martin's "manner of treating the Indians necessarily prevented his appointment," noted Senator Richard Henry Lee, who had relayed this to Patrick Henry in September 1789. "At present no such office as a standing Indian agent is appointed. The Government of the Western Territory is charged with such affairs." (This change was in place a full three years before this ALS was written by Henry) In some quarters Martin was seen as too lenient with the Indians, especially after an incident in 1786, when several young Cherokee warriors were said to have murdered two white settlers. The killings set off calls for retribution within the secessionist State of Franklin, and Martin found himself trying to mediate the dispute, and calm the settlers, while trying to prevent the angry Cherokees from joining with the Creeks. Martin did little to disguise his contempt for the authorities of the State of Franklin and wrote Patrick Henry that they "immediately marched into the above mentioned Town, where they killed one Young [Indian] woman, and Shot Several others."

However it was exactly Martin's perfect sense of diplomacy and protocols which appealed to Patrick Henry. With a firm belief that General Martin would be the ideal candidate for mediation with the Native Americans, Henry appealed to use General Martin once again as the Indian Agent. Henry noted that Martin " persevered so as to prevent .. any material damage from that Tribe ... used by our Enemies to incite them to hostilities -- He tells me he can influence Watt, their leader, to go to congress + is very sanguine in his opinion that a War with that (illegible) may be avoided by proper (management) of them. This I know he is capable of or I would not recommend him"

John Watts, referred to as "Watt", by Henry , (also known as Young Tassel), was one of the leaders of the Chickamauga Cherokee during the Cherokee-American Wars. Watts became particularly active in the fighting after the murder of his uncle, Old Tassel, by militant frontiersmen who attacked a band of delegates traveling to a peace conference in 1788. Watts was a "mixed-blood" son of a British trader (who was also named John Watts, and was the official British government Indian interpreter for the area — until his death in 1770). In 1792, Dragging Canoe died suddenly. Watts, who had been living back in the Overhill area, succeeded Dragging Canoe as council head of the Lower Cherokee (in accordance with the old warrior's wishes)

An incredible letter, rich in emotion and demonstrating Henry's vigilant passion for a modern day version of integration of races and cultures. An extremely scarce ALS with outstanding content, Patrick Henry uses his skills as a unifier and again questions the 'status quo'. He may not have been literally saying "Give me liberty or give me death" but metaphorically he still employed that very emotion. He championed the liberation of the human spirit to create unity from within our own land which was occupied by two cultures!

A richer understanding of the period and background leading up to this letter can be found below:

At the time, the landscape of America between the Indians and the Whites was one of chaos. Patrick Henry grappled with the attitudes and mislead truths of the vast majority of the citizens within the newly independent United States. Consensus existed that the Indians had supported Great Britain during the Revolutionary war; and now as allies of a conquered power, they should expect to be treated as such....

However the Indians, were there from the beginning—actually from before the beginning. We have long begun our national story with Christopher Columbus's discovery of the Americas, but the very first thing Columbus described after his landing was an encounter with the Native Americans who already lived here. As he put it in 1493, "I discovered a great many islands, inhabited by numberless people." Too often, those numberless people are overlooked, but Native Americans have been part of the American story for as long as there has been an American story. It is too easy, though, to turn a story of broken treaties, military aggression, bad faith, and infectious disease into a tale of individual acts. It may be more productive to understand it as a series of well-intentioned policies gone wrong. In the seventeenth century, European settlers began negotiating with the Indians for territory. These negotiations were usually piecemeal: individuals, companies, and townships worked out their own deals with the locals. This patchwork of agreements caused confusion. There was no central organization to keep track of the deals. Some did not care about negotiations, and took by force what had been disposed by treaty. In the eighteenth century, improvised agreements gave way to a coherent set of colonial strategies. In the first attempt at such a policy, the Proclamation of 1763, George III decreed:

The several Nations or tribes of Indians with whom We are connected . . . should not be molested or disturbed in the Possession of such Parts of our Dominions and Territories as, not having been ceded to or purchased by Us, are reserved to them . . . as their Hunting Grounds.

He drew a line along the Alleghenies, and ordered his subjects to remain east of it. By 1768, the surveying was complete from Canada to Florida, and for the first time Indian Country was formally established. There had always been a kind of frontier, but the Proclamation of 1763 made the west officially off-limits.

George Washington, and others, could "never look upon that Proclamation in any other light, than as a temporary expedient to quiet minds of the Indians." He knew that ever-increasing numbers of European Americans would move west despite it: the urge to expand was irresistible. This pattern—with the central government working to restrict westward expansion, and the people eager to move west quickly—marked relations with the Indians during the next hundred years. The Revolutionary War complicated matters. Benjamin Franklin and Patrick Henry urged the Indians to remain neutral, with little success. Some tribes sided with the British; some supported the rebels; some stayed neutral. Others were divided. As the war ended, all this complexity was forgotten. In the minds of most citizens of the newly independent United States, the Indians had supported Great Britain; as allies of a conquered power, they should expect to be treated as such. The Treaty of Paris, which ended the war in 1783, recognized the United States' claims to American territory.

Washington summarized, in a letter of 1783, the prevailing American attitude:

The Indians should be informed, that after a Contest of eight years for the Sovereignty of this Country G: Britain has ceded all the Lands of the United States within the limits discribed by . . . the Provisional Treaty.

Many tribes were astonished to discover that a foreign treaty composed without their consent or consultation was distributing their land. When the new United States found itself responsible for Indian policy, its citizens often continued to view the Native Americans as defeated enemies. It is telling that in 1789, the Congress gave authority for Indian relations to a division of the War Department. Nevertheless, whites realized that perpetual war could not be sustained. They were soon taught the lessons that George III had learned decades earlier: that a patchwork of agreements with the Indian tribes could only lead to strife. The Framers therefore wrote into the Constitution a provision that gave Congress the sole power "to regulate Commerce . . . with the Indian Tribes." President Washington, who had been skeptical about George III's Indian policies in the 1760s, found himself proposing and enforcing similar policies. In 1790, Congress passed the Act to Regulate Trade and Intercourse with the Indian Tribes, the first federal law on the subject. "No person," the law said, "shall be permitted to carry on any trade or intercourse with the Indian tribes, without a license for that purpose." The United States, though, was no more successful at managing an orderly westward expansion than Britain had been. Washington's third annual address, in 1791, said that these "measures having proved unsuccessful, it became necessary to convince the refractory of the power of the United States to punish their depredations." He offered proposals to keep citizens out of Indian territory, but the same problems that rendered the Proclamation of 1763 a mere "temporary expedient" plagued his own attempts to manage the frontier.

It was the third president, Thomas Jefferson, who showed most clearly the conflicted Euro-American conceptions of Native Americans. Historian Anthony F. C. Wallace wrote: "Jefferson appears both as the scholarly admirer of Indian character, archaeology, and language and as the planner of cultural genocide, the architect of the removal policy, the surveyor of the Trail of Tears."

That neatly embodies early American attitudes toward "primitive" peoples. The age of empire brought Europeans into contact with an unprecedented number of people they had never seen before, which forced them to rethink what it meant to be human. As too often happens when people are confronted with new experiences, they tried to make sense of them by means of myths, and two myths stood out above all others. On the one hand, the Native Americans were the inhuman, bloodthirsty, and merciless barbarians who delighted in murdering white babies in their cribs. As Michel de Montaigne put it late in the sixteenth century, "Every one gives the Title of Barbarity to every Thing that is not in use in his own Country." On the other hand, the Natives were noble savages living in balance with nature, uncorrupted by European civilization, preserving their ancient purity and goodness. The eighteenth century, fascinated with "man in the state of nature," could romanticize him just as easily as it could turn him into a monster.

Additional follow up on Patrick Henry -

To further illuminate Patrick Henry as a man who stood up for human rights, and a crusader for people's liberty's and freedom (aside from his efforts on this very front on behalf of the Indians), Henry additionally fought for the rights of the American people. He championed fighting against the accumulation of too much power in the government, and supported a citizen's rights to a trial by a jury. Henry served as a representative to the Virginia convention of 1788, where he argued against ratifying the U.S. Constitution, on the grounds that it gave too much power to the federal government. It passed. Further to the cause, Patrick Henry was a staunch supporter of citizens' right to trial by jury. At the Virginia Convention of the Ratification of the Constitution in 1788, Henry passionately stated opposition to the presented Constitution since it did not include an enumerated Bill of Rights, including the express guarantee of Americans' fundamental right to jury trial. There he argued that "trial by jury is the best appendage of freedom," categorizing it as one of the "great rights of mankind." As a result of Henry's criticisms of the proposed Constitution, James Madison promised a bill of rights, including the right to jury trials, would be added after ratification. He was instrumental in having the Bill of Rights adopted to amend the new Constitution and protect individual rights.

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