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2 Patrick Henry Patrick Henry 3
overseas the good ship Helen, with some two hun- sentatives of other blue-blooded families of Vir-
dred passengers and some twenty slaves. The pas- ginia, together with their ladies. Interspersed with
sengers and slaves were of the same race and the these honorable folk were the brutal traders-they
same color, only the passengers. were more or less who bought to sell again-who were not only to
rich in worldly possessions, coming to the. new be picked out by their evil faces but who openly
world with hearts beating high in the hopes of new carried short-stocked whips with long cruel lash,
fortunes, but the slaves were sent against their will. which they did not hesitate to use as a constant
Their offenses against society ranged from being reminder to their hu'man property that their mas-
stage robbers along the King's Highways of Eng- ters were supreme and all powerful. On the out-:-
land to the criminal offense of owing money, owing skirts of this assemblage this balmy spring morn-
debts that had been contracted to obtain the means ing that our story opens, stood, or rather leaned
whereby they lived, and not being able to pay them; against a rangy roan horse, a tall, thin man, clad
therefore, they were sent in bondage to the colonies from cap to moccasins in the buckskin of the woods-
to be sold as slaves. The blacks were few and labor man. His face and neck and hands so bronzed by
was scarce in the Colonies, the Indians then, as now, the sun that had it not been for the style of his
could never be used as hewers of wood and drawers straw-colored hair tied back by a faded scrap of rib-
of water. They roamed the hills and forests of the bon, one would have passed him by at a glance as a
surrounding country in the full flush of American half-breed Indian. His attitude as he leaned against
freedom, which to this time they have steadfastly his horse seemed to express his whole character,
adhered to in spirit if not in reality. The tobacco and it did. For Patrick Henry, ne'er do well that
fields were many and sadly in need of cultivation, he was, never sought to seem what he was not;
for history tells us our forefathers were much given indolence was in, every movement of his panther-
to brocades and lace and carefully dressed hair, and like body, levity and devilment shown in every
that they did not lean very strongly toward gain- twinkle of his careless and care-free blue eyes. He
ing their livelihood by the sweat of their brows. was there not on a mission; he had none. His mis-
True, there were exceptions, but were not the ma- sion lay with the game in the forests, with the fish
jority of our forefathers all immediate descendants in the streams; beyond that, those who noted him
of families of means who boasted their coronets and at all, noted him as a failure. Had he not been one?
their seals? Had not his father, an eminent lawyer and jurist,
set his brother, William, and him up in stock ( a
It was a gayly attired throng that attended the store)? Had not William proved by his close ap-
sale of the slaves of the good ship Helen, as she plication to business his worthiness and had not
lay warped to her moorings. There were the Ran- Patrick by his indolence and his giving credit to
dolphs, the Churchills, the Lees and many repre- everyone, busted the whole venture? Patrick made
