Lion of Liberty

Author:Harlow Giles Unger
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Da Capo Press
Published: 2010-10-05T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 11

A Belgian Hare

When the Virginia legislature reconvened in Richmond, British depredations had left fewer than 300 homes standing, and the depleted population was unable to offer legislators many services. In sharp contrast to the magnificent House of Burgesses in Williamsburg, the legislature convened in a small frame building, with members paid next to nothing. It was not much fun; most delegates had to lodge in uncomfortably tight quarters and were often in foul moods. Nonetheless, they heaped encomiums, along with their thanks and good wishes, on the heroes of the Revolution—Washington, Lafayette, Greene, French King Louis XVI, and endless other American and French personages both in and out of the military. They also conducted some essential business, electing as governor the Tidewater aristocrat and long-time burgess Benjamin Harrison, a cousin of Martha Washington. The government was bankrupt and paper money was worthless, so the legislators restricted use of outstanding paper money to payment of 1781 taxes or the purchase of new, government-issued “specie certificates” that would yield 6 percent a year in coins or other specie.

To replenish the state treasury, the Assembly imposed a variety of crushing new taxes: a 1 percent property tax on land, a flat two-shilling tax (about $6 today) on every horse and mule, a three-penny tax (about 75 cents today) on each head of cattle, a five-shilling tax (about $15 today) per wheel on pleasure carriages, and a whopping fifty-pound tax on every billiard table (about $3,000 today!) to discourage (or perhaps exploit) gambling. Taverns had to pay five pounds ($300) for their licenses and every master had to pay a ten-shilling ($30) capitation tax for every slave and every white male over twenty-one in his employ or under his control as an indentured servant. Without specie, however, payment of most taxes became all but moot, and the government agreed to accept the equivalent in tobacco or hemp for half the taxes due. As angry Piedmont farmers had sensed throughout the war, the same men who had taxed them as burgesses under the royal colonial government had returned to tax them as assemblymen under the independent government of Virginia. Only their titles had changed.

A week after the legislature reconvened, Henry’s malarial fever overwhelmed him again, and he returned to Leatherwood. When he arrived, he found that Dolly had given birth to her third child, a daughter she had named Martha Catherina—Henry’s ninth child. Despite her husband’s debilitating illness, the ever-patient Dolly persevered, managing the household of thirty-two slaves and thirty-four indentured workers, tending to her huge collection of children and step children, and nursing her sick husband—all without complaint.

For the next eighteen months, his illness kept him either in his sick-room or close to home,a and few acts of consequence were passed in the legislature during that time, according to Henry’s grandson.

Although the Assembly met as scheduled, it was little more than a social club. The Assembly’s wealthy planters still ruled their huge plantations like private fiefdoms and the rest of the state as mere extensions of their lands.

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