Three Famous Lines

We're recording. Is everyone—

There is one post.

I'm sorry?

Outside. There is one post and there are three of us. Mr. Henry's animal is tied to it. Mine is tied to Mr. Henry's animal. I do not know what Mr. Hale has done with his.

I walked.

He walked.

The post isn't for horses.

It has a slot for coins. I assumed it was a hitching post with a toll. I have paid it. I should like to know what I have paid for.

Time.

Time.

You've paid for the space for an hour. In an hour, someone comes and looks at the post, and if the time has run out and the horse is still there—

They take the horse.

They put a paper on it.

A paper.

It's a fine. You pay the fine later, or they put more papers on, and eventually they take the horse.

Eventually.

It's a process.

In my day, the town would have sent a boy to say your horse was in the street. I gather you have replaced the boy with a post and the post with a paper and the paper with a process. Mr. Henry, your horse is on my hour.

Then you will have the pleasure of dunning me for it, sir, and I have been dunned by better men than you and paid none of them.

This is The Hitching Post. I'm Peter Corrigan, in Boston, at street level, near a meter. This week we're doing something we do now and then: three guests, three short conversations, one question running through all of them. Each of these men is remembered chiefly for a single sentence. In one case he may not have said it. In one case he almost certainly didn't say it the way it's remembered. In one case he said it and somebody else rewrote the whole story around it. We'll take them in order of what they said.

Mr. Henry. Five times governor of Virginia, the loudest voice in the House of Burgesses for a decade before the war, and the man who very nearly talked Virginia out of ratifying the Constitution. Everybody knows seven words of yours. I want to know where they came from.

From my mouth, sir, in St. John's Church in Richmond, the twenty-third of March, 1775, in the presence of the Convention, and I do not recall that anyone took them down.

Nobody did. That's the thing. There's no text of that speech from 1775. No newspaper printed it, no delegate copied it, you didn't write it out. The version everyone knows was published in 1817, eighteen years after your death, by a lawyer named William Wirt, in a biography. Wirt hadn't been born when you gave it. He assembled it from the memories of old men, mostly St. George Tucker, who wrote him a letter saying he could recall the sense of it and some phrases, and Wirt wrote the rest. The "liberty or death" ending is in Tucker's recollection. The rest is Wirt's.

Then I have been improved.

Possibly. Jefferson read it in draft and told Wirt it was fine. To Daniel Webster, years later, he called it "a poor book written in bad taste" that showed off the writer more than the subject.

Mr. Jefferson said that of most books. He and I were not friends by the end, and he was not a man to let a grave interrupt a grudge.

You didn't leave many papers. Wirt complained about it. He said in his preface that the materials he'd been able to collect were "scanty and meagre, and utterly disproportionate to the great fame of Mr. Henry," because there was almost nothing in your hand.

There was nothing in my hand because I did my work with my mouth, which Mr. Wirt seems to have understood well enough to have done the same on my behalf. Read me his version.

"Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death!"

It is very fine.

Is it yours?

The last of it is mine. I said "liberty or death," or words that came to that; I recall the sense of it and the sound of the room. "Forbid it, Almighty God" I would have said; I said it often. The rest is a lawyer's, and I say that as one. It is the kind of thing I might have said, written by a man who had heard from other men what I might have said. I do not object to it. I object to being told it is a transcript.

It's on flags. Bumper stickers. It's the whole of your reputation.

Then my reputation is eighteen years younger than I am. I have had worse things said of me.

Here's my question. The phrase gets used now by people who mean something specific by it. It usually means: the government is the danger, and the danger is Washington. The federal government. That was your position in 1788; you fought the Constitution because you thought it would swallow the states. "I smell a rat," you said, and refused to go to Philadelphia.

I did.

And then in March of 1799, three months before you died, you stood up at Charlotte Courthouse and gave your last speech. Against the Virginia Resolutions. Against Madison's and Jefferson's argument that a state could nullify a federal law. You said that Virginia had "quitted the sphere" it belonged in. You'd been elected to the legislature as a Federalist. Washington had asked you to run.

He had.

So the man on the flag, the last thing he ever said in public, was that the states should obey the federal government.

The man on the flag said that the federal government having been made, over his objection, by the people of Virginia in convention, the remedy for a bad law was to change the law and not to break the Union, because the Union broken would be a worse thing than any law. That is not a change of principle, sir. That is the same principle applied to the thing that now existed instead of the thing I had feared. I fought the Constitution because I thought it would be a tyranny. When it was ratified I found it was a government, and I found that the men who had made it were now proposing to unmake it by state, and I found I liked that less. If your flag-men wish to quote me, they may quote the whole of me. I will not be cut to the length of a flag.

One more document. 1773. A letter to Robert Pleasants, a Quaker who'd sent you an anti-slavery pamphlet.

I know the letter.

"Would any one believe that I am master of slaves of my own purchase! I am drawn along by the general inconvenience of living without them. I will not, I cannot justify it." You owned people until you died. Sixty-seven of them at Red Hill, by the will; nearly a hundred across the three plantations.

I did.

"Give me liberty, or give me death." Whose liberty?

Mine, sir. I have never pretended otherwise. I wrote Pleasants that it was a lamentable evil and that I could not justify it and I did not justify it, and I did not free them, and I have had a long time to sit with the fact that a man may see a thing clearly and go on doing it. Mr. Wirt did not put that in the speech. Nobody would have cheered.

Would you say it again? The seven words?

I would say them again, and I would mean them again, and I would be the same man saying them, which is the part your flags leave off. Is that the end?

That's the end. Thank you, Governor.

Colonel Revere, your hour is up.

Captain Hale. Yale, class of '73. Schoolmaster in East Haddam and then New London. Captain in the Continental Army at twenty-one. In September 1776, after the retreat from Long Island, Washington needed someone to go behind the British lines and report on their dispositions. You volunteered. You were caught within about a week, and hanged the next morning, September 22nd, without a trial. You were twenty-one.

Yes, sir.

So. Was it worth it?

I've been asked that by nobody, sir, in a long time. People generally tell me it was.

I'm asking.

Then I'll answer as well as I can. I did nothing. That's the first thing. I got across, I walked about, I made some notes, and I was taken before I'd sent a word back. General Washington learned nothing from me that he didn't learn from the next man. If you're asking whether the mission was worth my life, I have to say that the mission had no worth at all, because it failed, and I failed it. If you're asking whether volunteering was worth it, that's a different question, and I've thought about that one more.

Go on.

Captain Hull, who was my friend, tried to talk me out of it. He said it wasn't a soldier's work; a spy is a thing that gets hanged, not a thing that gets a funeral. I told him that every kind of service necessary to the public good becomes honorable by being necessary. I believed that. I believe it. But I'll tell you what I didn't say to Hull, which is that I was twenty-one and I'd done nothing in the war but guard a supply depot and take a boat, and I wanted very badly to be of use before it ended. I'd have taken any errand that was offered. It was offered by General Washington, so I've been given credit for judgment I don't think I exercised.

How were you caught? The story is that you were recognized by a Loyalist cousin.

I don't know how I was caught. I was caught. A man who seemed to be a friend to the cause talked with me in a tavern one evening and drew out what I was about, and the next day he came back with soldiers. I found out later who he was. I'm told it's written down somewhere.

It is. A Loyalist shopkeeper in Connecticut named Consider Tiffany wrote an account in the 1780s, and it sat in his family until 2000, when it turned up at the Library of Congress. The man in the tavern was Robert Rogers.

Rogers. Of the Rangers.

Of the Rangers. He'd gone over to the British and was hunting for exactly what you were. He pretended to be a patriot spy himself, and you told him.

Then I was not caught. I was fooled. That's worse and I'm glad to know it. A man shouldn't die thinking he was unlucky when he was only green.

The sentence. "I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country." It's on your statue in New Haven, on the one in New York, and on the one at the headquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency in Virginia, which I'll explain in a moment. Did you say it?

I said something. I was allowed to speak. I don't remember the words. I'd read Cato; everybody at Yale had read Cato; there's a line in it about how it's a pity we can die but once to serve our country, and I expect I said something near that, because it was in my head and there wasn't much else in it at the time. Who wrote it down?

A British officer named Montresor was there. He told Captain Hull about it the next day under a flag of truce, and Hull put it in his memoirs, which his daughter published in 1848. Seventy-two years later. Nobody else recorded a word.

Then it went from me to a British engineer, and from him to Hull, and from Hull to his daughter. I'd not swear to it. I'd not disown it either. It sounds like something I'd have wanted to say, and I'd had a night to think.

Sir?

[pause] It's nothing. It's not nothing; it's not for now. We'll talk about it after the show.

It sounded like an alarm.

It's an alarm. It's not ours. Go on; I was asking about the agency.

You were asking, sir. You hadn't asked yet.

Now the agency. The United States has, since 1947, a permanent civilian service for gathering intelligence abroad. It employs tens of thousands of people. Its headquarters has your statue at the entrance, and the people who work there walk past it every day. They regard you as the first of them.

The first of what?

Of American spies.

Tens of thousands.

And a budget I'm not permitted to know.

And they've put me at the door. A man who was caught in a week by the first fellow who bought him a drink. I don't say it to be modest, sir; I say it because I'd like to know whether they've read the Tiffany paper. If they honor me for what I did, they've got the wrong man. If they honor me for what I meant, then I'd ask them to remember that what I meant was for a war that had an end, and a country that was three months old. I'd want to know what a permanent service of tens of thousands means, and whether it can mean the same thing.

Was it worth it?

For me? Yes. I don't know how to say otherwise; I was twenty-one and I wanted it and I got it. For the country, sir, I did nothing, and they built a statue anyway, and I think they built it for themselves. You asked. That's the answer. Is the school still there?

Which one?

New London. The Union School. On the hill.

It's still there. They've moved it six times. It's a museum.

A museum of what?

You.

Then it was a very small school. Thank you, sir.

Mail, before the Colonel. When we were at Peacefield with Mrs. Adams, and a listener in Hartford writes: "Mrs. Adams had it both ways. She said the magistrate has no business in the question and then said no woman may do as she likes. So who decides? She never said. You never asked." We did reach out to Mrs. Adams.

[recorded] The gentleman in Hartford says I never said who decides. I said it twice; he heard it once. The woman decides, with her conscience, and her minister if she has one, and her mother if she is lucky, and God, who is not in Washington and has never been consulted there. I said no woman may do as she likes because I do not think anyone may do as they like, and I did not think it needed a judge to say so. He has mistaken not the magistrate's for nobody's. That is a mistake men make. I have a letter about it.

Colonel Revere, you knew the Adamses.

I made her a set of spoons. She sent one back. It was the right one to send back.

Colonel Revere. Silversmith, engraver, dentist, and courier for the Committee of Safety. You've been here before; you were in the tower a few weeks ago while we were setting up, and you left before we could get you on.

I had a look at the steeple. It's been rebuilt. Twice, I'm told. The lanterns were in the old one.

I'm going to read you a poem.

I'd rather you didn't.

"Listen, my children, and you shall hear / Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere, / On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-Five; / Hardly a man is now alive / Who remembers that famous day and year."

I've heard it.

Longfellow. Published in January 1861. Every schoolchild in this country for a hundred years learned it by heart. Most of what people know about that night comes from it. I have it here, and I have your own account, the one you wrote for Dr. Belknap at the Historical Society in 1798, and I want to go through them together.

That's fair. Belknap's is the true one. I wrote it and I'd stand by it.

In the poem, you're waiting in Charlestown, watching the steeple for the signal. "One if by land, and two if by sea." A friend hangs the lanterns, and you see them, and you ride.

No. I arranged the lanterns. The Sunday before, coming back through Charlestown, I fixed it with Colonel Conant that if the regulars went out by water we'd show two lanterns in the North Church steeple and one if by land. That was for Charlestown, in case I couldn't get across the river. I wasn't waiting for the signal; I was the one who'd sent for it to be shown. Then I went home, got my boots and my coat, had two friends row me across under the guns of the Somerset, borrowed a horse from Deacon Larkin, and rode. The lanterns weren't for me. They were in case there was no me.

The poem doesn't have Dawes.

William Dawes went out by land, through the Neck, before I'd left the house. Dr. Warren sent him first. And Dr. Prescott joined us on the road past Lexington, a young man courting a girl in the town, on his way home. There were three of us to Concord. Two, after Lincoln.

In the poem, you reach Concord.

I never reached Concord. I was taken. Four officers came out of the shadow of a tree past Lincoln and one of them put a pistol to my head and asked me my name. I told him. He asked if it was Paul. I said yes. Prescott jumped his horse over a wall and got away and he's the one who got to Concord. Dawes was thrown. I was taken back toward Lexington, and they took Deacon Larkin's horse from me and gave it to a sergeant whose own was tired, and they let me go on foot. I walked back into Lexington. I was there when the firing started. I was carrying a trunk of Mr. Hancock's papers across the green at the time. That's how I saw it.

So the man on the horse at the end of the poem—

Is Prescott. Or nobody. Mr. Longfellow needed a man on a horse at the end and he had my name on the front. I don't fault him. He wasn't writing history. What was he writing?

He was writing in the winter of 1860. South Carolina had just seceded. Longfellow was an abolitionist, and he wanted a poem that would put a single man on a horse riding through the dark to wake up New England. It wasn't about you. It was about the spring of 1861.

Then he used me the way I used the lanterns. He needed a signal, and I was the one to hand.

Does that bother you?

It bothers me that there's no Dawes in it. It bothers me that people think I shouted "the British are coming," when there wasn't a man in Middlesex who didn't think himself British; I said the regulars were out, if I said anything. It doesn't bother me that a poet made a poem. I made engravings. I made one of the Massacre that Mr. Pelham drew and I copied, and it's the one everybody knows, and it's not accurate either, and it did what it was for.

You'd know about that.

I'd know about that. And I'd know, sir, that you have looked at that device twice since Captain Hale sat down, once when it made its noise and once just now, and that the Captain asked you about it and was put off, and that whatever it is has made you smile, and I'd like to know what makes a man smile at a device in the middle of a question about the Boston Massacre.

I apologize. I don't usually.

I didn't ask whether you usually.

All right. The noise, earlier, was an alarm. Every device in the region made it at the same moment. Somewhere in eastern Massachusetts a child had been taken, and the police wanted everyone to look for a particular car. It goes to every phone at once, within a distance they choose. A few million people.

All at once.

All at once. What I just looked at was the second message. The child's been found. About twenty minutes ago. That's what the smile was.

[pause] Then I withdraw the objection to the smile. I keep the objection to the putting-off. The Captain asked you a plain question.

He did.

And you'd have had us sit here not knowing whether a child was found because it wasn't on your list.

I'd have told you after.

After is a poor time for an alarm. That's rather the point of an alarm. Let me look at the thing.

Every device. Who lights it?

A police officer at a desk. There are rules.

It's the two lanterns.

That's what I was going to say.

Then I've saved you saying it. Conant and I made our rules on a Sunday night on the Charlestown shore, two men who trusted each other, for one night, for one purpose. Your officer at a desk can raise the whole county whenever the rules permit. I'll say this for it: it's faster than Deacon Larkin's horse, and it found the child, and I'd not have argued with that in 1775 either. And I'll say this against it: a few million people looked at the car, and nobody looked at the desk. Who's watching the desk?

Mr. Madison asked something like that a few weeks ago.

Then Mr. Madison and I would get on. Is there anything more?

Same last question for everyone this week. One sentence. Would you rather have the true story or the famous one?

The true one, sir, because I'm in it, and so is Dawes.

Captain Hale?

The true one, though I'd not have the famous one taken from the men who've found it useful, so long as they know which is which.

Governor?

The famous one, sir, and I'll thank you not to look surprised; I was an orator and a lawyer and I know which of the two moves a jury, and a man who says he prefers the truth to the effect has generally never been asked to produce either.

That was two sentences.

It was one, and it was a good one, and I'll not have it cut to the length of a flag.

That's The Hitching Post. Thanks to Governor Henry, Captain Hale, and Colonel Revere, and our apologies to the Boston Transportation Department, who have put a paper on two horses. Dr. Franklin is in Philadelphia and could not be reached; the device, we're told, is in a drawer. Next week we're back to the usual format, with one guest and one post.