On 5 Aug. 1775, Henry was made com mander-in-chief of the Virginia troops. In May of that year he had made a dash against Lord Dunmore, on account of the governor's secret seizure of some powder belonging to the colony. Deeming himself slighted by the Committee of Public Safety, which acted during the interim as the executive of Virginia, Henry, with some heat, threw up his military commission, 28 Feb. 1776.
Fortunate was it for the colonial cause that Henry was again at liberty to exert his forensic powers in the councils of the State. Represent ing Hanover County in the convention which met at Williamsburg 6 May 1776, he contributed greatly to the constructive work of that cele brated body, notably the motion for a declara tion of American independence and the framing of a constitution for Virginia. Among the con vention papers in the State Library at Richmond were found three endorsed by the clerk, "Rough Resolutions. Independence." William Wirt Henry, after minute comparison of the hand writing of these, concluded that the first was penned by Patrick Henry; the second by Meri wether Smith; and the third by Edmund Pen dleton; and that the resolution actually intro duced by Nelson was the one written by Henry. On the other hand, Edmund Randolph, who was a member of the convention, says that the res olution declaring for independence "was drawn by Pendleton, was offered in convention by Nelson, and was advocated on the floor by Henry' On 29 June 1776, the natal day of the com monwealth of Virginia, Patrick Henry was elected governor, took the oath of office 5 July, and served for three annual terms in succession.
As governor he commissioned, on 2 Jan. 1778, Col. George Rogers Clark to enlist seven cotn panics of men for the expedition against the British garrisons in the Northwest Territory. After leaving the executive office, Henry settled in Henry County, on an estate of about 10,000 acres, called Leatherwood, where he lived until he became governor for the fourth time, on 30 Nov. 1784. In the Virginia convention of 1788, which was called to ratify the Constitution of the United States, Henry led the opposition on the ground that such a federal government en croached too far upon the rights of the several States. While the arguments of Madison and the influence of Washington happily prevailed on that critical occasion, Henry was a chief agent in securing the amendments which consti tute a bill of rights in the national instrument His objection to the Constitution was stated concisely in his first speech before the conven tion: ((That this is a consolidated government is demonstrably clear; and the danger of such a government is, to my mind, very striking. . . . Who authorized them (the framers) to speak the language of we the people, instead of we the States! States are the characteristics and the soul of a confederation. If the States be not the agents of this compact, it must be one great, consolidated, national government of the people of all the States." Such was his clear discernment of the real nature of the govern ment established by the Constitution of the United States.