Excerpt from The Life of Patrick Henry The reader has a right to know what degree of credit is due to the following narrative; and it is the object of this preface to give him that satisfaction. It was in the summer of 1805, that the design of writing this biography was first conceived. It was produced by an incident of feeling, which, however it affected the author at the time, might now be thought light and trivial by the reader; and he shall not, therefore, be detained by the recital of it. The author knew nothing of Mr. Henry, personally. He had never seen him; and was of course compelled to rely wholly on the information of others. As soon, therefore, as the design was formed of writing his life, aware of the necessity of losing no time in collecting, from the few remaining contemporaries of Mr. Henry, that personal knowledge of the subject which might ere long be expected to die with them, the author despatched letters to every quarter of the state in which it occurred to him as probable that interesting matter might be found; and he was gratified by the prompt attention which was paid to his inquiries. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.