Miracles and Massacres by Glenn Beck Page A

building’s roof from its walls. Heavy oak doors slammed shut from the force of the mightywinds. Lead windows rattled and seemed ready to crack and explode into a thousand violent shards.
    Patrick Henry stood silent and passive, a calm eye at the center of a great tempest. The chair furiously banged his gavel for adjournment. There was no way anyone could proceed in the midst of this chaos.
    Those in the balcony simply stared and marveled at Patrick Henry, the man who could seemingly call down the heavens as his witness.
    Theatre Square (“The New Academy”)
    Broad Street, between Twelfth and Fourteenth Streets
    Richmond, Virginia
    June 25, 1788
    Patrick Henry sensed trouble was brewing.
    The roll call commenced on the series of prior amendments Henry had proposed to ensure American rights. This vote was everything. If the delegates decided to shoot down the idea of ratifying with amendments, then Henry knew he would lose the larger battle as well.
    He watched intently as the votes began to come in. Delegates from Virginia’s first four counties all voted “no”—against the prior amendments, and against Henry. Back and forth it went.
    James Madison rose from his chair to gain a better vantage point of what votes remained. A glare from Chairman Pendleton quickly forced him down. With 160 votes counted, the vote stood even. George Mason slumped. He knew that many committed Federalists were still left to vote. If the anti-Federalists were to win, it would have to be on a final flat-footed tie. One by one, the remaining delegates voted, solidly and firmly: “No.”
    There would be no prior amendments.
    Henry and Mason knew that the final vote on ratification of the Constitution itself was now a foregone conclusion. The tight margin, 89–79, belied the anticlimactic nature of the roll call. With Virginia on board, the Constitution and a new nation built around a far stronger federal government would now move forward.
    No cheers greeted the final tally. The vote had been too close forthat. There had been too many good patriots on either side. And there still remained much work to do. There might be no “previous” amendments, but, in the end, Patrick Henry and George Mason would win their fight for “subsequent” amendments and the badly needed Bill of Rights.
    EPILOGUE
    James Madison and Edmund Randolph rose from their seats and walked out toward the street. Nobody spoke, but James Madison heard a voice in his head. It was Patrick Henry’s, and the words that came to him were the same ones Henry had spoken over the previous two weeks.
    â€œVirtue will slumber,” Henry had warned. The Constitution could not hold it up. “The wicked will be continually watching,” he cried to the heavens. “Consequently you will be undone.”
    The words repeated themselves, over and over again, faster and faster, in James Madison’s mind. Virtue will slumber. The wicked will be continually watching. Consequently you will be undone .
    He tried to vanquish the thoughts from his head but instead the warnings grew louder and faster. What if, Madison thought, factions did arise, taxation did become oppressive, or the government did become consolidated? What if the states became impotent in the face of an ever-growing central government? What if foreign treaties endangered our freedoms and crushed our sovereignty? What if this new government eventually moved so far away from the principles they’d all agreed on that it could not even pay the interest on its legal debts? What if privacy was no longer respected? What if the press was not independent and instead an instrument of the state?
    Virtue will slumber. The wicked will be continually watching. Consequently you will be undone .
    And then Madison heard the words of anti-Federalist James Monroe: “There are no limits pointed out. They are not restrained or controlled from making any law, however oppressive.”