Patrick Henry

May 29, 1736 – June 6, 1799

Fiery orator whose "Give me liberty, or give me death!" rallied support for independence.

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Patrick Henry was born on May 29, 1736, in Hanover County, Virginia. He was not a bookish or highly schooled man, and he failed at both storekeeping and farming before finding his calling in the law, which he taught himself well enough to be admitted to the bar. What Henry had, above everything, was a voice. He could hold a courtroom or a crowd spellbound, and that gift for oratory would carry him to the center of the American Revolution. He made his name in 1763 in a case called the Parson's Cause, arguing that the king had overstepped his authority by striking down a Virginia law. A few years later, as a brand-new member of the Virginia House of Burgesses, he stood up in 1765 to attack the Stamp Act, the British tax that had enraged the colonies. His Virginia Resolves declared that only Virginians could tax Virginians, and legend holds that when he warned that King George might share the fate of murdered tyrants, cries of 'Treason!' rang out; Henry is said to have shot back, 'If this be treason, make the most of it.' Henry's most famous moment came on March 23, 1775, at the Second Virginia Convention in St. John's Church in Richmond. Urging his colleagues to arm the colony against Britain, he closed with words that became a battle cry of the Revolution: 'I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death!' No exact transcript survives; the version we know was reconstructed decades later from the memories of people who were there, so historians debate its precise wording, but its power to move a room toward war is not in doubt. You can follow the road to war in the American Revolution journey. When independence came, Henry was chosen the first Governor of Virginia under its new constitution in 1776. He served three one-year terms, stepped down as the state constitution required, and was later elected again, serving five terms in all across two stretches, from 1776 to 1779 and again from 1784 to 1786. As governor during the war, he supported George Washington's army and helped organize Virginia's defense and its western expeditions. Henry's most surprising role came after the war, when he turned against the very government other founders were building. Offered a seat at the Constitutional Convention of 1787, he refused to attend, later saying he 'smelt a rat' and feared the plan would create a national government far too powerful. When the finished Constitution came to Virginia to be ratified in 1788, Henry became its fiercest opponent, one of the leading voices of the Anti-Federalists. His speeches took up roughly a quarter of the convention's debates. At that Virginia ratifying convention he faced off against James Madison, warning that the new Constitution gave too much power to the central government and, dangerously, contained no written protection for individual rights. Henry lost the vote; Virginia ratified. But his warnings did not go to waste. The pressure from Henry and other Anti-Federalists helped force the promise that a list of protections would be added, and Madison, partly to answer these critics, drafted the amendments that became the Bill of Rights in 1791. You can explore that founding argument in the U.S. Constitution journey. Henry spent his last years back at the law and on his estate at Red Hill, still famous as one of the great voices of the founding era. He died there on June 6, 1799. Historians remember him as a man of contradictions, a champion of liberty who nevertheless enslaved many people, and as proof that the loud, stubborn opposition of one man can shape a nation as surely as those who wrote the laws.

Patrick Henry

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