“Give me liberty, or give me death!”
Patrick Henry was born on his family’s farm in Hanover County, Virginia, on May 29, 1736. His father was John Henry, an emigrant from Aberdeenshire, Scotland, who had attended King’s College, Aberdeen before emigrating to the Colony of Virginia in the 1720s. Settling in Hanover County in or about 1732 John Henry married Sarah Winston Syme, a wealthy widow from a prominent Hanover County family of English ancestry. Patrick Henry was once thought to be of humble origins, but in reality was born into the middle ranks of the Virginia landed gentry.
In 1754, Patrick Henry married Sarah Shelton reportedly in the parlor of her family’s home, known as Shelton House in Virginia Colony. As a wedding gift, Sarah’s father gave the newly weds a 300-acre plantation together with six slaves near Mechanicsville. The plantation was run down and could not be made profitable. The house burned down and the couple struggled. They sold the Plantation, called Pine Slash, in 1764 after Henry started working as a lawyer. Patrick and Sarah had six children. They moved to Scotchtown Plantation, also in Hanover County. Sarah became mentally ill and died there in 1775.
On October 25, 1777, Patrick Henry at age 41 married his second wife, the 22-year-old Dorothea Dandridge (1755-1831). The next year they moved to Williamsburg after his election as governor, and stayed through is two terms in office. They had 11 children together. In 1779 they moved to the 10,000-acre Leatherwood Plantation, which he bought with his cousin and her husband in Henry County, Virginia. Henry is also recorded to have purchased up to 78 slaves and he cultivated tobacco as the main crop.
Patrick Henry was an ardent supporter of state rights. He was an outspoken critic of the United States Constitution, on the grounds that it gave too much power to the federal government. Henry was instrumental in having the Bill of Rights adopted to amend the new Constitution and protect individual rights.
He was chosen as a presidential elector for the 1789 election from Campbell District , along with nine other men. The men all voted for George Washington with one of their votes, and split their second votes among other candidates.
In 1794 Henry and his wife, Dorothea,(Dorothy) retired to his 520-acre Red Hill Plantation near Brookneal, Virginia in Charlotte County, where he conducted his law practice. President George Washington offered Henry the post of Secretary of State in 1795, which he declined due to opposing the President’s Federalist policies. But, following the widespread executions and radicalism of the continuing French Revolution in Europe, Henry began to fear a similar fate could befall America, which had suffered great populist unrest. This prompted Henry in 1798 to speak in behalf of the Federalist Party.
Patrick Henry supported the Federalist policies of George Washington and Samuel Adams. He denounced the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions, which called for the rights of a state to nullify a federal law it considered unconstitutional. Henry warned that civil war was threatened because Virginia: “Had quit the sphere in which she had been placed by the Constitution, and in daring to pronounce upon the validity of federal laws, had gone out of her jurisdiction in a manner not warranted by any authority, and in the highest degree alarming to every considerate man; that such opposition, on the part of Virginia, to the acts of the general government, must beget their enforcement by military power; that this would probably produce civil war, civil war foreign alliances, and that foreign alliances must necessarily end in subjugation to the powers called in.”
In 1798 President John Adams nominated Henry as special emissary to France, but he declined due to failing health. He strongly supported John Marshall. At the urging of George Washington, Henry stood for and was elected to the Virginia House of Delegates as a Federalist. Three months prior to taking his seat, he died of stomach cancer on June 6, 1799, while at his Plantation, Red Hill.
Patrick Henry (May 29, 1736–June 6, 1799) was an American attorney, and planter, and a politician who became widely known as an orator during the movement for independence in the Colony of Virginia in the 1770s. This revolutionary figure was one of the Founding Fathers of our great and blessed United States of America and is well remembered throughout our history. He served as the first and the sixth post-colonial Governor of Virginia from 1776 to 1779, and from 1784 to 1786 respectively.
As a sharp and acid-tongued orator, Patrick Henry talked his way into prominence in the English colonies all along the Atlantic seaboard:
“I am not a Virginian, I am an American!”
Mr. Henry led the opposition to the Stamp Act of 1765 and played a major role in bringing the united colonies into a revolutionary war with England. Along with Samuel Adams and Thomas Paine, he is regarded as one of the most influential champions of Republicanism and an invested promoter of the American Revolution and its fight for independence.
Patrick Henry was a delegate to the First and Second Continental Congresses. (Virginia was, by far, the largest of the colonies; it included today’s West Virginia and Kentucky.) Because he perceived something to by amiss, wrong, just not right, he he did not attend the Federal Convention in Philadelphia, in 1787, which composed the Charter that would replace the weak-kneed, states-oriented Articles of Confederation (1781), then furiously opposed ratification because, he said, the Constitution would interfere with rights of the states and the people.
Years earlier, Henry had delivered his memorable “Give me liberty or give me death!” speech at the Virginia Convention of Delegates. Advocating war rather than negotiation, he passionately asked Virginia’s second revolutionary conclave, “Is life so dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?” Three weeks later, the first shots were fired in the war for independence.
Come join with me know as we mentally stroll together back through the pages of time, all the way back the The Virginia Convention of Delegates, commonly referred to as The House of Burgesses, on March 23, 1775, in Saint John’s Church in Richmond, Virginia. The House Burgesses was undecided on whether to mobilize for military action against the encroaching British military force, Henry argued in favor of mobilization. In the heat of discussion with no real consensus reached,…Patrick Henry boldly rose to his feet and passionately delivered his famous words:
“Different men often see the same subject in different lights; and therefore, I hope that it will not be thought disrespectful to those gentlemen, if, entertaining as I do, opinions of a character very opposite to theirs, I shall speak forth my sentiments freely and without reserve. This is no time for ceremony. The question before the House is one of awful moment to this country. For my own part, I consider it as nothing less than a question of freedom or slavery; an in proportion to the magnitude of the subject ought to be the freedom of the debate. It is only in this way that we can hope to arrive at the truth, and fulfill the great responsibility which we hold to God and our country. Should I keep back my opinions at such time, through fear of giving offense, I should consider myself as guilty of treason towards my country, and of an act of disloyalty towards the majesty of heaven, which I revere above all earthly kings.
….it is natural to man to indulge in the illusions of hope. We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth, and listen to the song of that siren, till she transforms us into beasts. Is this the part of wise men, engaged in a great and arduous struggle for liberty? Are we disposed to be of the number of those who, having eyes, see not, and having ears hear not, the things which so nearly concern their temporal salvation? For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it any cost, I am willing to know the whole truth; to know the worst and to provide for it.
I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided; and that is the lamp of experience. I know of no way of judging if the future but by the past. And judging by the past, I wish to know what there has been in the conduct of the British ministry for the last ten years, to justify those hopes with which gentlemen have been pleased to solace themselves and the House? Is it that insidious smile with which our petition has been lately received? Trust it not, sir; it will prove a snare to your feet. Suffer not yourselves to be betrayed with a kiss. Ask yourselves how this gracious reception of our petition comforts with these war-like preparations which cover waters and darken our land. Are fleets and armies necessary to a work of love and reconciliation? Have we shown ourselves so unwilling to be reconciled, that force must be called in to win back our love? Let us not deceive ourselves, sir. These are the implements of war and subjugation; the last arguments to which kings resort. I ask, gentlemen, sir, what means this martial array, if its purpose be not to force us to submission? Can gentlemen assign any other possible motives for it? Has Great Britain any enemy, in this quarter of the world, to call for all this accumulation of navies and armies? No, sir, she has none. They are meant for us; they can be meant for no other. They are sent over to bind and rivet upon us those chains which the British ministry have been so long forging. And what have we to oppose them? Shall we try argument? Sir, we have been trying that for the last ten years. Have we anything new to offer on the subject? Nothing. We have held the subject up in every light of which it is capable; but it has been all in vain. Shall we resort to entreaty and humble supplication? Let us not, I beseech you, sir, deceive ourselves longer. Sir, we have done everything that could be done, to avert the storm which is now coming on. We have petitioned; we have remonstrated; we have supplicated; we have prostrated ourselves before the throne, and have implored it interposition to arrest the tyrannical hands of the ministry and Parliament. Our petitions have been slighted; our remonstrances have produced additional violence and insult; our supplications have been disregarded; and we have been spurned, with contempt, from the foot of the throne. In vain, after these things, may we indulge the fond hope of peace and reconciliation. There is no longer any room for hope. If we wish to be free–if we mean to preserve inviolate those inestimable privileges for which we have been so long contending–if we mean not basely to abandon the noble struggle in which we have been so long engaged, and which we have pledged ourselves never to abandon until the glorious object of our contest shall be obtained, we must fight! I repeat it, sir, we must fight! An appeal to arms and to the God of Hosts is all that is left us!
They tell us, sir, that we are weak; unable to cope with so formidable an adversary. But when shall we be stronger? Will it be the next week, or the next year? Will it be when we are totally disarmed, and when a British guard shall be stationed in every house? Shall we gather strength by irresolution and inaction? Shall we acquire the means of effectual resistance, by lying supinely on our backs, and hugging the delusive phantom of hope, until our enemies shall have bound us hand and foot? Sir, we are not weak, if we make a proper use of the means which the God of nature hath placed in our power. Three millions of people, armed in the holy cause of liberty, and in such a country as that which we possess, are invincible by any force which our enemy can send against us. Besides, sir, we shall not fight our battles alone. There is a just God who presides over the destinies of nations; and who will raise up friends to fight our battles for us. The battle, sir, is not to the strong alone; it is to the vigilant, the active, the brave. Besides, sir, we have no election. If we were base enough to desire it, it is now too late to retire from the contest. There is no retreat, but in submission and slavery! Our chains are forged! Their clanking may be heard on the plains of Boston! The war is inevitable–and let it come! I repeat it, sir, let it come!
It is in vain, sir, to extenuate the matter. Gentlemen may cry peace, peace–but there is no peace. The war is actually begun! The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms! Our brethren are already in the field! Why stand we here idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? 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!
And so began the activities and events that brought the colonists to a Revolutionary War with England from which emerged our Declaration of Independence, our Constitution, and a new nation under God.
Now You Know More of What Really Happened…………