March 23, 1775, 250 years ago: Patrick Henry, considered the finest orator (public speaker) among America's Founding Fathers, makes his most famous statement. Except he might not have said it.
He was born on May 29, 1736, at Studley, his family's farmhouse outside Hanover, Virginia. The town, and its surrounding Hanover County, were named for the for House of Hanover, the royal family of Great Britain, then the rulers of British America.
Because of his uncle, a prominent minster named Patrick Henry, he frequently used the name "Patrick Henry Jr." until the uncle's death in 1777. Uncle Patrick, and American religion's "Great Awakening," inspired him to become a public speaker. But his dissatisfaction with the Church of England led him to not consider the ministry, so he turned to the law. He also became a talented violinist, and this, along with his Virginia law practice, led to his introduction to a younger Virginia lawyer and violinist, Thomas Jefferson. They would serve together in the House of Burgesses, the forerunner of the Virginia House of Delegates, and thus the oldest continuously-meeting legislative body in the Western Hemisphere.
Patrick Henry married twice. In 1754, he married Sarah Shelton. But she fell victim to mental illness, and died shortly after his famous speech of 1775. In 1777, he married Dorothea Dandridge (as far as is known, not related to 20th Century actress Dorothy Dandridge), and that marriage lasted the rest of Patrick's life. Between the two marriages, he had 17 children.
Henry was a lifelong slaveholder from the time of his first marriage, at age 18. Henry professed that slavery was wrong, and expressed hopes for its abolition; but he had no plan for doing so, nor for the multiracial society that would result. He wrote in 1773, two years before his famous speech about liberty, "I am the master of slaves of my own purchase. I am drawn along by the general inconvenience of living here without them. I will not, I cannot justify it."
He was elected to the House of Burgesses in 1765. That year, Britain imposed the Stamp Act on its American colonies. On May 29, his 29th birthday, he gave a speech protesting it. Jefferson was in attendance. So was John Tyler Sr., later a Governor of Virginia and the father of John Tyler, the 10th President of the United States. Henry invoked murdered tyrants, and compared King George III to them: "Caesar had his Brutus, Charles the First had his Cromwell, and George the Third... "
Some members yelled out, "Treason!" Henry continued: "George the Third may profit by their example. If this be treason, make the most of it!" Jefferson and Tyler both remembered the speech well, Tyler later calling it "one of the trying moments which is decisive of character."
Henry was not charged with treason, or any other crime, in regard to the speech. He remained a member of the House of Burgesses until its dissolution in 1776. He was named a Delegate from Virginia to the First Continental Congress in 1774. He was not a member of the Second Continental Congress, and was not directly involved in the declaration of independence -- upper- or lower-case.
Hanover County elected Henry as a delegate to the Second Virginia Convention, which convened at St. John's Episcopal Church in Richmond on March 20, 1775. (Williamsburg was still the capital of Virginia until 1780, when it was moved to Richmond, as it was further inland and on higher ground.) Once again, Jefferson was in attendance. So was George Washington.
The Convention debated whether Virginia should adopt language from a petition by the planters of the Colony of Jamaica. This document contained complaints about British actions, but admitted the King could veto colonial legislation, and it urged reconciliation. (Jamaica remained a British colony until 1962, and, while independent, it remains within the British Commonwealth, with the British monarch as its head of state, and represented in-country by a Governor-General.)
Henry offered amendments to raise a militia independent of royal authority in terms that recognized that conflict with Britain was inevitable, sparking the opposition of moderates. On March 23, he defended his amendments, concluding with the statement he is well known for:
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!
At this, the assembled men leapt to their feet and cheered. So, if Henry said anything after "Give me liberty," they were in no position to hear him.
In 1817, William Wirt, a Virginia politician who later served as U.S. Attorney General -- but was 2 years old at the time of the speech, and was in no position to know anything other than secondhand information -- published a biography of Henry, in which he claimed Henry said, "I know not what course others may take. But, as for me, give me liberty, or give me death!" And he then took an ivory paper cutter, simulated plunging it into his chest, in imitation of the 46 BC suicide of Cato the Younger, a patriot of the Roman Republic and a defeated enemy of Julius Caesar.
The Founding Fathers had something like a fetish for the statesmen of Ancient Rome, and to a lesser extent for those of Ancient Greece. Jefferson frequently peppered his letters with quotations from Greek historian Thucydides. Roman politicians like Cicero and Seneca, both of them martyred, were often quoted in speeches and cited in letters and newspaper articles. Latin names like "Publius" became pen names for activists who did not want to be identified. And George Washington was frequently compared to Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus, a Roman general who was called away from his farm to be dictator in 458 BC. He straightened things out, then gave up power and went back to his farm. The City of Cincinnati was named for him.
In 1713, the British playwright Joseph Addison wrote the play Cato, a Tragedy, about Cato the Younger. The play includes the line, "Chains or conquest, liberty or death." It was popular in British America, and Henry knew it. Going back even further is the opera Artemisia, written by Nicolò Minato in 1657, which contains an aria called "Give me death or freedom." But that was about a woman's heartbreak, not political freedom.
So, while we can't be absolutely certain that Patrick Henry followed up "Give me liberty" with "or give me death," the available evidence suggests that he did.
Henry's speech carried the day, and the Convention narrowly adopted his amendments. Just 27 days later, Massachusetts militiamen and a unit of the British Army exchanged gunfire at Lexington and Concord. The War of the American Revolution was underway.
On June 29, 1776, Henry was elected Governor of Virginia by the House of Burgesses. Jefferson's Declaration of Independence was approved 5 days later. Henry remained in constant written contact with Washington, his fellow Virginian and now commander of the Continental Army, standing up for him against the Conway Cabal of early 1778. He left office in 1779, and Jefferson was elected to succeed him.
Henry was returned to the House of Delegates in 1779, from a County that was cut out of Pittsylvania County. It was named Patrick Henry County, and was later split into Patrick County and Henry County. With the war won, he was returned to the Governorship in 1784, serving 2 years.
He was an opponent of the Constitution of the United States ratified at Philadelphia in 1787, as he didn't think it went far enough. He wanted a Bill of Rights to protect individual rights, and spoke against the Constitution at the Virginia Ratifying Convention. Nevertheless, on June 25, 1788, the Convention ratified it. Congress passed a Bill of Rights the next year.
Patrick Henry died on June 6, 1799, at Red Hill, his home in Brookneal, Virginia, now a National Historic Site, about 100 miles southwest of Richmond. He was 63 years old.
Along with Benjamin Franklin, Samuel Adams, John Hancock and Thomas Paine, Patrick Henry was among the leading non-military figures of the American Revolution who didn't get to be President of the United States -- regardless of whether he actually said, "Give me liberty, or give me death!"
There's a joke dating back to World War II. A ship's captain is telling his crew that they had misbehaved, and so they would not be permitted "liberty," another term for shore leave, when they got to their next port. A sailor yells out, "Give me liberty, or give me death!" The captain yells, "Who said that?" And the sailors yells back, "Patrick Henry!"
