Patrick Henry was one of the major political figures of the American founding era. A Virginia native, often called the voice of the American Revolution, Henry was renowned throughout the colonies for his oratorical skills and his best-known declaration, “Give me liberty or give me death,” uttered in March 1775, only weeks before the first shots were fired at Lexington and Concord. It endures as one of the most iconic expressions of the American commitment to freedom. At the same time, beyond his speech making, Henry was a skilled lawyer and a tough political leader whose deep distrust of governmental power impacted the writing, the ratification, and the implementation of the United States Constitution.
Born on May 29, 1736, in Hanover County, Virginia, Henry was the son of a Scottish-born planter, John Henry, and his wife, Sarah Winston Syme, a young widow from a prominent local family. As a youth Henry attended a local school for a few years, but the rest of his education came from his father, who had attended King’s College in his native Scotland. At fifteen Henry began to work as a clerk for a local merchant, and then in 1752 he and his older brother William opened a store, which quickly failed. At eighteen, although still unsure of a career path, Henry married sixteen-year-old Sarah Shelton. Enriched by the 600-acre farm, house, and six slaves that were her dowry, Henry attempted to make a life as a planter. However, fire destroyed the house in 1757, and a second attempt at running a store also failed. Desperate to support his growing family, he began helping his father-in-law at Hanover Inn, located across the road from the county courthouse. Taking advantage of the locale, Henry soon began to read the law. In 1760 twenty-four-year-old Henry convinced a distinguished panel of attorneys, including the esteemed George Wythe, that he should be admitted to the bar. Having found the right outlet for his talents, he quickly developed a profitable practice in Hanover and the surrounding counties with help from some influential citizens.
Using the oratorical skills that fueled his success as a courtroom advocate, Henry soon turned his attention to politics, winning election to the Virginia House of Burgesses in 1765. As Henry took his seat, the American colonists were debating how to respond to Britain’s newly imposed Stamp Act. Although new, Henry offered a resolution opposing the legislation. Henry forcefully expressed his opposition, likening King George III to dictators of old, previewing the powerful rhetoric and audacity that would come to characterize his efforts. Henry’s rhetorical onslaught drew a rebuke from the speaker, so Henry ultimately backed down amidst cries of treason. The young legislator, however, had made his point while also establishing himself as a force to be reckoned with in the coming years.
A portrait of Patrick Henry (1736–1799) delivering his famous oration containing the immortal words, “Give me liberty or give me death!” This speech, given in March, 1775, was widely reprinted and circulated in newspapers throughout North America, helping to inflame patriotic passions against British rule. (Library of Congress)
Early in one of Virginia’s delegations to the 1774 First Continental Congress, Henry made clear his nationalist outlook when he declared, “The distinctions between Virginians, Pennsylvanians, New Yorkers, and New Englanders are no more. I am not a Virginian, but an American.” Henry was also a member of the Second Continental Congress, which would ultimately declare independence. When the Congress adjourned on August 1, 1775, Henry returned to Virginia. While he would never again serve in an office outside Virginia, his influence within his native state had repercussions throughout the young nation. His reluctance to leave the state stemmed in part from family considerations, for in 1777, two and a half years after his first wife’s death, Henry married Dorothea Dandridge. Dandridge was in her early twenties and was a member of a prestigious Virginia family. Together they had eleven children in addition to the six he had with Sarah—although two died very young—and over the next few years, Henry often found his family responsibilities clashing with his political ambitions.
As tensions between the Crown and the colonies increased, Henry helped found the Virginia Committee of Correspondence. Also, fearing the further encroachment by British troops, he was an early advocate of military preparedness before independence. Returning from Congress in late 1775, Henry organized a regiment of his own, which was later included in the developing Continental Army. Declining to serve, he returned to the legislature. There he played a role in drafting the instructions to the Virginia delegates at the Continental Congress, directing them to pursue independence as well as the Virginia Declaration of Rights. As a member of the legislature, Henry generally supported the new state constitution, although he was concerned about the weak governorship despite his deep distrust of excessive governmental power. He thought more governmental power should be available given the need for the executive to be able to respond in the challenges of the war. He was even more concerned when he was elected by the legislature to the first of three one-year terms as governor, a position he held from July 6, 1776, until July 1, 1779. In that post, his greatest efforts were aimed at raising and supplying an army for his longtime ally, George Washington, with whom he worked closely in that effort. Upon completion of his governorship, Henry declined election to the Congress operating under the Articles of Confederation. He instead returned to the Virginia House of Delegates in 1780.
With the war won, Henry turned his energies to his family and his profession, although he did serve two additional terms as Virginia’s governor from 1784 to 1786. During that time, he came to understand clearly the challenges that confronted the new nation. Deeply suspicious of the intentions of those who called for the Philadelphia Convention in 1787, Henry refused an invitation to participate, famously commenting that he “smelled a rat.” Subsequently, he was among the first and the most outspoken opponents of the Constitution, and he led the opposition to ratification in Virginia. Henry was by all accounts the dominant figure of the June 1788 gathering, and his attacks on the concentrations of power that he believed the Constitution allowed, as well as the threats it posed to individual liberty, recalled the oratorical brilliance that had made his reputation during the Revolution. While he hammered at the need to at least amend the Constitution so as to protect individual liberties, his effort to prevent ratification was unsuccessful. In the end, Henry’s unsuccessful and perhaps exhaustive effort extended the proceedings. Virginia became the tenth state to ratify, following New Hampshire’s ninth vote that put the Constitution into effect and made the government operational.
While the Philadelphia Convention was Henry’s climax on the public stage, he did not go quietly into retirement. Unable to stop the creation of the new government, Henry first sought to convene a second constitutional convention to propose amendments, and when that failed, he used his influence in the Virginia legislature to prevent James Madison’s election as a senator. Later he convinced his ally James Monroe to run against Madison for a seat in the House of Representatives, a contest already made difficult by the drawing of district lines that put Madison’s home in a politically hostile area. However, Madison defeated his future ally Monroe and then went on to fulfill a promise to introduce a set of amendments to the new Constitution. These amendments became the Bill of Rights and enshrined protection for individual rights, as Henry had desired. Henry, however, still objected to the excessive power held by the executive and the power of the federal government rather than the power still held by the states. Even though the office was held by a man Henry revered, George Washington, Henry still believed that presidential government was not much different from the abusive monarchy the colonists had escaped little more than a decade previously.
Thomas Paine’s Common Sense
Perhaps the most iconic pamphleteer—some would say propagandist—associated with American revolutionary fervor is Thomas Paine (1737–1809), author of Common Sense. The English-born son of an Anglican mother and Quaker father, Paine also went on to pen The Rights of Man, which articulated and defended the case for the French Revolution, as well as The Age of Reason, which explored the relationship between religion and social structures. Common Sense has achieved mythic status in the American imagination, using plain-speaking and blunt language to build a powerful and persuasive argument for the full independence of the American colonies. Paine’s words about government—even at its very best, he said, it was “a necessary evil”—resonate today with Americans, notably with those associated with the “Tea Party,” as the twenty-first-century grassroots movement against the expansive size and powers of the federal government has come to be known.
C. Fee
The battle over ratification had essentially marked the end of Henry’s direct political involvement. He did remain an influential figure, and others regularly sought his support. Washington worked hard to gain Henry’s support of the president’s administration, offering Henry numerous positions in the government, including secretary of state. The Virginia legislature also elected him to a sixth term as governor in 1794, but he refused to serve, claiming that he and his family’s health and financial obligations would make such service impossible. There was also talk of him as a presidential candidate in 1796, but he again made clear his lack of interest in serving in the national government in any capacity. He did, however, make a brief return to the political arena in 1799. Henry was elected once again to the Virginia legislature at Washington’s urging and against the backdrop of serious national discord in an era characterized by the passage of the Alien and Sedition Acts and the XYZ Affair. However, he was unable to return to the body in which he had once exercised such great influence, for he died on June 6, 1799, of an intestinal condition.
In death Patrick Henry was celebrated for the leadership and influence he exerted in America’s earliest days. The voice of the Revolution, his whole public career was a testament to liberty, but while he had initially opposed the Constitution and the government it created, at the end of his life, Henry had come to embrace the Federalist cause. Having played no small role in the battle to achieve independence, he was comfortable with a government that would serve its citizens and the national interest, while at the same time protecting the personal liberties he held so dear. America’s early government was a product of his efforts.
William H. Pruden III
See also Allen, Ethan; Attucks, Crispus; Founding Myths; Ride of Paul Revere; Washington, George
Further Reading
Kidd, Thomas S. 2011. Patrick Henry: First Among Patriots. New York: Basic Books.
Mayer, Henry. 1986. A Son of Thunder: Patrick Henry and the American Republic. New York: Franklin Watts.
Rakove, Jack. 2010. Revolutionaries: A New History of the Invention of America. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
Unger, Harlow Giles. 2011. Lion of Liberty: Patrick Henry and the Call to a New Nation. Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press.
Wood, Gordon. 2003. The American Revolution: A History. New York: Modern Library.
Henry, Patrick—Primary Document
Patrick Henry, “Give Me Liberty” (1775)
One of the more famous speeches in American history occurred on March 23, 1775, when Patrick Henry delivered his “Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death” address. After Governor Dunmore suspended Virginia’s assembly, colonial leaders met in a series of conventions to discuss the crisis. In the second convention, Patrick Henry gave this oration, which rejected conciliation with England and argued for war. The speech was not recorded at the time, and the earliest known text, excerpted here, was assembled from remembered accounts and published in William Wirt’s Sketches of the Life and Character of Patrick Henry (1817).
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; and 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 a time, through fear of giving offense, I should consider myself as guilty of treason towards my country, and of an act of disloyalty toward the Majesty of Heaven, which I revere above all earthly kings. …
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 of 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 comports with those warlike preparations which cover our 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 motive 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 to them? Shall we try argument? Sir, we have been trying that for the last ten years. Have we anything new to offer upon 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? What terms shall we find which have not been already exhausted? Let us not, I beseech you, sir, deceive ourselves. 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 its 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 those means which the God of nature hath placed in our power. The 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 extentuate 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!
Source: Wirt, William. Sketches of the Life and Character of Patrick Henry. Philadelphia: James Webster, 1817.