—Thomas Jefferson, Notes on Early Career, January 6–July 29, 1821

Life

Patrick Henry was born May 29, 1736, in Hanover County, Virginia, the second of nine children born to John Henry and Sarah Winston Syme Henry. In 1754, he married Sarah Shelton (Henry), with whom he had six children. Sarah died in 1775, and he subsequently married his second wife, Dorothea Dandridge (Henry), with whom he had 11 children. He is best known for the “Liberty or Death” oration, delivered in 1775. Henry died at his Red Hill plantation in Charlotte County, Virginia, on June 6, 1799.

Education

Henry had little formal schooling but received a thorough classical and Christian education from his father, John Henry, and uncle, also named Patrick Henry, who was rector of Saint Paul’s Anglican parish in Hanover, Virginia. Henry was also self-educated as a lawyer and passed the bar exam in 1760.

Religion

Henry was a lifelong Anglican, though he was also deeply influenced by evangelical Presbyterian minister Samuel Davies of Hanover County, whose rhetorical skills he greatly admired.

Party Affiliation

During the debates over ratification of the Constitution, Henry was Virginia’s most outspoken Anti-Federalist, but in the 1790s, he aligned with the Federalist Party of George Washington, partly because of his long-standing rivalry with James Madison and Thomas Jefferson, who were becoming leaders of the newly formed Republican Party.

Highlights and Accomplishments

Patrick Henry was one of Virginia’s most popular and influential statesmen during the American Founding era. He was also one of the most radical leaders of the opposition to British colonial policies in America. Henry was one of the first colonists to speak out against the Stamp Act in 1765 and to call for defensive preparations against the British army in 1775. The latter occasion led him to give his “Liberty or Death” oration, the speech for which he is best known today. During the debates over ratification of the Constitution, he was one of Virginia’s leading and most outspoken Anti-Federalists, a position that pitted him against his fellow Virginian James Madison, the “Father of the Constitution.” Henry saw his opposition to the Constitution as animated by the same basic concerns that had earlier led him to oppose British tax policies: the fear of unchecked government power, which he regarded as the greatest threat to American liberty.

Early Life and Entrance into Virginia Law and Politics

Patrick Henry was born in 1736 on a plantation in Hanover County, Virginia. Like his fellow Virginian George Washington, Henry never went to college, but he received a thorough, if informal, education from his father, John, and his uncle, an Anglican minister also named Patrick Henry. When Henry was a boy, his mother Sarah would take him to the Presbyterian church of Samuel Davies of Hanover County, where he was deeply impressed by Davies’s learned but zealous revival preaching in the late stages of the First Great Awakening. The Awakening was an upsurge in Christian fervor that peaked across the colonies in the early 1740s with ministers calling on people to be “born again” to true faith in Jesus Christ. Henry would later recall that Davies was the best orator he ever heard, which was quite a compliment coming from the man many regarded as the finest speaker of the Revolutionary generation.

Like most of the southern Founders, Henry became a plantation owner and slave master as a young man. The Virginia economy was inextricable from agriculture and slavery, but Henry never regarded slavery as an ideal situation, either morally or socially. When pressed by anti-slavery figures in the 1770s to free his slaves, Henry admitted that economic necessity was his chief motivation for remaining attached to the institution even though slavery contradicted his views of Christian morality. Unfortunately, Henry did little to help the Founding generation to extricate themselves from the chief moral problem of the era.

While continuing to oversee his farms, Henry taught himself enough about the laws of England and Virginia to gain admission to the bar in 1760. His legal practice occasioned his first clash against British authority in the colonies: the Parsons’ Cause of 1763. In the 1750s, Virginia had enacted measures to regulate the salaries of public officials, including Anglican parsons, who were effectively state employees because of Virginia’s established denomination, the Church of England. The ministers, angered because they saw these measures as unjust reductions in their pay, sought legal redress in England to recoup their losses. In 1763, Henry helped to defend Virginia vestries who paid the ministers’ salaries, and he turned the case into a defense of colonial autonomy against meddling British power. Henry proclaimed that if the king of England disallowed legitimate colonial laws, he “degenerated into a Tyrant” who no longer deserved the colonists’ obedience. Such incendiary language against the king had rarely been used in America, but the jury was persuaded and awarded the minister in the case one penny in damages.1

The Stamp Act

Cases such as the Parsons’ Cause elevated Henry to a higher political profile. He became a member of the colonial legislature, the Virginia House of Burgesses, in 1765. Almost immediately after he had joined this body, news arrived of the British Parliament’s passage of the Stamp Act, which imposed a tax on almost all printed goods used in the colonies, including legal papers, newspapers, and more. New tax laws usually did not please the colonists, especially because they were not directly represented in Parliament. The only way they could register their opposition to measures like the Stamp Act was to complain from a distance.

Henry introduced strident resolutions against the Stamp Act despite being new to the legislature. The resolutions insisted that the English colonists in America had the same political rights that people in England had. Henry also argued for the principle of “no taxation without representation”—the idea that taxation was such a dangerous legislative power that only a people’s direct representatives could rightly exercise it. If legislators voted to tax their constituents, the constituents must have the power to vote them out of office; otherwise, legislators were sure to abuse their taxing authority. Finally, Henry’s resolutions concluded that only the Virginia legislature rightly had the power to tax Virginians. Newspapers also reported a few more resolutions (probably not introduced by Henry) that were even more radical, suggesting that colonists should actively resist any attempt to impose taxes on them without their direct consent.

Henry’s speech on the Stamp Act was just as stirring as the resolutions. In it, he even implied that if King George III kept claiming undue authority over the colonies, some brave patriot would likely assassinate him. This was an outrageous thing to say, and the Speaker of the House chastised Henry, saying it was treasonous. One dubious but oft-repeated account of the speech has Henry replying, “If this be treason, make the most of it!” The limited reliable sources surrounding this moment suggest that Henry apologized and backed away from his shocking statement about the king’s assassination. He admitted that sometimes he let his passion for American liberty get the best of him.2

The Growing Crisis with Britain

After Britain repealed the Stamp Act, Henry kept attending periodically to the emerging political standoff with Britain even as he dealt with local legislative matters and personal affairs. Henry had a growing family, along with law cases and land deals that took up much of his time before the mid-1770s, and as popular as he was, he was not what we would call a “career politician.” He could win most any office he sought in Virginia but often seemed more interested in tending to his farm, family, and private business than he was in enhancing his political career.

Nevertheless, when controversies stoked tension with British authorities, Henry was often the first to speak out in defense of American rights. As the colonies dealt with the ominous British reaction to the Boston Tea Party late in 1773, Henry gave scintillating speeches against the Coercive Acts. These acts cracked down on the Patriot movement in Boston, and Henry warned that if the British could deprive Bostonians of their right of self-determination, Virginians surely would be next. His Virginia Patriot colleague George Mason wrote admiringly that Henry was “by far the most powerful speaker I ever heard.… He is in my opinion the first man upon this continent, as well in abilities as public virtues….” Mason believed that if Henry had lived during the golden age of the Roman Republic, he would have stood out as one of its greatest leaders. This was high praise, as American leaders saw the Roman Republic as an exemplar of well-ordered liberty.3

The Coercive Acts led to the convening of the First Continental Congress in Philadelphia. In 1774, Henry, George Washington, and five other Virginia leaders were selected to attend the Congress. The colonies had little experience in cooperating with one another except to the extent that they were part of the broader British Empire. Echoing the English philosopher John Locke and calling for a new kind of American unity, Henry declared at the Congress that “We are in a State of Nature…. The Distinctions between Virginians, Pennsylvanians, New Yorkers and New Englanders, are no more. I am not a Virginian, but an American.”4

Liberty or Death

For Henry and the Virginians, the question of resistance to Britain reached a watershed moment in March 1775 when delegates attended the Virginia Convention at St. John’s Anglican Church in Richmond. It seemed likely that conflict would break out soon between the Patriot resistance and the British military in Massachusetts, the colony that had been the center of unrest against British power. More cautious Virginians wanted to keep appealing to the king and Parliament for redress of colonial grievances. Henry, however, had already seen the colonists make such appeals for a decade to no avail. He believed it was time to accept the inevitable and prepare for war.

Henry’s call for military preparedness resulted in his “Liberty or Death” oration, the defining speech of his career and arguably the most powerful speech of the entire Revolution. Surprisingly, we do not have the original text of Henry’s oration, so it was recreated several decades later by a biographer who interviewed people who had been there (Henry had passed away by this time). Even in the speech’s reconstructed form, a reader can readily appreciate the raw energy of Henry’s rhetoric. “Three millions of people armed in the holy cause of liberty,” he proclaimed, “and in such a country as that which we possess, are invincible by any force which our enemy can send against us.”5

Even on a close reading, we might miss the fact that the relatively short speech is teeming with references to the Bible, befitting Henry’s background in the church and exposure to revivalist preaching. Some biblical references are easily recognizable, such as his warning to Americans not to allow themselves to be “betrayed with a kiss,” referencing the disciple Judas’s betrayal of Jesus in the gospels. Other references are more obscure, with several coming from the Prophet Jeremiah of the Hebrew Bible.

The Bible was not Henry’s only source for the speech, of course. The climactic line “give me liberty or give me death” drew from the popular play Cato, A Tragedy, by Joseph Addison. Cato, the great Roman orator, had said in the play that “It is not now a time to talk of ought / But chains, or conquest; liberty, or death.” Founders such as Henry framed much of their understanding of political developments by reference to classical and Christian antiquity.

War and Independence

Henry’s call to arms carried the day at the Virginia Convention, and the momentum even led Henry to involve himself in military affairs. Soon after the Virginia Convention began to prepare for war, the royal governor of Virginia seized a cache of gunpowder from Williamsburg, depriving the Patriots of a possible supply of munitions. Henry then led a militia company to Williamsburg either to recapture the gunpowder or to secure compensation for it. The royal government in Virginia declared Henry a rebel and forbade colonists from offering him support. Henry had little experience in military matters, and it became clear that Virginians would look to other leaders to command the militia.

In the months leading up to the colonies’ Declaration of Independence in July 1776, Henry and other Virginia leaders had begun preparations for becoming an independent state, which required a new state constitution and Declaration of Rights. Henry, George Mason, James Madison, and others worked to craft these important documents. Henry was especially involved in framing the 16th article of the Declaration of Rights: its statement on religious liberty. Virginia’s formal relationship with the Anglican Church had been tested in the late colonial era when non-Anglican “dissenters,” including Quakers, Presbyterians, and Baptists, became more common. Baptists suffered especially harsh treatment from Anglican officials and county sheriffs in Virginia in the years just before the Revolution.

Virtually all Virginia leaders agreed in 1776 that active persecution of dissenters should cease. Some leaders, such as Madison and Thomas Jefferson, wanted to see Virginia make a clear separation between church and state. Others, such as Henry, realized that the state must afford liberty of conscience to all but also believed that Christianity was too important for the state to drop any connection with Christian denominations. The 16th article asserted that “all men are equally entitled to the free exercise of religion, according to the dictates of conscience,” but did not clarify whether it was intended to disestablish the Anglican Church completely.6 (“Free exercise” would reappear in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1791.)

The Virginia Convention selected Henry as the independent state’s first governor, befitting his prominence among Virginia leaders. George Washington was probably the only figure in the state who would have been a more natural choice as governor, but he had become the commander of the Continental Army and spent much of the war leading the fight against the British regular army in the northern states. A good portion of Henry’s work as governor involved coordinating with Washington and other American officials on the war effort.

Henry and Washington sometimes disagreed bitterly about using short-term state militiamen versus longer-term Continental soldiers, whom Washington believed he could discipline into an effective fighting force. However, Henry’s fundamental loyalty to Washington was unshakeable. He did Washington a great favor in 1777 when some Americans tried to enlist Henry in a back-channel campaign to have Washington removed as army commander. Henry immediately told Washington about the plot and said he would have nothing to do with it.

Political Rivalries and Religious Liberty

As political alignments matured in Revolutionary Virginia, Henry increasingly found himself at odds with Madison and Jefferson. His differences with Madison were largely over matters of policy, including church–state separation. The split between Jefferson and Henry was more personal and became especially bitter because of a controversy over Jefferson’s service as governor of Virginia. Jefferson’s term followed Henry’s departure from the office in 1779. When the British invaded Virginia in 1781, Jefferson was nearly captured at his Monticello home. His term as governor was almost up, and in his panicked flight from the British, Jefferson effectively left the state without a chief magistrate. Critics said this was dereliction of the governor’s duties, and Henry prompted a brief legislative investigation of Jefferson’s behavior.

Whether this investigation was fair or not, Jefferson blamed Henry for questioning his integrity and never forgave him for it. Even though Jefferson was serving as an American diplomat in France during much of the 1780s, he and Madison regularly corresponded about the frustrations caused by Henry’s opposition to their plans for legislative and constitutional reform.

A major priority for Madison and Jefferson was passing Jefferson’s Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom, which he had written before he left for France. During the war, Virginia had effectively defunded the Anglican Church, more as a wartime exigency than as a principled commitment to religious freedom. When the Treaty of Paris formally ended the Revolutionary War in 1783, supporters of the established church wanted funding to resume. Henry and others, however, realized that the time for a single established church had passed. Henry proposed instead that Virginia adopt a “general assessment for religion.” Under this plan, Virginians would still be required to pay a religious tax, but they could designate which denomination would receive the funds. This arrangement would have reflected a compromise between the traditional system of an established church and the new reality of religious pluralism in the state.

However, Madison and Jefferson, joined by many evangelical dissenters (especially Baptists), wanted the state to stop forcing people to give money to religious groups altogether. They believed that only the free exercise of religion prevented government corruption of Christianity. When Henry left the legislature to serve again as governor, the way was open for Madison to shepherd the Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom to enactment in 1786. Henry represented a common view among the Founders that states could honor religious liberty while also providing direct support for religion. Jefferson, Madison, and the Baptists won the day, however, with their promotion of religious freedom and the end to Virginia’s direct aid to churches.

The Battle over the Constitution

The Articles of Confederation, a simple, state sovereignty–based system of government, was the nation’s first constitution. By the mid-1780s, most American leaders agreed that the Articles needed revision because of the inability and unwillingness of the states to cooperate for constructive national purposes. However, the Articles themselves made the adoption of amendments almost impossible. The result was a crisis of political reform.

Henry initially expressed some interest in revising the Articles, but he and many others came to fear that the campaign to amend or replace the Articles would result in a “consolidated” national government. They regarded a consolidated system as the opposite of the republican ideal of dispersed power. Southerners like Henry were especially worried that northern leaders would be open to actions that would devastate the southern economy if they were able to commandeer the national legislature. Such troubling measures included negotiating away navigation rights to the Mississippi River, an idea that was proposed in 1786 to the dismay of many southerners.

Madison and Alexander Hamilton took the lead in the national effort to replace the Articles with a new constitution that would be less beholden to the states and would locate the government’s sovereign authority in “the people.” Delegates were selected to attend the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in 1787. As usual, Virginia chose Henry as one of the state’s delegates, but Henry fatefully refused to attend the Convention. When questioned later why he declined, he said, “I smelt a rat!” Whether or not Henry was entirely aware of the changes that Madison, Hamilton, and others intended to make in Philadelphia, he was ultimately alarmed by the result of the Constitutional Convention. When the Convention called for the states to hold ratifying conventions, Henry summoned all his rhetorical powers in the Virginia Ratifying Convention to defeat the Constitution in his state.

During the ratification process, Henry became aligned with the Anti-Federalists. The Anti-Federalists opposed Madison, Hamilton, and the pro-Constitution cohort, who became known as the Federalists. These were not formal political parties, but simply the people who were for and against the Constitution. Many Americans have found it difficult to understand why figures like Henry would have opposed the Constitution, given its brilliance and enduring quality. Henry explained his Anti-Federalist stance the same way he justified his opposition to Britain in the Revolution: his fear of the loss of Americans’ rights and liberties.

Anti-Federalists had a variety of concerns about the proposed Constitution. Many were distressed that the original constitution had no bill of rights, and these critics were relatively satisfied when Madison promised that he would introduce a bill of rights in the First Congress after the Constitution was ratified. But Anti-Federalists like Henry were not satisfied with mere assurances of rights. Henry believed that it was foolish to accept centralized government power, regardless of what promises proponents of the Constitution made about honoring Americans’ freedoms. To Henry, if you gave officeholders the ability to abuse liberty, they would eventually do it, because human nature was essentially corrupt and power-grabbing. He thought that good republican government depended on dispersing power among the states, even if that meant that government was sometimes inefficient as it was under the Articles. Efficient government might convey some short-term benefits but ultimately would threaten the people’s freedom, and that was not a price Henry was willing to pay.

Henry controlled much of the debate at the Virginia Ratifying Convention in mid-1788. Madison listened as Henry criticized the proposed Constitution from every conceivable angle. Henry thought the Preamble’s opening phrase “We the people” was both preposterous and alarming. How could a closed-door meeting of 55 delegates in Philadelphia represent “we the people”? And why didn’t they say “We the states” if this Constitution was really as “federal” and state-based as its defenders said? To Henry, all signs suggested that the states would become a sideshow under the Constitution with all fundamental powers flowing up to the new national government.7

Then there was the office of President. The Articles had no separate executive branch, while the Constitution made the President commander in chief of the armed forces and (originally) provided no limit on the number of terms a President could serve. To Henry, this was a poorly masked attempt to create a King of America:

This Constitution is said to have beautiful features; but when I come to examine these features…they appear to me horribly frightful. Among other deformities, it has an awful squinting; it squints towards monarchy; and does not this raise indignation in the breast of every true American? Your President may easily become king.… If your American chief be a man of ambition and abilities, how easy is it for him to render himself absolute! The army is in his hands….8

History was replete with examples of people losing their liberty when a strong executive used the military to suppress dissent and silence his enemies.

Henry also noted the absence of a bill of rights: “The rights of conscience, trial by jury, liberty of the press, all your immunities and franchises, all pretensions to human rights and privileges, are rendered insecure, if not lost, by this change.”9 Unlike some other Anti-Federalists, however, Henry was not convinced that adding a bill of rights would secure these freedoms. Plenty of governments said they would protect the people’s liberty but failed to do so. Henry believed that the only real security was in structuring a government and dispersing its power so that it was exceedingly difficult for officials to act in concert against the people’s rights. Madison agreed to a degree with this principle of checks and balances, but he also believed that the government must be able to do what it needs to do—for example, foster a robust economy or protect against threats to national security—effectively. Henry had a more single-minded focus on liberty than the Federalists did: “You are not to inquire how your trade may be increased, nor how you are to become a great and powerful people, but how your liberties can be secured; for liberty ought to be the direct end of your government.”10

In the end, Henry failed to convince enough delegates, and Virginia voted by a slight majority to ratify the Constitution. Henry’s aim had been to defeat the Constitution, not merely to secure a bill of rights. Nevertheless, Americans can thank Henry and the other Anti-Federalists for pressuring Madison and other Federalists to add the Bill of Rights to the Constitution. Madison and his allies did not originally think a bill of rights was necessary or helpful. How could one possibly list all the rights that the national government was not supposed to violate? But the Anti-Federalists insisted that some rights were so foundational that the Constitution must enumerate them as sacrosanct. The Anti-Federalists’ complaints are a classic instance of the value of open debate in a republic: The rancorous process of ratification produced the Bill of Rights, which many Americans regard as the most cherished part of the Constitution.

Final Years

By the early 1790s, Henry’s health was in decline. Discouraged by the ratification of the Constitution, he largely stepped away from politics. Madison’s and Jefferson’s views of constitutional power in the 1790s gravitated somewhat toward Henry’s as they articulated the view that the Constitution narrowly limits the national government’s power. Over time, they became opposed to Alexander Hamilton, who took the position that the Constitution enabled the government to act in ways that benefited the national interest even if the power in question was not explicitly granted by the Constitution. This debate came to a head over Hamilton’s economic program and his proposed Bank of the United States, an institution that the Constitution did not mention.

Madison’s and Jefferson’s faction began to emerge as an opposition political party, the Republicans, aligned against the Federalist Party of Hamilton, Washington, and John Adams. Henry might have had more ideological sympathy for the Republicans, but his personal attachments led him to align with Washington and the Federalists. There was even some discussion about Henry running for President as a Federalist in 1796 to replace the retiring Washington, but that never came to fruition, and Adams became Washington’s successor instead.

By the end of the 1790s, national politics had become vitriolic, capped by the Federalists’ passage of the Alien and Sedition Acts in 1798. These acts were designed to suppress dissent against the Adams Administration. The Republicans responded with horror, and southern states (led by Madison and Jefferson) contemplated plans for nullifying federal laws or perhaps even secession from the American Union. Washington felt that the nation could not afford to have men like Henry stay on the sidelines during this crisis and finally persuaded Henry to run for the Virginia House of Delegates again in 1799. Henry died before taking office, passing away at his Red Hill plantation in Charlotte County on June 6, 1799. The Virginia Gazette spoke for many when it exclaimed, “Mourn Virginia mourn! Your Henry is gone! Ye friends to liberty in every clime, drop a tear.”11

Because Patrick Henry never served as President, his accomplishments as a Founding Father have been somewhat overshadowed by those of his fellow Virginians, especially Washington, Jefferson, and Madison. But among those who remained in Virginia, Henry was arguably the most popular and influential politician during the Revolutionary crisis and war.

Americans’ mixed assessment of Henry results as well from his steadfast opposition to the Constitution, which put him on the losing side of the ratification debates. One could certainly question whether Henry’s dire warnings about the Constitution were warranted at the time, but in the long term, his fear that the national government would become massive and dangerously intrusive has been confirmed. Again, we could debate whether this uncontrollable growth of federal power was built into the original scheme of the Constitution or whether it resulted from executive, legislative, and/or judicial violations of the Constitution by later American officials, but with federal budgets and deficits today running well into the trillions of dollars, the warnings of Anti-Federalists like Henry seem increasingly prophetic. Throughout the Revolutionary crisis and the ratification debates, Henry’s message was consistent: You can have a powerful government, or you can protect citizens’ liberty, but in the long run, it is terribly difficult to do both.

In the end, Patrick Henry saw the fate of nations as bound up with the people’s virtue and their commitment to guarding liberty. Reflecting on America’s fate, Henry once wrote that independence would be a blessing or a curse depending on “the use our people make of the blessings which a gracious God hath bestowed on us. If they are wise, they will be great and happy. If they are of a contrary character, they will be miserable.” He concluded by paraphrasing Proverbs 14:34: “Righteousness alone can exalt them as a nation.”12

Thomas Kidd

Selected Primary Writings

Virginia Resolves of 1765 (May 30, 1765)13

Resolved, That the first adventurers and settlers of this his Majesty’s Colony and Dominion of Virginia brought with them and transmitted to their Posterity, and all other his Majesty’s Subjects since inhabiting in this his Majesty’s said Colony, all the Liberties, Privileges, Franchises, and Immunities, that have at any time been held, enjoyed, and possessed, by the people of Great Britain.

Resolved, That by two Royal Charters, granted by King James the First, the Colonists aforesaid are declared entitled to all Liberties, Privileges and Immunities of Denizens and natural Subjects, to all Intents and Purposes, as if they had been abiding and born within the Realm of England.

Resolved, That the Taxation of the People by themselves, or by Person chosen by themselves to represent them, who can only know what Taxes the People are able to bear, or the easiest Method of raising them, and must themselves be affected by every Tax laid on the People, is the only Security against a burthensome Taxation, and the distinguishing Characteristick of British freedom, without which the ancient Constitution cannot exist.

Resolved, That his Majesty’s liege People of this his most ancient and loyal Colony have without Interruption enjoyed the inestimable Right of being governed by such Laws, respecting their internal Polity and Taxation, as are derived from their own Consent, with the Approbation of their Sovereign, or his Substitute; and that the same hath never been forfeited or yielded up, but hath been constantly recognized by the Kings and People of Great Britain.

“Liberty or Death” Speech (March 23, 1775)14

…I have but one lamp by which [man’s] 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 had 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…. 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 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. 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!

Speech at the Virginia Ratifying Convention (June 5, 1788)15

…You are not to inquire how your trade may be increased, nor how you are to become a great and powerful people, but how your liberties can be secured; for liberty ought to be the direct end of your government.

Having premised these things, I shall, with the aid of my judgment and information, which, I confess, are not extensive, go into the discussion of this system more minutely. Is it necessary for your liberty that you should abandon those great rights by the adoption of this system? Is the relinquishment of the trial by jury and the liberty of the press necessary for your liberty? Will the abandonment of your most sacred rights tend to the security of your liberty? Liberty, the greatest of all earthly blessing—give us that precious jewel, and you may take every thing else! But I am fearful I have lived long enough to become an old-fashioned fellow. Perhaps an invincible attachment to the dearest rights of man may, in these refined, enlightened days, be deemed old-fashioned; if so, I am contented to be so. I say, the time has been when every pulse of my heart beat for American liberty, and which, I believe, had a counterpart in the breast of every true American; but suspicions have gone forth—’suspicions of my integrity—publicly reported that my professions are not real. Twenty-three years ago was I supposed a traitor to my country? I was then said to be the bane of sedition, because I supported the rights of my country. I may be thought suspicious when I say our privileges and rights are in danger. But, sir, a number of the people of this country are weak enough to think these things are too true. I am happy to find that the gentleman on the other side declares they are groundless. But, sir, suspicion is a virtue as long as its object is the preservation of the public good, and as long as it stays within proper bounds: should it fall on me, I am contented: conscious rectitude is a powerful consolation. I trust there are many who think my professions for the public good to be real. Let your suspicion look to both sides. There are many on the other side, who possibly may have been persuaded to the necessity of these measures, which I conceive to be dangerous to your liberty. Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect every one who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force. Whenever you give up that force, you are inevitably ruined. I am answered by gentlemen, that, though I might speak of terrors, yet the fact was, that we were surrounded by none of the dangers I apprehended. I conceive this new government to be one of those dangers: it has produced those horrors which distress many of our best citizens. We are come hither to preserve the poor commonwealth of Virginia, if it can be possibly done: something must be done to preserve your liberty and mine. The Confederation, this same despised government, merits, in my opinion, the highest encomium: it carried us through a long and dangerous war; it rendered us victorious in that bloody conflict with a powerful nation; it has secured us a territory greater than any European monarch possesses: and shall a government which has been thus strong and vigorous, be accused of imbecility, and abandoned for want of energy? Consider what you are about to do before you part with the government. Take longer time in reckoning things; revolutions like this have happened in almost every country in Europe; similar examples are to be found in ancient Greece and ancient Rome—instances of the people losing their liberty by their own carelessness and the ambition of a few. We are cautioned by the honorable gentleman, who presides, against faction and turbulence. I acknowledge that licentiousness is dangerous, and that it ought to be provided against: I acknowledge, also, the new form of government may effectually prevent it: yet there is another thing it will as effectually do—it will oppress and ruin the people.

There are sufficient guards placed against sedition and licentiousness; for, when power is given to this government to suppress these, or for any other purpose, the language it assumes is clear, express, and unequivocal; but when this Constitution speaks of privileges, there is an ambiguity, sir, a fatal ambiguity—an ambiguity which is very astonishing.… I shall be told I am continually afraid: but, sir, I have strong cause of apprehension. In some parts of the plan before you, the great rights of freemen are endangered; in other parts, absolutely taken away. How does your trial by jury stand? In civil cases gone—not sufficiently secured in criminal—this best privilege is gone. But we are told that we need not fear; because those in power, being our representatives, will not abuse the powers we put in their hands. I am not well versed in history, but I will submit to your recollection, whether liberty has been destroyed most often by the licentiousness of the people, or by the tyranny of rulers. I imagine, sir, you will find the balance on the side of tyranny. Happy will you be if you miss the fate of those nations, who, omitting to resist their oppressors, or negligently suffering their liberty to be wrested from them, have groaned under intolerable despotism! Most of the human race are now in this deplorable condition; and those nations who have gone in search of grandeur, power, and splendor, have also fallen a sacrifice, and been the victims of their own folly. While they acquired those visionary blessings, they lost their freedom. My great objection to this government is, that it does not leave us the means of defending our rights, or of waging war against tyrants. It is urged by some gentlemen, that this new plan will bring us an acquisition of strength—an army, and the militia of the states. This is an idea extremely ridiculous: gentlemen cannot be earnest. This acquisition will trample on our fallen liberty. Let my beloved Americans guard against that fatal lethargy that has pervaded the universe. Have we the means of resisting disciplined armies, when our only defence, the militia, is put into the hands of Congress? The honorable gentleman said that great danger would ensue if the Convention rose without adopting this system. I ask, Where is that danger? I see none. Other gentlemen have told us, within these walls, that the union is gone, or that the union will be gone. Is not this trifling with the judgment of their fellow-citizens? Till they tell us the grounds of their fears, I will consider them as imaginary. I rose to make inquiry where those dangers were; they could make no answer: I believe I never shall have that answer. Is there a disposition in the people of this country to revolt against the dominion of laws? Has there been a single tumult in Virginia? Have not the people of Virginia, when laboring under the severest pressure of accumulated distresses, manifested the most cordial acquiescence in the execution of the laws? What could be more awful than their unanimous acquiescence under general distresses? Is there any revolution in Virginia? Whither is the spirit of America gone? Whither is the genius of America fled? It was but yesterday, when our enemies marched in triumph through our country. Yet the people of this country could not be appalled by their pompous armaments: they stopped their carer, and victoriously captured them. Where is the peril, now, compared to that? Some minds are agitated by foreign alarms. Happily for us, there is no real danger from Europe; that country is engaged in more arduous business: from that quarter there is no cause of fear: you may sleep in safety forever for them.

Where is the danger? If, sir, there was any, I would recur to the American spirit to defend us; that spirit which has enabled us to surmount the greatest difficulties: to that illustrious spirit I address my most fervent prayer to prevent our adopting a system destructive to liberty.…

If we admit this consolidated government, it will be because we like a great, splendid one. Some way or other we must be a great and mighty empire; we must have an army, and a navy, and a number of things. When the American spirit was in its youth, the language of America was different: liberty, sir, was then the primary object. We are descended from a people whose government was founded on liberty: our glorious forefathers of Great Britain made liberty the foundation of every thing. That country is become a great, mighty, and splendid nation; not because their government is strong and energetic, but, sir, because liberty is its direct end and foundation. We drew the spirit of liberty from our British ancestors: by that spirit we have triumphed over every difficulty. But now, sir, the American spirit, assisted by the ropes and chains of consolidation, is about to convert this country into a powerful and mighty empire. If you make the citizens of this country agree to become the subjects of one great consolidated empire of America, your government will not have sufficient energy to keep them together. Such a government is incompatible with the genius of republicanism. There will be no checks, no real balances, in this government. What can avail your specious, imaginary balances, your rope—dancing, chain—rattling, ridiculous ideal checks and contrivances?...

Recommended Readings

• Charles L. Cohen, “The ‘Liberty or Death’ Speech: A Note on Religion and Revolutionary Rhetoric,” William and Mary Quarterly, Vol. 38, No. 4 (October 1981), pp. 702–717.
• Lorri Glover, The Fate of the Revolution: Virginians Debate the Constitution (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2016).
• Thomas S. Kidd, Patrick Henry: First Among Patriots (New York: Basic Books, 2011).
• William Wirt, Sketches of the Life and Character of Patrick Henry (Philadelphia: James Webster, 1817).

Notes