Marking the 250th anniversary of Patrick Henry’s famous speech.

By Lawrence W. Reed, Foundation for Economic Freedom

In St. John’s Episcopal Church in Richmond, Virginia, delegates from around the colony gathered to discuss matters that would rile Britain’s distant King and set Virginia on a path to rebellion. It was March 23, 1775.

One man, a homeschooled and self-taught lawyer who became a prominent planter and a member of the colony’s House of Burgesses, rose to speak. His remarks were described by a witness as “one of the boldest, vehement, and animated pieces of eloquence that had ever been delivered.” That man was Patrick Henry.

Few speeches in history resonated more powerfully than did Henry’s on that momentous occasion. Is there any American in the 250 years since who doesn’t know its most famous line, “Give me liberty or give me death!”?

Tensions between the 13 American colonies and the mother country had risen since King George III ascended to the throne in 1760. Decades of “salutary neglect,” during which the colonies governed themselves with little outside interference, gave way to a meddlesome monarch and a pushy Parliament. At the same time, Enlightenment ideas of liberty were gaining ground from New England to the Deep South. London’s attempts to impose taxation without representation and otherwise erode what the colonists saw as the traditional rights of Englishmen led some by 1775 to think the unthinkable: independence.

Thirty-nine-year-old Patrick Henry had already stuck his neck out by asking the convention to create a Virginia militia to prepare for a war he believed was inevitable. Those who still held out for peace and reconciliation were shocked. They knew that forming an army without London’s consent was nothing short of treason. But Henry began his oration with a ringing defense of his position. To remain quiet and do nothing, he declared, would itself be treason “and an act of disloyalty toward the Majesty of Heaven, which I revere above all earthly kings.”

What has come down to us since that day is not a verbatim transcript of Henry’s remarks but rather a reconstruction based on eyewitness accounts. The version generally accepted as probably the closest to the original was prepared by William Wirt and published in 1817. What is beyond all doubt, however, is this: Henry’s speech was a barnburner that left the assembled audience in stunned silence for several minutes.

Henry noted that previous attempts at resolving issues with London were often met with sweet words followed by harsh action. He urged his fellow Virginians not to “be betrayed with a kiss” again. Take notice instead, he said, of “those warlike preparations which cover our waters and darken our land”:

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? … 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.

The storm was coming, warned Henry. Indeed, the “shot heard ’round the world” would be fired at Lexington the following month. The time for debate and petitions was past. In no uncertain terms, this fiery patriot advised his friends what must be done:

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!

Who would come to America’s aid? How could 13 colonies, even if united, take on the world’s preeminent military power all by themselves? The delegates were wondering about that very uncertainty, but Henry gave them an answer. “There is a just God who presides over the destinies of nations, and who will raise up friends to fight our battles for us,” he pronounced. Indeed, many Americans would come to regard their two greatest allies in the war with Britain to be in this order: God and the French. “The battle, sir, is not to the strong alone,” Henry reminded his listeners. “It is to the vigilant, the active, the brave.”

In about 1,200 words, Patrick Henry put everything on the line. No equivocation, no hesitations, no suggested compromises. He was as decisive as an orator can be. His final sentences ring with the clarity of a church bell to this day:

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!

Thomas Jefferson and George Washington were present and stirred by Henry’s words. So was Edward Carrington, who later served with distinction as a lieutenant colonel in Washington’s Continental Army. Carrington listened to Henry’s speech from outside one of the church’s windows. He was so moved by it that he turned to friends and said, “Boys, bury me here, in this very spot!” When he died 34 years later, he was indeed buried under that window.

The convention rallied to Henry’s cause and moved to place Virginia “in a posture of defense.” Washington, Jefferson, and a handful of others were appointed to prepare a plan to create an army. Lord Dunmore, the British-appointed Governor of Virginia, would soon abandon the colony and flee on a ship. Patrick Henry became the first Governor of the new state of Virginia in the same month the Declaration of Independence was signed, July 1776.

In the long and storied history of the struggle for liberty, “the speech” of March 23, 1775, in that Richmond church surely ranks as one of the most memorable orations of all time.