Patrick Henry: “Liberty or Death” Speech

About the Author

Patrick Henry was born in Hanover County, Virginia, on May 29, 1736, and died in Charlotte County, Virginia, on June 6, 1799. Coming from a family of moderate means, Henry first worked in a country store and then as a farmer. Then he read law—a common practice in the eighteenth century before the establishment of law schools—and was admitted to the Virginia Bar in 1760. He soon established a formidable reputation in the courtroom based on his electrifying addresses to juries. One of Henry's early court cases challenged the English Crown's authority to overturn a law passed by the Virginia assembly. Although he lost his case, Henry became a popular colonial leader, lauded for his belief in the colonists' constitutional rights.

When he was elected to the Virginia House of Burgesses in 1765, Henry again earned plaudits for his speech making. He became so outraged over the Stamp Act—which he deemed taxation without representation, since the colonists had not been consulted and had not given their consent to the measure—that he proposed that the Virginia Assembly should declare itself independent. The incensed Henry even issued a threat to the British monarchy, warning King George III to heed the examples of previous rulers who had lost their lives to usurpers.

Now aligned with a radical faction that included Thomas Jefferson, Henry joined a number of burgesses calling for a Virginia constitutional convention and a continental congress—his response to the royal governor's dissolution of the colonial assembly in 1774. As a delegate to the First and Second Continental Congresses (1774–1775), he called for the arming of a militia—the first step, he openly announced, in a war he deemed inescapable. His uncompromising posture is expressed in his most famous statement from his speech in March 1775: “I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!”

Henry's passionate commitment to individual liberty made him a keen supporter of the American Revolution and the Articles of Confederation, a document that ceded sovereign authority to the states. As an Antifederalist, he opposed the ratification of the U.S. Constitution, arguing that it endowed the central (federal) government with too much power. He feared that the rights of individual citizens might be imperiled in a federal system that made the states subordinate. Henry rejected efforts to make him part of the newly formed U.S. government, although in 1799 he consented in deference to President George Washington's request to run as a Federalist for a Virginia state senate seat. Henry won but died before taking office.

While Henry's stirring words ensured his place in American history, the measure of the man and his accomplishments has vexed historians, who decry the paucity of documents and records of his life, the need to rely on hearsay about reactions to his speeches, and the fact that he did not take a prominent part in the battles of the Revolution or in the newly formed government of the United States. Jefferson worked with Henry but concluded that his fellow Virginian was a demagogue with little interest in government itself. Yet Henry was elected to five terms as his state's governor and was famous for inspiring men of all classes and ways of life, insisting on the rights of the common man, the reduction of taxes, relief for the poor, and expansion of the money supply to assist a broad spectrum of Americans.