Patrick Henry: “Liberty or Death” Speech

Impact

Henry's speech had a profound and stirring impact on everyone who heard it. For years, men would recollect his words and their reactions. To say that it was the most powerful speech ever delivered in Virginia's House of Burgesses is an understatement. The speech's historic significance was recognized immediately. One burgess supposedly said that he wanted to be buried on the spot.

One account described a hushed assembly hanging on Henry's every word. Even Henry's opponents admitted how moved they were by his words. Edmund Randolph, for example, attributed a religious intensity to Henry's address, declaring, “The British King was lying prostrate from the thunder of heaven” (Beeman, p. 66). Thus Henry's words became not merely his own but virtually a kind of divine judgment on the actions of the British Crown. Henry himself, in that moment, seemed a prophet, speaking as “man was never known to speak before,” Randolph claimed (Beeman, p. 66). Henry had made a contribution not only to the colonial cause but also to the cause of humankind.

The practical impact of Henry's speech took the form of approving his resolution that the colony arm itself and send delegates to the Second Continental Congress. Jefferson later acknowledged that Henry's bold words had solidified the elite of colonial leaders, bolstering them in their determination to reject overweening royal authority. Henry's boldness also affected new leaders in colonies like Pennsylvania, where the elite had resisted radicalism.

While Henry's words inspired his fellow colonists, they prompted royal authorities to increase military measures, so that by April 18, 1775, British troops were sent to Lexington and Concord, Massachusetts. Governor Dunmore secured Virginia's supply of gunpowder and even threatened to free all slaves who were willing to fight for the British Crown. The result, however, was to strengthen the forces of radicalism and to make Henry's words even more apposite. In retrospect, Henry's speech took on an air of inevitability, as if he were the first to describe a state of affairs—a drive for liberty—that no power on earth could restrain. Thus many of the retrospective accounts of Henry's speech must be viewed in the context of the events that later seemed to confirm his rousing convictions.