Liberty's son of thunder: Patrick Henry's words were his most potent weapons. Americans sacrificing for their country today still echo his thunderous cry, "Give me liberty or give me death!".

Patrick Henry arrived in Richmond in March 1775 as one of the few patriots aware of the dire need for his state to prepare for the coming War for Independence. Several days later, on March 20, Virginia's second revolutionary assembly convened at St. John's Church in Richmond. The general mood of the assembly at the time could at best be termed "wait and see." In fact, Edmund Pendleton offered a conciliatory measure pleading with King George III to intervene on the colony's behalf.

Henry introduced an amendment to Pendleton's resolution on March 23 "that this colony be immediately put in a posture of defense; and ... [there] be a committee to prepare a plan for the embodying, arming and disciplining such a number of men as may be sufficient for that purpose." The resolution to arm Virginia against the crown shocked some of the delegates. Many of them remained loyal to the British crown and hoped the colony could patch up differences with England.

To pass the amendment, Henry arose and delivered his now-famous "Give me liberty or give me death" speech. He began in soft tones, gradually increasing in volume as he explained the hopelessness of reconciling with the crown and the disastrous impact of inaction. "Shall we gather strength by irresolution and inaction?" he asked. "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?"

By the conclusion of his speech, according to the fragmentary historical record, Henry had raised his voice to a thunderous volume and to tremendous impact, declaring: "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!"

When Henry concluded, the whole audience was momentarily silent and stunned, as if shaking off the shock of a bomb exploding in their midst. One man who had listened to the speech from outside the church through an open window, Edward Carrington, was so impressed with the oratory that he exclaimed: "Let me be buried on this spot." Carrington later became a colonel in the militia, and his request was granted upon his death in 1810. After the silent pause, a general outcry of "To arms!" arose in the chamber, and Richard Henry Lee arose to support Henry's amendment, which eventually passed by the narrow margin of 65-60.

"After every illusion had vanished," Edmund Randolph later wrote of the speech, "a prodigy yet remained. It was Patrick Henry, born in obscurity, poor, and without the advantage of literature, rousing the genius of his country, and binding a band of patriots together to hurl defiance at the tyranny of so formidable a nation as Great Britain."

Early Life

Patrick Henry was indeed born to a family of modest means that offered no hint of future greatness. His father, John Henry, had emigrated from Aberdeen, Scotland, and had set up a small farm on the South Anna River in Hanover County, Virginia.

Patrick was born in 1736. During his early life, he displayed a notable lack of interest in learning. Though taught the basics of English and Latin by his father, and further schooled by his uncle Rev. Patrick Henry of nearby St. Paul's Parish, young Patrick Henry was more interested in hunting and fishing than in his Latin and Greek studies.

By age 15, Patrick had become a clerk in a local store. Within a year he and his older brother William opened up their own shop. But Patrick Henry would be a total failure as a shopkeeper. The Henry brothers closed up their shop within a year, having lost all of their initial capital.

Patrick Henry soon married Sarah Sheldon and was given a dowry of a half-dozen slaves and a 300-acre farm. Henry proved to be just as bad a farmer as a shopkeeper, and his financial condition worsened when his house burned down in a fire. He sold some slaves and invested his remaining capital in a store once again. By 1759, just one year later, he had repeated his past failure and was forced to move his growing family in with his father-in-law.

Having failed three times at a career, Henry turned his eyes to a new vocation-the law. Henry did not extensively prepare for the bar exam. He undertook no formal schooling. According to contemporary reports, he studied for no more than eight months--and possibly as little as six weeks. And he nearly failed the exam. Of the four bar examiners, only Peyton and John Randolph initially agreed to sign his license, and even they did so reluctantly. Henry needed three signatures, and George Wythe refused to sign. However, examiner Robert C. Nicholas agreed to sign alter Henry promised to continue studying the law. Thomas Jefferson wrote years later that he had consulted Patrick Henry's bar examiners--"the two Randolphs acknowledging he was very ignorant of law, but ... they perceived him to be a young man of genius, and did not doubt he would soon qualify himself."

Henry proved to be a good risk. If there was one thing he could do well, it was to argue persuasively. He mastered oratory, accurately sizing up his audience in every circumstance and moving them with the force of emotion.

Henry quickly built up a law practice, while occasionally lending a hand at the tavern his father-in-law had opened. Henry managed 1,185 cases in his first three years and quickly became relatively wealthy. He was even able to advance both his father and father-in-law money for business projects.

Henry's big break in his legal career came in late 1763, when he took on a case most had considered hopeless. Henry had agreed to argued for tobacco farmers who insisted that pastors be paid no more than the same rate that had applied for more than 100 years. Anglican pastors had the privilege of taxing farmers, who were expected to pay in tobacco--or, when it was too scarce and valuable, at a rate of two-pence per pound of tobacco. Pastors wanted to increase the two-pence rate, since, in the late 1750s, it was only one third the price of a pound of tobacco. Though the Virginia House of Burgesses had passed a law approving the two-pence rate, the pastors appealed to London, and London sided with the pastors. James Maury, a local pastor in nearby Louisa County, sued in court for damages from farmers after London courts had declared the Virginia law unconstitutional.

One of the arguments Henry made on behalf of his clients was that London's ruling had undermined the self-governance Virginia had a right to under its charter. He would soon make this argument again under different circumstances.

In this case, Henry--himself a lifelong, church-going Anglican--argued for the farmers so persuasively that the Anglican pastors became extremely unpopular. During the course of Henry's argument, it became apparent that the rectors would be unable to collect, regardless of how the jury voted. Some pastors fled town before the verdict was even rendered.

The jury awarded Pastor James Maury only one penny in damages--handing Henry a technical loss but a de facto victory in what was supposed to be a hopeless cause. Henry earned statewide fame, and his legal practice benefitted immensely.

Perhaps the greatest fallout from his newfound popularity was that, just over a year later, Louisa County voters elected him to represent them in the House of Burgesses even though he did not live in the county and had owned property there for less than a year.

Fiery Legislator

The colonies were in a tumult over the Stamp Act when Henry arrived at the House of Burgesses after his May 15, 1765 election. The British Parliament's Stamp Act had imposed taxes without the consent of the colonies upon a whole host of goods in America, from paper to lead to legal documents. The established families of Virginia who ran the House of Burgesses planned a tame protest against the Stamp Act, but the 29-year-old Henry wrote a scathing set of seven resolutions, stating in part:

   That the taxation of the people by
   themselves or by persons chosen by
   themselves to represent them ... is
   the distinguishing characteristic of
   British freedom, and without which
   the ancient constitution cannot
   subsist....

      The inhabitants of this colony are
   not bound to yield obedience to any
   law or ordinance whatsoever upon
   them, other than the laws or ordinances
   of the General Assembly
   aforesaid ...

      That any person who shall, by
   speaking or writing, assert or maintain
   that any person or persons, other
   than the General Assembly of this
   colony, have any right or power to impose
   or lay any taxation on the people
   here, shall be deemed an enemy
   to his majesty's colony.

Though a House of Burgesses member for less than two weeks, Henry took up the cause of his resolutions with an oratorical fire that history records as one of the most effective speeches of all time. And it was not without controversy. "Caesar had his Brutus, Charles the First his Cromwell, and George III...," Henry said in the House of Burgesses as the cry of "treason" was raised in the chambers by more reticent members. But Henry cleverly finished his sentence with: "and George III may profit by their example. If this be treason, then make the most of it."

Among those who would testify to the impact of Henry's words was Thomas Jefferson, who was then a little-known law student. "At the door of the lobby of the House of Burgesses," Jefferson later wrote, "[I] heard the splendid display of Mr. Henry's talents as a popular orator. They were great indeed; such as I have never heard from any other man. He appeared to me to speak as Homer wrote."

At the end of two days of furious debate, the House of Burgesses passed the mildest five of the seven resolutions--by just one or two votes. Henry had carried all of the younger members of the House with him on the vote. Jefferson noted that Peyton Randolph, a Tory who had opposed the resolutions, fumed as he stormed out of the chamber that he "would have given 500 guineas for a single vote."

A day later, with Henry absent, the House of Burgesses expunged one of the five resolutions that had passed. But it didn't matter. Samuel Adams' Sons of Liberty had acquired a copy of the original set of seven resolutions as introduced by Henry and got them published up and down the Atlantic coast, representing the entire set as the will of the Virginia legislature. British General and Massachusetts military Governor Thomas Gage later wrote that Henry's Stamp Act resolutions served continent."

The Stamp Act debate made Henry the virtual leader of the House of Burgesses, and Henry was eventually elected speaker of the house. He remained active in opposing the Townshend Act and other British aggressions that followed.

But when Gage enforced Parliament's Port Act, closing Boston Harbor in retaliation for the Boston Tea Party, Henry's House of Burgesses passed a resolution on May 24, 1774 suggesting an impending "civil war." The resolution asked Virginians to "implore divine interposition" to "give us one heart and one mind firmly to oppose, by all just and proper means, every injury to American rights; and that the minds of his majesty and his parliament may be inspired from above ... from continued pursuit of measures pregnant with their ruin." British-appointed Virginia colonial Governor Dunmore dissolved the House of Burgesses two days later, though the legislature met without the governor's sanction in an August revolutionary assembly. The assembly appointed seven delegates to the first Continental Congress in Philadelphia to address wrongs done to the colonies, choosing Patrick Henry as one of the seven.

Groundwork for Independence

At the Continental Congress, as at the House of Burgesses, Henry argued forcefully and clearly. John Adams noted that "in the Congress of 1774 there was not one member, except Patrick Henry, who appeared ... sensible of the precipice, or rather the pinnacle, on which we stood, and had candor and courage enough to acknowledge it." Despite Henry's advocacy for a strong resolution, however, Congress eventually sent George Ill the ineffectual "olive branch petition" asking for relief from parliament.

Henry was soon back in Virginia preparing the groundwork for independence and dealing with personal tragedy. His beloved wife Sarah, who had suffered from a deteriorating mental condition for several years, passed away in 1775, leaving Patrick Henry heartbroken and his children motherless. But Henry's loss did not sidetrack him from the impending struggle for independence.

Henry sponsored the already-mentioned resolution to arm Virginia in Virginia's 1775 revolutionary assembly, and the assembly not only passed the resolution but appointed Henry as commander-in-chief of Virginia's military. This occurred at about the same time the Continental Congress appointed George Washington commander-in-chief of continental forces. Henry would never test his military skills on the battlefield, however. His political opponents undercut the command given to him by the legislature, and the only chance he had to march with the militia was when he demanded the return of 15 half-barrels of gunpowder to the public magazine that Governor Dunmore had removed to a British ship. Dunmore paid the colonists 330 [pounds sterling] in lieu of returning the gunpowder, after Henry marched with his militia to force its return. Henry accepted the monetary substitute and used the proceeds to arm the militia. The violence of war was temporarily postponed.

After Henry's political opponents stripped him of his commander-in-chief title, leaving him as an ordinary militia colonel, Henry resigned in protest, shifting his full attention once again to the political battlefront. By May 15, 1776, Henry was able to win passage of a resolution in the revolutionary legislature instructing Virginia's delegates to declare that the colonies are "absolved from all allegiance to, or dependence upon, the crown or parliament of Great Britain." The resolution, written by Edmund Pendleton, was primarily argued on the floor by Henry.

The newly independent Virginia also went to work on a new constitution, in which Henry heavily participated with his friend and ally George Mason. "But [Henry's] eloquence is the smallest part of his merit," Mason said. "He is, in my opinion, the first man upon this continent, as well in abilities as public virtues."

The new constitution contained a spectacular bill of rights, but was otherwise too directly democratic and contained insufficient separation of powers to stabilize government and guard individual rights. Members of both houses of the legislature were elected directly by the people for one-year terms, and the governor was chosen annually by the legislators.

First Post-Colonial Governor

Henry was chosen as first governor under this constitution on June 29, 1776, and he resigned his seat in the Continental Congress to serve his state. As a result, he never had the chance to sign the Declaration of Independence he had worked so hard to bring about. Henry served three full terms as governor, the maximum allowed under the new constitution. His governorship was racked by the same kind of frustrations that his successors experienced: an inability to fill colonial troop requisitions; a militia reluctant to march outside of the state; and a terrible lack of credit for the state.

But Henry also enjoyed some remarkable successes. For example, he dispatched Colonel George Rogers Clark to Illinois to stop British machinations in the West. Clark's less than 200 troops won a brilliant victory after a brutal winter march and swept all British military presence from the American West.

Henry fully backed the national war effort and its commander-in-chief. When he received an anonymous letter exhorting him to publicly criticize George Washington in February 1778, during the depth of the misery at Valley Forge, Henry not only ignored the author's plea to burn the letter but mailed it with a friendly warning to Washington.

Henry left the governorship in 1779 to his friend Thomas Jefferson, though the two soon had a falling out that would never be reconciled. Henry moved back to the legislature, where, as speaker of the house, he often clashed with Governor Jefferson.

After the end of the War for Independence, Henry also clashed with James Madison, who opposed a bill, backed by Henry, to pay the salaries of Anglican Church ministers from the public treasury. Henry won that particular skirmish, but the law was eventually scuttled.

Henry left the legislature after being elected governor again in 1784. He served two more one-year terms as governor, after which he found himself deeply in debt. He had lived lavishly, outspending his 1,000 [pounds sterling] annual salary. He reopened his legal practice and was soon on the road back to financial security.

Bill of Rights Proponent

Henry favored a stronger national government than existed under the Articles of Confederation, but opposed the 1787 Constitution for two reasons. He argued that the constitutional convention that drew up the document had exceeded its mandate. Called to revise the Articles of Confederation, the constitutional convention had instead tossed out the articles and created a new government from scratch. Even more troubling to Henry, the proposed new Constitution did not include a bill of rights. (The Bill of Rights was added later in the form of the first 10 amendments.) James Madison, long a political opponent of Henry, wrote worriedly to Jefferson in Paris that Henry could disrupt Virginia's convention to ratify the Constitution. "Mr. Henry is the great adversary who will render the event precarious," Madison said.

During the ratifying convention, Henry doggedly insisted upon a bill of rights, calling it "indispensably necessary." Henry argued that a bill of rights was necessary because "all nations have adopted the construction that all rights not expressly and unequivocally reserved to the people are impliedly and incidentally relinquished to rulers." Henry would not back the Constitution without a bill of fights to guarantee the reverse assumption, now enshrined in our Tenth Amendment. "I trust that gentlemen, on this occasion, will see the great objects of religion, liberty of the press, trial by jury, interdiction of cruel punishments, and every other sacred right secured, before they agree to that paper [the new Constitution]," Henry said.

When Henry lost the ratification battle, he did his best to ensure that Federalist promises were fulfilled to pass a bill of fights after the Constitution was adopted. Together with George Mason, he cofounded grass-roots patriotic societies that provided the citizen pressure to ensure adoption of a bill of rights. From his leadership position in the Virginia legislature, Henry nominated anti-Federalists Richard Henry Lee and William Grayson to the U.S. Senate. He opposed a Senate seat for James Madison, though Madison won election to the House of Representatives in the first Congress. Madison had opposed a bill of rights as unnecessary, but he introduced the Bill of Rights in the House of Representatives in 1789.

Henry soon became a political ally of his old friend George Washington, in part because of his rift with Jefferson and Madison. Though Henry's ongoing friendship with Washington caused him trouble in his old, anti-Federalist social circles, Washington offered him the positions of chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court and secretary of state at separate times in 1795. By that time, Henry had already retired from public office, and his thoughts had turned more openly toward religion and preparing his soul for the afterlife. Henry passed away in 1799, leaving his family a modest inheritance. He closed his last will and testament with a hand-written testimony to his religion: "This is all the inheritance I can give to my dear family. The religion of Christ can give them one which will make them rich indeed."

When Henry went to the Continental Congress for the first time, fellow Virginian Roger Atkinson described him as "moderate and mild, and in religious matters a saint; but the very devil in politics, a son of thunder. He will shake the senate." Patrick Henry did shake both the Continental Congress and Virginia's legislature. And the United States is a free and independent nation because of it.