PATRICK HENRY, 'GIVE ME LIBERTY, OR GIVE ME DEATH!'

Patrick Henry

Yesterday, The Grandma went to visit the library to search information about Patrick Henry, an American attorney, a Founding Father, and orator known for his declaration to the Second Virginia Convention (1775) Give me liberty, or give me death!

Before going to the library to search more information about Henry, The Grandma studied a new lesson of her Intermediate Language Practice manual (Grammar 42).

More information: Verbs followed by -ing or infinitive 1

Patrick Henry (May 29, 1736–June 6, 1799) was an American attorney, planter, and orator best known for his declaration to the Second Virginia Convention (1775): Give me liberty, or give me death! A Founding Father, he served as the first and sixth post-colonial Governor of Virginia, from 1776 to 1779 and from 1784 to 1786.

Henry was born in Hanover County, Virginia, and was for the most part educated at home. After an unsuccessful venture running a store, and assisting his father-in-law at Hanover Tavern, Henry became a lawyer through self-study. Beginning his practice in 1760, he soon became prominent through his victory in the Parson's Cause against the Anglican clergy. Henry was elected to the Virginia House of Burgesses, where he quickly became notable for his inflammatory rhetoric against the Stamp Act of 1765.

In 1774 and 1775, Henry served as a delegate to the First and Second Continental Congresses, but did not prove particularly influential. He gained further popularity among the people of Virginia, both through his oratory at the convention and by marching troops towards the colonial capital of Williamsburg after the Gunpowder Incident until the munitions seized by the royal government were paid for.

Patrick Henry

Henry urged independence, and when the Fifth Virginia Convention endorsed this in 1776, served on the committee charged with drafting the Virginia Declaration of Rights and the original Virginia Constitution.

Henry was promptly elected governor under the new charter, and served a total of five one-year terms. After leaving the governorship in 1779, Henry served in the Virginia House of Delegates until he began his last two terms as governor in 1784. The actions of the national government under the Articles of Confederation made Henry fear a strong federal government and he declined appointment as a delegate to the 1787 Constitutional Convention. 

He actively opposed the ratification of the Constitution, a fight which has marred his historical image. He returned to the practice of law in his final years, declining several offices under the federal government. A slaveholder throughout his adult life, he hoped to see the institution end, but had no plan for that beyond ending the importation of slaves.

Henry is remembered for his oratory, and as an enthusiastic promoter of the fight for independence.

More information: History

Give me liberty, or give me death! is a quotation attributed to Patrick Henry from a speech he made to the Second Virginia Convention on March 23, 1775, at St. John's Church in Richmond, Virginia.

Henry is credited with having swung the balance in convincing the convention to pass a resolution delivering Virginian troops for the Revolutionary War. Among the delegates to the convention were future U.S. Presidents Thomas Jefferson and George Washington.

The speech was not published until The Port Folio printed a version of it in 1816. The version of the speech that is known today first appeared in print in Sketches of the Life and Character of Patrick Henry, a biography of Henry by William Wirt in 1817. There is debate among historians as to whether and to what extent Henry or Wirt should be credited with authorship of the speech and its famous closing words.

Thomas Marshall told his son John Marshall, who later became Chief Justice of the United States, that the speech was one of the most bold, vehement, and animated pieces of eloquence that had ever been delivered. 

More immediately, the resolution, declaring the United Colonies to be independent of the Kingdom of Great Britain, passed, and Henry was named chairman of the committee assigned to build a militia.

Phrases equivalent to liberty or death have appeared in a variety of other places:

The Grandma, Viurem lliures o morirem

The national anthem of Uruguay, Orientales, la Patria o la Tumba, contains the line ¡Libertad o con gloria morir!, Liberty or with glory to die!.

The Declaration of Arbroath made in the context of Scottish independence in 1320 as a letter to the Pope contained the line It is in truth not for glory, nor riches, nor honours that we are fighting, but for freedom -for that alone, which no honest man gives up but with life itself. The Declaration is commonly cited as an inspiration for the United States Declaration of Independence by many, including the US Senate and it is possible that Henry knew of the Declaration when he wrote his speech.

During the Siege of Barcelona (25 August 1713-11 September 1714) the Barcelona defenders and the Maulets used black flags with the motto Live free or die, in Catalan Viurem lliures o morirem.

The motto of Greece is Liberty or Death, Eleftheria i thanatos. It arose during the Greek War of Independence in the 1820s, where it was a war cry for the Greeks who rebelled against Ottoman rule.

More information: The Colonial Williamsbrug Foundation

A popular and possibly concocted story in Brazil relates that in 1822, the emperor Pedro I uttered the famous Cry from Ipiranga, Independence or Death, Independência ou Morte, when Brazil was still a colony of Portugal.

During the Russian Civil War, the flag used by Makhno's anarchist Revolutionary Insurrectionary Army of Ukraine had the dual slogans Liberty or Death and The Land to the Peasants, the Factories to the Workers.

In March 1941 the motto of the public demonstrations in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia against signing the treaty with Nazi Germany was Better grave than slave, Bolje grob nego rob.

During the Indonesian National Revolution the Pemuda used the phrase Merdeka atau Mati which means Freedom or Death.

More recently, in China, Ren Jianyu, a 25-year-old former college student village official was given a two-year re-education through labor sentence for an online anti-CPC speech. A T-shirt of Ren's saying Give me liberty or give me death! in Chinese, has been taken as evidence of his anti-social guilt.

More information: Historic Saint John's Church

The liberties of a people never were, 

nor ever will be, secure, when the transactions 

of their rulers may be concealed from them.

Patrick Henry