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People of the Revolutionary War | Patriots of the American Revolution | Patrick Henry
Patrick Henry
> The War Inevitable by Patrick Henry
The American political leader Patrick Henry was the most celebrated orator of the American Revolution.
He was born on May 29, 1736, in Hanover County, Virginia. Henry failed as both a storekeeper and a
farmer before being admitted to the Virginia bar in 1760. However, he won fame in 1763 after his
impassioned pleading in the Parsons' Cause, a case in which he defended the right of the colony to
fix the price of the tobacco in which the clergy were paid, despite a contrary ruling from London.
When Henry entered the House of Burgesses in 1765, he and
Richard Henry Lee successfully compelled the entrenched oligarchy to
share power with them. Henry's effectiveness as an orator gave him a
commanding influence in the legislature throughout his life. After the
passage of the Stamp Act (1765) he introduced a set of radical
resolutions denouncing the British Parliament's usurpation of powers
vested in the colonial legislature, which alone had the power to tax. He
supported the resolves in a speech ending "Caesar had his
Brutus--Charles the first his Cromwell--and George III--may he profit
from their example." Widely circulated throughout the colonies, the
resolves made Henry famous.
Henry was the focal point of Virginia's
opposition to British policy. When the royal governor,
Lord Dunmore, dissolved the Virginia legislature after
the closing of the port of Boston in 1774, Henry
organized a rump session of the legislature, which met
in the Raleigh Tavern in Williamsburg. It issued an
invitation to the other colonies to send delegates to a
Continental Congress.
As a member of the Congress, Henry was an outspoken
advocate of strong measures of resistance. At a meeting
of the Virginia assembly (right) in Richmond on Mar. 23,
1775, he called on the colonists to arm themselves, with
the words:
"Give me liberty, or give me death."
Soon after, he led the militia of Hanover to force Governor Dunmore to surrender munitions belonging to the colony.
With the outbreak of the Revolution, Henry became commander in chief of
the Virginia troops, but he was prevented from actively
exercising his command by state leaders who considered him too
erratic. He continued in the legislature, fostering the move for
independence and helping draft the first state constitution. In
June 1776 he was elected governor. In this position, which he
held till 1779, he vigorously supported the war effort,
dispatching George Rogers Clark to secure the western regions.
After the war Henry's influence in the legislature tended to
be sporadic because of his habit of leaving before the end of the
session. He astonished his contemporaries by advocating state support of
religion and amnesty for Loyalists.
Henry served as governor again from 1784 to 1786 but declined to attend
the Constitutional Convention of 1787. An ardent supporter of state
rights, he led the Virginia opposition to ratification of the federal
Constitution, losing the vote by a small margin. His hostility to
centralized government and to measures favoring commercial interests led
him initially to protest the Federalist program of the Washington
administration. As the years passed, however, his fear that the
radicalism of the French Revolution would infect the nation brought him
to support the Federalist party. Just before his death, on June 6, 1799,
he was elected to the state legislature as a Federalist.
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