"Give me liberty or give me death!" is a quotation attributed to American politician and orator Patrick Henry from a speech he made to the Second Virginia Convention on March 23, 1775, at St. John's Church in Richmond, Virginia.[1] 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 United States presidents Thomas Jefferson and George Washington.
Over forty years after Patrick Henry delivered his speech and eighteen years after his death, biographer William Wirt published a posthumous reconstruction of the speech in his 1817 work Sketches of the Life and Character of Patrick Henry.[2] This is the version of the speech as it is widely known today and was reconstructed based on the recollections of elderly witnesses many decades later. A scholarly debate persists among colonial historians as to what extent Wirt or others invented parts of the speech including its famous closing words.[2][3][4]
- ^ Hart & Leininger 1995, p. 286.
- ^ a b Cohen 1981, p. 702, Footnote 2.
- ^ Raphael 2004, pp. 145–156, 311–313.
- ^ Cohen 1981, pp. 703–04, 710ff.