Henry, Patrick

Patrick Henry (May 29, 1736 – June 6, 1799) was an American attorney, planter, politician, 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. 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, both fearing a powerful central government and because there was as yet no Bill of Rights. 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.

• Early life (1736–1759)
• 2Revolutionary lawyer and politician (1760–1775)
  • 2.1Parson's Cause
  • 2.2Stamp Act
  • 2.3Lawyer and landowner (1766–1773)
  • 2.4Renewed involvement and First Continental Congress (1773–1775)
  • 2.5"Liberty or Death" (1775)
  • 2.6Gunpowder incident
• 3Independence and first time as governor
• 4Leatherwood and the House of Delegates (1779–1784)
• 5Second period as governor (1784–1786)
• 6Opponent of the Constitution (1787–1790)
• 7Later years
• 8Monuments and memorials
• 9Legacy and historical view
• 10See also
• 11Notes
  • 11.1Source bibliography
• 12Further reading
  • 12.1Primary sources
• 13External links
  • 13.1Archival records

Early life (1736–1759)

Henry was born on the family farm, Studley, in Hanover County in the Colony of Virginia, on May 29, 1736.^[1] His father was John Henry, an immigrant from Aberdeenshire, Scotland, who had attended King's College, University of Aberdeen, there before emigrating to Virginia in the 1720s.^[2] Settling in Hanover County in about 1732, John Henry married Sarah Winston Syme, a wealthy widow from a prominent local family of English ancestry.^[3]

Patrick Henry shared his name with his uncle, an Anglican minister, and until the elder Patrick's death in 1777 often went as Patrick Henry Jr.^[4] Henry attended a local school until about the age of 10. There was then no academy in Hanover County, and he was tutored at home by his father.^[5] The young Henry engaged in the typical recreations of the times, such as music and dancing, and was particularly fond of hunting.^[6] Since the family's stock, considerable lands and slaves would pass to his older half-brother John Syme Jr.,,^[7] due to the custom of primogeniture, Henry needed to make his own way in the world. At the age of 15, he became a clerk for a local merchant, and a year later opened a store with his older brother William. The store was not successful.^[1]

The religious revival known as the Great Awakening reached Virginia when Henry was a child. His father was staunchly Anglican, but his mother often took him to hear Presbyterian preachers. Although Henry remained a lifelong Anglican communicant, ministers such as Samuel Davies taught him that it is not enough to save one's own soul, but one should help to save society. He also learned that oratory should reach the heart, not just persuade based on reason.^[8] His oratorical technique would follow that of these preachers, seeking to reach the people by speaking to them in their own language.^[9]

Religion would play a key part in Henry's life; his father and namesake uncle were both devout and were both major influences in his life. Nevertheless, he was uncomfortable with the role of the Anglican Church as the established religion in Virginia, and fought for religious liberty throughout his career. Henry wrote to a group of Baptists who had sent a letter of congratulations following Henry's 1776 election as governor, "My earnest wish is, that Christian charity, forbearance and love may unite all different persuasions as brethren."^[10] He criticized his state of Virginia, feeling that slavery and lack of religious toleration had retarded its development. He told the Virginia Ratifying Convention in 1788, "That religion or the duty which we owe to our Creator, and the manner of discharging it, can be directed only by reason and conviction, not by force or violence, and therefore all men have an equal, natural and unalienable right to the free exercise of religion according to the dictates of conscience, and that no particular religious sect or society ought to be favored or established by law in preference to others."^[10]

Henry often served as host at Hanover Tavern as part of his duties, and entertained the guests by playing the fiddle. Among those who stayed there during this time was the young Thomas Jefferson, aged 17, en route to his studies at the College of William and Mary, and who later wrote that he became well acquainted with Henry then, despite their age difference of six years.^[12] Jefferson in 1824 told Daniel Webster, "Patrick Henry was originally a bar-keeper", a characterization that Henry's biographers have found to be unfair; that his position was more general than that, and that the main business of Hanover Tavern was serving travelers, not alcohol. William Wirt, Henry's earliest biographer, rejected Jefferson's suggestion that Henry's profession then was a bartender, but noted it would have been "very natural in Mr. Henry's situation" to do what was necessary to ensure that guests were properly seen to.^[13]In 1754, Henry married Sarah Shelton, reportedly in the parlor of her family house, Rural Plains. (It also became known as Shelton House.) As a wedding gift, her father gave the couple six slaves and the 300-acre (1.2 km^{2) Pine Slash Farm} near Mechanicsville. Pine Slash was exhausted from earlier cultivations, and Henry worked with the slaves to clear fresh fields. The latter half of the 1750s were years of drought in Virginia, and after the main house burned down, Henry gave up and moved to the Hanover Tavern, owned by Sarah's father.^[11]

Revolutionary lawyer and politician (1760–1775)

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