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"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. 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. 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.

Background and speech

The Second Virginia Convention met at St. John's Episcopal Church in Richmond, Virginia, on March 20, 1775. Delegates selected a presiding officer, and they elected delegates to the Continental Congress. At the convention, Patrick Henry—a delegate from Hanover County—offered amendments to raise a militia independent of royal authority in terms that explicitly recognized that war with the British Empire was inevitable, sparking the opposition of convention moderates. On March 23, Henry defended his amendments and purportedly concluded with the following statement:

If we were base enough to desire it, it is now too late to retire from the contest. There is no retreat but in submission and slavery! Our chains are forged! Their clanking may be heard on the plains of Boston! The war is inevitable and let it come! I repeat it, sir, let it come. It is in vain, sir, to extenuate the matter. Gentlemen may cry, Peace, Peace but there is no peace. The war is actually begun! The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms! Our brethren are already in the field! Why stand we here idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? 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!

As he concluded, Henry plunged an ivory paper knife towards his chest in imitation of the Roman patriot Cato the Younger.

Reception and aftermath

According to Edmund Randolph, the convention sat in profound silence for several minutes after Henry's speech ended. George Mason, who later drafted the Virginia Declaration of Rights, said that the audience's passions were not their own after Henry had addressed them. Thomas Marshall told his son John Marshall, who later became Chief Justice of the United States, that the speech was "one of the boldest, vehement, and animated pieces of eloquence that had ever been delivered." Edward Carrington, listening by a window, was so affected by the speech that he requested to be buried there, and in "1810, he got his wish."

Henry's speech ultimately swayed the convention, and it was resolved that the colony be "put into a posture of defence: and that Patrick Henry, Richard Henry Lee, Robert Carter Nicholas, Benjamin Harrison, Lemuel Riddick, George Washington, Adam Stephen, Andrew Lewis, William Christian, Edmund Pendleton, Thomas Jefferson and Isaac Zane, Esquires, 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." Despite this resolution, many moderate delegates remained uncertain where the resistance urged by Henry and other radicals would lead, and few counties formed independent militia companies at the urging of the convention. Nevertheless, Henry was named as chairman of the committee assigned to build a militia.

A month later, Lord Dunmore, the governor of Virginia, ordered Royal Navy sailors to remove all stocks of gunpowder from the powder magazine at Williamsburg, Virginia. This flashpoint—later known as the Gunpowder Incident—became Virginia's equivalent of the Battle of Lexington. Upon learning of Dunmore's decision, Patrick Henry led his militia toward Williamsburg to force return of the gunpowder to the colony. The stand-off was resolved without conflict when a payment of £330 was made to Henry. Fearing for his safety, Dunmore retreated to a naval vessel, ending royal control of the colony. Henry became the independent state's first governor in July 1776.

Publication and controversy

Over 40 years after Patrick Henry delivered his speech and 18 years after Henry's death, a reconstruction of the speech was printed in Wirt's 1817 biography Sketches of the Life and Character of Patrick Henry. Wirt corresponded with elderly men who had heard the speech in their youth as well as others who were acquainted with people who were there at the time. All concurred that Henry's speech had produced a profound effect upon its audience, but only one surviving witness attempted to reconstruct the actual speech.

St. George Tucker attempted a two-paragraph reconstruction of the speech in a letter to Wirt, but Tucker noted that it was "in vain... to give any idea of his speech". Using Tucker's two paragraphs, Wirt "filled in the blanks" and created a speech that was far longer in length. The original letter with Tucker's remembrances has been lost.

For 160 years, Wirt's reconstruction of Henry's speech was accepted as fact. In the 1970s, historians began to question the authenticity of Wirt's rendition. According to the only written first-hand account of the speech, Henry's 1775 speech used graphic name-calling that does not appear in Wirt's 1817 rendition. Furthermore, Wirt's reconstruction is devoid of Henry's rhetorical custom of invoking fear of Indian attacks in promoting independence from Britain. Given Wirt's artistic liberties in reconstructing the speech, it is possible that Henry never uttered the quotation, "Give me liberty or give me death," and scholars question to what extent the speech we know is the work of Wirt or Tucker.

According to historian Bernard Mayo, most scholars are skeptical of the accuracy of Wirt's rendition of Henry's speech. Nevertheless, "its expressions... seemed to have burned themselves into men's memories. Certainly, its spirit is that of the fiery orator who in 1775 so powerfully influenced Virginians and events leading to American independence."

Precursors

The hand of fate is over us, and Heav'n
Exacts severity from all our thoughts.
It is not now a time to talk of aught
But chains or conquest, liberty or death.

There had been similar phrases used preceding Henry's speech. The 1320 Declaration of Arbroath made in the context of Scottish independence was a letter to Pope John XXII that 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". It is commonly cited as an inspiration for the Declaration of Independence by many, including Trent Lott in a speech before the United States Senate.

The 1713 play, Cato, a Tragedy, was popular in the American Colonies and well known by the Founding Fathers who frequently quoted from the play. George Washington had the play performed for the Continental Army at Valley Forge. It contains the line, "It is not now time to talk of aught/But chains or conquest, liberty or death" (Act II, Scene 4). The phrase "Liberty or Death" also appears on the Culpeper Minutemen flag of 1775.

In Handel's 1746 oratorio Judas Maccabeus, the hero sings, "Resolve, my sons, on liberty or death."

Other contexts

Phrases equivalent to liberty or death have appeared in a variety of other places. In the summer of 1787, the armed citizens' militia of the Dutch Republic paraded and drilled beneath banners extolling "Liberty or Death". Soon after, amid the French Revolution, the sentence that would become the national motto of France "Liberté égalité fraternité" ("Liberty, equality, fraternity") was sometimes written as "Liberté, égalité, fraternité ou la mort" ("Liberty, equality, fraternity or death").

The Society of United Irishmen in the 1790s and 1800s adopted 'Liberty or Death' as a slogan. During the 1798 rebellion appeals to the population were printed out featuring the heading "Liberty or Death!". It was also a rallying cry of the 1804 Castle Hill convict rebellion in Australia staged by United Irishmen convicts.

During the Greek War of Independence in the 1820s, "Liberty or Death" (Eleftheria i thanatos) became a rallying cry for Greeks who rebelled against Ottoman rule. During this same period, Emperor Pedro I of Brazil purportedly uttered the famous "Cry from Ipiranga", "Independence or Death" (Independência ou Morte) in 1821, when Brazil was still a colony of Portugal.

The 1833 national anthem of Uruguay, "Orientales, la Patria o la Tumba", contains the line ¡Libertad o con gloria morir! ("Liberty or with glory to die!").

Serbian Chetnik Organization, formed in early 20th Century, had "Sloboda ili smrt/Freedom or Death" as one of its mottos.

During the Russian Civil War, the flag used by Nestor 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" embroidered in silver on its two sides.

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

During the Indonesian National Revolution, the Pemuda ("Youth") used the phrase Merdeka atau Mati ("Freedom or Death").

In the 1964 speech "The Ballot or the Bullet" in Cleveland, Malcolm X said, "It'll be ballots, or it'll be bullets. It'll be liberty, or it will be death. The only difference about this kind of death—it'll be reciprocal."

In 2012, Ren Jianyu, a Chinese 25-year-old former college student village official, was given a two-year re-education through labor sentence for an online speech against the Chinese Communist Party. A T-shirt of Ren saying "Give me liberty or give me death!" (in Chinese) was presented as evidence of his guilt.

In the 2022 COVID-19 protests in China, a man in Chongqing was filmed giving a speech criticizing harsh lockdown measures, shouting "Give me liberty or give me death!" in Chinese repeatedly to the cheers of onlookers.

See also

• Liberty or Death (disambiguation)
• Flag of the Treinta y Tres
• Join, or Die
• Live Free or Die
• Liberté, égalité, fraternité
• Give Me Liberty (1936 film)
• Give Me Convenience or Give Me Death

References

Citations

1. Hart & Leininger 1995, p. 286.
2. ^ Cohen 1981, p. 702, Footnote 2.
3. ^ Raphael 2004, pp. 145–156, 311–313.
4. Cohen 1981, pp. 703–04, 710ff.
5. ^ Kukla 2017, pp. 170–172; McDonnell 2012, pp. 44–45.
6. Kidd 2011, p. 52.
7. ^ Aron 2008, pp. 86–88.
8. Wirt 1817, p. 124.
9. Aron 2008, pp. 88; Ragosta 2016, p. 47; Cohen 1981, p. 702.
10. Kukla 2017, pp. 170–172.
11. Avalon Project 2008.
12. Selby & Higginbotham 2007, p. 2.
13. Russell 2000, p. 52.
14. Selby & Higginbotham 2007, p. 4.
15. Russell 2000, p. 53.
16. Selby & Higginbotham 2007, pp. 52, 121.
17. ^ Raphael 2004, p. 147.
18. ^ Raphael 2004, p. 148.
19. ^ Raphael 2004, p. 149.
20. Hemple 1977, pp. 298–310.
21. Raphael 2004, p. 311, Footnote 7.
22. ^ Randall 1997, p. 43.
23. Lott 1997.
24. Culpepper 2015.
25. Händel 1999.
26. Schama 1990, p. 248.
27. De Saboulin Bollena 1988, pp. 48, 116, 280.
28. Maxwell-Stewart, Hamish; Quinlan, Michael (2022). Unfree Workers Insubordination and Resistance in Convict Australia, 1788–1860. Springer. p. 255.
29. Campbell, Malcolm (2022). Ireland's Farthest Shores Mobility, Migration, and Settlement in the Pacific World. University of Wisconsin Press. p. 94.
30. Kee, Robert (2000). The Green Flag : A History of Irish Nationalism. Penguin. p. 142.
31. Crampton 1991, p. 57.
32. Barman 1988, p. 96.
33. Uruguay Anthem 2016.
34. Babac, Dusan; Thomas, Nigel (2022). Yugoslav Armies 1941–45. Bloomsbury Publishing. p. 32.
35. Eikhenbaum 1974, p. 610.
36. Job 1992.
37. Padmodiwiryo 2015, p. 165.
38. Breitman 1990, p. 32.
39. NetEase 2012.
40. Gan, Nectar; Wang, Selina (November 25, 2022). "As anger rises and tragedies mount, China shows no sign of budging on zero-Covid". CNN. Retrieved November 27, 2022.
41. Gan, Nectar; Wang, Selina (November 25, 2022). "As anger rises and tragedies mount, China shows no sign of budging on zero-Covid". CNN. Retrieved November 27, 2022.

Works cited

• Aron, Paul (2008). "John Adams". We Hold These Truths. Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield in association with The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation. pp. 86–88. ISBN 978-0-7425-6272-1 – via Internet Archive.
• Barman, Roderick J. (1988). Brazil: The Forging of a Nation, 1798–1852. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press. p. 96. ISBN 978-0-8047-1437-2 – via Google Books.
• Bate, Walter Jackson (1977). Samuel Johnson. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. p. 446. ISBN 0-15-179260-7 – via Internet Archive.
• Breitman, George (1990). Malcolm X Speaks: Selected Speeches and Statements. New York: Grove Weidenfeld. p. 32. ISBN 9780802132130 – via Google Books.
• "Chongqing Village 'Liberty or Give Me Death' T-shirt Is Evidence for Detention". 大河报 (in Chinese). NetEase. October 11, 2012. Archived from the original on October 12, 2012. Retrieved October 10, 2012.
• Cohen, Charles (October 1981). "The 'Liberty or Death' Speech: A Note on Religion and Revolutionary Rhetoric". William and Mary Quarterly. 38 (4). Williamsburg, Virginia: 702–717. doi:10.2307/1918911. JSTOR 1918911.
• Crampton, William (1991). Complete Guide to Flags. New York: Gallery Books. p. 57. ISBN 978-0-8317-1605-9 – via Google Books.
• Culpepper, Warren (January 2, 2015). "Culpepper Flags". Culpepper Family History Site. Alabama: Lew Griffin. Retrieved March 24, 2022.
• De Saboulin Bollena, Roger (1988). Liberté, égalité, fraternité ou la mort (in French). Lozère, France: Société des lettres, sciences et arts de la Lozère. pp. 48, 116, 280 – via Google Books.
• DeMaria, Robert Jr. (1994). The Life of Samuel Johnson. Oxford: Blackwell. ISBN 978-1-55786-664-6 – via Internet Archive.
• Eikhenbaum, Vsevolod M. (1974) . "Part II: Ukraine (1918–1921)". The Unknown Revolution, 1917-1921: Book III: Struggle for the Real Social Revolution. Detroit, Michigan: Black & Red Books. p. 610. ISBN 978-0-914156-07-9 – via Internet Archive.
• Händel, Georg Friedrich (October 20, 1999) . "Judas Maccabeus". Stanford, California: Stanford University. Retrieved March 24, 2022.
• Hart, James D.; Leininger, Phillip (1995). The Oxford Companion to American Literature. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. p. 286. ISBN 978-0-19-506548-0 – via Internet Archive.
• Hemple, Judy (1977). "The Textual and Cultural Authenticity of Patrick Henry's 'Liberty or Death' Speech". Quarterly Journal of Speech. 63 (3). Oxfordshire, United Kingdom: 298–310. doi:10.1080/00335637709383390.
• "History about the Anthem of Uruguay". Embassy of Uruguay in Argentina. March 24, 2016. Archived from the original on March 24, 2016. Retrieved March 23, 2022.
• Job, Cvijeto (March 15, 1992). "Requiem for a Nation". The Washington Post. Washington, D.C. ISSN 0190-8286. Retrieved March 21, 2018.
• Johnson, Samuel (1775). Taxation No Tyranny: An Answer to the Resolutions and Address of the American Congress. The Strand, London: Thomas Cadell – via Google Books.
• Kidd, Thomas S. (2011). Patrick Henry: First Among Patriots. New York: Basic Books. ISBN 978-0-465-00928-2 – via Google Books.
• Kukla, Jon (2017). Patrick Henry: Champion of Liberty. New York: Simon & Schuster. ISBN 978-1-4391-9081-4 – via Google Books.
• Lott, Trent (1997). "Senate Resolution 155 – Designating 'National Tartan Day'". Washington, D.C.: United States Congress. Retrieved March 22, 2019.
• McDonnell, Michael A. (2012). The Politics of War: Race, Class and Conflict in Revolutionary Virginia. Chapel Hill, North Carolina: University of North Carolina Press. ISBN 978-1-4696-0107-6 – via Google Books.
• Padmodiwiryo, Suhario (2015). Student Soldiers: A Memoir of the Battle that Sparked Indonesia's National Revolution. Translated by Palmos, Frank. Jakarta, Indonesia: Yayasan Pustaka Obor Indonesia. p. 165. ISBN 978-979-461-961-2. Retrieved March 21, 2018 – via Google Books.
• Ragosta, John (2016). Patrick Henry: Proclaiming a Revolution. New York: Routledge. doi:10.4324/9781315776729. ISBN 978-1-317-69132-7 – via Google Books.
• Raphael, Ray (2004). Founding Myths: Stories that Hide Our Patriotic Past. New York: The New Press. ISBN 978-1-56584-921-1 – via Internet Archive.
• Randall, William (1997). George Washington: A Life. New York: Henry Holt & Company. ISBN 978-0-8050-2779-2 – via Internet Archive.
• "Resolutions of the Provincial Congress of Virginia; March 23, 1775". The Avalon Project. New Haven, Connecticut: Yale Law School. 2008. Retrieved March 23, 2022.
• Russell, David Lee (2000). The American Revolution in the Southern Colonies. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland. ISBN 978-0-7864-0783-5. OCLC 248087936 – via Google Books.
• Schama, Simon (March 1990) . Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution. New York: Vintage Books. p. 248. ISBN 9780679726104 – via Internet Archive.
• Selby, John E.; Higginbotham, Don (2007). The Revolution in Virginia, 1775–1783. Williamsburg, Virginia: Colonial Williamsburg. ISBN 978-0-87935-233-2. OCLC 124076712 – via Google Books.
• Wirt, William (1817). Sketches of the Life and Character of Patrick Henry. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: James Webster. OCLC 4519869 – via Internet Archive.

External links

• Give Me Liberty public domain audiobook at LibriVox

v t e Virginia in the American Revolution
Early	Parson's Cause (1763) Virginia Resolves (1765) Virginia Association (1769)
1774	Fairfax Resolves First Virginia Convention
1775	Fincastle Resolutions Augusta Resolves "Give me liberty, or give me death!" Gunpowder Incident Formation of Culpeper Minutemen Dunmore's Proclamation Formation of Ethiopian Regiment Battle of Kemp's Landing Battle of Great Bridge Second Virginia Convention Third Virginia Convention Fourth Virginia Convention
1776	Burning of Norfolk Formation of Lee's Legion Fifth Virginia Convention Augusta Declaration Lee Resolution Virginia Declaration of Rights
1779	Chesapeake raid
1781	Raid on Richmond Skirmish at Waters Creek Battle of Cape Henry Battle of Blandford Action at Osborne's Raid on Point of Fork Battle of Spencer's Ordinary Battle of Green Spring Francisco's Fight Battle of the Chesapeake Siege of Yorktown

• 1770s quotations
• 1775 in the Colony of Virginia
• 1770s speeches
• 1775 works
• American political catchphrases
• American Revolution
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• Speeches by American politicians