📘 The speech nobody wrote down

What you’ll learn

1. The room on Church HillPlace the speech as an intervention in a live vote to arm Virginia, at Henrico Parish Church on 23 March 1775, not as a national slogan already written down.Dunmore had closed the Burgesses. The Second Convention met in Richmond. Henry moved a posture of defence. The journal names a committee. It does not name a motto.
2. Delay is a voteShow how the reported speech turns waiting from a neutral pause into a political choice, and hold that argument beside Henry's own slaveholding.Wirt's Henry thanks the cautious gentlemen, then asks when the colony will be stronger. Freedom or slavery is his binary. It is also a word he used as a master of people he would not free.
3. The last sentenceRead the famous close as a compression of the argument, then return to the vote and the later picture that made the line look like a photograph.No retreat except submission. As for me. The convention still had to pass a resolution. Currier and Ives are 1876.
4. The speech you cannot hearSeparate Wirt's 1817 reconstruction from the convention journal, and leave the exact wording unproven.Nobody wrote the speech down that day. Tucker’s 1805 letter is lost. Tonight, read the last page next to that caution.

Questions this course answers

Grounded in trusted sources

• William Wirt, Sketches of the Life and Character of Patrick Henry, Philadelphia: James Webster, 1817. Preface: design conceived summer 1805; Wirt had never seen Henry; materials from remaining coevals, including Judge Tucker and Thomas Jefferson. The reconstructed convention speech, including the courtesy to the gentlemen who have just addressed the House; freedom or slavery; when shall we be stronger; irresolution and inaction; no retreat but in submission and slavery; the war is actually begun; the next gale from the north; as for me, give me liberty or give me death. DocSouth electronic edition, https://docsouth.unc.edu/southlit/wirt/wirt.html ; speech text also at the Avalon Project, https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/patrick.asp
• Resolutions of the Provincial Congress of Virginia, 23 March 1775, as printed in Peter Force, American Archives, and hosted by the Avalon Project. Well-regulated militia; colony immediately put into a posture of defence; committee of 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 to prepare a plan for embodying, arming, and disciplining sufficient men. https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/res_cong_va_1775.asp
• Encyclopedia Virginia. 'Patrick Henry's Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death Speech (March 23, 1775)': delivered during Virginia's Second Revolutionary Convention in support of a resolution to raise a militia; speech not written down at the time; William Wirt wrote a transcription in his 1817 biography. 'The Virginia Revolutionary Conventions (1774–1776)': 23 March, fourth day; Henry moved that this Colony be immediately put into a posture of Defence; speech in support; resolution narrowly passed; twelve-member committee including Washington to prepare a plan for embodying, arming and disciplining men. 'Patrick Henry (1736–1799)': 23 March 1775 at Saint John's Church; 1754 marriage to Sarah Shelton, dowry of Pine Slash and six enslaved people; 1773 letter that he could not justify being master of slaves of his own purchase. https://encyclopediavirginia.org/primary-documents/patrick-henrys-give-me-liberty-or-give-me-death-speech-march-23-1775/ ; https://encyclopediavirginia.org/entries/the-virginia-revolutionary-conventions-1774-1776/ ; https://encyclopediavirginia.org/entries/henry-patrick-1736-1799/
• Library of Virginia, Document Bank of Virginia, 'Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death, Patrick Henry Speech, 1775'. Second Virginia Convention 20–27 March 1775 at what is now St. John's Church; Dunmore had dissolved the Burgesses; Hanover delegate Henry presented a resolution to muster the militia; convention included Washington, Richard Henry Lee, and Jefferson; resolution passed by a narrow margin; not recorded at the time or during Henry's lifetime; Wirt reconstructed the speech in 1817 from St. George Tucker's transcription in an 1805 letter now lost; exact words remain unknown; Lexington less than a month later. https://www.lva.virginia.gov/collections/educator-resources/dbva/items/show/324
• National Humanities Center / America in Class, 'Patrick Henry and Give Me Liberty!', advisor Robert A. Ferguson. No contemporaneous transcript; Wirt of Maryland published the first biography in 1817 and drew on materials collected beginning in 1808, including interviews with people who knew Henry and people present; twenty-seven days after 23 March, Lexington and Concord. https://americainclass.org/patrick-henry-give-me-liberty/
• Patrick Henry's Red Hill, reprint of Henry's 1773 letter to Robert Pleasants: would anyone believe that I am the master of slaves of my own purchase; drawn along by the general inconvenience of living here without them; I will not, and cannot justify it. Red Hill also notes estate inventories after Henry's 1799 death listing nearly seventy enslaved people at that plantation. https://www.redhill.org/red-hill/

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