Patrick Henry's name is on classroom walls. "Give me liberty, or give me death." The line entered the public record of the Revolution. The primary record also contains the following.
Patrick Henry was born in 1736 in Hanover County, Virginia. He was a planter and a lawyer. He held enslaved people throughout his adult life. He became famous in 1763 in the Parson's Cause case — arguing against the Crown's authority to override Virginia's legislature — and gained a wider colonial audience with his response to the Stamp Act in 1765. His Virginia Resolves of May 1765, documented in the records of the House of Burgesses and in Jefferson's later notes, were the first formal legislative challenge to the Stamp Act from a colonial assembly. They are at Founders Online.
Henry held enslaved people throughout his life. His letter to Robert Pleasants in January 1773 — in which he acknowledged the contradiction between his professed principles and his practice — is held at Haverford College's Quaker Special Collections. It has not been digitized with a public URL. That gap is documented in the sources section below. The plantation record of enslaved persons at his various properties is not consolidated in a single digitized institutional archive the way Monticello's or Mount Vernon's records are. That gap is also documented.
On March 23, 1775, at the Second Virginia Convention in Richmond, Patrick Henry delivered what became the most quoted speech of the Revolution. "Give me liberty, or give me death." The primary source record requires a note here.
The resolutions passed at the Second Virginia Convention on March 23, 1775 are at the Yale Avalon Project. They document that the meeting took place, that Henry's resolutions on defense were passed, and that Virginia committed to armed resistance. The meeting's outcome is in the primary record. The exact words of the speech are not.
Resolved, That a well-regulated Militia, composed of Gentlemen and Yeomen, is the natural Strength and only Security of a free Government; and that such a Militia will relieve our Mother Country from any Expence in our Protection and Defence, will obviate the Pretence of taxing us for that Purpose, and render it unnecessary for Britain to keep any Standing Army (ever dangerous to Liberty) in this Colony.
Patrick Henry declined to attend the Constitutional Convention in 1787. He was appointed a delegate but refused. His reported reason — "I smelt a rat" — comes from secondary accounts. His primary source record on the Constitution begins with a letter to George Washington in October 1787, after the Convention had concluded.
I cannot bring my mind to accord with the proposed Constitution. The concern I feel on this account is really greater than I am able to express.
Henry's objections to the Constitution were substantive: no Bill of Rights, a federal taxing power that could override the states, a standing army provision, and — crucially — the federal government's potential power over slavery. He joined George Mason in opposing ratification. Both men were at the Virginia Ratification Convention in June 1788.
The Virginia Ratification Convention met June 2–27, 1788. Virginia's ratification was not guaranteed — the state was closely divided and Henry led the opposition. Madison led the defense. The debates were documented in the Robertson shorthand notes, which are the primary record of what was said on the floor. Founders Online's editorial note on the Convention documents Henry's role as the primary Anti-Federalist voice throughout the proceedings.
On June 4, 1788, Henry attacked the Constitution's opening words. The Convention debates record his argument: the phrase "We the People" — rather than "We the States" — represented a consolidation of power in a national government that the states had not authorized. He argued the Convention had been called to revise the Articles of Confederation, not to create an entirely new government.
On June 24, 1788, Patrick Henry made the argument that has generated the most discussion in the historical record of the Virginia Ratification Convention. The Robertson debates, via Founders Online's editorial record, document Henry arguing that the federal government's general welfare and taxing powers could be used to free enslaved people. He presented this as a reason to oppose ratification.
May they not pronounce all slaves free, and will they not be warranted by that power? This is no ambiguous implication or logical deduction. The paper speaks to the point: they have the power in clear, unequivocal terms, and will clearly and certainly exercise it.
The argument is documented. Henry argued that a strong federal government posed a threat to slavery — and that this was a reason Virginia should not ratify the Constitution. He was making this argument in the same decade in which he had written that he hoped to find some plan for the "gradual abolition of slavery" — the letter that is at Haverford and not yet digitized publicly. Both positions are in the record.
Virginia ratified the Constitution on June 26, 1788 — 89 votes to 79. Henry proposed 40 amendments. Congress adopted 12 of them as the Bill of Rights, ratified in 1791. Henry's sustained opposition to ratification contributed directly to the inclusion of the Bill of Rights. The Virginia ratification record is at Yale Avalon.
We the Convention of Virginia do in the name and in behalf of the People of Virginia declare and make known that the powers granted under the Constitution being derived from the People of the United States may be resumed by them whensoever the same shall be perverted to their injury or oppression and that every power not granted thereby remains with them and at their will.
Thomas Jefferson's notes on Patrick Henry — written in 1824, twenty-five years after Henry's death in 1799 — are at Founders Online. Jefferson's assessment is not uniformly positive. He describes Henry's oratory as powerful and his preparation as minimal. The notes document Jefferson's private view of a man he had known for decades.
Henry declined an appointment as Secretary of State under Washington and declined a seat on the Supreme Court. He declined to attend the Constitutional Convention. He declined multiple offers of federal office after ratification. His political career was conducted almost entirely at the state level — Virginia governor five terms, Virginia legislator continuously. He was offered more and refused more than almost any other figure of the founding era. The primary record documents what he did accept and what he did not.
The primary sources document Henry's Stamp Act Resolves, his defense resolutions at the Second Virginia Convention, his opposition to the Constitution, his June 24 1788 speech arguing that federal power might free enslaved people, and Virginia's ratification. They document two gaps — the March 23 1775 speech text and the Haverford letter — and note them as gaps rather than citing secondary accounts as primary sources.
Patrick Henry is not a forgotten founder. His name is on the classroom wall. This series goes to the archive not to recover him but to show what the primary record actually contains — which is more complicated than the classroom wall suggests. Every claim sourced. Every document linked. Every gap documented as a gap. The archive is open.