Patrick Henry

Born May 29, 1736
Studley, Virginia
Died June 6, 1799
Charlotte County, Virginia

Politician, lawyer, public speaker

During Revolutionary times most Americans got their information by the spoken word. Patrick Henry's fiery speeches inspired the American colonies to turn their dreams of freedom from England into reality. His ability to relate to the common man as well as lawmakers allowed him to capture the loyalty of a wide audience and become one of the major heroes of the American Revolution.

Patrick Henry was the son of John Henry, a wealthy planter, and his wife, Sarah Winston Syme Henry. He was born on May 29, 1736, in Hanover County, Virginia. For a few years he attended the local schools, but he was mostly taught by his father, who had attended college in his Scottish homeland.

At sixteen he and his older brother, William, opened their own store. Despite their hard work, the store soon failed. In 1754, young Patrick Henry married Sarah Shelton, the daughter of a prosperous family who lived nearby. In time the Henrys had six children.

Henry's father-in-law gave the young couple a three-hundred-acre farm and slaves to work the land. In those days, most large farms were worked by slaves. Henry ran the farm until a fire destroyed his house. Then he went to work again as a storekeeper, also working for a time in his father-in-law's tavern.

Begins practicing law

In 1760 at age twenty-three, Henry decided to become a lawyer. Over the next several years, the intelligent young man built a successful law practice. Henry first gained a reputation as a champion of the common man in December 1763. He was defending some local churchgoers in a lawsuit over money matters filed by the church's minister. During the case, the eloquent Henry displayed deep concern about injustices done to common people.

Early political involvement

Henry began his political career in 1765 when he won a seat in the House of Burgesses (pronounced BER-juss-es), the lower house of the Virginia legislature (its lawmaking body). The red-headed young man brought an outspoken, direct style to the House that impressed his listeners.

Henry's reputation spread beyond Virginia when he took part in protests against taxes the British imposed on the colonies. One such tax, the Stamp Act of 1765, required that Americans purchase stamps and specially stamped paper to be used for all documents. As a lawyer, Henry would be affected by such a tax on legal documents; so would his clients.

In May 1765 the House of Burgesses passed Patrick Henry's Stamp Act Resolves. The document branded the Stamp Act unfair and illegal. It also included a resolution claiming the colony of Virginia had the legal right to make laws on its own, without England's approval. To openly make such claims was an act that took courage; Henry could be severely punished by Great Britain for this kind of talk. He soon became known around America as a strong opponent of the policies of the British Empire.

During the 1760s Henry was kept busy raising his young family and furthering his legal career. In 1769 he received official approval to practice law before the General Court, Virginia's highest court.

As tensions mounted between the colonists and the British government, Henry remained a member of the House of Burgesses. Opinion was divided on the question of how to handle the quarrel with England. Henry joined other members of the House who spoke out early in favor of a complete break with England. He also favored the establishment of a new type of government in the colonies that would give more power to the average citizen. Among Henry's allies were Thomas Jefferson see entry, who later became a U.S. president, and Virginia patriot Richard Henry Lee (see box).

Supports development of American political organizations

In 1773 Henry helped establish committees of correspondence in the colonies. These were groups that aroused public opinion and organized acts of defiance against Great Britain. Soon England began punishing the colonies for their acts of resistance. Harsher laws and restrictions on trade were put in place by British authorities. But as a result of this crack-down, the colonies drew closer together in their opposition to Great Britain.

In 1775 Royal Governor John Dunmore of Virginia (he was appointed by the king of England) dissolved the meeting of the Virginia House of Burgesses because lawmakers there proposed a day of mourning over unfair British taxation policies.

In response to Dunmore's actions, Henry held illegal and informal sessions of the House at a tavern in Richmond, Virginia. He called for members to support a constitutional convention for Virginia to organize a new system of government. He also called for a continental congress, a meeting where representatives of all the colonies would gather to decide what to do about America's political future.

Delivers stirring speech in Congress

The First Continental Congress met in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in September 1774. Representatives of twelve of the thirteen colonies met there to express grievances against British taxation policies. Henry served as one of the seven delegates from Virginia.

The members of the First Continental Congress could basically be divided into two groups: conservatives, who hoped to patch up the quarrel with England, and radicals—like Henry—who were determined to resist.

Henry was well known among those in attendance and he received several important committee assignments. He gave a speech that impressed his listeners when he declared, "The distinctions between Virginians, Pennsylvanians, New Yorkers, and New Englanders, are no more. I am not a Virginian, but an American."

According to historian George F. Willison, at this time Henry was "some six feet tall, [and] trim… [He] was not ahandsome man, but personable and engaging. His manner toward all men, from the humblest to the highest, was quiet, friendly, and unaffected… Henry when speaking publicly wasoften something of an actor… Even so, his words and his posturing [often] carried the day."

The First Continental Congress prepared several petitions, which they sent to King George III see entry in 1774. The petitions included complaints about British oppression and objections to the Intolerable Acts, measures put in place by the British to punish the colonists for acts of rebellion. The Congress then adjourned, agreeing to meet again in May 1775 if King George had not responded satisfactorily to their petitions.

Calls for an army kept ready for action

By the winter of 1774–75, Henry saw a war as unavoidable. He organized a militia (pronounced ma-LISH-a; a volunteer group of citizen-soldiers) to defend his home county of Hanover against the British. Tragedy struck the Henry family early in 1775 when Sarah, who had shown signs of serious mental illness, died from unknown causes. Henry was left to raise their children on his own.

In 1775 Henry assumed a leadership role in Virginia's Revolutionary government, called the Convention of Virginia. It replaced the lawmaking body approved by the British government, the Virginia House of Burgesses. At the first meeting of the Convention in March 1775, there was much disagreement as to whether the Virginia colonists should seek a peaceful solution to their problems with England.

This meeting marked the high point of Henry's fame. It was here that he uttered his legendary remarks in support of preparing for war. He was reported to have said, "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 oth ers may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!" Virginians decided to arm themselves in preparation for a pos sible war of independence.

When Governor Dunmore heard what had taken place at the Virginia Convention, he sent a small group of British soldiers to seize arms and ammunition the revolutionaries had stored in Williamsburg, Virginia. The soldiers were only partly successful; their mission was discovered before they could complete it.

The colonists protested the governor's actions and threatened him with violence. An angry Henry planned to set out from Hanover to Williamsburg with his local militia unit to demand payment for the seized guns and gunpowder. It took several men to persuade Henry and his troops not to march forward and carry out their plan.

Henry attends Second Continental Congress

On May 18, 1775, Henry attended the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia. Just one month before, the Concord, Massachusetts, militia had exchanged gunfire with British troops, then forced them back to Boston. In part because of this event, Henry urged that local militias be formed, equipped, and trained to defend the colonies if it became necessary.

While Henry was away in Philadelphia, the Virginia Convention formed two military units. By a slim vote, the convention elected Henry to command one of the units and act as senior officer to both divisions, even though he had little military experience. Henry was quite successful at getting recruits for the unit he commanded. But there were people in power who did not care for him. On December 9, 1775, those people sent Henry's second unit out to fight against Governor Dunmore without Henry as senior officer. Then, in early 1776, both militia units were combined and made part of the newly formed Continental army. Henry was to serve as a colonel (pronounced KER-nuhl) in his old regiment, under the command of men he had formerly led.

Enraged at the insults, Henry declined to serve. To protest this poor treatment of their commander, his entire unit nearly quit. But Henry displayed real character when, despite his personal disappointment, he urged his men to stay and serve under the new officers.

Serves as governor

His military career went nowhere, but Patrick Henry's political career flourished. On May 6, 1776, Henry once again was elected to the Virginia Convention. He successfully urged his fellow delegates there to adopt Richard Henry Lee's resolutions to be presented at the next session of the Second Continental Congress. The resolutions were a bold call for independence from England and the creation of a declaration of independence. At the Virginia Convention, Henry also drafted and had adopted a constitution for the new Commonwealth of Virginia. (Some states prefer to call themselves commonwealths rather than states.)

Virginia voters elected Henry as their first governor and he began serving his term in July 1776. Henry found that the Virginia governorship was a largely ceremonial office with very little power. He had problems raising and equipping an army to serve in the Revolutionary War (1775–83), but he did the best he could. He did manage to set up a court system and get some government offices up and running.

In October 1777 Henry married Dorothea Dandridge, a woman from an old and wealthy Virginia family. The couple went on to have ten children. Henry would find it a struggle trying to support the many children from his two marriages. In time the Henrys relocated to a ten-thousand-acre plantation in faraway Henry County, named for Patrick Henry.

Opposes Jefferson-Madison group

In 1779 Henry left the Virginia governorship. In 1780 he won a seat to the House of Delegates, the lower house of the Virginia legislature known as the General Assembly. The Assembly had been established by the new Virginia Constitution four years earlier. He served there until 1784. Even though his attendance was irregular, he soon became one of its most important members.

Henry was always looking out for the common man. He supported tax reduction and financial relief for people in debt. Other men in the legislature had different ideas about government. Henry's chief opponent in the house was James Madison see entry, a supporter of then-Virginia governor Thomas Jefferson. Henry and his followers managed to block almost every bill proposed by the Jefferson-Madison group.

In 1784 Virginia voters once again elected Henry governor. With his family he returned to Richmond, where he served as governor until his resignation in 1786. He then bought a farm in Prince Edward County, where he and his family lived for the next six years. He represented the county in the Virginia legislature.

Opposes U.S. Constitution

The Treaty of Paris ending the Revolutionary War was signed in 1783. It soon became obvious that the Articles of Confederation, adopted in 1777, were not adequate to govern an independent and expanding United States. A new constitution was needed. A Federal Constitutional Convention met in Philadelphia in May 1787 to draft a new U.S. Constitution. Conventions were then held in each of the states to vote on whether to accept the document.

When representatives from Virginia met at their state constitutional convention in 1788, Henry opposed the adoption of the proposed Constitution of the United States. His chief objection was that it had no bill of rights to safeguard individual citizens. He also complained that the proposed Constitution made the federal government too strong and took away states' rights. Henry wanted the United States to remain a loose union of states allied with one another. He feared that the adoption of the Constitution would turn it into "one great consolidated national government of the people of all the States."

Despite his opposition, the Constitution met with overwhelming support. But thanks in part to Henry, the final version of the Constitution did contain a Bill of Rights (the name given to the first ten amendments to the Constitution). The Bill of Rights protects the basic rights of individuals against the power of a strong federal government.

Retirement years

In the 1780s and 1790s, Henry turned down all offers to run for state or national government posts. He preferred to engage in his own law work. In 1790, now sixty-four and in declining health, Henry retired to Red Hill, a plantation near Brookneal, Virginia, part of his expanding real estate holdings. He worked hard at his law practice and earned huge fees as he won case after case. He also became one of the largest landholders in Virginia and surrounding states.

In the early 1790s, Henry surprised everyone when he abruptly left the Republican Party. The fiery young revolutionary had grown into a man who supported order in government. He believed the Republican Party had become too disruptive under the leadership of his old opponents, Jefferson and Madison. At the invitation of George Washington see entry and Richard Henry Lee, Henry joined the Federalist Party (see box in John Adams entry).

Henry ran for the state legislature in 1799 as a Federalist and easily won. But he was never to serve again. He died of cancer on June 6, 1799, at his Red Hill home in Charlotte County, Virginia. The enormous Henry family attended his funeral and he was laid to rest under a plain stone. The epitaph (a short composition written in memory of a person who has died) read: "His fame his best epitaph."

Thomas Jefferson remembered Henry as "the idol of his country beyond any man who ever lived." He later added, "It is not now easy to say what we [Americans] should have done without Patrick Henry."

For More Information

Allison, Robert J. "Patrick Henry" in American Eras: The Revolutionary Era, 1754–1783. Detroit: Gale, 1998, pp. 221–22.

Boatner, Mark M. "Henry, Patrick" in Encyclopedia of the American Revolution. Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 1994, pp. 500–501.

Bourgoin, Suzanne M., and Paula K. Byers. "Henry, Patrick" in Encyclopedia of World Biography. Detroit: Gale, 1998, vol. 7, pp. 309–11.

Meade, Robert Douthat. Patrick Henry: Practical Revolutionary. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Co., 1969.

Risjord, Norman K. "Henry, Patrick" in Encyclopedia of American Biography. John A. Garraty and Jerome L. Sternstein, eds. New York: Harper-Collins, 1996, pp. 538–39.

Willison, George F. Patrick Henry and His World. Garden City, NY: Doubleday and Company, 1969.

Richard Henry Lee, Henry's Rebellious Companion

Richard Henry Lee (1732–1794) was a member of the distinguished Lee family of Virginia. From 1758 to 1775, Lee served in the House of Burgesses until that body was dissolved by the British.

Along with Patrick Henry and Thomas Jefferson, Lee became widely known as an early defender of the rights of the colonies against England. In 1773 Lee and others proposed founding committees of correspondence, bodies that organized resistance in the colonies to British policies they saw as unfair. In 1773 Lee joined the newly formed Virginia Committee of Correspondence.

Lee served in the Continental Congress from 1774 to 1780. In June of 1776 he offered a famous resolution there that gave rise to the Declaration of Independence, which he later signed. His stirring resolution stated: "Resolved, that these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States, that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the state of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved."

Lee again served in Congress from 1784 to 1787, acting as its president from 1784 to 1785. Like Henry, Lee was an opponent of the early version of the U.S. Constitution, which he believed infringed on the rights of the individual states. He proposed a change in the document that was adopted, almost in his exact words, as the Tenth Amendment of the Constitution. It states, "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." He served as a U.S. senator from Virginia from 1789 to 1792. Lee died on June 19, 1794, on his plantation near Stratford, Virginia.