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Illustrated Episode · Volume III, chapter 68 · 23 March 1775

Give me liberty, or death

In a plain wooden church a lean man stands upright in a box pew, one arm thrust high, as rows of wigged delegates in dark coats lean toward him in the cold light from tall windows.
Richmond, Virginia, March 1775. In St. John's Church, Patrick Henry rises before the Virginia convention and, as his first biographer William Wirt tells it, cries, "Give me liberty, or give me death!" Rothbard says Henry openly welcomed the coming clash, and his resolution to arm the militia won only by a slim vote. Chapter 68 of Conceived in Liberty.

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Adapted from Murray N. Rothbard, Conceived in Liberty (Mises Institute, 2011), CC BY 3.0.

What happened

In late March 1775 the Virginia convention, an enlarged House of Burgesses meeting without the governor's leave, met in St. John's Church at Richmond. The issue was Patrick Henry's resolution to arm and strengthen the militia. Rothbard says the clash was plainly coming, that Henry welcomed it, and that the resolution won only by a slim vote against Edmund Pendleton, Benjamin Harrison and Richard Bland. Richard Henry Lee and George Washington supported Henry. Nobody wrote the speech down. The famous words are William Wirt's, printed in 1817 from Judge St. George Tucker's recollection of the day. They end "give me liberty, or give me death!" Edmund Randolph wrote that the convention sat in profound silence for several minutes. The convention refused to call up any sizable armed force, and set up a conservative committee under Pendleton and Harrison. Even so, Virginia's militia was formed in companies independent of the governor's officers. A month later Lord Dunmore had twenty kegs of the colony's powder seized, and Henry led a Hanover County militia company to win the money back.

Sources

  1. Murray N. Rothbard, Conceived in Liberty (Mises Institute, 2011 single-volume ed.), vol. III, ch. 68, 'Support from Virginia', pp. 1087-1088. CC BY 3.0. Rothbard
  2. William Wirt, Sketches of the Life and Character of Patrick Henry (Philadelphia, 1817), the source of the printed speech; Wirt built it on Judge St. George Tucker's two paragraphs of recollection and added most of the rest (Journal of the American Revolution, 2015; Wikipedia). Secondary source
  3. Wikipedia, 'Give me liberty or give me death!' (read 2026-09-30 through a fetch summary): the speech of 23 March 1775 at St. John's Church; Wirt's 1817 version resting on Tucker's two paragraphs; Edmund Randolph's 'profound silence', George Mason's 'passions were not their own' and John Marshall on the speech. Secondary source
  4. Wikipedia, 'St. John's Church (Richmond, Virginia)' (read 2026-09-30 through a fetch summary): a wooden frame church of 1741, extended on the north side in 1772; about 120 delegates, including Jefferson and Washington, in March 1775. Secondary source
  5. 'Patrick Henry's "Liberty or Death": Granddaddy of Revolution Mythologies', Journal of the American Revolution (July 2015; read 2026-09-30): no transcript survives; Tucker's recollection supplied under a fifth of Wirt's text; Wirt wrote most of the 1,217 words himself. Secondary source