The phrase “Give me freedom or give me death!” It has been expressed by protesters of the uprising of the Tiananmen Plaza in 1989 in China to those who opposed Covid-19 restrictions in the United States in 2020.
Malcolm X made it reference in his 1964 speech “vote or bullet”, demanding equal rights for black Americans. President Donald Trump cited him on his social platform of Truth last year, criticizing a judge during his criminal money judgment.
According to the reports, the phrase was first used 250 years ago on Sunday by the lawyer and legislator Patrick Henry to persuade Virginia settlers to prepare for the war against an increasingly punitive Britain, only weeks before the American revolution.
The tensions were boiling, particularly in Massachusetts, where the British replaced the elected officials, they occupied Boston and closed the port.
“The whole episode was about helping our brothers in Massachusetts,” said historian John Ragosta, who wrote a book about Henry. “This is the community. This is the nation. It is not, ‘What do I get from this personally?'”
The printed version of Henry’s galvanizing speech in a crowded church was approximately 1,200 words. And yet, those seven words have survived the centuries as a line of a work by Shakespeare.
It’s a very malleable phrase, “said Patrick Henry Jolly, a fifth great -grandson of Henry.” It is something that can be applied to many different circumstances. But I think it is important that people understand the original context. “
Jolly is ready to recreate Henry’s speech on Sunday in the same church where his ancestor delivered it. The presentation, which will be transmitted online, is part of the commemoration of Virginia of the 250th anniversary of the birth of the nation.
Here is more information about Henry and his speech:
Who was Patrick Henry?
Born in an influential family in Virginia in 1736, Henry became a successful litigating lawyer in his 20 years.
According to the Library of Congress, he once amazed a Court Chamber with an argument that “man is born with certain inalienable rights,” an idea echoed in the declaration of independence.
In 1765, Henry won a seat in the Virginia colonial legislature. It was instrumental in opposing the Law on Stamps of Great Britain, which imposed a direct tax on the US colonies to raise money for Britain.
As tensions increased, many Americans felt as second -class citizens without representation in Parliament, Ragosta said. At the time of Henry’s speech, many thought: “The King will not listen to us. They have invaded Boston. What should we do in Virginia about it?”
Did he really say it?
In his 2004 book, “Founding Myths”, historian Ray Raphael wrote “is very unlikely,” Henry said: “Give me freedom or give me death!”
Henry did not write the speech and the version we know today was published 42 years later in a biography of 1817 of him. The biographer, lawyer William Wirt, rebuilt Henry’s words of the memories of decades of people who were there.
The printed version, Raphael wrote, “reflects the agendas of the nineteenth -century nationalists who liked to romantize war.”
But other historians said there is ample evidence that Henry pronounced those words.
“We have several people, years later, saying: ‘I remember that it was yesterday,'” said Ragosta, and added that Thomas Jefferson was one of them.
They recalled that Henry raised a card opener that looked like a dagger and sank under his arm as in his chest before saying the famous phrase.
“That is the oratory of the 18th century,” Ragosta said. “It’s very passionate.”
Jon Kukla, another historian who wrote a book about Henry, cited another evidence. Men in the Militias de Virginia soon embroidered their heavy canvas shirts with “freedom or death.”
The popular work of 1712 “Cato” on a Roman senator also contains the line: “Now it is not a time to talk about Aught, but chains or conquests, freedom or death.”
“It would have been part of the literate culture of the time,” Kukla said.
What happened next?
The most immediate impact of Henry’s speech was more support for the independence and expansion of Virginia’s militias.
In later months, Henry and others were also driven by the fear that the British releases enslaved people, raphael suggests in “founding myths.”
The Royal Governor of Virginia, Lord Dunmore, offered freedom to enslave people who fought for the British.
But Ragosta said it was not a main motivation for Henry, who enslaved dozens of people.
“That moves many people from the fence to the patriot column, no doubt,” Ragosta said. “But that is not really what is happening with the Jefferson, the Washington, the Henryys. They had already been very committed to the patriot movement.”
After independence, Henry served as governor of Virginia five times. It also became known as an antifederalist and opposite ratification of the Constitution of the United States and a strong central government.
But Henry later spoke in support of the founding document at the request of George Washington in 1799, the year Henry died.
“He says: ‘Look, I voted against the Constitution, but we people vote for her. And so we have to comply with her,” Ragosta said.
Libertad versus license
Jolly, Henry’s descendant, said that most people positively react to the famous words of their ancestor and recognize their historical importance.
“And there are some people who react thinking that it is a scream of meeting today for them to defend their rights, on both sides of the hall,” Jolly said.
However, Henry and his contemporaries were careful to distinguish the freedom of the license, said Kukla, the historian.
“Freedom, as they understood, was not the freedom to do something that would please you,” Kukla said.
