50 Fun Facts About Patrick Henry

While helping his wife's family run Hanover Tavern, young Patrick Henry entertained guests by playing which instrument?

Fiddle playing was part of Henry's job as host at the tavern, where he moved after his farmhouse burned down. He read law there in his spare hours and passed the bar in 1760.

When Patrick Henry made his name in a 1763 lawsuit over tobacco-paid salaries, which relative of his was the judge?

His father, Colonel John Henry, presided as the young attorney branded any king who struck down good laws a tyrant. The judge let his son talk on even as opposing counsel cried treason.

Patrick Henry reportedly said he 'smelt a rat' to explain why he refused to attend which 1787 gathering?

The Constitutional Convention had a seat waiting for Henry, but he stayed home, fearing a powerful central government. He then fought the finished document at Virginia's ratifying convention in 1788.

Which Richmond house of worship, the oldest in the city, hosted Patrick Henry's 'liberty or death' speech in March 1775?

St. John's Church hosted the Second Virginia Convention because Richmond lay farther from the royal governor's reach than the capital. The wooden building, raised in 1741, was a generation old when Henry spoke.

Patrick Henry's warning that the colonists not be 'betrayed with a kiss' alludes to which figure in the Gospels?

Judas Iscariot identified Jesus to his captors with a kiss, and Henry casts the British ministry in that role. Its smiling reception of the colonists' latest petition, he warns, is a snare.

In his 1775 speech, Patrick Henry says the one lamp by which his feet are guided is the lamp of what?

Experience is Henry's only guide to the future: judging by ten years of British conduct, he argues, more petitions will win nothing. The past is his proof that talking has failed.

Patrick Henry's retort 'If this be treason, make the most of it' came while attacking which British tax law in 1765?

The Stamp Act drew five resolutions from Henry, a legislator for only nine days, insisting that Virginians could be taxed only by their own assembly. Newspapers across the colonies reprinted them.

Which future president followed Patrick Henry as Virginia's governor in 1779 and later nursed a long grudge against him?

Thomas Jefferson took over in 1779, and Henry later backed an inquiry into his conduct after British raiders scattered the state government. Jefferson was still running Henry down to guests in 1824.

Pro-democracy protesters in which country carried banners invoking Patrick Henry's 'liberty or death' speech in 1989?

China saw Henry's words raised on banners by the demonstrators in Tiananmen Square. Two decades later a T-shirt bearing the same line was used as evidence against a Chinese village official sent to a labor camp.

Patrick Henry's image of a siren whose song turns listeners into beasts is drawn from which epic poem?

The Odyssey supplies both halves of the image: the sirens lure sailors to their deaths, while the enchantress Circe turns men into swine. Henry fuses the two into a single creature.

In his 1775 speech, Patrick Henry says the clanking of the colonists' chains can be heard on the plains of which city?

Boston was where most British military action had so far taken place, and Henry's point is that its chains are Virginia's too. He says 'our chains', tying a Massachusetts quarrel to his own listeners.

Patrick Henry opens his 1775 speech by calling the question before the delegates nothing less than freedom or what?

Slavery is the fate Henry holds over his listeners from the first paragraph to the last, where he asks if peace is worth chains. Many of the delegates, like Henry himself, were slaveholders.

What was Patrick Henry urging the Virginia Convention to do when he gave his 'liberty or death' speech in 1775?

His resolutions asked Virginia to raise an armed militia independent of the royal governor, a full year before independence. They passed narrowly, and Henry chaired the committee that drew up the plan.

Less than a month after Patrick Henry told Virginians the war had 'actually begun', which battles proved him right?

Lexington and Concord came 27 days after the speech, when British troops marched out to seize colonial munitions. Virginia's own governor made a similar grab for gunpowder within days.

Which president quoted Patrick Henry's famous line in 'The American Promise', urging Congress to protect Black voters?

Lyndon B. Johnson set Henry's cry beside 'all men are created equal' as one of the great phrases of the nation's founding purpose. He was speaking days after marchers were beaten in Selma, Alabama.

Patrick Henry's 1775 convention met in Richmond to stay clear of the royal governor in which colonial capital?

Williamsburg was home to the governor and loyalist forces, so the delegates gathered inland at Richmond, then a small town. Five years later Richmond replaced it as Virginia's capital.

Which president offered Patrick Henry a Supreme Court seat and the post of secretary of state, only to be turned down?

George Washington felt he owed Henry for exposing a wartime plot against his command, and tried him for one post after another. Henry turned every offer down.

Patrick Henry fought the proposed Constitution in 1788 for creating too strong a president and for leaving out what?

A bill of rights was missing from a plan Henry said endangered trial by jury and a free press. Virginia ratified anyway, 89 votes to 79, but asked for amendments that helped shape the first ten.

Patrick Henry and George Mason led which faction in Virginia's 1788 debate over ratifying the Constitution?

Anti-Federalists feared a distant central government would crush local self-rule, and Henry's speeches fill nearly a quarter of the convention's record. He lost the vote but kept pressing for amendments.

In Patrick Henry's 1775 speech, the tempting 'song of that siren' that men are apt to listen to stands for what?

The illusion of hope, Henry says, is what lets men shut their eyes to a painful truth. He returns to the idea later, mocking delegates for 'hugging the delusive phantom' while their enemies bind them.

Which Virginian, the 'Mr. President' addressed throughout Patrick Henry's 1775 speech, chaired the convention?

Peyton Randolph, speaker of Virginia's colonial assembly, was in the chair in Richmond. Months earlier the colonies' delegates meeting in Philadelphia had made him their first president as well.

Ending his 1775 speech, Patrick Henry mimed stabbing himself with a paper cutter in imitation of which Roman patriot?

Cato the Younger killed himself rather than live under Caesar's rule. A hit 1713 play about him, well known to the Founders, has a line pairing liberty with death that Henry's ending echoes.

Which biographer, later U.S. attorney general, first printed Patrick Henry's 'liberty or death' speech 42 years on?

William Wirt rebuilt the speech in 1817 from old men's memories, since no transcript was made at the time. Since the 1970s historians have argued over how many of the famous words are Henry's own.

Which Virginia judge, who heard Patrick Henry speak in 1775, supplied the memories behind the speech's printed text?

St. George Tucker sent the biographer two paragraphs from memory, warning that it was vain to try to convey the speech. The rest was filled in around them, and his original letter is now lost.

Patrick Henry's 'We have petitioned; we have remonstrated; we have supplicated' shows which rhetorical device?

Parallelism lets Henry stack up every peaceful step the colonists have tried, in verbs that grow more desperate each time. The list ends with them spurned 'from the foot of the throne'.

Which term names the opening of a classical argument, where Patrick Henry praises the speakers before him?

Exordium is the stage where a speaker wins goodwill, which Henry does by calling his opponents 'very worthy gentlemen' before he disagrees with them. His fiery close is the peroratio.

Months after Patrick Henry's speech, which Virginia volunteers flew a rattlesnake flag reading 'Liberty or Death'?

Culpeper Minutemen carried a white banner with a rattlesnake, 'Don't Tread on Me' and 'Liberty or Death'. They helped win the Battle of Great Bridge that December before disbanding.

In the refutation part of his 1775 speech, Patrick Henry answers which objection raised by cautious delegates?

The colonies are too weak, his opponents say, and Henry asks when they will be stronger: next week, next year, or once they are disarmed? Millions fighting for freedom, he answers, are invincible.

What does Patrick Henry call 'the implements of war and subjugation' that Britain has already sent to America?

Fleets and armies, Henry argues, are not needed for a work of love and reconciliation. Britain has no other enemy in that quarter of the world, he says, so they can only be meant for the colonists.

Which 1763 court case, ended by a jury's award of one penny in damages, first made Patrick Henry famous?

The Parson's Cause pitted Anglican ministers seeking back pay against a Virginia law the king had struck down. Henry told the jury that a king who annulled good laws was a tyrant, and they awarded one penny.

Before he took up law, Patrick Henry failed at farming and at which other trade, begun at 16 with his brother William?

Keeping a store was Henry's first venture, and it soon failed. Drought then wore out his farm, and only after teaching himself law did he find work that suited his gift for talk.

In his 1765 'treason' speech, Patrick Henry said that Caesar had his Brutus and Charles I had which man?

Oliver Cromwell led the side that tried and beheaded Charles I in 1649. As Henry moved on to the reigning king, shouts of treason went up from the floor.

Which British monarch did Patrick Henry seem to threaten in 1765 by naming rulers killed by their own subjects?

King George III was told he might profit from the examples of Caesar and Charles I, both killed by opponents. The Speaker shouted treason, and by one account Henry followed up with a half-apology.

Patrick Henry had sat for only nine days in which Virginia colonial assembly when he made his 1765 'treason' speech?

House of Burgesses benches were mostly empty when the newcomer pushed through his resolutions against a new tax. Its elected members had first met at Jamestown in 1619.

Patrick Henry declared 'I am not a Virginian, but an American' while arguing over voting rules at which gathering?

The First Continental Congress was deciding how to count votes, and Henry wanted large colonies such as Virginia to carry more weight. He lost the argument, and each colony got a single vote.

Patrick Henry led Hanover volunteers toward the capital in 1775 after which royal governor seized Virginia's gunpowder?

Lord Dunmore had marines empty the public magazine by night, and Henry halted only when the powder was paid for. The governor issued a proclamation against him, then soon fled to a warship.

As governor, Patrick Henry secretly sent which frontier officer to seize British posts in the Illinois country?

George Rogers Clark's public orders said only that he was to defend Kentucky, and the real target was kept even from his recruits. He took Kaskaskia in July 1778 without firing a shot.

Patrick Henry argued that the Constitution should open not with 'We, the People' but with 'We, the' what?

States, in Henry's view, were the true parties to the union, so he demanded to know who had authorized the framers to speak for the people. He feared one great consolidated national government.

Patrick Henry used his grip on Virginia's assembly to keep which ratification-fight rival out of the first U.S. Senate?

James Madison lost the Senate vote in the assembly Henry dominated and had to run for the lower chamber instead, in a district his allies said was drawn against him. He beat James Monroe for the seat anyway.

Patrick Henry died in 1799 at which Charlotte County plantation, now a national memorial holding his grave?

Red Hill was Henry's last home, bought in 1794 after he retired from public life. He had just won a seat in the legislature when he died there, months before it met.

Which Hanover County plantation house was Patrick Henry's home when he gave his famous speech in 1775?

Scotchtown was Henry's home through his most famous speech and his election as governor. He sold it within a few years of his first wife's death there.

The stone over Patrick Henry's grave carries a single line of tribute, declaring which thing 'his best epitaph'?

His fame, the inscription says, is all the epitaph he needs. He lies beside his second wife, Dorothea, in the family burying ground at the plantation where he died.

Patrick Henry was a founding trustee of which Virginia school, where he later enrolled seven of his sons?

Hampden–Sydney College counted Henry among its first trustees in 1775, and he helped push its charter through the assembly in 1783. He is credited with writing into it an oath of allegiance for every professor.

As a boy, Patrick Henry absorbed the preaching style of Samuel Davies during which religious revival in the colonies?

The Great Awakening brought Presbyterian preachers such as Davies to Hanover County, where Henry's mother took him to hear them. He later credited Davies with teaching him what an orator should be.

Which future chief justice was Patrick Henry's co-counsel in the 1790s British debts case Ware v. Hylton?

John Marshall prepared the written pleadings while Henry did much of the courtroom talking for Virginia debtors. One of the judges was moved to exclaim that Henry was an orator indeed.

Which Philadelphia doctor wrote Governor Patrick Henry an unsigned letter attacking the army's commander in chief?

Benjamin Rush, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, hoped to draw Henry into the push to replace the general. Henry sent the letter straight to its target, who recognized the handwriting.

Patrick Henry and Virginia's legislators fled Charlottesville in 1781 just ahead of which British cavalry commander?

Banastre Tarleton rode in hoping to seize the state government, which escaped over the mountains to Staunton. One tale has a woman scolding the runaways as cowards until she learned Henry was among them.

Patrick Henry soured on a stronger union after a 1786 treaty proposed ceding Mississippi navigation to which country?

Spain would have controlled the river for 25 years in return for trade favors that mainly helped New England. Southern votes blocked the deal, but it left Henry distrustful of northern good faith.

In Patrick Henry's 1775 speech, what will 'the next gale that sweeps from the north' bring to his listeners' ears?

The clash of arms from the north is Henry's way of saying the fighting has already started in New England, where 'our brethren are already in the field'. So why, he asks, do Virginians stand idle?

Which country, rising against Ottoman rule in the 1820s, took up a war cry matching Patrick Henry's 'liberty or death'?

Greece made 'Freedom or Death' its national motto after the war. By one account the nine stripes of its flag stand for the nine syllables of the phrase in Greek.