Patrick Henry (1736-1799)
Patrick Henry was born in Studley, Virginia, and received a limited education in the local schools. Despite help from his father, he failed at a series of business ventures before finding his calling in the law at age 24. Quickly earning a reputation as an impassioned orator, he was elected to the Virginia House of Burgesses in 1765, and soon shocked his fellow representatives with a fiery denunciation of the newly-imposed Stamp Act. Eventually orchestrating the passage of a series of defiant resolutions, he went on to become an active member of Virginia’s Committee of Correspondence in the years leading up to the Revolution. In March of 1775, a month before the fighting began at Lexington and Concord, he advocated armed resistance to British authority with the famous words, “Give me Liberty or give me death.”