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>Be Patrick Henry
>born 1736 Virginia backcountry
>no college, minimal formal schooling
>self-taught lawyer grinding borrowed law books
>brutal early life: store bankrupt, farm failed, tavern failed
>married at 18 to Sarah Shelton
>first wife suffered severe mental illness after children, died young
>remarried Dorothea Dandridge
>total ~16 children
>1763 Parson's Cause trial, argues successfully against British law
>wins big victory for local taxpayers
>becomes overnight hero to ordinary Virginians
>1765 House of Burgesses
>Stamp Act speech
>Caesar had his Brutus, Charles the First his Cromwell
>George the Third may profit by their example (meaning tyrants who abuse power get assassinated or executed by their own subjects)
>speaker screams TREASON
>Henry replies if this be treason make the most of it
>chamber erupts
>instant revolutionary legend
>1775 St. John's Church Richmond
>delivers Give me liberty or give me death speech against British rule. Colonies face a choice between freedom and slavery
>Virginia convention votes to raise armed militia companies
>Revolution effectively begins that day
>Continental Congress delegate
>pushes aggressively for independence
>governor of independent Virginia twice
>1787 invited to Constitutional Convention
>refuses to attend. “I smelt a rat.” great line
>1788 Virginia ratifying convention
>leads Anti-Federalist fight
>debates Madison relentlessly for days
>opposes ratifying without protections
>demands adding a bill of rights to limit fed power
>opposes unlimited federal taxing power
>fights against giving Congress broad direct taxes on citizens without strong limits or consent
>fears even permanent federal army could oppress the people, fears standing army in peacetime
>opposes president with king-like authority
>warns against executive too powerful and unchecked
>opposes federal government too distant from the people
>fights centralized power far away ignoring local realities
>his unrelenting pressure forces Federalists to promise amendments
>Bill of Rights gets added to secure ratification
>later opposes national bank and related financial schemes
>opposes them as unconstitutional federal power grabs using vague implied powers
>opposes debt assumption
>opposed paper aristocracy
>opposed consolidation of wealth in elite hands
>squints toward monarchy
>stays true agrarian yeoman
>farmer family man suspicious of bankers and centralized elites
>never sells out
>dies June 6 1799 at Red Hill plantation
>buried on his own land
Leaves Behind:
>liberty or death as the only acceptable stance
>armed citizens as the ultimate check on tyranny
>Bill of Rights as the critical barrier against federal overreach
>permanent redpill on centralized power
>no chains no submission
>Give me liberty or give me death, still the hardest line ever spoken on American soil
>Patrick Henry mogs eternal
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