Patrick Henry is one of the biggest names in the story of the American Revolution.
His father, Colonel John Henry, had been born in Aberdeen in 1704. John's parents, Patrick Henry and Jean Robertson, were born in 1670s Scotland during the bloody persecutions of King Charles II against the Presbyterian Covenanters. One of the most infamous prisons where Covenanters were held was Dunnottar Castle just south of Aberdeen (see here), in a dungeon known as the "Whigs Vault" - many of them were transported as slaves to North America.
A branch of the Henry family came to Ulster in 1616 and settled at Loughbrickland in County Down; a Rev William Henry from Loughbrickland became minister of Dromore Presbyterian Church in 1753.
Patrick was born in Virginia in 1736; his two sisters married 'sons of Ulster' – Annie married William Christian (his parents were from the Londonderry area), and Elizabeth married William Campbell (his parents were Ulster Presbyterians). In later life Elizabeth became a dynamic Methodist lay preacher across America.
In the early 1770s, Patrick lived on the plantation estate known as Scotchtown.
1) 1775 – Patrick was just 39 years old when he took his seat on a pew of St John's Church in Richmond, Virginia, on 23 March 1775. He famously rose to his feet and gave the historic speech which closed with the immortal lines "Give me Liberty or give me Death". You can visit the church today - there was a re-enactment of the event on the 250th anniversary earlier this year.
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2) 1776 – Henry wrote two of the articles of the Virginia Declaration of Rights, which was published in Williamsburg in June 1776, during the Fifth Virginia Revolutionary Convention (depicted above). A later author examined the text, which had mostly been written by George Mason, and said this –
"... When we look at the Declaration of Rights prepared by him, and which, with a few alterations, was adopted by the Convention, we shall find it a condensed, logical, and luminous summary of the great principles of freedom inherited by us from our British ancestors, the extracted essence of Magna Charta, the Petition of Rights, the acts of the Long Parliament, and the doctrines of the Revolution of 1688 as expounded by Locke—distilled and concentrated through the alembic of his own powerful and discriminating mind. There is nothing more remarkable in the political annals of America than this paper ..."
Henry's most acclaimed biographer, his grandson William Wirt Henry (Wikipedia here) wrote this in his three volume Patrick Henry, Life, Correspondence and Speeches (1891; online here):
"... The Bill of Rights of 1689, upon the accession of William and Mary, was the most complete statement of the principles of government ever attempted. This was written by the great Lord Somers, and it embodied the Pettion of Right of 1628, written by Sir Edward Coke. The Virginia Bill of Rights contained all that was of value in these celebrated papers, and much more, and as a summary of the rights of man, and of the principles of free government, stands, and is destined to stand, without a rival in the annals of governments..."
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3) 1788 – Patrick Henry may have thought that the subsequent Declaration of Independence of 4 July 1776, his election as the first post-independence Governor of Virginia, the Revolutionary War (which ended in 1783), and his re-election as Governor for a second term in 1784, might all combine to secure the liberties he had long sought. Not a bit of it.
However, with his second term expired, it looked like the fledgling United States of America was about to install a new élite with centralised power that was not much different than the London version they had overthrown, with power in the hands of the few. George Washington sent Henry a copy of the emerging new Constitution and Henry had grave concerns at what he read. As the famous quote by Mather Byles says:
"Which is better—to be ruled by one tyrant three thousand miles away, or by three thousand tyrants one mile away?"
So in June 1788, the Virginia Ratifying Convention gathered to debate the Constitution. Once again in Richmond, Virginia, 52 year old Henry delivered another historic speech, asking the audience what it was that the new United States truly wanted – Liberty or Empire? Perhaps shockingly to his post-Independence audience, Henry invoked ancient British liberties –
“We are descended from a people whose government was founded on liberty; our glorious forefathers of Great Britain made liberty the foundation of everything. That country is become a great, mighty, and splendid nation; not because their government is strong and energetic, but, sir, because liberty is its direct end and foundation. We drew the spirit of liberty from our British ancestors ...
... Will the abandonment of your most sacred rights tend the security of your liberty? Liberty, the greatest of all earthly blessings—give us that precious jewel and you may take everything else. But I fear I have lived long enough to become an old-fashioned fellow. Perhaps an invincible attachment to the dearest rights of man may, in these refined, enlightened days, be deemed old-fashioned: if so, I am contented to be so..."
It's another brilliant example of how - even after the War was over, and the British government had been defeated by her own colonial subjects - a change of nationality was not the essential point, securing liberty was. The Constitution's famous introduction "We the People of the United States..." was insufficient rhetoric. A new national government in America was no guarantee of liberty for ordinary Americans.
Here's the plaque in Richmond:
The outcome was that an additional, new, document, would be required to protect the freedoms of the individual citizen from American Federal government overreach – the 1789 Bill of Rights (Wikipedia here). The Anti-Federalists, of which Henry was one, had succeeded. Unsurprisingly, sections of it were pretty much directly lifted from William III and Mary II's previous 1689 Bill of Rights. The Bill of Rights lacks the poetry and drama of the Declaration and the Constitution, but it has substance. It begins with these words:
Congress of the United States begun and held at the City of New-York, on Wednesday the fourth of March, one thousand seven hundred and eighty nine.
THE Conventions of a number of the States, having at the time of their adopting the Constitution, expressed a desire, in order to prevent misconstruction or abuse of its powers, that further declaratory and restrictive clauses should be added: And as extending the ground of public confidence in the Government, will best ensure the beneficent ends of its institution.
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4) 1889 – Exactly a century later, Patrick Henry's grandson, William Wirt Henry, addressed the very first Congress of the Scotch-Irish Society of America, which met at Columbia in Tennessee in May 1889. He delivered a presentation entitled The Scotch-Irish of the South.
Far bigger than the title suggests, it's a broad sweeping narrative through centuries of history. He quoted John Knox confronting the Queen - "if princes exceed their bounds, no doubt they may be resisted even by power", he quoted Andrew Melville confronting the King - "there are two kings and two kingdoms in Scotland".
It's good solid stuff, and as an intro to the grand story of the Ulster-Scots / Scotch-Irish, its a pretty good starting point and ticks most of the boxes, with a few tastefully low-key references to his august ancestor. It also includes a superb account of a "Whig Wedding" in Pennsylvania in 1778 of an Ulster-born couple, Jane Roan and William Clingan. It's online here, from page 110 – 131.
"... the earliest Scotch-Irish emigrants to America were men who had been participants, or children of those who were participants, in the terrible drama which closed with the battle of the Boyne. Accordingly we find that these men were among the earliest champions of freedom, and the most earnest and persistent defenders of the rights; of the people, as against the unjust actions of the British government ... These devoted men kept alive the flame of liberty ..."
• Two years later, in 1891, William Wirt Henry's three volume biography of his grandfather, entitled Patrick Henry: Life, Correspondence and Speeches was published and is online at HathiTrust here.
"... Jefferson in after years said that the members from the upper counties invariably supported Mr. Henry in his revolutionary measures, and there can be no doubt they did so on this occasion, and that to the Scotch-Irish; and Huguenot members he was indebted for his triumph..."
• In 1898, he visited Belfast to continue his researches (see page 33 here)
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