HENRY, PATRICK (1736-1799), American politician and orator, was born at Studley, Hanover county, Va., on May 29, 1736. He was the son of John Henry, a well-educated Scotsman, who served in Virginia as county surveyor, colonel and judge of a county court. His mother was one of a family named Winston of Welsh descent, noted for conversational and musical talent. A mediocre student in the country school and under his father's tutorship, Patrick proved equally unsuccessful in business. In seven years he failed twice as a storekeeper and once as a farmer. In the meantime he acquired a taste for reading history and de cided to study law. After a brief period of preparation he was admitted to the bar at the age of 24 and rapidly acquired a con siderable practice. Then in 1763 was delivered his speech in "The Parson's Cause," a suit brought about by the custom of paying the clergy in money or tobacco according to the state of the market, which made Henry the idol of the common people of Virginia and procured for him an enormous clientele. In 1765 he was elected a member of the Virginia legislature, where he became in the same year the author of the "Virginia Resolutions," which, being no less than a declaration of resistance to the Stamp Act and an assertion of the right of the colonies to legislate for themselves independently of the control of the British parliament, gave a most powerful impetus to the movement resulting in the American Revolution. In a speech urging their adoption appear the often-quoted words, said to have been uttered in tones of thrilling solemnity, "Caesar had his Brutus, Charles the First his Cromwell, and George the Third (here he was interrupted by cries of `Treason') and George the Third may profit by their example! If this be treason, make the most of it." In the House of Burgesses he was prominent as a radical in all measures in opposition to the British Government, and was a member of the first Virginia committee of correspondence. In 1774 and 1775 he was a delegate to the continental congress. In in the second revolutionary convention of Virginia, Henry, regarding war as inevitable, presented resolutions for arming the Virginia militia, supporting them in a speech with the dramatic peroration, "I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty or give me death !" The resolutions were passed and their author was made chairman of the committee for which they provided. The chief command of the forces of Vir ginia was also given to him, but he was so checked by the Com mittee of Public Safety, that he resigned on Feb. 28, 1776. In the Virginia convention of 1776 he favoured the postponement of a declaration of independence until a firm union of the colonies and the friendship of France and Spain had been secured. In the same convention he served on the committee which drafted the first constitution for Virginia, and was elected governor of the State, being re-elected in 1777 and 1778, thus serving as long as the new constitution allowed any man to serve continuously. As governor he gave Washington able support and sent out the ex pedition under George Rogers Clark (q.v.) into the Illinois country.
In 1778 he was chosen a delegate to Congress, but declined to serve. From 1780 to 1784 and from 1787 to 1790 he was again a member of his State legislature; and from 1784 to 1786 was again governor. Until 1786 he was a leading advocate of a stronger central government, but when chosen a delegate to the Phila delphia constitutional convention of 1787, he declined to serve and he led the opposition to ratification in Virginia, contending that the proposed Federal Constitution was dangerous to the liberties of the country. This change of attitude is thought to have been due chiefly to his suspicion of the North aroused by John Jay's proposal to surrender to Spain for 25 or 3o years the navigation of the Mississippi. From 1794 until his death he de clined in succession the following offices: U.S. senator secretary of State in Washington's cabinet (1795), chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court (1795), governor of Virginia (1796), to which office he had been elected by the assembly, and envoy to France (1799) . In 1799, however, he consented to serve again in his State legislature, where be wished to combat the Virginia Resolutions; he never took his seat, since he died, on his Red Hill estate, on June 6 of that year. Henry was twice married, first to Sarah Skelton and second to Dorothea Dandridge.
See M. C. Tyler, Patrick Henry (1887) ; and Wm. Wirt Henry (Patrick Henry's grandson) , Patrick Henry, Life, Correspondence and Speeches (189o-9I) ; these supersede the very unsatisfactory biography by William Wirt, Sketches of the Life and Character of Patrick Henry (1817). See also George Morgan, The True Patrick Henry (1907).