
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, March 24, 1991                   TAG: 9103240237
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: D3   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: RICHMOND                                LENGTH: Medium

COLLEAGUES: GIVE US PEACE FROM PATRICK HENRY

The phrase that is arguably America's most famous call to arms was uttered in a Richmond church as the colonial aristocracy contemplated battling the British for independence.

But Patrick Henry's cry, "Give me liberty or give me death," mustered something less than patriotism in many of his colleagues.

The Second Virginia Convention gathered at St. John's church for a week in March 1775 to debate fielding a militia. After four days of debate, on March 23, Henry delivered his oft-quoted line.

Henry was a self-taught lawyer from humble beginnings who sometimes tweaked his aristocratic, learned friends. And historians said many at the Virginia Convention thought Henry rash for suggesting war was inevitable.

"Henry was always viewed as something of a radical. Suggesting war is radical, but he was also going beyond what most people would have been willing to say," said Norman Stevens, a historian at Virginia Military Institute.

Less than a third of the American colonists favored war, Stevens said. Another third were loyal to the crown and slightly more than a third probably had no opinion, he said.

The speech was extemporaneous, and was only pieced together later from the writings of others at the convention.

"The phrase `Give me liberty or give me death' popped up enough times (in accounts of the meeting) that it is generally believed to have been said," said John Selby, chairman of the history department at The College of William and Mary.

"It probably increased popular support for the war. But Henry was not very well liked by the leadership, mainly because he kept shooting his mouth off, generating a lot of popular emotion when they preferred to do things a step at a time."

The speech did make Henry a folk hero, Stevens said. Henry served as governor of Virginia at the end of the Revolutionary War, and again several years later.

He died in 1799.

The speech made St. John's a favorite campaign stump for later politicians. Church officials now bar politicians from speaking there.

"We have some resistance to the church being used and manipulated like that," said the Rev. Thomas Markley.

That didn't stop 1988 Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Gary Hart from holding a news conference in the churchyard, Markley said.

by CNB