Patrick Henry and Independence Day

This Independence Day, help educate our fellow Americans about the revolutionaries who signed the Declaration of Independence, who against tyranny pledged, “to each other our Lives, out Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.” Patrick Henry is one such revolutionary.

Red Hill, the Patrick Henry National Memorial, is the last home and burial place of the orator of liberty, who was born May 29, 1736 and died some 63 years later on June 6, 1799. He served as Virginia’s first elected governor, as well as in the House of Burgesses in Williamsburg, where, in 1765, he attacked England’s Stamp Act. In opposition he exhorted, “If this be treason, make the most of it.”

His brief Red Hill on-line biography reads, “During the second Virginia Convention, his most famous speech was delivered in 1775 at St. John’s Church in Richmond. His words became the clarion call that led the colonies into the Revolution. With courage and elegance, he cried, “˜I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty or give me death.'”

In Oregon and across these United States, we have long been in dire need of radicals cut from the Patrick Henry cloth. To oppose government abuse of eminent domain, ever-increasing taxation and civil liberty violations, to name but a few, is not treason. Rather, it is principled patriotism; resistance is our heritage.

Declaration
National Memorial
Biography