(Born 1736, died 1799)

Patrick Henry, lawyer, patriot, and orator, was a living symbol of the American struggle for liberty and self-government. From the day in 1760 when he appeared in Williamsburg to take his attorney's examination before Robert Carter Nicholas, Edmund Pendleton, John and Peyton Randolph, and George Wythe, Patrick Henry's story is inseparable from the stream of Virginia history.

In 1763, arguing the famed Parson's Cause in Hanover County, Henry proclaimed that a king who would veto a good and necessary law made by a locally elected representative body was not a father to his people but a tyrant who forfeits the allegiance of his subjects. Henry amplified this doctrine to the point of treason in defending his resolutions against the Stamp Act in the House of Burgesses on May 30, 1765. Carried away by the fervor of his own argument, the plainly dressed burgess from Louisa County exclaimed that "Caesar had his Brutus, Charles the First his Cromwell, and George the Third." At this point cries of treason rose from all sides, but with hardly a pause Henry neatly "baffled the charge vociferated" and won the burgesses for his cause. Five of his resolutions approved, the new leader in Virginia politics saddled his lean horse and took the westward road out of Williamsburg. (After his departure, one of the resolutions was overturned.) Henceforth Henry was a leader in every protest against British tyranny and in every movement for colonial rights.

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