Patrick Henry shouted “Give me liberty or give me death” from the podium at the Second Virginia Convention in 1775, a call for independence. As a young man, Henry was moved by the First Great Awakening and became a supporter of religious liberty and an orator who understood the value of emotional as well as intellectual impact. A fiddler, a lawyer, and eventually a politician, Henry believed that both slavery and the fact that the Anglican church remained the official church of Virginia were injurious to the development of the colony. He was also a slaveholder. This is what I think of when
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