Patrick Henry’s Speech 250th Anniversary Keynote Address

Carly Fiorina, VA250 National Honorary Chair

March 23, 2025

Good afternoon.

How fortunate we are to be here.

You will hear immortal words ring out once more in these rafters. You will witness a deeply divided Second Virginia Convention finally agree to deliver troops for the Revolutionary War. As the richest and most politically powerful of the thirteen colonies, Virginia’s decision to prepare for war was pivotal.

“Give me liberty or give me death” did not come out of the blue. In July of the previous year, two other Virginians, George Washington and George Mason, friends and neighbors along the mighty Potomac River had delivered to Alexandria, Virginia what are known as the Fairfax Resolves, which declared for the first time that the colonies were not a conquered nation and could not be governed by laws to which they did not consent or taxed without representation.

Two months before the fateful meeting here at St. John’s church, a group of “overmountain men” in southwest Virginia delivered the Fincastle Resolutions, stating for the first time anywhere in the colonies that they were willing to fight and die for these ideas.

We tend to overlook how fraught this period was. How consequential these actions were, how enormous the risks being taken. Those colonists who spoke for revolution, who supported and fought for revolution, risked absolutely everything. It is hard to fully grasp all they stood to lose: property, stature, livelihood and lives. Everyone understood that the Crown had the money, the power, the army to crush any resistance.

We can convince ourselves that such courageous choices in the face of real personal danger and risk were made easier because there was such camaraderie and consensus among the actors. But that is not the real story.

There were many bitter rivalries among the principals. Thomas Jefferson was pea-green with envy about Patrick Henry and considered him a blow-hard who nevertheless could move a crowd. George Mason and George Washington came to disagree intensely about a Bill of Rights for their fledging nation and went to their dying days never speaking again.

Deep divisions existed throughout all the colonies over religion, politics, ethnicity, status and class, slavery. Colonists were divided over whether resistance to the Crown, much less
revolution, was treasonous.

The truth is the revolutionary movement, like all great movements forward in this country, did not occur because everyone agreed. Great movements forward occur because a common cause becomes more important than individual differences and disappointments.

Great courage was required by men like Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry, George Washington, George Mason, James Madison. And so were forbearance and tolerance, patience and
perspective.

Throughout all time and across the face of the earth, ours is the only nation not founded on ethnicity or territory or religion. Ours is the only nation in human history founded on ideas, ideals and a system of government. When we do not know our history, when we do not care who or what came before us, when we no longer understand the foundation upon which our nation is built, then we do not know why we are Americans. And our differences – which have always existed – tear us apart, because we have no national identity that holds us together.

We must reconnect Americans to who and where we come from. We must re-engage Americans who do not think our founding ideals or system of government have anything to do with them. We must re-inspire our fellow citizens and remind them what it means to be an American.

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We are so fortunate to be here.

From the first English settlement at Jamestown to the surrender of the British at Yorktown. From give me liberty or give me death, to all men are created equal. From the ideas that inspired it to the battlefields that decided it, there is simply no America without Virginia. And no better time than now to reconnect with your country in the place that made it possible.

America was made in Virginia. Here in Virginia, wherever you travelled from today, you are not simply making a journey to St. John’s Church or Mt. Vernon or Williamsburg or Monticello. You are coming home. As the birthplace of the nation, Virginia belongs to every American.

It doesn’t matter whether you speak English with a southern drawl or Spanish with a Texas twang. It doesn’t matter whether you can trace your lineage back to the first Americans or you are a recent citizen. It doesn’t matter where you started or what you look like. If you believe in the promise of America, in individual liberty and equality before God, then Virginia is where you come from. Because this is where those ideas were born and raised, where the dream of freedom became a nation destined to achieve it.

We are all so fortunate to be here. Welcome home.