A reader sent along a video he took July 4, 2012, of an actor at Colonial Williamsburg delivering Patrick Henry’s most famous speech.
27 days later and 480 miles away, war broke out in earnest at Lexington and Concord when General Gage’s attempts at gun control went horribly awry, and the British Regulars were cut to pieces by shop-keepers, merchants, and farmers.
And down in Virginia;
“The night of April 20, 1775, Lieutenant Henry Collins stole toward the capital with a squad of royal marines from H.M.S. Magdalen anchored in Burwell’s Bay on the James River. Their orders, straight from Governor Dunmore, were to empty the arsenal and disable the muskets stored there….
It was Patrick Henry’s oratory that helped the governor down this road. At St. John’s Church in Richmond on March 23,….
Dunmore wrote:
“The Series of Dangerous Measures pursued by the People of this Colony against Government, which they have now entirely overturned, & particularly their having come to a Resolution of raising a Body of armed Men in all the Counties, made me think it prudent to remove some gunpowder which was in a Magazine in this Place, where it lay exposed to any Attempt that might be made to seize it, & I had Reason to believe the People intended to take that step.”
…Word of Lexington and Concord reached Williamsburg on April 27. The Virginia Gazette got out a broadside the next day that said: “The Sword is drawn and God knows when it will be sheathed.” Soon Henry and 150 militiamen were threatening the capital from a Military Encampment just west of the city and demanding restitution for the powder…..
http://www.history.org/Almanack/places/hb/hbmag.cfm
“Man is not the creature of circumstances, Circumstances are the creatures of men.”
Benjamin Disraeli
Death before slavery!
Well Done Sir, Huzzah, Huzzah, Huzzah
I wish he was here to address The House and The Senate today.
It was Patrick Henry’s Culpeper Militia that gave us the Culpeper flag.
:)