Why did patrick henry write his Give me liberty or give me death speech?

Answer 1

The speech was given in order to raise support for the American Revolutionary War. Actually, he gave the speech to the Virginia House of Burgesses.

Answer 2

Why seems like a hard question to answer, because the person is no longer around. But the theme of that speech "give me liberty or give me death" should have pretty much become self explanatory. I't's almost like saying, "give me my freedom or if I have to I'll die for that that freedom". This is the true American spirit that still exist today. The speech written by this particular person truly believe that Americans should fight or die for their own freedom. However, America during the time the speech was written, was at it's prime stage of becoming independent from the oppression of the King of England and his foreign policy.

It's too bad not very many Americans realized how important this was. I tend to blame it on our leaders from the past and present to have some how change that true American spirit. I can understand that we are no longer under any oppression other than may be being attacked by terrorists on our own soil due to our own leaders' stupdity. But our forefathers wouldn't have sit around letting any foreign terrorists attack our soil given the fact that America had been freed from England for a few hundred years. Neither would they have let such crisis as would have caused some foreigner countries to want to become terrorists mainly because they're afraid they are going to loose their own way of life or freedom if you will. America had come a long way to be ahead of everyone else both in military and technology, and especially economically. But to use Patrick Henry's speech and it's ideal then for today, to fight terrorists seems vague, promiscuity, and bigotry. What I'm getting at is that it's the Iraqis that should have been the ones that wrote this similar speech when we first invaded Iraq. Good enough, yes?

Answer 3

Actually, we may not know quite as much about this speech as we think we do.

1) We DO know that Patrick Henry made a speech on March 23, 1775 to members of the Viriginia House of Burgesses, urging them to prepare for war. He argued that it was inevitable -- that all their efforts for the previous ten years had failed -- and so they much immediately raise troops to be prepared.

We also know that the House of Burgesses was already leaning in this direction and that they did decide to make the preparations Henry was calling for.

2) We have this text:
http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/patrickhenrygivemeliberty.html

But what most students of American history do NOT know is that we have NO contemporaneous record of the actual content of this speech! The text above was compiled by William Wirt, Henry's grandson and biographer, 40 years later (1817)!

Some have suggested that much of the present form owes much to Wirt's polishing and embellishing. But if we do not have the exact words, there is no question that Henry took the sort of position embodied in this speech and was well-known as a powerful orator.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrick_Henry#Biography
http://www.bookrags.com/biography/william-wirt-dlb/

Answer 4

He gave that speech to the Continental Congress, who were voting on whether or not to go to war with the British. Everyone else up to that point had given speeches against the war. Then, Patrick Henry gets up, and delivers his famous speech pro-war, citing that if they didn't go to war now, they might never be able to. He, in essence, was the cause of the Revolutionary War, because after he gave that speech (an excellent example of a persuasive speech using logos-logic, ethos-ethics, pathos-feeling) it was a unanimous vote among the councilmen, and within ONE MONTH the war had started.

Answer 5

He gave it because he was fed up about how Britain was not giving Americans freedom to do much, so he made that speech to show how most Americans feel.

Here is the speech:
http://libertyonline.hypermall.com/henry-liberty.html