A Crossroads Resource
Unit IV: What was the American Revolution? 1760-1836
Question/Problem 2: Was the American Revolution a revolution?
American Revolution:
Reading A: National Leaders
Patrick Henry and other national leaders in the colonies were frustrated
by British rule. The following is excerpted from Patrick Henry's famous
speech to the Virginia legislature in 1775. Read the following and answer
the question below.
...Sir, we have done everything that could be done to avert the
storm which is now coming on. We have petitioned, we have remonstrated,
we have supplicated, we have prostrated ourselves, before the throne, and
have implored its interposition to arrest the tyrannical hands of the
ministry and parliament. Our petitions have been slighted; our
remonstrances have produced additional violence and insult; our
supplications have been disregarded; and we have been spurned, with
contempt, from the foot of the throne. In vain, after these things, may
we indulge the fond hope of peace and reconciliation? There is no longer
any room for hope. If we wish to be free, if we mean to preserve
inviolate those inestimable privileges for which we have been so long
contending, if we mean not barely to abandon the noble struggle in which
we have been so long engaged and which we have pledged ourselves never to
abandon until the glorious object of our contest shall be obtained, we
must fight!...
Our brethren are already in the field! Why stand we here idle?
What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear,
or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and
slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may
take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!
_Eyewitnesses and Others: Readings in American History, Vol. 1:_
Beginnings to 1865 (Austin, TX: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc., 1991),
pp. 103-107.
Question: What changes did Patrick Henry hope to achieve during the
American Revolution?
Back To Question #2