Patrick Henry — "Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death"

**Patrick Henry** was the most electrifying orator of the American Revolution and the founding generation's most ferocious defender of individual liberty against government overreach. Born in 1736 in Hanover County, Virginia, he failed at farming, failed at storekeeping (twice), and then discovered, almost by accident at age 24, that he could make a courtroom do whatever he wanted with the sound of his voice. Within three years of passing the bar, he had become the most famous lawyer in Virginia, not through legal scholarship but through raw persuasive power that contemporaries described as supernatural.