The Long Fuse - If This Be Treason

American Political History · Oct 9, 2023 · 23m

He was a 29-year-old backcountry lawyer in shabby clothes, nine days into his first term, in a chamber full of the most powerful men in Virginia. By the time he sat down, he had compared King George the Third to a murdered tyrant and dared the House to call it treason.

This is the story of Patrick Henry and the Virginia Resolves of 1765, the moment the colonial argument stopped being a polite petition and became open defiance. It is also a story about how history actually travels: how Henry’s most radical words were struck from the record by his own colleagues, how the one eyewitness account…