Patrick Henry & Sojourner Truth

Liberty and freedom are universal values in presentday United States.

- Eric Arnesen

But the definition and reality of these simple terms was something that earlier Americans could not take for granted. Patrick Henry and Sojourner Truth were two political actors who sought to give concrete meaning to those words. And, in so doing, they stirred their fellow Americans to take firm action in the public sphere.

Patrick Henry…

was the child of a Scottish immigrant who made Virginia his home by becoming a prosperous planter. His son Patrick made a name for himself across Virginia as a lawyer. In 1765, Patrick was elected to the Virginia House of Burgesses, where he spoke out forcefully against Great Britain’s taxation of American colonists. By the time the American Revolution began 10 years later, his reputation as a powerful speaker had been established. Thomas Jefferson, one of America’s Founding Fathers, disliked Henry, but testified that he was “the greatest orator that ever lived.” A recent biographer described Henry as “legendary as the ‘son of thunder’ because of the extraordinary power of his oratory.”