Congress made yet another appeal to the Crown to hear out their grievances over the Stamp Act, but most agreed the time for talk is over. English America was on a war footing when Virginia’s House of Burgesses met in a church in Richmond. A few of the voices urged for peace, at least until hearing the response from Britain. Patrick Henry, one of the Founding Fathers, wanted none of it. Henry addressed the president of the convention, calling for an assembly of cavalry drawn from every Virginia town, to fight the British.

On this day, March 23, 1775, Patrick Henry gave his speech to the second Virginia Convention. Assembled were politicians from the Virginia colonial government that the British governor dissolved. Henry reportedly finished his heartfelt appeal with the famous lines “I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death.”

It became one of the most famous utterances in history, a motto that resonated through the ages and was actually adopted (unofficially) by the country of Armenia; but “Give me liberty of give me death” may actually be a myth. Unlike some other contemporary speeches, no written first-hand accounts exist of Patrick Henry’s speeches. The first record of Henry’s speech comes from a book published seventeen years after his death, and the words to it are largely sourced from recollections of another man present at the Convention. Doubtless something of the kind was pronounced there, but the exact details of what and by whom are lost to history.