Henry, PATRICK, a great American orator and patriot, was born in Hanover county, Virginia, 29th May 1736. His father was a native of Scotland, his grandmother a cousin of Robertson the historian. Henry received a share of classical education, but at an early age entered business, and married at eighteen. Having failed successively in 'store-keeping' and in farming, he became a lawyer in 1760, and three years later found his opportunity, when, having been employed to plead the cause of the people against an unpopular tax, his great eloquence seemed suddenly to develop itself. This defence placed him at once in the front rank of American orators, and his later speeches advanced him to their head. From amid the sullen murmurs and remonstrances that the passage of the stamp-act evoked, his voice it was that first rose in a clear, bold call to resistance.
Throughout the war of independence he was a zealous patriot. He was a delegate to the first Continental congress, which met at Philadelphia in 1774, and delivered the first speech in that assembly—a speech that for fiery eloquence and lofty tone was worthy of so momentous a meeting. In 1776 he carried the vote of the Virginia convention for independence; and in the same year he became governor of the new state. He was afterwards four times re-elected. In 1791 he retired from public life, and returned to his practice; in 1795 he declined the secretaryship of state offered him by Washington. He died 6th June 1799. Henry was an able administrator, a wise and far-seeing legislator; but it is as their greatest orator that his memory lives in the minds of most Americans. No one who has come after has approached him in ability to stir and sway the passions of an audience. The classical life is that by William Wirt; others are Everett's, in Sparks's American Biography, Tyler's (1887), and W. W. Henry's (3 vols. 1891).