I probably should have added some context.

Revolution was in the air in early 1775. Only a few months earlier, delegates from the American colonies had held the first Continental Congress and sent Britain’s King George III a petition for redress of grievances, among them the repeal of the so-called “Intolerable Acts.” A mass boycott of British goods was underway, and Boston Harbor still languished under a British blockade as punishment for 1773’s Boston Tea Party. In a speech to Parliament in late-1774, King George had denounced the “daring spirit of resistance and disobedience to the law” which seemed to be spreading like wildfire across the American continent.

Amid these mounting tensions, the Second Virginia Convention convened to discuss the Old Dominion’s strategy in negotiating with the Crown. The roughly 120 delegates who filed into Richmond’s St. John’s Church were a veritable “who’s who” of Virginia’s colonial leaders. George Washington and Thomas Jefferson were both in attendance, as were five of the six other Virginians who would later sign the Declaration of Independence. Prominent among the bewigged statesmen was Patrick Henry, a well-respected lawyer from Hanover County. Blessed with an unfailing wit and mellifluous speaking voice, Henry had long held a reputation as one of Virginia’s most vociferous opponents of British taxation schemes. During the Stamp Act controversy in 1765, he had even flirted with treason in a speech in which he hinted that King George risked suffering the same fate as Julius Caesar if he maintained his oppressive policies. As a recent delegate to the Continental Congress, he had sounded the call for colonial solidarity by proclaiming, “The distinctions between Virginians, Pennsylvanians, New Yorkers and New Englanders are no more. I am not a Virginian; I am an American.”

Henry was convinced that war was around the corner, and he arrived at the Virginia Convention determined to persuade his fellow delegates to adopt a defensive stance against Great Britain. On March 23, he put forward a resolution proposing that Virginia’s counties raise militiamen “to secure our inestimable rights and liberties, from those further violations with which they are threatened.” The suggestion of forming a militia was not shocking in itself. Other colonies had passed similar resolutions, and Henry had already taken it upon himself to raise a volunteer outfit in Hanover County. Nevertheless, many in the audience balked at approving any measure that might be viewed as combative. Word that King George had rejected the Continental Congress’s petition for redress of grievances was yet to reach the colonies, and some still held out hope for a peaceful reconciliation with Britain.

After several delegates had spoken on the issue, Patrick Henry rose from his seat in the third pew and took the floor. A Baptist minister who was watching the proceedings would later describe him as having “an unearthly fire burning in his eye.” Just what happened next has long been a subject of debate. Henry spoke without notes, and no transcripts of his exact words have survived to today. The only known version of his remarks was reconstructed in the early 1800s by William Wirt, a biographer who corresponded with several men that attended the Convention. According to this version, Henry began by stating his intention to “speak forth my sentiments freely” before launching into an eloquent warning against appeasing the Crown.

https://www.history.com/news/patrick-henrys-liberty-or-death-speech-240-years-ago