Hampden-Sydney College was closely tied to Patrick Henry from its founding through the early republic. When first president Samuel Stanhope Smith named the college after English anti-Royalists, he aligned it with Henry’s revolutionary outlook, and Henry was elected a founding trustee in November 1775, shortly before classes began, serving on the board until his death in 1799; James Madison was elected at the same time, and Henry later sent seven of his sons there. During the Revolution, students enlisted together to fill Prince Edward County’s quota for the Revolutionary army, and as Virginia’s first governor Henry personally thanked them. The college’s 1775 petition for a charter was delayed by the war, but after it Patrick Henry was instrumental in securing the charter in 1783 and was probably responsible for writing its oath of allegiance. After settling in Prince Edward County following 1784, he also introduced a bill in the Virginia legislature seeking state support for the college, though it failed. Samuel Stanhope Smith and trustee James Madison strongly supported ratification of the U.S. Constitution, while Henry opposed it as an Antifederalist; when Smith could not attend a meeting where Henry spoke against the Constitution, he had a student publicly reenact Henry’s speech and then answered it himself, an episode that seriously affronted Henry even though his support for the college never wavered. Henry was a leading Virginia statesman who defended colonial rights, rose to prominence in the Parsons’ Cause in 1763, advanced revolutionary principles in his 1765 resolutions against the Stamp Act, and became renowned for the words “Give me liberty or give me death” delivered at Saint John’s Church in 1775. Known as the Voice of the Revolution, he served twenty-six years in the Virginia legislature, held five terms as governor, helped draft Virginia’s 1776 constitution and Declaration of Rights, criticized the U.S. Constitution, and strongly influenced the creation of the Bill of Rights.