St. John’s Church became a powerful symbol of American liberty and the foundations of the republic when more than 100 Virginia colonial leaders, including Patrick Henry, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Richard Henry Lee, and Peyton Randolph, gathered there as elected delegates to the Second Virginia Convention in March 1775. One of five conventions organized by Virginia to protest Great Britain, this meeting became historic on March 23, 1775, when Patrick Henry defended his resolution to put the colony into a state of defense and delivered the words, “Give me liberty or give me death.” His speech helped spark revolutionary feeling in Virginia, his resolutions passed by a narrow margin, and Virginia’s support for independence helped keep the American Revolution from becoming only a regional conflict. Henry, later called the “Voice of the Revolution,” had already gained prominence through the Parsons’ Cause in 1763 and his 1765 resolutions against the Stamp Act, later served 26 years in the Virginia legislature and five terms as governor, helped draft the Virginia Constitution of 1776 and its Declaration of Rights, strongly influenced the creation of the Bill of Rights, and was praised after his death by John Adams as a statesman of unusual candor and courage.
