Sudie Cord

Virginia's First Governor Sudie Cord

Patrick Henry was an American attorney, planter, politician, and orator best known for his declaration to the Second Virginia Convention: "Give me liberty, or give me death!" A Founding Father, he served as the first and sixth post-colonial Governor of Virginia, from 1776 to 1779 and from 1784 to 1786.
Henry played crucial roles both during the Revolution and before it, locally and nationally. He was Virginia's first governor, and he was instrumental in convincing Virginian politicians to go to war. And yet, his life and career have mostly been reduced to the famous phrase "Give me liberty, or give me death," even though it's unclear whether those most famous of words were actually in the speech. This is because the first transcript of the speech came over a generation after Henry delivered it, in a biography of Henry written by William Wirt. Thus, ironically, historians are divided over whether the phrase Henry's best known for was his words or those of his biographer. Moreover, similar variations of that phrase already existed, and it's possible Henry was familiar with them, much the same way Franklin Roosevelt's line about fear had predecessors as far back as Duke Wellington over a century earlier.