On a recent podcast by Kris Ann Hall she read Patrick Henry's famous "Give me Liberty or give me death speech". March 23rd was the anniversary of that speech. I looked up the transcript and in reading realized how amazing and brave these people were. A speech like that today would send college students to their "safe spaces" and cause the establishment media to insist he tone down his rhetoric. Here is one excerpt:
If we wish to be free -- if we mean to preserve inviolate those inestimable privileges for which we have been so long contending -- if we mean not basely to abandon the noble struggle in which we have been so long engaged, and which we have pledged ourselves never to abandon until the glorious object of our contest shall be obtained, we must fight! I repeat it, sir, we must fight! An appeal to arms and to the God of Hosts is all that is left us!