"Give me liberty, or give me death!" is a quotation attributed to Patrick Henry from a speech he makes to the Second Virginia Convention, after the Virginia House of Burgesses had been disbanded by the Royal Governor, on March 23, 1775, at St. John's Church in Richmond, Virginia.

He is credited with having swung the balance in convincing the convention to pass a resolution delivering Virginian troops for the Revolutionary War.

Among the delegates to the convention are future U.S. Presidents Thomas Jefferson and George Washington.

According to Edmund Randolph, the convention sat in silence for several minutes afterwards.

Thomas Marshall will tell his son John Marshall, who will later become Chief Justice of the United States, that the speech was “one of the most bold, vehement, and animated pieces of eloquence that had ever been delivered.”

Edward Carrington, who was listening outside a window of the church, requested that he be buried on that spot.

In 1810, he will get his wish.

The drafter of the Virginia Declaration of Rights, George Mason, said, “Every word he says not only engages but commands the attention, and your passions are no longer your own when he addresses them.”

More immediately, the resolution, declaring the United Colonies to be independent of the Kingdom of Great Britain, passes, and Henry is named chairman of the committee assigned to build a militia.

Britain's royal governor, Lord Dunmore, reacts by seizing the gunpowder in the public magazine at Williamsburg—Virginia’s equivalent of the battles of Lexington and Concord.