Patrick Henry Liberty Or Death Summary

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Patrick Henry, speaker of the famous speech “Liberty or Death”, delivered his message on March 23, 1775 in Richmond, Virginia. Henry was a delegate and lawyer who tried to convince the Virginia colonist to join the cause, and get their militias to fight in the Revolutionary War. He tried to persuade the colonist saying that if we don’t fight now we’re going to end up as slaves to the British; he knew the war was going to happen eventually. To get the message across, Henry uses fear as a way to get the other delegates to get up and fight. Also, Henry has a big firm voice. Several of people ended up being so moved and captivated by the speech, because after he finished talking you could tell he was passionate about the situation and actually …show more content…

He starts to compare us to family saying, “...that force may be called in to win back our love”(Henry). People tend to get really emotional when they hear things about families hence it being pathos. Also he has a few ideas talking about how the British are here to fight us and no one else, we have done everything we could, and the only way to be free now is to fight in this war. These ideas show ethos. By using different analogies and comparisons he is able to better convince and tell the colonist about all the signs about how we should be at war with them. Henry continues the speech by giving a few more reasons as to why we should be free. He states, “There is no longer any room for hope. If we wish to be free…”(Henry). Henry believes that if we really want to be free, we have to stop sitting around and hoping for something to happen, we actually have to fight. Continuing, Henry talks about how we probably will not get any stronger, so why not fight now when everyone is excited to fight for the cause. By saying this he is using Pathos and Ethos. Using Rhetorical questions and repetition he is able use his ideas to convince the delegates to round up their