Henry’s speech to the Second Virginia Convention exhorted the gathered representatives to take up arms against the oppressive overreach of a monarch. In its announcement of the anniversary celebration, the Trump administration, which has wrested control over funding the government away from Congress and is attempting to close legislatively created agencies, said: “At a moment when America’s fate hung in the balance, Henry’s words sparked daring action in the souls of patriots.”
Henry stood to speak at a moment when the British were massing military forces in a clear display of force. “Gentlemen may cry, Peace, Peace,” he said, “but there is no peace. The war is actually begun! The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms!” The Trump administration, which has unleashed ICE agents on legal residents and disappeared them across the country, touts Henry as “an unflinching advocate for American Independence.”
“If we wish to be free,” Henry told the men gathered at St. John’s Episcopal Church in Richmond, “if we mean to preserve inviolate those inestimable privileges for which we have been so long contending… we must fight!” Trump, who enjoys a Supreme Court-granted immunity for anything he does that he claims is an “official act,” said we collectively should “fearlessly summon the spirit of 1776 to build a future that we will be proud to impart on our children.”
Following Henry’s exhortation, the Second Virginia Convention voted that the colony be “put into a posture of defence.” At its semiquincentennial, Trump, who has repeatedly expressed a desire to annex Canada, Panama, and Greenland, celebrates the speech’s effect of having “set America on the path to ultimate triumph over forces of tyranny and oppression.” He made the declaration to celebrate this anniversary “by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States.”
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