Cardinal News 250

John Wyatt talked his way out of a prisoner of war camp with a barrel of rum. He then used forged documents to infiltrate Tories in the New River Valley who were planning to attack the lead mines in modern-day Wythe County.

We talk with Michael Hudson, executive director of Historic Smithfield in Montgomery County.

Andrew Lawler contends that Thomas Jefferson wanted to destroy urban, multiracial, capitalist Norfolk partly because it didn’t fit his vision of an agrarian slaveocracy, that Black slave ownership wasn’t the same as white slave ownership and that Patrick Henry manipulated white farmers into supporting the Patriot cause.

Lord Dunmore spirits gunpowder out of Williamsburg to a British ship, provoking outrage. Militias start assembling for march to capital.

The six-part documentary will debut in November on PBS. Next year marks the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.

The Marquis de Lafayette eventually helped secure his freedom. A statue to James Armistead Lafayette will be dedicated this month in New Kent County.

The National Constitution Center ranked Patrick Henry’s speech as one of the ten greatest speeches in American history, along with Abraham Lincoln’s “Gettysburg Address,” Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream!” and JFK’s first inaugural address.

His famous “Give me liberty or give me death” speech is still being quoted, including during the Tiananmen Square uprising in China.

This month we hear from Stephen Wilson, executive director at the St. John’s Church Foundation.

Henry, the foremost orator of our times, stuns listeners by declaring, “Give me liberty or give me death!”