"The Greatest Lawyer That Ever Lived: Patrick Henry at the Bar of History" by George Morrow

This is a slim volume containing two essays about Patrick Henry, both by George Morrow.  In both essays, the author contends that Patrick Henry is essentially a mystery to us today for two reasons.  

First, Patrick Henry wasn't obsessed with writing things down OR with keeping records of his writing and speeches for posterity.  He was very gifted as a defense attorney and as a public orator, but his speeches had a strange ability to make people agree with him at the same time as not be able to remember exactly what he said.  So even the speeches we think we know he made, George Morrow says are probably just vague approximations of what he said because Henry didn't keep the speeches he wrote and no one else could remember more than the basic gist of them.  Yes, including the famous "Give me liberty, or give me death speech."

Second, George Morrow makes a convincing case for Thomas Jefferson being virulently envious of Patrick Henry for decades because Henry was a much more accomplished lawyer than Jefferson and a much better public speaker.  Morrow contends that, after Patrick Henry's death, Thomas Jefferson began systematically and effectively erasing Patrick Henry's good qualities from public and private memory alike and replacing them with the idea that Patrick Henry was a mediocre lawyer who got a lucky day in court now and then, was a lazy and cowardly state governor, and so on. 

If nothing else, these two essays have convinced me I need to read more about Patrick Henry and not rely on my memories of what my high school history books said about him thirty years ago.

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: G.  Nothing scandalous or untoward here.

This has been my second book read from my #RevolutionaryWarReads list!