Liberty and Death: Patrick Henry’s Family Devotion

“My brother Pat is not returned from Philadelphia yet,” wrote Anne Christian of her brother Patrick Henry, who was away at the First Continental Congress in 1774. “His wife is extremely ill.”
Anne’s letter is one of the few written documents that references her sister-in-law’s mysterious mental illness, which threw the Henry family into turmoil in the years leading up to the American Revolution. It also reveals the affectionate nickname Henry’s familiars had for him. “Pat” Henry is famous today for his fiery oratory.
By all accounts the marriage was a happy one. Henry was elected to a seat in the Virginia House of Burgesses and Sarah looked after a growing litter of children. While Henry’s star rose in the world, so did tensions with Great Britain, allowing him to showcase his oratorical skills.
Then in late 1771 or early 1772, a shadow appeared. Shortly after the birth of their sixth child, Sarah abruptly began suffering from an unknown condition among that vague constellation of mental illnesses once classified as “insanity.” There is no detailed information about what it was apart from nebulous references in family correspondences.
Pieced together from available facts, historians and mental health experts today use current knowledge to retrospectively diagnose her. It seems likely that she suffered from either postpartum depression or puerperal psychosis—a condition involving the sudden onset of psychotic symptoms following childbirth.
Doctors were called in, but none could find a cure for her condition. One advised Henry to admit her in an insane asylum recently established in nearby Williamsburg. Anyone who has seen films about such places is familiar with the brutal treatments patients received; these had a good deal in common with torture methods. Henry made the brave decision to go against professional advice, deciding to keep Sarah at home where he and his household servants could personally tend to her.
Sarah was placed in the basement of their Virginia home. Over the next several years, her condition continued to deteriorate. She became so violent that she had to be confined in a “strait-dress”—an early form of the straitjacket.
Many people who lose ill family members after a long period of caregiving often have an emotionally complex reaction: relief that a burden has been lifted, mixed with guilt at feeling that relief. While there is no direct evidence that Henry had this exact experience, we do know that the demands of caring for both family and country had taken a toll on him. At 44, he described himself as “a distraught old man.”
Henry coped with grief through busyness, throwing himself completely into the cause of the Revolution. A few weeks after Sarah’s death, on March 23, 1775, Henry gave his most famous speech. Solidifying his nickname as the “Voice of the Revolution,” he made an impassioned argument to form a colonial militia. The speech’s concluding lines are well-known to many Americans:
“Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!”
Henry was famous for the way his passionate rhetoric would appeal to the sentiments and prejudices of his audience. While it is impossible to know exactly how much his emotional state following Sarah’s death influenced his emotional oratory, a connection is plausible.
Perhaps he had her deterioration in mind when, speaking of the worsening relationship with Great Britain, he told his listeners, “It is natural to man to indulge in the illusions of hope.”
After political retirement, Henry spent the final years of his life at Red Hill in Virginia. The estate is modest compared to the opulent expanses of Monticello and Mount Vernon. While the grounds comprised about 3,000 acres, the living quarters were quite small at the time. With his oldest children grown and two prematurely deceased, Henry raised the remaining youngsters of his huge family in a one-and-a-half-story house of about 600 square feet.
He died at Red Hill in the summer of 1799, the same year as the childless Washington. His grave located on the grounds can still be seen today, where visitors can pay tribute to one of our nation’s legendary speakers.