Did Patrick Henry decry the death of law enforcement?
A local protest group is assembling in my city in a park where Nathan Bedford Forrest, a democrat, made a famous speech in the 1870s bringing blacks and whites together for the first time. Nathan Bedford Forrest and his wife are buried at this site.The park and statue have been there since 1905 and once part of an historic Victorian and post-Victorian neighborhood and city park.
The park itself is historic in my mind—it is the only one remaining of several that were here prior to the 1920s. Most of the houses and neighborhoods became blighted or were razed by urban renewal groups in the 1950s.
They are decrying the removal of the statue using the “Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death!” speech of a Republican, Patrick Henry, who lived a century before Forrest.—one of the Founding Fathers of our nation— concluding with “What do we want? Liberty! When do we want it? NOW! (are we still slaves?)— then target the police declaring “What do we want? DEAD COPS when do we want it? NOW! There is no one to riot with but the police. Most of the signs being held are against Donald Trump, a left-leaning republican and former democrat, depicting him as a KKK leader and Adolph Hitler and the reason the statue must come down.
This is the most disconnected montage of unrelated events, movements, history, slander, and hysteria—it hardly seems real—much less that anyone could make these “connections.” But this drive seems to be sweeping the country— George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and even slave-abolisher Abraham Lincoln (in a Chicago demonstration and vandalism) are not exempt.
Whereas there IS truth in that Patrick Henry was against slavery, I don’t recall his famous speech demanding dead cops. Today, Donald Trump is actually seen as a White Supremacist / KKK leader (about 30% of his family is Jewish)—last week he was going to put us at risk of Nuclear Holocaust for “threatening North Korea”
Can anyone make any sense out of this? Did Patrick Henry really demand an overthrow of local law enforcement?
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Let’s get two things cleared up:
1. Patrick Henry decried the death of law enforcement only in the sense that he agitated for the armed overthrow of the British Colonial government in America and equated the subjugation of the American colonists under British rule with slavery. At the time of the speech, 23 March 1775, we were a British Colony. There was no US government and no organized police forces in America in 1775. There were, however, British soldiers in the streets of our port cities. Patrick Henry was against British law enforcement only.
2. No, he was not affiliated with the Republican Party. After the Revolution, he was elected three times as governor of State of Virginia on the Federalist Party ticket. Patrick Henry died in 1799. The Republican Party was founded in 1854. He was republican only in the sense that he agitated for a republican form of government, vs a monarchy.
Patrick Henry (1736 – 1799) was a failed Virginia planter—complete with slaves—and a failed shopkeeper who later became a lawyer, rousing orator, revolutionary soldier and Federalist politician. He stood firmly against monarchic rule throughout his professional career.
At the time of the speech, the question had been put to the House of Burgesses as to whether or not Virginians would form an army to fight the British. His speech is said to have resulted in the decision to fight.
If you read the three items below you will be able to answer the questions in your details and become much better informed than the protesters you described.
The Speech
About the Speech
Patrick Henry bio
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There’s no question that there are some strange views and opinions loose in the country regarding its history and even its current disposition. How else might we explain the annointing of Trump?
“Patrick Henry was a Republican” and glossing over Nathan Bedford Forrest’s role in founding the Klan.
The Trump voter, ladies and gentlemen.
@Yellowdog You continually make references to Party affiliations of historical characters as justification for their current evaluation. Yes, the Republicans were the big opponent of slavery, and yes, Democrats, especially in the South did their awful enforcement of segregation for 75 years after reconstruction.
But you ignore that parties and platforms change and evolve. Today is today, and the leadership of the Republican Party has demonstrated on many occasions this year that support of racist and white supremacist ideologies is consistent with the party’s efforts to overturn voter’s right and civil rights enforcement.
That is why people are demonstrating to resist the administartion, an administartion that has encourage pro Nazi and racist demonstrations.
You keep brining up ” getting rid of statues of Washington and Jefferson” to equate that with removing confederate memorials. That is a false equivalency raised by white supremacists as justification for keeping confederate memorials. It is not something truly espoused by people opposed to the current administration.
@Yellowdog Patrick Henry was an agitator and a freedom fighter in favor of liberty. To that extent he opposed British law enforcement.
Your founders were all traitors and certainly had no compunction murdering countless members of British law enforcement and loyalists.
de·cry
dəˈkrī/Submit
verb
publicly denounce.
“they decried human rights abuses”
synonyms: denounce, condemn, criticize, censure, attack, rail against, run down, pillory, lambaste, vilify, revile; More
Your post is such a jumble; I would want to see a reputable news article about the protest before offering an opinion.
I am trying to figure out what you are talking about. Is the city’s plan to remove the Forrest statue? If so, on what grounds, and do you approve?
The protesters are using Patrick Henry symbolically as someone in favor of liberty. In the process they may be distorting the historical facts a bit. There are worse crimes.
Kind of like how anarchists like Guy Fawkes even though he was attempting to overthrow a parliamentary government in favor of a Catholic theocracy.
So…Guy Fawkes was or was not a supporter of antidisestablishmentatianism?
I’ve always wanted to use that word in a coherent sentence!
@Strauss Well, Guido Fawkes predate disestablishment efforts by a few hundred years, but he would prefer the Catholic Church be established as a replacement rather than there be no established church at all.
@Muad_Dib Damn it! There was a little voice in the back of my head that was telling me I was using that word wrong, but I was just too lazy and tired to look it up. That is bloody embarrassing. Now I’m going to mindfuck over this for a week, but I won’t ever forget it’s meaning. Thank you and welcome to Fluther.
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