William Wirt’s Skull
William Wirt’s Skull
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Compiled by Jim Moyer 2/19/2017, 3/23/2019, updated 2/21/2020
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This skull is quite a find while searching for something else.
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The search?
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The search was for tracing Colonel George Washington’s southern journey in September 1756.
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Tracing his steps from Winchester to Augusta County Courthouse to Fort Harrison to all the way to the North Carolina border, where he visited Fort Mayo in old Halifax County which later birthed Patrick and Henry Counties, named after Patrick Henry, and so this led where?
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This led to Patrick Henry’s speech.
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And that’s where William Wirt’s skull appears.
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Patrick Henry?
William Wirt?
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In that skull, William Wirt’s skull, stolen in the 1970s and later recovered, was the idea that Patrick Henry said, “Give me Liberty or Give me Death.”
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According to JAR, the respected Journal of the American Revolution, there is no evidence Patrick Henry said that.
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And maybe that idea came from Addison’s Cato, a favorite play in the British Empire and of our Founders, often quoted by George Washington.
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In Addison’s Cato, A Tragedy, see Act II, Scene 4:
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“It is not now time
to talk of aught
But chains or conquest,
liberty or death.”
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Jon Kukla in his Patrick Henry: Champion of Liberty alleges “Henry plunged an ivory letter opener towards his chest in imitation of the Roman patriot Cato the Younger. “
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DEBUNKING?
That “Liberty or Death” was in the language of all the elites and masses who saw the play, Cato A Tragedy, certainly means that saying it or writing it was only a matter of time.
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The play was so ingrained into everybody at the time. Most of our founders memorized the great lines. See how many references there are to this play. Proof of that is to be found here.
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William Wirt’s Intent
William Wirt’s intent was to write a biography of Patrick Henry, but no one ever jotted down all his speeches. So after much frustration in trying to find a record — any record of Patrick Henry’s speeches, he wrote some of Patrick Henry’s speeches like he was quoting him.
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“In 1816 the editors of Port Folio magazine asked Wirt to publish a sample of his forthcoming book, and the author selected the alleged text of the speech Patrick Henry delivered in Richmond’s Henrico Church on March 23, 1775, more than four decades earlier.” See JAR article.
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JAR contends Wirt wrote
Give Me Libery or Give Me Death:
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About Addison’s Cato
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William Wirt BIO
Wirt was huge in his time, big as any Founding Father.
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Wirt’s 2 Direct Sources:
Judge St. George Tucker, and Edmund Randolph were two sources William Wirt used for part of reconstructing Patrick Henry’s speeches.
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Wirt wrote back, thanking Tucker for his contribution: “I have taken almost entirely Mr. Henry’s speech in the Convention of ’75 from you, as well as your description of its effect on you verbatim.” [ix] Wirt did adopt one other phrase, “peace when there was no peace,” from an article that Edmund Randolph, a firsthand witness, published in 1815 in the Richmond Enquirer. [x] That was all. More than one thousand of the 1,217 words in the speech we think of as Henry’s—including the stirring last paragraph—were conjured by William Wirt.
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Source:
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Judge St George Tucker’s one son, Henry St George Tucker created and ran Virginia’s largest private law school in 1824 on 37 South Cameron Street in Winchester.
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Source Page 22 to 23, By David M Corbin for the Winchester Frederick Co Historical Society Volume VI, 1991-1992
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Sources:
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The JAR story:
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Story on the stolen skull
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Joseph Addison’s CATO quotes
Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death
may owe its heritage to a scene in Act II, in which Cato declares, “It is not now a time to talk of aught / But chains or conquest, liberty or death.”[5] Similarly, Nathan Hale’s ubiquitous quote during his execution, “I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country,” may have bene inspired by Act IV, when Cato glorifies his son’s death, “-How beautiful is death when earned by virtue? / Who would not be that youth? What pity is it / That we can die but once to serve our country!”[6] In truth, Henry often spoke extemporaneously from notes and no complete text of the speech has survived. Instead, it was re-constructed decades later by a Henry biographer, who Ray Raphael concludes likely wrote the speech.[7] Similarly, few were present at Hale’s execution and his quote comes through the memoir of a classmate, who claimed to be repeating the story told him by John Montressor, the British chief engineer stationed nearby.[8] In either case, a certain class of Americans were already familiar with the ideas and sentiments attributed to Henry (liberty or death) and Hale (martyrdom for cause and country), thanks in no small part, to the play.
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From the JAR article:In 1816 the editors of Port Folio magazine asked Wirt to publish a sample of his forthcoming book, and the author selected the alleged text of the speech Patrick Henry delivered in Richmond’s Henrico Church on March 23, 1775, more than four decades earlier. The final work, Sketches of the Life and Character of Patrick Henry, came out the following year. An instant bestseller, it was reprinted twenty-five times in the next half-century.[v]
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How accurate is Wirt’s rendition of Henry’s most famous speech?
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