Becoming Patrick Henry

“If this be treason,” Patrick Henry famously declared at the Capitol in Williamsburg, “make the most of it.” Nathaniel Lasley, Colonial Williamsburg’s newest Nation Builder, is making the most of his chance to portray Henry.

Being a Nation Builder offers a select group of interpreters the chance to inhabit a historical figure more fully. For Lasley, that meant months of studying the Revolution’s most famous orator before first appearing as Henry. Most people know Henry for his two famous speeches: “If This Be Treason” was delivered in Williamsburg in 1765 in opposition to the Stamp Act and, more broadly, to defend the principle that only the colonists’ elected assemblies could tax them. Ten years later in Richmond, “Give Me Liberty, or Give Me Death” inspired many Virginians to prepare for revolution.

But, as Lasley has learned, there was a lot more to Patrick Henry than fiery oratory.

“I always thought Henry was interesting because he was someone who didn’t bend with the popular will but shaped it,” Lasley said. “He wasn’t afraid to do things that weren’t easy or expedient. He would stick his neck out even if there were potential dire consequences.”

Lasley was surprised to learn that Henry was a skillful diplomat. As the first governor of Virginia after independence, Henry initiated trade relations with Louisiana and the West Indies, and he was constantly negotiating with the Native nations beyond the mountains.

“There was more range in his abilities than I originally thought,” Lasley said. “He has proven to be very interesting, which is fortunate since I’m married to him now.”

Lasley also noted the dark side to Henry: Recognizing that slavery served his financial interest, he never manumitted anyone.

Coming to Williamsburg

Many actor interpreters start as actors and then study history. Lasley first wanted to be a history professor, then realized he could teach a broader audience about America’s past by performing. Besides, he liked being outdoors.

His first experience with historical theater was in 2004 at the Thoroughgood House, a historic home in Virginia Beach. In 2009 he joined Colonial Williamsburg, giving tours of the George Wythe House. In 2011 he auditioned for a part in Colonial Williamsburg’s street theater, then called Revolutionary City. For the audition he played Israel Hands, a member of Blackbeard’s pirate crew.

“The audition was a train wreck,” he recalled. “I went on way too long.”

Nonetheless, Bill Weldon, who was the director of Revolutionary City at the time, gave him another chance. Lasley improvised a scene in which he played James Innes, an officer in the Virginia militia. During the interaction, Innes clashed with none other than Patrick Henry. That audition led to regular work playing Innes, who was a complex character like Henry. Innes was a devoted patriot but also an enslaver who was documented as occasionally bullying those who did not follow his lead. Playing Innes, Lasley said, “got people to think about how complicated the Revolution was.”

Lasley has become most familiar to Colonial Williamsburg visitors as Innes, but he has also played other roles, including Edmund Randolph, who rebelled against his loyalist father to join the patriot cause, and John Jarret Carter, a bartender who was a soldier in Washington’s army who later joined the British.

Studying various figures helped prepare Lasley to become Henry. “Members of the performing arts department are regularly reading primary sources,” he said. “The difference in being a Nation Builder is the time I’ve been allotted to do so — four to eight hours a day. Of course, the all-day study sessions are temporary while I am training, but the devotion to a single character is not.”

The Two Henrys

Richard Schumann, who has portrayed Henry in Williamsburg since 1995, has provided Lasley with valuable advice.

“Richard has been loaning me material from his personal library and advising me on what to read,” Lasley said. “I’ve been able to make the most of every second because of his guidance.”

Schumann said that he has been impressed over the past 10 years by Lasley’s ability to dig deep into his various characters and to draw crowds.

“He’s already shown me that he’s got the ‘Henry fire’ in his belly,” Schumann said, “so fear nothing, Patrick Henry fans — our founding hero is in very capable hands.”

Schumann will continue to portray Henry, and he and Lasley are planning a program in which both appear on stage together, with the older Henry reflecting on his life and Lasley acting out those memories.

Schumann also noted that 2025 marks the 250th anniversary of the “Liberty or Death” speech. “Be on the lookout for a regularly scheduled rendition of that oration with two Henrys for the price of one,” he said.

Writing programs is not new to Lasley. He has written a number of shows for Colonial Williamsburg in partnership with Barbara Swanson, who is one of the Foundation’s bookbinders and also Lasley’s wife. They wrote A Soldier’s Christmas, in which Innes returns from the war and struggles with what today would be called post-traumatic stress disorder, and Soldier’s Journey, in which John Jarret Carter struggles with the same affliction but comes to very different conclusions than Innes about the merits of the Revolution. In addition, Lasley has co-written two shows, Fugitive’s Christmas and Measure of a Man’s Worth, that examine the institution of slavery during the Revolution. His co-authors were actor interpreters Willie Wright, Hope Wright and Horace Smith.

Currently, Lasley is working on a program about Henry’s relationship with his first wife, Sarah Shelton Henry, who suffered from mental illness, and about connections between that relationship and his “Liberty or Death” speech. That script is based on a book titled In Sickness and in Health: The Marriage of Patrick Henry and Sarah Shelton by Mark Couvillon, a former Foundation interpreter.

“Nation Builders and other Colonial Williamsburg actors have to have more than one skill set,” Lasley said. “We’re always researching, creating and performing. I have wanted this job for 20 years, and now that I’ve had the honor to be chosen, I’m going to apply those skills, Richard’s guidance and a lifelong love of history to become Patrick Henry.”

Liberty or Death!

When the Second Virginia Convention convened on March 20, 1775, it did so amid talk among the more radical colonial leaders that the time had come to take up arms. Many of the delegates to the convention feared that the royal governor, Lord Dunmore, might try to break up the proceedings, so they met in Richmond instead of Williamsburg. Richmond had no government building large enough to accommodate the convention, so the delegates assembled at Henrico Parish Church, later renamed St. John’s Church.

On March 23, Patrick Henry put forward a resolution that the colony immediately be put into a “state of defence.” More moderate delegates objected, arguing that military preparations would undercut any hope of reconciling with Great Britain. Henry rose to speak. Most accounts of Henry’s famous words rely on William Wirt’s biography of Henry, first published in 1817:

“Gentlemen may cry, peace, peace — but there is no peace. The war is actually begun! The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms! Our brethren are already in the field! Why stand we here idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? 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,” cried he, with both his arms extended aloft, his brows knit, every feature marked with the resolute purpose of his soul, and his voice swelled to its boldest note of exclamation — “give me liberty, or give me death!”

Since there is no contemporary record of Henry’s words, it is impossible to know how many of the words were Henry’s and how many were Wirt’s. Wirt named two sources: St. George Tucker and John Tyler, both of whom were present at the church. Others who were there, including Thomas Jefferson, did not contradict Wirt’s account. It seems likely, therefore, that the general outline of the speech and many of the words — including the most memorable of them — were Henry’s.

Many of Henry’s listeners would have recognized that the “liberty or death” line was similar to one in Joseph Addison’s 1712 play Cato: A Tragedy. In Addison’s play, Cato spoke of resisting the tyranny of Julius Caesar and proclaimed: “It is not now a time to talk of aught / But chains, or conquest; liberty or death.”

Whatever the exact words and whatever their sources, there can be no doubt of their impact. According to Edmund Randolph, the convention sat in silence for several minutes. Thomas Marshall told his son John, who later became chief justice of the United States, that the speech was “one of the most bold, vehement, and animated pieces of eloquence that had ever been delivered.”

More immediately, Henry’s resolution passed, and Henry was named chairman of the committee assigned to build a militia. Soon after, Dunmore seized the gunpowder in the public magazine at Williamsburg.

Edward Carrington, who was listening outside a window of the church, asked to be buried at that spot. In 1810, he got his wish. “Now, after two and a half centuries,” wrote Jon Kukla in his 2017 biography of Henry, “his grave bears witness to the speech that burned itself into the memories of countless listeners — Give me liberty or give me death! — and carried Virginia further toward armed resistance and revolution.”