Ominous Warning!

Take heed, George the Third!  It's 1765 and the sleeping giants in The Colonies are about to be wakened by your oppressive taxations!  Stamp Act, indeed!  A taxation on TEA?  Why, that would be like taxing the very air we breathe!  (Hmmm.  Is that what the EPA is doing to America right now??)

Have you ever READ the Declaration of Independence?  It's not just that opening paragraph.  It details exactly why the colonists had reached the limits of their tolerance for the King's governmental threats to the freedom those in America had found.  They came here for freedom, found it, and by-jingo, not even the King was going to take it away!

Patrick Henry, as a very young man, became a firebrand, a great Voice of Liberty:

Caesar had his Brutus, Charles the First his Cromwell, and George the Third ...may profit by their example. -- May 29, 1765

I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided, and that is the lamp of experience.  I know of no way of judging the future but by the past. -- March 23, 1775

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! -- March 23, 1775

And now his warnings to US!

June 5, 1788  Liberty, the greatest of all earthly blessings -- give us that precious jewel, and you may take every thing else! ... Guard with jealous attention the public liberty.  Suspect every one who approaches that jewel. --

1799  Whether (independence) will prove a blessing or a curse, will depend upon the use our people make of the blessings which a gracious God hath bestowed on us ... Reader! whoever thou art, remember this; and in thy sphere practice virtue thyself, and encourage it in others. -- Patrick Henry's message for posterity

Patrick Henry knew something about posterity:  He had 17 children and 77 grandchildren!  The foundations of freedom no other population on earth has ever known were laid by Patrick Henry and those who crafted the Declaration of Independence.  It was won by those who fought the battles and died, or lived to build a nation like no other before or since.

He drew his strength from Red Hill, the home he built in central Virginia.  It is an exquisite estate, a peace exists there that we have not found at all the other locations we have been to.  There is a tree there that has been living undisturbed since Patrick Henry's time. 

Up close you can see it's age and it's strength.  One would have to step way, way back to see it's size.

The structures on the land are not magnificent like Point of Honor or Monticello, though Patrick Henry knew both Dr. George Cabell and Thomas Jefferson as close friends.

Notice the magnificent old tree on the left.

If I remember correctly, Henry's descendants continued to live here until the 1930's  (Again with the "no house payments for 300 years" thing!)

This outbuilding was his law office.  One room was for lawyer-ing and the other was where his law students slept.

 This was his desk and chair.  No massive filing system.  No copy machines or computers. 

And this is a very unique work table.  The "arms" would extend when Henry had large documents or maps to support.  (Think of the size of the parchment the Declaration of Independence was written on.)  I thought it was a pretty clever design.

But, is this what the Founding Fathers have come to mean to us?  Even those few of us that are even curious about the truth of those times?  Is it now all about old trees and buildings and land?  artifacts?

To honor their memories and their sacrifice to gain the liberty and freedoms we still know today, shouldn't we continue to fight for those ideals, albeit at the voting booth?  As a matter of fact, if we DON'T fight for that liberty and those freedoms with our votes, we might very well have to fight with even stronger weapons. (God forbid!)  "Know the truth and the truth will set you free!"  Who said that?  Bless his heart, he did know what he was talking about!