#1660 Ten Things: The Real Patrick Henry (Live)

Listening to America

History, Politics, Unitedstates, Society & Culture, American

4.6 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 14 July 2025

⏱️ 51 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Clay’s conversation with popular guest Dr. Lindsay Chervinsky on Patrick Henry. Henry began his life as a shopkeeper but rose to become the governor of Virginia and one of the handful of most essential rabble-rousers in the American Revolution. Henry and Jefferson were frenemies; at one point, Jefferson (the Deist) said to his friend Madison, “We must pray for Henry’s death.” This quip was likely a joke, but Jefferson was quite critical of Henry, and he never forgave him for initiating a legislative investigation into Jefferson’s conduct as the beleaguered wartime governor of Virginia. Henry refused to attend the Constitutional Convention in 1787 because, he said, “he smelt a rat.” He opposed ratification in Virginia, but when Jefferson and Madison were considering secession in 1798 and 1799, Henry declared to George Washington that the constitutional settlement must not be disturbed by the Jeffersonians. This episode was recorded live on May 16, 2025. *Note, we posted this description in error for the podcast episode published on June 9, 2025.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, everyone, and welcome to this very special edition of Listening to America.
0:08.9	I'm Clay Jenkinson.
0:09.9	I'm sitting across literally, physically, for the second time in my life, Dr. Lindsay
0:15.0	Chervinsky, as you know, a very frequent and much-loved guest on the Listening to America podcast. And Lindsay, you and I last
0:23.5	night gave a lecture here. We are actually on the property of Christ Church in Weems, Virginia,
0:29.8	and we gave a lecture together about the religious clause of the First Amendment.
0:34.9	We did. And I was reflecting on this last night that we were
0:38.4	speaking from the pulpit and we were talking about the importance of religious freedom and occasionally
0:42.3	being slightly irreverent. And I quoted, I think, West Wing and I was a little sorry about that,
0:48.4	but that's fine. It's essential. We're making history accessible to the people. We talked about Washington's letter to the Turo
0:56.1	Synagogue, and I was wondering if we were tempting fate, you know, the wrath from high above
0:59.9	with some lightning coming down and striking us in our place, but that did not happen as we
1:04.1	are still sitting here today, and it was a spectacular venue, and we are very grateful that
1:10.1	they let us into it. So thank you so much for having us back.
1:14.0	Yeah, our subject today is Patrick Henry, 10 things about Patrick Henry. But before we do that,
1:19.8	I just want to say hello to Robert Teagle. You are our host. I've been most gracious to us.
1:24.4	I've had you print out gazillions of documents. Good crowd last night.
1:28.2	It was a great crowd and we were so thrilled to have Lindsay come back. She spoke here last
1:32.7	year on John Adams and said, I'll come back if I can speak in the church this time. And
1:38.3	then I said, well, can you can you give me an invite to Clay and the rest is, as they say,
1:43.4	history. But what a great evening and
1:45.8	the setting certainly is an ironic one not only for what Lindsay said but also the building
	...

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