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A Moment in Time is a series of theatrical audio clips in the style of early news radio broadcasts, covering events from Henry VIII to Hiroshima. Created by Dan Roberts starting in 1993, they are short "moments in time" that capture the feel and timbre of 1940s wartime radio.

A Moment in Time Archives: Patrick Henry's Personal Trauma

Volume: 1

Number: 10

Date: 02/25/2002

At the time Patrick Henry gave his famous speech at St. John's Church in Richmond in March 1775, few people knew of the personal tragedy through which his family was going. At the moment the patriot leader was calling for arming the Virginia militia, his wife was at home suffering a severe mental illness. The son of Henry's physician later wrote that while Henry was arousing a nation to arms, "his soul was bowed down and bleeding under the heaviest sorrows and personal distress." Mrs. Henry's dementia was so acute that she had to be restrained in a basement room and placed in a strait dress to prevent her from taking her own life. Each day, Henry opened the trapdoor in the hall near the entrance to the house and went down to feed her himself. Those who look at the past must avoid too much speculation about how personal trauma affects political actions. But it is useful to consider how Henry's quiet struggle to comfort a wife gone mad might have given intensity to his political rhetoric. Without evidence we cannot say for sure, but hearing the words of the Liberty or Death speech, one cannot help but wonder how his thoughts of a straitjacketed wife, in a dark basement room, struggling with a sickness that would not go away, might not have informed the manner in which he spoke of the colonies struggle with a stubborn and intractable England. "Shall we try argument? Sir, we have been trying that for the last ten years... Shall we resort to entreaty and humble supplication? What terms shall we find, which have not been already exhausted?...We have petitioned remonstrated prostrated ourselves before the throne....and we have been spurned, with contempt....Is life so dear, or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?" Patrick Henry lived another quarter of a century and witnessed the birth of the nation he helped inspire. Mrs. Henry was dead within a year. "A Moment in Time" is produced at the University of Richmond. This is Dan Roberts.

Beeman, Richard. Patrick Henry: A Biography. New York: McGraw-Hill Publishing Company, 1974.

Campbell, Norine Dickson. Patrick Henry: Patriot and Statesman. New York: Devin-Adair Publishers, 1979.

Meade, Robert D. Patrick Henry: Patriot in the Making. New York, 1957.

Mayer, Henry. A Son of Thunder: Patrick Henry and the American Republic. New York: F. Watts Publishing Company, 1986.

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