March 23 · This Day in America
Saint John's Church in Richmond is packed. Virginia's leaders — Washington and Jefferson among them — have gathered as a convention, still hoping reconciliation with the Crown is possible. Patrick Henry rises to argue it is not. War is already coming, he says; the only question is whether free men meet it standing up. His voice climbs as he closes: I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death. The room is said to have sat in stunned silence, then erupted. The exact words come down to us through a biographer who reconstructed the speech from those who were there — but the resolution it carried passed, and Virginia voted to arm. Less than a month later, shots fired at Lexington made the choice real. A church became the place where a colony decided to fight.
Source: encyclopediavirginia.org
Also on this day · 1839
On March 23, the Boston Morning Post runs a bit of editorial wordplay and prints two letters that would conquer the planet: 'o.k.' — a deliberately silly abbreviation of 'oll korrect.' It should have died as a fad. Instead it rode the 1840 presidential campaign into the language, then into every language. The word humanity reaches for to mean everything is fine started as a newspaperman's pun in Boston.
Source: www.history.com
“I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death!”Patrick Henry, Richmond, 1775