Patrick Henry's Contribution To The Constitution

“Give me liberty, or give me death.” Patrick Henry is forever noted in history for this famous line during the American Revolution. His contributions to liberty did not stop with the British, however. Patrick Henry was the leader of the Anti-Federalists in the early years of our country. The Anti-Federalists did not want a federal government system, where there is a strong central government, then smaller, state governments. Patrick Henry had his own ideas for a decentralized national government, which he added on to the Constitution during the ratification convention in Virginia.
Patrick Henry was invited to the Constitutional Convention, however, he vehemently declined the offer. He did not approve of the fact that they were secret meetings and went on to say “I smell a rat!” However, that did not stop him from voicing his thoughts on the national government that this new nation needed and against the one established at the Constitutional Convention. Patrick Henry was a

central voice in the ratification discussions in Virginia, and was crucial to the Constitution’s adoption of the Bill of Rights. Henry realized that a strong central government impeded state sovereignty and ignored the South, and wanted to implement broad suffrage rights.
Patrick Henry made a series of speeches at the ratification convention in Virginia against the Constitution.

In his speeches, he pointed out critical aspects of the government that were left out of the Constitution. During his speech on June, 7 1788, he discussed that Virginia has a Bill of Rights which included broad suffrage, unlike the United States Constitution. Using this as a basis, he wonders how the states could trust a government that doesn’t even mention suffrage. If they decide on restricted suffrage, then they can pick and choose who votes for them, keeping them in office, which could result in a monarchical government. Henry felt that is was necessary to retain full suffrage rights to all citizens, as to make sure there is a fair election of government officials. He wanted to make sure this analysis of this comparison between the Virginian government and the newly formed U.S federal government was noted, as he was focused on the impeding steps taken against state

sovereignty.
Henry wanted to give broader suffrage to the citizens of his new nation.
State sovereignty was the key aspect of the Anti-Federalists’ fight against the Constitution. They believed that in order to avoid returning to a monarchial government, the power should be further spread out, then in a central location. “The Constitution is said to have beautiful features… [and] they appear to me to be horrifyingly frightful. Among other deformities… it squints toward monarchy.” Patrick Henry, while at the Virginia Ratifying Convention, was very much against the proposed national government, and what it could become, as he stated in the aforementioned quote. Under the Articles of Confederation, the states retained most of their sovereignty, with a very weak, decentralized government. However, under this new Constitution, the states were given almost no power. There was no direct power granted to the states in the new Constitution. Henry felt like this was the U.S. returning to a government with the ability to go tyrannical. He wanted the states to retain their rights as individual states, and not the strong central government established in the Constitution.
Another impediment of state sovereignty was that the Constitution ignored the Southern states. The South has a history for being known as a strong supporter of states’ rights. The new Constitution had no steps taken towards assisting the south. The South had very little in regards to populace in the states. Though there was more land in the South than the North, there were fewer states, in regard to numbers. The northern states would therefore have more representation in both houses of Congress. They had larger populations, which decided seats in the House, and more states meant more groups of two in the Senate. Though the South did receive more representation in the 3/5 Compromise, it still wasn’t enough for what they felt they deserved. Patrick Henry, a southerner himself, wanted this new Constitution to have more focus on the South, than it truly did. This was a central point Henry made during the ratification convention.