Talk:Give me Liberty, or give me Death!

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[edit] Exact Phrasing

actually there is some doubt over the exact wording of the speech, and if in fact if it was given to the house of burgesses. you should look at the book "founding myths," for more information.

Yeah, I read "Founding Myths" and apparently scholars are unsure if this was how he worded it. Its a notable controversey IMO. SteelyDave 06:16, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

It's amazing to me that "scholars" of modern modality know so much more than all the learned men over the past 200 years who have not questioned founding documents and their authors, those in particular who were alive during this speech and it's circulation who didn't find it necessary to debate it's content would seem to have precedent.


Is there anywhere a copy of the speech? Even a reproduced, second-hand, hear-say facsimile?

I memorized it a while ago during school. Should I share?
EDIT: Actually, the Patrick Henry page already has what seems to be it all. [[Kidalana 01:40, 21 September 2007 (UTC)]]

[edit] Merge?

Do we really need this? Seeing as it basically copies wholesale from Patrick Henry? lk

[edit] Unsourced

wtf is "This quoe is also very popular in speeches by Southern patriots."? changing 208.59.171.97 03:28, 23 December 2005 (UTC

[edit] Frank Miller's Give me Liberty

How about mentioning that this quote inspired Frank Miller in his graphic novel Give me Liberty? I think it's the second page on the first issue and it even has Patrick Henry's name on it. airstrike 00:13, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

Mentioning it here is the wrong way round: the quote is important to the graphic novel, not vice versa. It's already mentioned on Give Me Liberty. It should not be here, lest we end up with a great big trivia list of everything that somehow alludes to this quote (which is unfortunately rather common).
Aside from that, how do you know the quote "inspired" it? What if it just happened to fit the novel's theme as Miller conceived it? 82.92.119.11 00:15, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] References section

I don't understand the approach to footnotes/references taken in this article. What's the point of separate Footnotes and References sections, when, in fact, the footnotes are simply references to one of the References? This double indirection is inconsistent with every other article I've ever worked on. Why are some full references in the Footnotes section and some in the References? Why is there complete duplication in some cases?

I also don't understand this comment. What was broken, and what part of WP:CITE is relevant? Thanks. —johndburger 03:11, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

Maintaining a "References" section in addition to "Notes"
It can be helpful when footnotes are used that a separate "References" section be maintained, in which the sources that were used are listed in alphabetical order. With articles that have lots of footnotes, it can become hard to see which sources have been used, particularly when the footnotes contain explanatory text. A References section, which lists citations in alphabetical order, helps readers to see at a glance the quality of the references used.
If such a section is included, the footnotes should be in a separate section entitled "Notes" or "Footnotes." Where an alphabetical list of references is provided, "short footnotes" may be used, where the footnotes contain only an author, perhaps title, and page number, without giving a full citation in the footnote itself.
In addition to its use by citations, the reference section lists the sources used to write the article. Sources are listed regardless if they are used for citations. Sources which are used for a particular citation but are not otherwise used may be listed solely as a citation. BradMajors (talk) 13:49, 19 January 2008 (UTC)
I think little of this applies to this article:
  • With articles that have lots of footnotes—Nope.
  • it can become hard to see which sources have been used—Nope.
  • particularly when the footnotes contain explanatory text—Nope.
  • Sources are listed regardless if they are used for citations—but every one of the sources is used in a citation. They're in one-to-one correspondence.
And if having a single merged section is "broken", then many (most?) Featured articles are broken—a quick sample of the first ten History FAs shows that more than half of them have only a References section. Nevertheless, I'll defer on this.
But I still don't understand the duplication between the two sections. Why are two of the sources now cited in full in both sections, and the rest are not? My reading of WP:CITE doesn't support this format at all. If some distinction is being made about the way these sources are used in the article, I'm missing it, and I suspect most readers will as well. Thanks. —johndburger 15:02, 19 January 2008 (UTC)
I have fixed the article to use short form citations consistently. There is no universally accepted method of using citations. BradMajors (talk) 19:45, 19 January 2008 (UTC)
That's true. I still think both Notes and Reference is kinda overkill for this article, but looking at the FAs that do use that approach, I'm starting to appreciate its utility. And consistency is more important than which approach is used. Thanks! —johndburger 20:53, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Article rating

By the way, despite my quibbling about the References, I think this is a really nice article, and should certainly be rated higher than Stub—I'm tempted to rate it a B, but will back off to Start if that's the consensus. —johndburger 15:06, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

I have upped the article rating to a start. There is more content that can be added, in particular a reliable citation indicating that "Liberty or Death", or its equivalent, was being used before Henry made his speech, and that "Give me liberty, or give me death" never appears in print until 1817. A "B" requires the majority of the content. Whether it has the majority of the content is debatable. BradMajors (talk) 01:12, 29 January 2008 (UTC)