The Virginia ratifying convention
Henry appears on the show as the most forceful of the losers. Carol Berkin stated the ground of his opposition: “That’s why Patrick Henry fought tooth and nail in the Virginia ratifying convention to see the Constitution go down to defeat, because he said these powers will weaken the authority of the state governments” Carol Berkin on The Bill of Rights No One Wanted (2016). Zadek’s addition in the same episode is the measure of how local the founding loyalties were: “As you pointed out in your book, Patrick Henry to his dying day considered his country to be Virginia.”
Thomas Fleming confirmed the stakes in Virginia, the largest state: “down in Virginia, Patrick Henry was totally opposed to this, and some other very talented guys were opposed too” — and without Virginia and New York, “there wouldn’t have been a government” Was The Ratification of the Constitution A Mistake? (2012). That episode is also where Zadek sets out his own conclusion, reached from reading the Anti-Federalists’ predictions rather than the Federalists’ promises: “Oh my God, the Anti-Federalists were right."
"The voice of thunder”
Zadek’s description comes from his visits to Colonial Williamsburg, where actors who have spent their careers in a single role take questions in character. “The first speaker I heard was Patrick Henry, and that was interesting because Patrick Henry, the voice of thunder, is a very colorful character and by the way, one who vehemently opposed the Constitution—and frankly, he was right, but that’s another topic for another day” George Washington’s Providence (2013). The companion passage in the Thomas Fleming episode makes the same point about the reenactors: “these reenactors spend their entire lives living the life of Jefferson and Patrick Henry” George Washington Was Our Guest (2011).
Before Common Sense
In the Paine episode, Harlow Unger placed Henry’s most famous speech just ahead of the pamphlet that did the broader work: “The shots had been fired at Lexington, and Patrick Henry had exploded the air with his famous speech, ‘Give me liberty or give me death.’ But the idea of independence did not capture the minds of all Americans” Thomas Paine: Apostle of Liberty (2021). Henry is also named in the show’s introduction of Harlow Giles Unger, whose books include The Lion of Liberty: Patrick Henry and the Call to a New Nation How Washington Invented the Presidency (2013).