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states boasted their own navies. A violent uprising—“Shays’ Rebellion”—had torn apart western Massachusetts just a year earlier without any national military to quell it. Many people worried that Massachusetts was just the beginning.
    With the American experiment now hanging in the balance, many leaders argued that the Articles should be changed to allow for a stronger federal government before it all fell apart. A convention met at Independence Hall in Philadelphia to work out the details, but the delegates had quickly determined that the Articles couldn’t be fixed. They were broken beyond repair. Some delegates, led by Virginia’s James Madison, went rogue and drafted an entirely new document with a new set of rules that established a very different relationship between American citizens and their government.
    They called it “the Constitution.”
    These delegates, the “Federalists,” believed they had no other choice. Patrick Henry, on the other hand, thought otherwise. The man who had challenged Britain, and, indeed, the entire universe, to give him liberty or death thirteen years earlier believed the greatest crisis currently haunting America was the possible ratification of this new Constitution. He had avoided the convention in Philadelphia where the monstrosity had been born, but now it had come to him in Virginia and he could ignore it no longer.
    Henry knew that the next month might very well decide everything. The Constitution had made a lot of progress since Philadelphia. Delaware, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Georgia, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Maryland had already ratified the document. South Carolina might do so at any moment. Only a single additional state’s ratification was necessary for the two-thirds majority needed for the Constitution to take effect—a much lower bar than the Articles had been held to; they had required unanimous approval.
    The Constitution’s success seemed so near, but in reality, its very survival still hung in the balance. A Union without Virginia wouldhardly last longer than the Articles of Confederation had endured with Virginia on board.
    That left men like Patrick Henry in the lurch. He did not want to see the Union fall apart, but he also believed that this new document was an invitation to tyranny, which he had fought before. In 1765 he’d made a passionate speech to Virginia’s House of Burgesses: “Caesar had his Brutus,” he’d thundered, “Charles the First his Cromwell; and George the Third, may he profit by their example. If this be treason, make the most of it!”
    Now, more than twenty years later, he believed the rat he smelled in Philadelphia was pushing them steadily toward monarchy. He was resolved to do everything in his power to stop that march dead in its tracks.
    Henry’s fingers drummed even faster now. His eyes narrowed. He could hardly wait for the fun to begin.
    Patrick Henry was ready to go in for the kill.
    Richmond, Virginia
    Theatre Square (“The New Academy”)
    Broad Street, between Twelfth and Fourteenth Streets
    June 4, 1788
    The kill would not be so easy.
    Patrick Henry estimated that 80 percent of all Virginians stood opposed to this new Constitution, but he knew that his opponents, the Federalists, had done their homework. They had worked hard to get the right delegates in place, and now it was becoming clear that the final vote in the ratifying convention teetered on a knife’s edge. Only a handful of votes would decide the issue and potentially the fate of the entire nation.
    The nearly 170 delegates formed a large crowd, but all around them, and in the gallery high above, partisans from both sides—along with the merely curious—filled the hall to its brim. Though it was only early June, the sheer mass of humanity made the room too hot and stuffy for comfort.
    Patrick Henry stood tall and gaunt, six feet high and just 160pounds, his