Give Me Liberty: Speakers and Speeches That Have Shaped America

"Give me liberty," demanded Patrick Henry, "or give me death!" Henry's words continue to echo in American history, and that quote, and the speech it comes from, remains one of the two or three known to almost every American. The other speeches that have become part of our American collective consciousness all have one theme in common: liberty. These feats of oration seem to trace the evolution of America's definition of liberty and whom it applies to.

But what exactly is liberty? It is a ter...