Yeah, we know that the idea of a slave-owner like Patrick Henry talking about how bad slavery is really leaves a taste in our mouths that's nastier than blue cheese. The guy seemingly never saw the irony of these statements, chalking up his slave-owning to ye olde "But I'm Virginian. It's just how things are done" defense.

But let's try to push that elephant way to the side of the room and focus on how Henry uses the motif of slavery vs. freedom throughout this speech. Because this motif is huge—in fact, it's this motif that the speech ends on. (Do we need to say it again? Okay, here it is: "Give me liberty or give me death!" (75). Oh, man: that's just so good.)

But Henry starts throwing around his liberty vs. chains symbolism almost immediately:

The question before the House is one of awful moment to this country. For my own part, I consider it as nothing less than a question of freedom or slavery. (5)

Henry continues the slavery imagery through his discussion of the intentions of the British military:

They are sent over to bind and rivet upon us those chains which the British ministry have been so long forging. (29)

Once Henry really gets going in his argument for taking up arms against Great Britain, he says,

There is no retreat but in submission and slavery! Our chains are forged! Their clanking may be heard on the plains of Boston! (60-63)

There's an element of hyperbole to Henry's use of this motif. Are the British really going to make the colonists slaves? Well, no, certainly not in the literal sense…though there may be some prison chains waiting for them as traitors to the crown.

No, Henry's big concern is that he feels they've lost the rights of Englishmen. Despite the fact that Great Britain has a monarchy, it's been a relatively free country for centuries. By Henry's time, the British monarchy is constitutional, not absolute (like those of Russia or France). The monarch rules with the consent of Parliament, and through them, the people who elected them.

So, British citizens have certain rights granted through the Magna Carta and other docs, including the right to representative government and a fair trial by a jury of their peers. Henry feels these rights have been denied to colonists, so he uses "slavery" as a term to describe loss of what he feels are some pretty fundamental rights.