"Liberté ou la mort": Ayiti's words, Patrick Henry's reconstruction, and the books

SUMMARY"Liberté ou la mort": Ayiti's words, Patrick Henry's reconstruction, and the books (Nov 4, 2026). Tito: "libre meaning free and also book... the colonizers were burning the towns, libraries and books... in slavery they didn't want us to read."
RECORD, Ayiti: Dessalines' proclamations of 1804, including the Act of Independence (January 1, 1804), are headed "Liberté ou la mort" and signed in the name of the "Armée indigène," the Indigenous Army. Ayiti's own army called itself indigenous in its founding document. (Verify the header wording on the Gonaïves print; the UK National Archives holds a printed copy.)
RECORD, the US version: "Give me liberty, or give me death!" is credited to Patrick Henry (Virginia Convention, March 23, 1775), but no text was written down at the time. The speech first appears in William Wirt's Sketches of the Life and Character of Patrick Henry (1817), rebuilt from older men's memories 42 years later. The same Wirt ran for president as the Anti-Masonic candidate in 1832 (Lodge Library LL-006). The phrase "la liberté ou la mort" was also a French revolutionary slogan of the 1790s.
RECORD, the words: Latin has two words spelled liber: liber, libera "free" (giving liberty, libre) and liber, libri "book," first the inner bark that was written on (giving library, French livre). Linguists give them separate roots; the shared spelling is a fact.
RECORD, burned books: Bishop Diego de Landa burned Maya codices and images at Maní, Yucatán (July 12, 1562), and wrote that the people "regretted it to an amazing degree." Only four Maya codices are known to survive (Dresden, Madrid, Paris, and the Maya Codex of Mexico).
RECORD, reading banned: South Carolina's Negro Act (1740) fined anyone teaching an enslaved person to write. After Nat Turner (1831) Virginia banned schools teaching enslaved and free Black people to read and write; other Southern states passed similar laws

PATTERNfree and book share one word, and the powers moved against both: books burned in Yucatán, reading banned in Virginia and the Carolinas

LENS (WW9)Liberté ou la mort is Ayiti's oath, said by the Indigenous Army in its own founding paper; the US version is a reconstruction. To be free is to keep the book

OPENZumárraga and the Mexica archives (accounts of burnings are Disputed); whether "Liberté ou la mort" reached the mainland nations through Ayiti. Needs deep research.