6th President of the Confederation Congress Richard Henry Lee
Richard Henry Lee was an American statesman and Founding Father from Virginia best known for the June 1776 Lee Resolution, the motion in the Second Continental Congress calling for the colonies’ independence from Great Britain leading to the United States Declaration of Independence, which he signed.
Born: January 20, 1732, Stratford Hall, Stratford, VA
Died: June 19, 1794, Chantilly
Profession: Law
Spouse: Anne Aylett (m. 1757–1768)
Children: Marybelle Lee, Sarah Caldwell Lee
Siblings: Francis Lightfoot Lee, Thomas Ludwell Lee, Arthur Lee,
Richard Henry Lee was born in Stratford, Westmoreland County, Virginia on January 20th, 1732 and died in Chantilly, Virginia on June 19th, 1794. He was the third son of a Thomas Lee, the “empire builder,” who as the 5th son of Richard Lee “the emigrant”, the largest Virginia landowner at the time of his death in 1640, received a modest inheritance. Thomas Lee, Richard Henry Lee’s father, nonetheless managed to acquire real estate holdings far beyond Lee “the emigrant” and at the time of his death in 1750 amassed some 30,000 acres in the Northern Neck of Virginia. The greater part of Thomas Lee’s massive estate, including the family homestead called Stratford, went to the eldest son, Philip Ludwell Lee. Only the first four of Thomas Lee’s six surviving sons, which included Richard Henry Lee, were left modest landed estates.
At an early age Richard Henry Lee was sent over to England for schooling at the academy of Wakefield in Yorkshire. The personal wealth and status of his family enabled Lee to choose any profession, including philanthropist. In 1752 he returned to Virginia and without any plans for a professional practice applied himself with great diligence to the study of law. Both English and Roman law occupied his attention; he was also an earnest student of history. As a young adult, Richard Henry Lee decided to rent out many of his inherited slaves as well as his inherited lands hoping to support his family on the proceeds while devoting his professional efforts to politics.
In 1757 he was appointed justice of the peace for Westmoreland County. In 1761 he was elected to the Virginia House of Burgesses, of which he remained a delegate until 1788. Extreme shyness prevented his taking any part in the debates for some time. His first speech was on a motion: “to lay so heavy a duty on the importation of slaves as effectually to put an end to that iniquitous and disgraceful traffic within the colony of Virginia.”
On this occasion his hatred of slavery overcame his timidity and he made a powerful speech containing the proofs of the principal arguments used in by the northern Abolitionists through the 1860’s. Lee had no profession beyond his public service. Like Samuel Adams, he was a professional politician. In times of need, especially when the real estate market declined after the French Indian War, he could see no other way to provide for his family except through seeking lucrative appointive governmental offices. In 1764, Lee even requested the post of Virginia Stamp Collector in a particularly embarrassing life episode. It was actually Lee’s repeated failure to win Crown appointments that reinforced his and Arthur Lee’s perception that the British regime only distributed offices to buy or reward sycophant colonialists. His perceptions quickly evolved into convictions that the colonial side of “virtue against the forces of corruption” was just cause early in the Anglo-American conflict.
He was an energetic opponent of the Stamp-Act, and in 1765 formed an association of citizens of Westmoreland County for the purpose of deterring all persons from undertaking to sell stamped paper. A Tory gentleman in the neighborhood accepted the office of Stamp-Collector and boasted that he would enforce the use of stamped paper upon the people in spite of all resistance. Mr. Lee, being then captain of a Volunteer Company of Light Horse, at once went with his men to this gentleman’s house and made him deliver up his commission as collector and all the stamped paper in his possession. He also insisted the former collector bind himself by oath never again to meddle with such matters. The Stamp-Collector Commission and the incriminating papers were then burned in a bonfire on the lawn. It was a ceremonial fire overseen by Richard Henry Lee, who desperately sought the office only two years earlier.
At the news of the Townshend Acts of 1767, Mr. Lee moved a petition to the king in the House of Burgesses, setting forth in pointed terms the grievances of the colonies. In July 1768, he wrote a letter to John Dickinson, suggesting that all the colonies should appoint select committees “for mutual information and correspondence between the lovers of liberty in every province.” The suggestion was in harmony with the views of the famous “circular letter” of the Massachusetts assembly, written by Samuel Adams and lately sent forth to all the colonies.
There has been some discussion as to whether Adams or Lee is to be credited with the first suggestion of those remarkable “committees of correspondence” which organized the American Revolution. The earliest suggestion of such a step, however, is to be found in a letter from the great Boston preacher, Jonathan Mayhew, to James Otis, in June, 1766. The letter mentioned above from Lee to Dickinson seems to have come next in point of date, and at the same time Christopher Gadsden appears to have received from Lee a letter of similar purport.
Mr. Lee may or may not nave heard of Mayhew’s suggestion. The idea was one that might naturally have occurred to several of these eminent men independently. The machinery of committees of correspondence was, however, first set in motion by Samuel Adams between the towns of Massachusetts in 1772. The project of inter-colonial committees was first put into practical shape by the Virginia house of burgesses in the spring of 1773, on motion of the youthful Dabney Cart, brother-in-law of Thomas Jefferson.
