Arthur Lee

Arthur Lee (1740-1792) was a propagandist for the American Revolutionary cause and an agent in Europe for the Continental Congress.

Arthur Lee was a member of the famous Lee family of Virginia and the younger brother of two signers of the Declaration of Independence, Richard Henry Lee and Francis Lightfoot Lee. Arthur was educated in the British Isles at Eton, Edinburgh (where he received his doctor of medicine degree in 1764), and the Middle Temple. He was admitted to the bar in 1775. During the decade preceding 1776, he was an impassioned propagandist for American rights. He wrote numerous political pamphlets and letters and staunchly defended the English radical John Wilkes. He was Benjamin Franklin's rival as America's chief spokesman in Great Britain.

In 1775, as confidential agent of the Continental Congress, Lee began a series of negotiations with the French and Spanish to secure desperately needed war materiel for the American army. A year later he was appointed one of three commissioners to negotiate a French alliance. As the other commissioners, Franklin and Silas Deane, energetically, ingeniously, and perhaps compromisingly made contracts to start guns and supplies across the Atlantic, spasms of suspicion seized Lee. He believed that Deane, especially, and various scheming Frenchmen were reaping huge, dishonest profits at the expense of American patriot blood and treasure. Lee thought that Franklin aided the plots by boudoir intrigues in Paris and pettifogging letters home. To expose all this, Lee made furious accusations to Congress, which resulted in 1778 in Deane's recall just as the commissioners signed the long-sought French alliance.

Though Lee's charges led to Deane's disgrace and perhaps restrained war profiteering, their principal effect was to divide Congress into warring factions. Lee found ready support from his brothers and their New England allies (especially John and Sam Adams), who were ready to believe the worst about Franklin. The "Lee-Adams faction" preferred to minimize American connections with Europe and to depend instead on simple American courage and perseverance.

In general, however, Lee found Congress cool both to his accusations and to his view of American national policy in the 3 years he served as a Virginia delegate (1781-1784). After vigorously opposing the Federal Constitution, he spent his last years as a Treasury board official (1785-1789) and in embittered retirement in Virginia.

Further Reading

Letters related to Lee's public career are in Francis Wharton, ed., The Revolutionary Diplomatic Correspondence of the United States (6 vols., 1889), and Edmund C. Burnett, ed., Letters of Members of the Continental Congress (8 vols., 1921-1936). There is no adequate biography of Lee. Richard H. Lee, Life of Arthur Lee (2 vols., 1829), though eulogistic, inaccurate, and expurgated, contains details on his life and long selections from his correspondence. Relevant material on Lee's family appears in Burton J. Hendrick, The Lees of Virginia: Biography of a Family (1935).

Additional Sources

Potts, Louis W., Arthur Lee, a virtuous revolutionary, Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1981.

Riggs, A. R., The nine lives of Arthur Lee, Virginia patriot, Williamsburg, Va.: Virginia Independence Bicentennial Commission, 1976. □

Lee, Arthur (1740–92), member of the famous Virginia family, was educated at Eton and Edinburgh (M.D., 1764), practiced medicine at Williamsburg, and went to London (1768) to study law and prepare for his diplomatic career. In the Virginia Gazette (1768), he published The Monitor's Letters, which supplemented Dickinson's Letters from a Farmer, and he continued his literary contributions to the colonial cause in other letters and in An Appeal to the Justice and Interests of the People of Great Britain (1774) and A Second Appeal (1775). As a result of these pamphlets, he was appointed the London agent for Massachusetts (1770–75) and secret agent of the Continental Congress (1775). With Franklin and Silas Deane he was appointed (1776) to negotiate a treaty of alliance with France, and to solicit aid for the Revolution. Although they accomplished their ends, Lee and his colleagues were troubled by constant friction because his vivid imagination led him to accuse them of treason and fraud, when at worst they were guilty only of errors.

Richard Henry Lee (1732–94), his brother, was also a distinguished Revolutionary patriot whose service in the House of Burgesses (1758–75) included work with Patrick Henry and Jefferson for radical measures. In the Continental Congress he signed the Declaration of Independence. He opposed the Constitution mainly because it had no bill of rights. His views were set forth in two pamphlets printing Letters of the Federal Farmer, respectively Observations … (1787) and An Additional Number of Letters … (1788), which were the chief literary opposition to The Federalist. After the ratification, he was elected a U.S. senator (1789–92), and was instrumental in the passage of the Bill of Rights, being himself the author of the 10th Amendment.

Arthur Lee 1740-92, American Revolutionary diplomat, b. Westmoreland co., Va.; brother of Francis L. Lee, Richard H. Lee, and William Lee. Educated in Great Britain, he returned to Virginia to practice medicine, but soon decided to study law and went (1768) to London. There, like William Lee, he became a partisan of John Wilkes and a political pamphleteer. In 1770 he became agent for Massachusetts in London. After the outbreak of the American Revolution, he was made a commissioner for the Continental Congress to seek foreign aid. In 1777 he went to Spain, but was unable to obtain a formal treaty; he was also refused recognition at the Prussian court in Berlin. With Benjamin Franklin and Silas Deane he helped persuade Pierre de Beaumarchais to act as agent for supplying aid to the rebellious colonials. In Paris, however, he quarreled with Franklin and Deane, and his unfavorable reports to Congress resulted in the recall of Deane and a halt on payments to Beaumarchais. In 1779 he was recalled. He later served in the Continental Congress.

Bibliography: See B. J. Hendrick, The Lees of Virginia (1935).