Arthur Lee

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).

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.