Lee, Richard Henry

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Lee, Richard Henry

LEE, RICHARD HENRY. (1732–1794). Member of Congress, Orator, Signer. Virginia. Eldest of the four famous sons of Thomas Lee, he attended England's Wakefield Academy from 1748 to 1751, touring the Continent before returning to the Lee home of Stratford in Virginia in 1752. His career in politics began on a minor note as a justice of the peace in his home county of Westmoreland in 1756; the next year he followed the path of his ancestors to the House of Burgesses, where he became heavily involved in supplying the militia. He also married in 1757, taking his wife, Anne Aylette (d.1768), to Stratford. They remained there until 1763, when Lee established Chantilly-on-the-Potomac, the estate where he would raise nine children and live for the remainder of his life. During those years he began to play a prominent role in the Patriot politics that led to the break with England. He allied with Patrick Henry, with whom he remained close politically and personally for the rest of his life. He coauthored the important Westmoreland Resolves during the Stamp Act crisis, and in 1768 he proposed setting up committees of correspondence. From then to 1773 he kept up his political activity while simultaneously engaging in a profitable tobacco-shipping business with his brother William, who was in London. In 1774 he attended the Virginia Convention.

In the Continental Congress (1774–1780), Lee quickly formed a lasting friendship with John and Sam Adams; he favored strong measures in dealing with the mother country and was one of the first to advocate a direct attack on the king, rather than the ministry, as the oppressor of the colonies. He saw independence primarily as a pre-requisite to the essential winning of foreign support, and he had an important part in getting his state to send Congress resolutions on behalf of independence, foreign alliances, and confederation. Having touched off the movement toward independence, Lee left Philadelphia on 13 June 1776 without taking any part in the subsequent drafting of the Declaration of Independence. He subsequently became a Signer, however. His service on eighteen different committees in his first three months as a delegate gives an indication of his tireless efforts in Congress.

In the late 1770s he took a leading part in convincing fellow Virginians that their sacrifice of claims to western lands was necessary if a confederation were to be achieved. With his brother Arthur he became deeply involved in the controversy with Silas Deane. In May 1779 he was forced by ill health, resulting from arduous work, to resign from Congress, but he came back in 1784 and was elected president of that body; he sat in Congress again in 1787. Meanwhile, despite bad health, he sat in the state House of Delegates. He led opposition to adoption of the Constitution, feeling that the lack of a bill of rights and other features of the document gave the federal government powers that could be abused. Patrick Henry, who shared Lee's objections, was instrumental in getting him elected to the new U.S. Senate, where Lee worked toward amending the Constitution. His principal propositions found their place in the first ten amendments.

In October 1792 he again resigned on grounds of health. A little more than two years later he died at Chantilly, the home he had established around 1757 near the family seat, Stratford.

In addition to politics, Lee ventured into western land speculation, forming with Washington and his brothers the Mississippi Land Company. He was also one of the most outspoken opponents of slavery in the eighteenth century, advocating "liberty and freedom" for Africans by 1759.