Richard Henry Lee

Lee was born in Westmoreland County, Virginia, to Colonel Thomas Lee and Hannah Harrison Ludwell Lee on January 20, 1732. He came from a line of military officers, diplomats, and legislators. His father served on the Governor's council and briefly as an interim governor of Virginia before his death in 1750. Lee spent most of his early life in Stratford, Virginia, at Stratford Hall. Here he was tutored and taught a variety of skills. To develop his political career, his father sent him around to neighboring planters with the intention for Lee to become associated with neighboring men of like prominence. In 1748, at 16, Lee left Virginia for Yorkshire, England, to complete his formal education at Queen Elizabeth Grammar School, Wakefield. Both of his parents died in 1750. In 1753, after touring Europe, he returned to Virginia to help his brothers settle the estate his parents had left behind.^[2]

In 1757, Lee was appointed justice of the peace of Westmoreland County. In 1758, he was elected to the Virginia House of Burgesses, where he met Patrick Henry. Lee remained a "valuable ally of...Henry and Samuel Adams" throughout the American Revolutionary War.^[3] An early advocate of independence, Lee became one of the first to create Committees of Correspondence among the many independence-minded Americans in the various colonies. In 1766, almost ten years before the American Revolutionary War, Lee is credited with having authored the Westmoreland Resolution^[4] against enforcement of the British Stamp Act 1765, which was publicly signed by prominent landowners who met at Leedstown, Virginia, on February 27, 1766. Among the signers were three brothers and one close cousin of George Washington.

In August 1774, Lee was chosen as a delegate to the First Continental Congress in Philadelphia. In Lee's Resolution on June 7, 1776, during the Second Continental Congress, Lee put forth the motion to the Continental Congress to declare Independence from Great Britain, which read (in part):

Resolved: That these united colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States, that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British crown, and that all political connection between them and the state of great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved.

Lee had returned to Virginia by the time Congress voted on and adopted the Declaration of Independence, but he signed the document when he returned to Congress.

 

Lee was elected the sixth president of Congress under the Articles of Confederation on November 30, 1784, in the French Arms Tavern, Trenton, New Jersey. Congress convened on January 11, 1785, in the old New York City Hall, with Lee presiding until November 23, 1785. Although he was not paid a salary, his household expenses were covered in the amount of $12,203.13.^[5]

Lee abhorred the notion of imposing federal taxes and believed that continuing to borrow foreign money was imprudent. Throughout his term, he maintained that the states should relinquish their claims in the Northwest Territory, enabling the federal government to fund its obligations through land sales. He wrote to friend and colleague Samuel Adams:

I hope we shall shortly finish our plan for disposing of the western Lands to discharge the oppressive public debt created by the war & I think that if this source of revenue be rightly managed, that these republics may soon be discharged from that state of oppression and distress that an indebted people must invariably feel.^[6]

Debate began on the expansion of the Land Ordinance of 1784 and Thomas Jefferson's survey method; namely, "hundreds of ten geographical miles square, each mile containing 6086 and 4-10ths of a foot" and "sub-divided into lots of one mile square each, or 850 and 4-10ths of an acre" on April 14.^[7] On May 3, 1785, William Grayson of Virginia made a motion, seconded by James Monroe, to change "seven miles square" to "six miles square."

The Land Ordinance of 1785 passed on May 20, 1785,^[8] yet the federal government lacked the resources to manage the newly surveyed lands. Not only did Native Americans refuse to relinquish their hold on the platted territory, but much of the remaining land was occupied by squatters. With Congress unable to muster magistrates or troops to enforce the dollar-per-acre title fee, Lee's plan ultimately failed, although the survey system developed under the Land Ordinance of 1785 has endured.^[9]

Lee served in the United States Senate in the First and Second Congresses from 1789 to 1792. In 1792 he became the second president pro tempore, but later that year he was obliged to resign due to his failing health, and he retired from public life.^[10]

• Justice of the Peace for Westmoreland County, Virginia (1757)
• Virginia House of Burgesses (1758–1775)
• Member of the Continental Congress (1774–1779, 1784–1785, 1787)
• Virginia House of Delegates (1777, 1780, 1785)
• President of the Confederation Congress (November 30, 1784 – November 4, 1785)
• United States Senator from Virginia (March 4, 1789 – October 8, 1792)
• President pro tempore during the Second Congress (April 18 – October 8, 1792)

Lee's mother Hannah Harrison Ludwell died in 1750. On December 5, 1757, he married Anne Aylett, daughter of William Aylett. Anne died on December 12, 1768. The couple had six children, four of whom survived infancy. Lee remarried in June or July 1769 to Anne (Gaskins) Pinckard. The couple had seven children, five of whom survived infancy.

Lee honored his brother, Francis Lightfoot Lee (another signer of the Articles of Confederation and the Declaration of Independence), by naming one of his sons after him.

Children with Anne Aylett:^[11]

• William Lee (1750 - March 23, 1836)
• William F. Lee (1758 - unknown)
• Thomas Jesse Lee (October 20, 1758 - September 07, 1805)
• Mary "Molly"^[12] Lee Washington (July 28, 1764 - November 02, 1795), who married Colonel William Augustine Washington, Sr.^[13]
• Hannah Lee Washington (1765 - November 23, 1802), who married Corbin Washington^[14]
• Thomas Lee (October 13, 1760 - unknown)
• Ludwell Lee (October 13, 1760 - March 23, 1826), speaker of the Virginia Senate
• Marybelle Lee (1768 - 1768)

Children with Anne Pinckard:^[15]

• Anne "Nancy"^[16] Lucinda Lee (December 1, 1770 - September 9, 1804), who married Charles Lee^[17]
• Henrietta "Harriet"^[18] Lee (December 10, 1773 - 1803), who married Richard Lee Turberville, and later William Moffitt^[19]
• Sarah Caldwell Lee (November 27, 1775 - May 08, 1837)
• Cassius Lee (August 18, 1779 - July 08, 1798)
• Francis Lightfoot Lee (June 18, 1782 - April 13, 1850)
• Unnamed child (1784 - 1784)
• Francis Ludwell Lee (1786 - 1844)
• David Richard Lee (unknown birthdate)

Lee died on June 19, 1794, at the age of 62. Schools in Rossmoor, California, and Glen Burnie, Maryland are named after him, and Richard Henry Lee School in Chicago is named in his honor. The World War II Liberty Ship SS Richard Henry Lee was named in his honor. The Chantilly Archaeological Site was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1971.^[20] He is portrayed in Sherman Edwards' 1969 musical 1776.

• Memorial to the 56 Signers of the Declaration of Independence
• Federal Farmer

• McGaughy, Kent J. Richard Henry Lee of Virginia: A Portrait of an American Revolutionary (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2003).
• Selby, John E. "Richard Henry Lee, John Adams, and the Virginia Constitution of 1776." Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 84.4 (1976): 387–400. online
• Unger, Harlow Giles. First Founding Father: Richard Henry Lee and the Call for Independence (2017) online review

• Lee, Richard Henry. The Letters of Richard Henry Lee: 1762–1778 (2 vol 1911–1914) online. also vol 2 online

 

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• United States Congress. "Richard Henry Lee (id: L000201)". Biographical Directory of the United States Congress.
• President Richard Henry Lee
• Richard Henry Lee
• Biography by Rev. Charles A. Goodrich, 1856 Archived September 13, 2019, at the Wayback Machine
• Richard Henry Lee papers in the Manuscripts and Archives Division at The New York Public Library.
• Richard Henry Lee at Find a Grave
• Richard Henry Lee Bio
• Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Lee, Richard Henry" . Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.