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.McGaughy, J. K. Richard Henry Lee (1732–1794). (March 18, 2014). In Encyclopedia Virginia. Retrieved from https://encyclopediavirginia.org/entries/lee-richard-henry-1732-1794/ Lee Richard Henry 1732–1794

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.{{Cite book |last=Davis |first=Kenneth C. |title=Don't Know Much About History: Everything You Need to Know About American History but Never Learned |publisher=HarperCollins |year=2003 |isbn=978-0-06-008381-6 |edition=1st |location=New York |page=82 |author-link=Kenneth C. Davis}} An early advocate of independence, Lee became one of the first to create a 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{{cite book|url=https://archive.org/details/westmorelandcou00wriggoog|page=[https://archive.org/details/westmorelandcou00wriggoog/page/n54 42]|quote=Westmoreland Resolution.|title=Westmoreland County, Virginia: Parts I and II : a Short Chapter and Bright Day in Its History|first1=Lawrence|last1=Washington|first2=Randolph Harrison|last2=McKim|first3=George William|last3=Beale|date=January 1, 1912|publisher=Whittet & Shepperson, printers|access-date=September 22, 2016|via=Internet Archive}} 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.

File:Coat of Arms of the Lee Family.svg]]

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.[http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-YhGJOCnB8bE/Uw4Iv1RksdI/AAAAAAAAJNg/VtgHb6N1bZk/s1600/President's+Expenses.png Estimate of the Annual Expenditure of the Civil Departments of the United States, on the present Establishment] [http://www.richardhenrylee.org/ President Richard Henry Lee]

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.{{cite web|url=http://leearchive.wlu.edu/papers/letters/transcripts-ballagh/b311.html|title=President Richard Henry Lee to Samuel Adams, New York May 20. 1785|access-date=22 September 2016|archive-date=October 28, 2014|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141028074445/http://leearchive.wlu.edu/papers/letters/transcripts-ballagh/b311.html|url-status=dead}}

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.[http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-HeY1dA9YuvQ/Um07Ec68twI/AAAAAAAAHgY/vVmemvCmfTg/s1600/Ohio+Territory+Section.jpg Plat of Township 2, Range 7 in the Ohio Seven Ranges ca. 1786] [http://www.richardhenrylee.org/ Richard Henry Lee, President of the United States in Congress Assembled] 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,Olsen, J.S., & Mendoza, A.O. (2015). Land Ordinance of 1785. In American economic history: A dictionary and chronology, (p. 367). Greenwood. 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.{{cite web|author=Staff|date=May 29, 2012|title=The Public Land Survey System (PLSS)|url=http://www.nationalatlas.gov/articles/boundaries/a_plss.html|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120607063232/http://www.nationalatlas.gov/articles/boundaries/a_plss.html|archive-date=June 7, 2012|access-date=June 20, 2012|work=National Atlas of the United States|publisher=U.S. Department of the Interior}}

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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.[https://www.richardhenrylee.org/?m=0 richardhenrylee.org] (retrieved March 9, 2024)

• 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, including Thomas Jesse Lee and Ludwell Lee. 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.

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.{{NRISref|version=2010a|dateform=mdy}} He is portrayed in Sherman Edwards' 1969 musical 1776.

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

{{reflist}}

• 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. [https://www.jstor.org/stable/4248066 online]
• Unger, Harlow Giles. First Founding Father: Richard Henry Lee and the Call for Independence (2017) [http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=54369 online review]

• Lee, Richard Henry. The Letters of Richard Henry Lee: 1762–1778 (2 vol 1911–1914) [https://books.google.com/books?id=hQsOAAAAIAAJ&dq=Richard+Henry+Lee+&pg=PA1 online]. also [https://books.google.com/books?id=8wsOAAAAIAAJ&dq=Richard+Henry+Lee+&pg=PA11 vol 2 online]

{{Commons category|Richard Henry Lee}}

{{Wikiquote|Richard Henry Lee}}

• {{congbio|L000201}}
• [http://www.richardhenrylee.org/ President Richard Henry Lee]
• [http://www.ushistory.org/declaration/signers/rhlee.htm Richard Henry Lee]
• [http://www.colonialhall.com/leerh/leerh.php Biography by Rev. Charles A. Goodrich, 1856] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190913185347/http://colonialhall.com/leerh/leerh.php |date=September 13, 2019 }}
• [http://archives.nypl.org/mss/4522#detailed/ Richard Henry Lee papers] in the Manuscripts and Archives Division at The New York Public Library.
• [http://www.leftjustified.com/richard-henry-lee Richard Henry Lee Bio]
• {{Cite EB1911|wstitle=Lee, Richard Henry}}

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Category:1732 births

Category:1794 deaths

Category:Richard Henry Lee

Category:American people of English descent

Category:Anti-Federalists

Category:Continental Congressmen from Virginia

Category:House of Burgesses members

Category:People educated at Queen Elizabeth Grammar School, Wakefield

Category:Presidents pro tempore of the United States Senate

Category:Signers of the Articles of Confederation

Category:Signers of the Continental Association

Category:Signers of the United States Declaration of Independence

Category:United States senators from Virginia

Richard

Category:People from Westmoreland County, Virginia

Category:People from colonial Virginia

Category:Founding Fathers of the United States

Category:United States senators who owned slaves

Category:18th-century United States senators