When people think of the Declaration of Independence, a certain few figures come to mind; men such as John Hancock, John Adams, Samuel Adams, Thomas Jefferson, or Benjamin Franklin are the first to be acknowledged. However, there were 51 more signers than just them. 56 brave lawyers, doctors, merchants, ministers and plantation owners signed their own death warrants by defying the King of England to gain their own independence from faraway tyranny. Each of these men had vastly different stories, but they all had one thing in common; they all longed for freedom.
It is quite unfortunate that many of the important men involved with the Declaration of Independence are not given the recognition that they ought to have. Richard Henry Lee is a very important figure in revolutionary history, but he is rarely mentioned at all, because we are too caught up in the historical celebrities. To understand the significance of Richard Henry Lee, and his place in the world at the time, one must know his background. The Lee family began in colonial America with Richard Lee I, who immigrated from England to Virginia in 1639.
He began in the colonies as a nobody, but he built himself a commercial empire. He was a member of the house of Burgesses, and he made a fortune with trade, tobacco and his land. He is thought to possibly be the richest man in Virginia at the time, and the largest land holder as well, owning some 5300 hectares of land at the time of his death. The names of his separate estates are used to distinguish between different parts of his family line. Richard Henry Lee was born in Westmoreland county, Virginia, on January 20, 1732, only a month before George Washington, in the same county.
Richard Henry Lee was born to Thomas Lee and Hannah Harrison Ludwell Lee, and was the fourth born of his parents’ eight surviving children. He was born at Stratford hall, which is the same estate where general Robert E. Lee was born (Richard Henry Lee is Henry “Light-Horse Harry” Lee’s cousin, who is the father of Robert E. Lee himself). In the early years of his life, Richard Henry was educated at home, for his parents had a schoolhouse on their estate. Richard Henry was sent to England to complete his formal education at Wakefield Academy in Yorkshire, at a quite young age, being sixteen or less.
Richard Henry’s father, Thomas Lee, was very wealthy, being one of the co-founders of the Ohio company of Virginia (a land speculation company which helped colonize the Ohio Country). He was also a land owner and tobacco farmer. Thomas built Stratford Hall to secure his own social status, being an upperclass man in Virginia. Their large amount of land, wealthy heritage, and tobacco business gave the Lees a vast amount of money. On January 25, 1750, Richard Henry’s mother Hannah died, just five days after Richard Henry’s eighteenth birthday.
Thomas Lee was the president of the council of the Royal governor during this time, and he was standing in as the governor of Virginia during lieutenant governor Sir William Gooch’s absence. From the years of 1660 to 1775, governors of Virginia were appointed by the crown, but most of the time, they never even went to the colony (particularly in the eighteenth century). Their duties were carried by a deputy, usually a Lieutenant governor. If the Lieutenant governor was not available or absent, the president of the council would serve as the Royal governor.
Thomas Lee served from September 4, 1749, until he died on November 14, 1750. News of Thomas Lee’s death reached Richard Henry around 1751. His eldest brother, Philip Ludwell Lee, left England to go back to Virginia, and after touring Europe for at least a year, Richard Henry returned the Virginia in 1753 to help his brothers settle their father’s estate. Conflicting interests and plans caused the Lee brothers to file a suit against their brother Philip, stating that he would not divide the estate according to their father’s will. Philip said that he wanted to pay off his father’s debts before splitting the estate up.
The lawsuit failed, but the incident caused a rift in the bothers’ relationships. Thomas Lee’s estate was quite large, which made his sons adequately wealthy. A repeated pattern that is seen is “where there’s wealth, there politics are also”; the wealthy tended (and still tend) to be more often political than the average man. While only Richard Henry Lee and his brother Francis Lightfoot Lee signed the Declaration of Independence, his two other brothers, Thomas Ludwell Lee and Philip Lee, were both as politically active. The Lee brothers made their entrance to the political scene in 1755, when Philip Lee was appointed as a Burgess.
In 1757, Richard Henry Lee was appointed by the royal governor of Virginia as a Justice of the Peace for Westmoreland county. The next year, Philip was appointed to the governor’s council, and Richard Henry won the seat in Philip’s place in the House. Both of his other brothers, Thomas and Francis, were elected as representatives of their own counties at the same time. Richard Henry Lee is said to have been too shy to engage in debates while in the House, until he discovered his immense oratorical skill, on par with Patrick Henry, when he gave a startling speech in support for the stopping of the slave trafficking in Virginia.
As is with most politicians, though, Richard Henry Lee made numerous enemies during his time as a Burgess. The most noteworthy of which is John Robinson, who held the office of both Speaker of the House and Treasurer. The bad blood between them was in a way, passed down from his father. Richard Henry’s father, Thomas Lee, was in support of the westward expansion of Virginia, which would promote the agriculture (of which Thomas would profit greatly) and also Indian trading in Virginia. That is the reason that he started the Ohio company.
However, feeling that the Ohio company unfairly favoured the northern part of the territory, a group of politicians from the James River area founded a competing company. John Robinson was the leader of the James River faction, so the two men were not on good terms from the start. Another issue was with whom their loyalties stood. John Robinson was a friend of the former Lieutenant governor Sir William Gooch, who Thomas Lee stood in for in his absence. However, the current Lieutenant governor of the time, Robert Dinwiddie, was not happy with Robinson.
Dinwiddie had a way of angering powerful politicians, and such was the case with Robinson. He thought that allowing somebody to hold the two offices, the Speaker of the House and the Treasurer, at the same time, provided one person with too much power. Richard Henry Lee made an attempt to separate the offices, but he failed. However, he became a marked enemy of Robinson. Richard Henry Lee generated the most hate from himself by his exposition of the corruption of John Robinson’s treasury scandal. As treasurer, Robinson was tasked with the destruction of redeemed treasury notes.
Many of his “high-and-mighty” friends in the house had wasted their fortunes living an expensive life, and had resorted to borrowing money to maintain it. Robinson loaned out the currency to them, causing unbacked currency that should have been destroyed to enter the economy. Lee voiced his suspicions of this, but nothing came of it until John Robinson died in 1766, and a full investigation revealed that more than 100,000 pounds had mysteriously vanished. The revealing of this corruption earned Richard Henry Lee many powerful enemies in the House of Burgesses.
Richard Henry Lee was still serving his tenure in the House when problems began to escalate between England and the Colonies. The three major Parliament acts that were felt by Virginia were the Stamp act, the Proclamation act of 1763, and the Currency act in 1764. The Proclamation act devastated Virginia’s business of expansion into the Ohio territory, and cut off access to the Ohio river valley. The Currency act of 1764 expanded the previous Currency act from 1751—which only applied to New England—to all of the colonies. It stated that the colonies could not use paper tender for the use of public and private debts.
The colonies could still issue paper money, however, but it could not be used for the redemption of public and private debts. Richard Henry Lee applied to be the stamp collector of Virginia when he first heard of the Stamp act, but he later found himself leading a protest against it when the act began to be enforced in Virginia. It is worth mentioning that Richard Henry Lee had all of the wealth, name, birth and social status necessary to be a complete aristocrat, and many other wealthy citizens were Tories, only interested in their own enterprises.
Not so with Lee, and he played an important role in blurring the class lines with his opposition to the British tyranny. In 1774, Lee was chosen as a delegate for Virginia in the first continental congress. One of the issues that he was most outspoken about was the Quebec act of 1774, which gave control of all of the land formerly restricted by the Proclamation line to French Canada, which damaged Virginia’s large tobacco industry, including Lee’s own, because it took away access to fresh and fertile land on which to grow crops. Lee took part in the second continental congress in 1775, after the war had already begun.
Many of the moderate delegates has attempted to appease Britain with the “Olive Branch Petition”, but it was never even considered by the king, and he felt insulted by it, so he tightened his grip on the colonies. On June 7, 1776, Richard Henry Lee proposed the colonies’ split from Britain, in what is called “The Lee Resolution”. It outlined what he thought could happen for the colonies. The original text states: “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 olitical connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved.
That it is expedient forthwith to take the most effectual measures for forming foreign Alliances. That a plan of confederation be prepared and transmitted to the respective Colonies for their consideration and approbation. ” (Courtesy of Nolo) The issue was set aside until July, and a committee of five men,Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman,and Robert R. Livingston, was selected to draft the official document.
The document was voted on by 12 of the 13 colonies on July 2, 1776. It was officially adopted by the congress on July 4, 1776, but New York’s delegates did not give their support until July 9. It was signed on August 2, 1776, by most of the signers, including Richard Henry Lee. A new nation was born. Richard Henry Lee stayed in politics even during and after the American revolution, though he was said to have been absent from the Virginia house frequently due to poor health. Lee was known to be a mannerly and polite gentleman, who was very convicting when he spoke his mine on issues.
He married twice; in 1757 he married Anne Aylett, but she died in 1768. He married Anne Gaskins Pinckard in 1769. Lee was an anti-federalist, who supported the Bill of Rights, and helped pass it through congress. In October of 1792, Richard Henry Lee officially retired from public service. He died on June 19, 1794, at the age of 62. Though he may have never realized it, Lee died as one of the very important people in American history. He left behind a legacy of faith, service and bravery; standing up for what he believed and not losing track of the most important things.
