Jesse Lee was an American Methodist Episcopal clergyman and historian. He served as a Chaplain of the United States House of Representatives and as a Chaplain of the United States Senate.
Background
Jesse Lee was born in Virginia, the second son of Nathaniel and Elizabeth Lee. His father owned a farm of several hundred acres in Prince George County and enough slaves to cultivate it, was three times married, had twelve children, the last born when he was in his seventy-eighth year, and at his death, aged eighty-nine, left seventy-three grandchildren and sixty-six greatgrandchildren. His parents attended the Church of England, and though their own rector "was but a sorry preacher and of very questionable character, " under the widely felt influence of Devereux Jarrett of Bath Parish, they were brought into a vital religious experience. Jesse, a boy of high emotional sensibility, was also converted. After the introduction of Methodism into Virginia the Lees joined a Methodist Society, and their home became a regular preaching place on one of the circuits.
Education
His secular education had been of the limited kind which neighboring schools afforded, but included attendance at a singing school where his natural gift for song was cultivated.
Career
In the latter part of 1777 Lee took charge of a widowed relative's farm in North Carolina. Zealously religious, he soon became a class-leader, exhorter, and finally a local preacher. Drafted into the army in 1780, he refused to bear arms because of conscientious scruples, but professed himself ready to perform any other duty assigned. Accordingly, until he was honorably discharged after three months' service, he was first a wagon driver and later sergeant of pioneers. Unofficially, he also did the work of a chaplain.
Although urged to become a traveling preacher he long hesitated, but in the latter part of 1782 put his fitness to the test by some circuit riding in Virginia and North Carolina. In 1783 he was admitted to the Virginia Conference on trial. For the next six years he labored with marked success in North Carolina, Virginia, and Maryland. Much to his regret, notice of the "Christmas Conference" held in Baltimore in 1784, at which the Methodist Episcopal Church in the United States was organized, did not reach him in time for him to attend.
The February following, Bishop Asbury took him as a helper on a tour into South Carolina, which ended at Charleston. "I was comfortable in brother Lee's company, " the Bishop notes in his journal under date of February 22, 1785; and for many years thereafter, though they were not always in agreement, relations between the two were intimate. While on this tour Lee met a man from New England and through conversation with him conceived the idea of carrying Methodism into that Congregational stronghold, but Asbury was not at the time favorable. Some four years later, however, Lee was appointed to the newly formed Stamford Circuit, Connecticut. Methodist preachers had visited New England before, but Lee went in to possess the land, and it was due to his faith and zeal, his tireless journeyings, and his evangelistic power that Methodism was everywhere planted in that unfriendly soil. Physically as well as spiritually he was well fitted for his mission. Over six feet tall, weighing more than 250 pounds, of genial countenance, he commanded attention everywhere. By his singing he could draw people about him, and by his fluent, forceful, colloquial preaching he could hold and convince them. He had the jovialness commonly attributed to fleshy persons, was somewhat of a joker, and in lively repartee was unequaled. His utterances had all the boldness of thorough-going conviction. "I did not give them velvet-mouth preaching, " he said of a sermon on the loss of the soul and the torment of the damned, delivered in the meeting house at Newtown, Connecticut, "though I had a large velvet cushion under my hands. "
During the Conference year, May 1789 to October 1790, he not only labored in the principal towns of Connecticut with such effect that helpers from Maryland were sent him, but also traveled in Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Vermont, and New Hampshire. Up to 1790 he had refused ordination, but at the Conference held in New York in October of that year he was privately ordained deacon by Bishop Asbury, and the following day publicly ordained elder. He continued to labor in New England until 1797, serving as presiding elder of several districts, and carrying the conquest of Methodism as far north as Maine. By this time the general superintendency of the work had become too onerous for even the indefatigable Asbury, upon whom, since Bishop Coke was out of the country much of the time, it largely fell. Asbury called Lee to his aid, and from September 1797 until the General Conference of 1800 he assisted Asbury as required, performing all the duties of a bishop except ordination.
When at this General Conference another bishop was chosen, Lee, having been tied with Richard Whatcoat on the second ballot, was defeated on the third by four votes. Besides Whatcoat's fitness for the position, there were other reasons for this result. A few felt, or professed to feel, that the jovial Lee was not sufficiently dignified for the office. Someone started the rumor that he had forced his assistance on Asbury, and that the latter did not want him elected, a charge which Asbury denied. More effective probably in bringing about his defeat, was his independent attitude toward ecclesiastical rules and authorities, and his aggressiveness in the councils of the Church.
As a youthful preacher, at the Conference in North Carolina, April 1785, he had vigorously differed with Bishop Coke on the attitude the Methodist Church should take toward slave-holders and condemned the rules in force as ill-timed and likely to produce grave evils. Coke was so incensed that he objected to the passing of Lee's character. Lee also opposed the introduction of the "Council" into the organization of the church, and in a letter presented to its first meeting pointed out the errors of the plan. For his pains he received a reply almost insulting in tone. (letter in L. M. Lee, Life and Times of Rev. Jesse Lee, post. , p. 282. ) At that early date, he favored a delegated General Conference, and in 1792 submitted to Bishop Asbury a plan for such a body. Ezekiel Cooper, who was associated with him in Massachusetts, wrote under date of August 1, 1793, referring to Lee's policies in Lynn: "At General Conference, last November, in Baltimore, Brother Lee strove very hard to have several parts of the Discipline altered, and the bishop's power reduced, but he could not succeed. . Such parts of the Discipline as he favored in the General Conference he was strenuous in and enforced, and required strict adherence; but such parts as he opposed in General Conference he would not submit to. I told him it showed a stiff obstinacy. He wished everyone to bend to him, and would not bend to anyone, or even to the Conference. " (G. A. Phoebus, Beams of Light on Early Methodism in America, 1887, p. 169. ) Lee accepted his defeat with good grace. He was invited to act as assistant to the bishops, but preferred to return to circuit work. After a long tour through New England he was stationed in New York until April 1801, when he was appointed presiding elder of the South District of Virginia.
For the next fourteen years his labors were within the bounds of the Virginia Conference, except that in 1807 he traveled South on a roving commission as far as Savannah. In the summer of 1808 he made his last visit to New England where, while rejoicing in the great progress Methodism had made, he deplored various departures from the simplicity of early Methodism. Up to 1809 he had had no home of his own, but that year he bought a small farm near that of his father.
During this period he also did some writing. His first publication was a memoir of his brother, A Short Account of the Life and Death of the Rev. John Lee, a Methodist Minister in the United States of America (1805). In 1810 he issued A Short History of the Methodists in the United States of America, the earliest written, and an invaluable compendium of facts. In 1814 he published two sermons. His History was criticized as lacking literary style and not sufficiently exalting Asbury; but the Bishop said of it: "I have seen Jesse Lee's History for the first time: it is better than I expected. He has not always presented me under the most favourable aspect: we are all liable to mistakes, and I am unmoved by his" (Journal of Rev. Francis Asbury, 1852, III, 340).
In 1809, while at Baltimore superintending the publication of his book, Lee was elected chaplain of the House of Representatives, and was reëlected at the four succeeding sessions. In 1814 he was chosen chaplain of the Senate. He was criticized by some of his brethren and attacked in the Conference for holding such office on the ground that it was incompatible with his prior engagements as an itinerant Methodist. Without his consent he was transferred from the Virginia to the Baltimore Conference in 1815, and appointed to Fredericksburg. Rightly or wrongly, he considered the transfer a political move to prevent his election to the next General Conference. He refused to go to Fredericksburg and escaped censure from the Baltimore Conference on the apparently valid plea that Fredericksburg was not within its jurisdiction.
In 1816 he was appointed to Annapolis, Maryland. While attending a camp meeting near Hillsborough in August of that year he was taken sick and died on September 12, at the age of fifty-eight. He was buried in the old Methodist burying ground, Baltimore, but his body was moved with others in 1873 to Mount Olivet Cemetery. In the extent and importance of his labors for Methodism he perhaps deserves to rank next to Asbury.