Background
He was born in 1732 in Westmoreland County, Vairginia, United States.
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RICHARD HENRY LEE
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Lee received an education befitting a wealthy planter's son—private tutors at home and then Wakefield Academy in England.
Career
Between 1766 and 1776 Lee developed a reputation throughout the Colonies as a flaming "Son of Liberty. "
In the House of Burgesses he drew up the memorials to the Crown and the Lords protesting the Stamp Act, and he gave strong endorsement to Patrick Henry's famous Virginia Resolves.
The Townshend Acts renewed Lee's militancy.
He strongly supported the boycott of British goods and wove cloth on his own looms and pressed his own grapes for wine.
"Lee was one of the most active and influential members of the First and Second Continental Congresses, serving on the committees that drew up the Declaration of Rights, the Address to the King, the Memorial to the People of British America, the Address to the People of Great Britain, and the letters to the people of Canada and Florida.
By this time he was well known as the "Cicero" of America.
John Adams described him as a "tall spare man … a scholar, a gentleman, a man of uncommon eloquence.
"By 1776 Lee and Adams had become the leaders of the movement for independence.
Lee admired the British Constitution but felt that its equipoise had been destroyed byministerial corruption.
In any case, he believed that Britain had "already put the two countries asunder" by Parliament's American trade ban of December 1775.
Lee's three famous resolutions of June 7, 1776, followed logically: American independence, an alliance with France, and a plan of interstate confederation. For the remainder of his stay in Congress (1774-1780, 1784 - 1787), Lee served on the committee to negotiate foreign alliances, chaired the committee that drafted the formal ratification of the Articles of Confederation, and helped secure Virginia's cession of western land claims.
The Antifederalist
Lee resisted efforts to give Congress the power to regulate commerce and to impose customs duties.
He viewed commerce as an enemy to virtue and the breeder of the mercantile aristocracy that had corrupted Europe.
He felt that a Congress with an independent income would threaten the liberties of the states.
Lee approved the Northwest Ordinance because of its property guarantees and the Articles of Confederation because of their guarantees of liberty.
In the end he accepted the Constitution because it was "this or nothing, " and he served as one of Virginia's first senators in the new government.
Religion
In July, Lee proposed an economic declaration of independence, throwing open American ports to the trade of the world; but Congress did not act on Lee's suggestion until almost a year later, when it also recommended the formation of independent state governments, an action Lee had already urged upon Virginia.
Politics
Lee saw the issue as a contest against both aristocracy and democracy on behalf of the vast majority of "men of middling property. "
Connections
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Born
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Died
1794 (aged 62) -
Nationality
American -
Religion
independent