As part of our celebration of America at 250, we’ve started a weekly newsletter by historian Jonathan Horn. Learn what happened this week in American history, why it matters, and what else you should see and read in The Free Press and beyond. This week, Jonathan writes about Richard Henry Lee and his resolution declaring the colonies free and independent states. To get this newsletter in your inbox every week, sign up here.
—The Editors
With all the buildup to the anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, it’s easy to forget that the real suspense in Philadelphia 250 years ago was not over whether the Continental Congress would approve the document drafted by Thomas Jefferson but over whether the delegates would approve a resolution written by another Virginian, Richard Henry Lee.
Though Massachusetts delegate John Adams believed Congress had essentially declared independence in mid-May when it narrowly approved the statement that he had written calling for the authority of King George III to “be totally suppressed” in all 13 colonies (see our newsletter from two weeks ago), there was still considerable resistance to making independence official. It was Lee who forced the issue on June 7, 1776, when he introduced the following resolution: “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.”
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Born just weeks before George Washington in the same Virginia county (Westmoreland), Lee belonged to one of colonial America’s most powerful families. John Adams would remember the Lees as “that band of brothers—intrepid and unchangeable—who like the Greeks at Thermopylae, stood in the gap, in defense of their country, from the first glimmering in the Revolution, in the horizon—through all its rising light, to its perfect day.”
Five of Lee’s brothers reached adulthood, and four found their way into leadership roles in the American Revolution. Younger brother Francis Lightfoot Lee served with Richard Henry in the Continental Congress (they’d both eventually sign the Declaration of Independence). Baby brothers William Lee and Arthur Lee carried out diplomacy in Europe. Meanwhile, older brother Thomas Ludwell Lee led the way in Williamsburg at the Virginia Convention, when it voted on May 15, 1776, to instruct its delegates to the Continental Congress to propose a resolution of independence. It was in obedience to those instructions that Richard Henry Lee introduced his resolution.
