First Founding Father

by Harlow Giles Unger

  Still feeling the aftereffects of his bout with influenza, he sought nothing but rest and tranquility. Although he tried returning to Congress in the fall, his carriage overturned, tossing the fifty-eight-year-old Patriot and his traveling companions onto the road, bruising them all badly and preventing Lee’s return to Congress until December 1791. He arrived in time to join the end of a heated debate on congressional representation. Using the usual voting advantages that came with their proximity to the capital, northerners moved to increase the constitutionally designated number of people represented by each member of the House from 30,000 to 33,000. Still weak from his carriage accident, Richard Henry Lee struggled to his feet to oppose the measure, charging it would “abridge the representation of the South and add to that of the North”—which, of course, was what its northern proponents had intended.18 Although Congress passed the measure, President Washington—a good Virginian, after all—vetoed the bill, and the northerners in Congress failed to muster the two-thirds majority needed to override the veto.

  Although two years younger than Richard Henry Lee, Vice President Adams was as tired—even more so than Lee—with capital life. He was bored to tears, all but sobbing, “My country has in its wisdom contrived for me the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived or his imagination conceived.”19 Once one of the most active Patriots in the American Revolution, he now did nothing in the new American republic but sit in the US Senate and listen in silence to endless debates, unable under the rules to participate and consigned to voting only in the unlikely event of a tie. His other constitutional obligation was to wait—again in silence—for the unlikely death of the President.

  After the vote over House representation, Adams looked at the agenda and, finding nothing of importance awaiting Senate action, he told senators he would take a month’s leave of absence. By then Richard Henry Lee had let enough colleagues know that the current session would be his last, and with Adams’s departure, the Senate—Federalists and Antifederalists alike—honored Lee by electing him president pro tempore.

  When he left the capital and returned to Chantilly, his four-year term came to an end, but Virginia’s legislature prepared to reelect him to succeed himself with a six-year term. He wrote to the speakers of both state houses, saying he had “grown gray in the service of my country” and had had enough. He expressed the “deepest sense of gratitude and obligation for the good opinion” of the legislature, adding,

  It is not in my power to convey to you an adequate idea of the regret I feel at being compelled by the feeble state of my health to retire from the service of my country. The strong sense that I entertain of public duty, joined to a deep feeling of gratitude for the reiterated goodness of the General Assembly to me, would render the toils of public business a pleasure… were I not prevented by infirmities that can only be relieved by a quiet retirement.20

  The Virginia Senate responded with a unanimous resolution recognizing that “he hath conspicuously shone forth as a statesman and patriot” and wishing that “he may close the evening of a life in… uninterrupted happiness.”21 In the US Senate Pennsylvania’s William Maclay, who usually spewed nothing but vitriol at everyone in government, including George Washington, conceded that Richard Henry Lee was “a man of clear head… who gave independence to America.”22

  Although he did his best to use his better moments productively, the “feeble state” of Richard Henry Lee’s health persisted well into the new year. In December 1792 his beloved younger brother Arthur died, just shy of fifty-two. He had never married and had no children. After his return from Europe in 1781 he had won election to the Virginia Assembly and subsequently to the Continental Congress, where he grew obsessed with exposing Pennsylvania delegate Robert Morris as a wartime profiteer.

  Congress had appointed Morris superintendent of Finance in February 1781, as Washington began preparing his forces for the decisive Virginia campaign. Morris had accepted commissions on transactions his firm of Morris and Willing had negotiated with European arms dealers through Silas Deane, their silent partner in Paris. Although a clear violation of the emoluments clause of the Constitution, so many members of Congress and high-level military officers other than Washington had reaped similar rewards while serving in government that Congress all but ignored Arthur Lee’s charges. At $6 pay per day (less than $20 in today’s dollars), few delegates to Congress could afford not to extract a percentage of the funds they disbursed to government suppliers.*

  Arthur Lee retired from public service after ratification of the Constitution and led the life of a bachelor farmer until his death in December 1792. His and Richard Henry Lee’s younger brother William would die three years later in 1795 at the age of fifty-six. William’s wife had predeceased him, and, blind by then, he sent his two young daughters to live with his brother Francis Lightfoot Lee and his wife, who had no children of their own. William’s son remained to care for his father and run their farm.

  In retirement Richard Henry Lee spent as much time as possible tutoring and mentoring his two youngest boys, thirteen-year-old Cassius and ten-year-old Francis. He kept as informed as possible about current events, but unlike many retired public officials of his day, he wrote few letters to old friends from his days in government. With one exception—President George Washington—he directed his letters only to relatives, especially nieces and nephews in need of guidance.

  A continent-wide war had erupted in Europe. France had declared war on Britain, Holland, Prussia, Spain, and Sardinia and demanded that the Washington administration reciprocate for French aid during the Revolutionary War by sending American troops to support France in the European conflict. Washington responded with a Presidential Proclamation of Neutrality on April 23, 1793, stating, that “the duty and interest of the United States require that they should adopt a conduct friendly and impartial toward the [warring] powers.”23

  Washington’s proclamation—the first presidential proclamation in American history—sparked political turmoil across the United States, pitting Anglophiles, whose commercial and financial interests depended on British trade, against Francophiles, who had fought alongside French soldiers in the Revolutionary War. With members of his own cabinet divided on the issue, Washington was grateful for any political support he could find.

  “The success and happiness of the United States is our care,” Richard Henry Lee wrote to comfort the President, “and if the nations of Europe approve war, we surely may be permitted to cultivate the arts of peace.… It is really a happiness to reflect that if war should befall us, our government will not promote it, but give cause to all who venerate humanity to revere the rulers here.”24

  In what may have been the last letter Richard Henry Lee ever wrote,* he turned full circle politically, acknowledging the necessity and wisdom of unilateral action by the chief executive of the federal government, unchecked by either federal legislators or state governments. It was a remarkable political change of heart—one with political implications that continue to be felt in America to this day in the unchecked stream of executive orders effectively legislating and restricting the rights of Americans without participation by Congress or the consent of the people.

  During his tenure in government Richard Henry Lee had led those Founding Fathers who fought for state sovereignty and local control in almost every political sector, leaving a slim federal government with carefully limited powers. Lee, Patrick Henry, and their Antifederalist supporters had argued passionately against ratification of the Constitution and enhancement of federal power.

  The anarchy during the years of the loose-knit Confederation that preceded the Constitutional Convention, however, had changed many minds. The states—and, indeed, the American people—proved themselves incapable of governing themselves and living peacefully together, and an impotent Confederation government had been incapable of resolving interstate conflicts or mounting a successful defense against foreign enemies.

  As Richard Hen
ry Lee and Patrick Henry—and, later, Thomas Jefferson—recognized the dangers of unrestricted antifederalism to national security in a nation as large as the United States, they gradually adopted federalist positions, beginning with Lee’s startling support for Washington’s Neutrality Proclamation.

  The struggle between the Federalist and Antifederalist successors would heat up again and again, reaching a climax of sorts with the outbreak of the Civil War and continuing in various forms long after. To a certain extent it continues to this day as those who oppose federal interference in state and local political affairs—the heirs to antifederalism—take their arguments into court or, in extreme cases, arm themselves, seize federal properties, and challenge federal law enforcement authorities at gunpoint. Today’s heirs to federalism, on the other hand, argue that only federal authorities have the will, the power, and the corruption-free law-enforcement operatives to protect individual rights and combat abuses by and endemic corruption of state and local officials.

  Before the Founding Fathers died, however, even the staunchest Federalists and Antifederalists acknowledged at least some defects in their own political philosophies and recognized some benefits of their opponents’ philosophies. So when President Washington ignored Congress in 1793 and usurped executive powers by issuing a Presidential Proclamation of Neutrality with the force of law, Richard Henry Lee—once the ardent foe of presidential power—sent the President his support in the last political act of his life.

  On April 15, 1794, Washington replied to Lee, thanking him for supporting the controversial proclamation and adding, “I learn with regret that your health has continued bad ever since I last had the pleasure of seeing you. Warm weather I hope will restore it: if my wishes could be of any avail you assuredly would have them.”25

  On June 19, 1794, sixty-two-year-old Richard Henry Lee died at Chantilly. His family buried him at the Lee family graveyard not far from Stratford Hall. On his gravestone they inscribed a message that might have come from every living American at the time, “We cannot do without you.”

  * Although Morris would later win election as one of Pennsylvania’s first two senators under the Constitution, the panic of 1796–1797 would wipe out the value of his land speculations and send him to debtor’s prison for three years—too late for Arthur Lee to savor victory. He and his brothers had all died by then.

  * There may well have been others, but this is the last authenticated letter known to have survived his death and published with his other letters in the books listed in the Notes and Bibliography of this book.

  Afterword

  NO BELLS TOLLED FOR RICHARD HENRY LEE WHEN HE DIED. NO processions filled the streets of American towns and cities; no celebrants extolled his life in stentorian eulogies. In fact, there were neither celebrants nor eulogies.

  Only Richard Henry Lee’s wife and adolescent sons looked on as slaves carried his plain wooden casket to its grave on a barren expanse of land the Lees called Burnt House Field. It was where Richard Henry Lee’s father’s first plantation home had stood until it burned to the ground in 1729. Along with the ashes of their ancestral home, generations of Lees had added remains of their family members and their slaves to the earth beneath the field and gave the graveyard its name.

  After Richard Henry Lee’s burial, his wife, Ann, and her two young boys, Cassius and Francis, abandoned their isolated home at Chantilly in favor of a smaller place in the populated community of Alexandria, Virginia. She died two years later, in 1796.

  Richard Henry Lee’s two oldest sons, Thomas and Ludwell, were practicing law by then and continued doing so the rest of their lives, with Thomas, an avid farmer, practicing in rural Virginia. Ludwell, the more ambitious of the two, entered politics, eventually winning election as Speaker of Virginia’s State Senate.

  30. Richard Henry Lee’s gravestone stands in the Lee Family graveyard called Burnt House Field, where his father’s first home in Virginia stood before a fire reduced it to ashes.

  Richard Henry’s younger brother Francis Lightfoot Lee died three years after Richard Henry. Their sister Alice Lee remained in Philadelphia and died there in 1817 at the age of seventy-seven, all but ending the public service and associated fame of the Lee Family—with two notable exceptions. Richard Henry’s first cousin, once removed, had already gained national attention as the heroic Major General Henry “Light-Horse Harry” Lee, who commanded a daring light-cavalry unit known as “Lee’s Legion” in the Revolutionary War. Lee’s troops helped win critical victories that recaptured the Carolinas from the British. Elected governor of Virginia in 1791, he led the troops that President Washington sent to Pittsburgh to crush the Whiskey Rebellion, also in 1791. Eight years later Henry Lee gained lasting fame for his eloquent eulogy that called the fallen Washington “first in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen.”1

  In 1831 his son Robert E. Lee married Mary Anna Custis, daughter of George Washington’s step-grandson, George Washington Parke Custis. Together they lived in Arlington House, the magnificent Greek-revival mansion that stands today on a hill overlooking Arlington National Cemetery.

  Thirty years after his marriage Robert E. Lee assumed command of the Confederate Army in a civil war aimed at fracturing the republic his illustrious father and great cousin had fought to create. He later became president of Washington and Lee College in Lexington, Virginia. Although the Lee Family line continues today, its many members are content to serve the nation in quiet ways, without the notoriety generated by their forebears.

  Ironically, when Richard Henry Lee stepped off the national stage during his last years, he all but vanished into historical obscurity. Although first of America’s Founding Fathers to proclaim American independence, he remains unknown to most Americans today—for a variety of reasons.

  First, he lived in a home that no longer exists and had been too isolated to become a gathering place for national and world leaders. Chantilly stood on a lonely bluff overlooking the Potomac River, far from the nearest town. In contrast, Washington’s Mount Vernon lay but a dozen miles from Alexandria—less than two hours on horseback. John Adams’s home was near Boston, and Jefferson’s aerie at Monticello commanded a full view of Charlottesville and the towering University of Virginia dome that he had designed and directed. While surviving family, friends, and admirers preserved the homes of these and other Founding Fathers, the departure of Lee’s wife and two sons left Chantilly empty, untended, and deteriorating.

  Visible and deserted at the top of a cliff, Chantilly was an easy target for British warships sailing up the Potomac River to destroy Washington, DC, during the War of 1812. A derelict by then, Chantilly fell victim to the elements and rotted away, vanishing into the wind off the Potomac River without leaving a trace.

  Those who maintained and continue to maintain Mount Vernon, Monticello, and the Adams house in Massachusetts have preserved not just a collection of old houses but the memories and life stories of their primary residents. In addition, hagiographic biographies have added mythological deeds—Washington and his cherry tree, for example—that reinforce the national memory of all three men as larger-then-life heroes.

  John Adams grumbled that the written history of the American Revolution would evolve into myth—“one continued lie… the essence of which will be that Dr. Franklin’s electrical rod smote the Earth and out sprung General Washington—and thence forward these two conducted all the Policy, Negotiations, Legislatures and Wars [Adams’s italics]. These underscored lines contain the whole fable, plot and catastrophe.… This is the fate of all nations.… No nation can adore more than one man at a time.”2

  Adams may well have been thinking of his friend Richard Henry Lee, for after the Federalists had won the struggle over ratification of the Constitution, they relegated most Antifederalists to historical obscurity. Although Thomas Jefferson and James Monroe began their political careers as Antifederalists, they quickly turned Federalist when presidential powers seduced them into imposi
ng arbitrary, unilateral—and unconstitutional—acts that bypassed the states and other branches of the federal government. Recent presidents have made a common practice of using similarly unconstitutional powers, issuing executive orders to write their own laws and bypass Congress.

  Among the great Antifederalists who stood alongside Richard Henry Lee in the battle against ratification, Patrick Henry’s cry for liberty or death still earns universal recognition as the clarion call for American revolution. But most Americans either don’t know or ignore his historic roles as Virginia’s great first governor and courageous champion of antifederalism. Lost as well is Richard Henry Lee’s role as The First Founding Father and originator of the Declaration of American Independence—a declaration that Congress adopted before Thomas Jefferson had put his pen to the document we celebrate today.

  Purposely or not, Jefferson helped obscure the nation’s memory of Richard Henry Lee. By the time Jefferson died in 1826, both Richard Henry Lee and Patrick Henry were long dead, and no other Antifederalists—indeed, no other Founding Fathers—had survived to challenge Jefferson’s claim in the inscription he wrote for his own tombstone, declaring that he had been the sole author of the Declaration of Independence.

  While Lee and Patrick Henry had lived both had earned Jefferson’s malevolence by demanding Jefferson be censured for his failure as governor to defend Virginia against the British invasion in 1780. Lee’s grandson, Richard H. Lee II, further tarnished Jefferson’s name and incurred Jefferson’s enmity for the Lees by asserting that Jefferson had written only a small part of the Declaration of Independence and “stole [the rest] from Locke’s Essays.” Nonetheless, it is Jefferson’s colossal statue that stands with a copy of the Declaration of Independence in his hand in the memorial that bears his name in Washington, DC. Nowhere to be found are the name and image of Richard Henry Lee, the nation’s First Founding Father.