Richard Henry Lee
Richard Henry Lee ( born January 20, 1732 the Stratford Hall Plantation, Virginia, † June 19, 1794 in Chantilly, Virginia) was the sixth President of the Continental Congress and as a signatory to the Constitution of the United States one of the founding fathers of the United States.
Life
Lee was trained at the Academy of Queen Elizabeth Grammar School in Wakefield in Yorkshire, England. In 1752 he returned to Virginia, where he took up a legal profession. In 1757 he was appointed Justice of the Peace of Westmoreland County. 1761, he was elected to the House of Burgesses of Virginia, where he remained until 1788. As an early advocate of independence it was founded a First, the correspondence between the many committees at Independence interested Americans in the various colonies.
In August 1774, Lee was elected as a delegate to the First Continental Congress in Philadelphia. In 1775 he was colonel of the militia of Westmoreland County. In the Lee Resolution Lee drove the movement forward in the Continental Congress to submit the Declaration of Independence. Because Lee's absence from the Congress due to his wife's illness Thomas Jefferson was chosen to write the Declaration.
Lee was against the creation of the United States Constitution, because he wished not to powerful central government. Because of his insistence of the 10th Amendment to the Constitution was written, who ascribes all the powers the states or the people not mentioned. He was elected by the Legislative Assembly of Virginia to one of his first two senators, but was forced because of his poor health in 1792, to abdicate.
He died at his home and is buried in the Burnt House Field Cemetery in Mount Pleasant at Hague in Westmoreland County.
Biographical data
- Parents: Thomas Lee ( * 1690, † November 1750 )
- Hannah Harrison Ludwell ( born January 25, 1750)
- Philip Ludwell Lee ( * 1726, † 1775)
- Hannah Lee ( * 1728, † 1782 )
- Thomas Ludwell Lee ( * 1730, † 1778)
- Francis Lightfoot Lee ( * 1734, † 1797)
- Alice Lee ( * 1736, † 1818)
- William Lee ( * 1739, † 1795)
- Arthur Lee ( * 1740, † 1792)
- Thomas Lee ( born October 20, 1758 † October 7 (?) 1805)
- Ludwell Lee ( born October 13, 1760 † March 23, 1836 )
- Mary Lee ( born July 28, 1764 † 1795)
- Hannah Lee ( * 1766 (?), † 1801 (? ) )
- Anne Lee ( born December 1, 1770 † September 9, 1804 )
- Henrietta Lee ( born December 10, 1773 † 1804 (?) )
- Sarah Lee ( * December 27, 1775, † May 8, 1837 )
- Cassius Lee ( born August 18, 1779 † July 8, 1798 )
- Francis Lightfoot Lee ( born June 18, 1782 † April 13, 1850 )
Political offices
- Justice of the Peace for Westmoreland County, Virginia ( 1757)
- House of Burgesses of Virginia Colony (1758 - 1775)
- Member of the Continental Congress (1774 - 1779, 1784 - 1785, 1787)
- Signer of the Declaration of Independence of the United States
- House of Burgesses of the State of Virginia (1777, 1780, 1785 )
- Colonel of the Westmoreland, Virginia militia
- United States Senator for Virginia (March 4, 1789 - October 8, 1792 )
- President pro tempore during the Second Continental Congress