Patrick Henry, leading the Hanover Independent Company, one of the new militia companies which Dunmore so feared, marched on Williamsburg demanding that the governor return the powder. Henry called off his militia company when Dunmore sent him pounds in payment for the powder XIV, p. On May 8, , Henry wrote to Francis Lightfoot Lee concerning the matter, evidently experiencing at least a little doubt as to what the public and official reactions would be to the daring step he had taken.
Having designedly referred to the Convention [1] whether any of the money ought to be returned, lest presuming too much might be alleged against me, I trouble you, sir, with this, to be an advocate for the measure if you think it right. I suppose my attendance at the Congress may prevent me from being present at the Convention, where perhaps an attempt may be made to condemn the measure and misrepresent my conduct.
If any doubt remains as to the fitness of the step I have taken, can it lay over until I am heard? IX, p. When Dunmore finally called the House of Burgesses into session again on June 1, , one of their first acts was to appoint a committee to prepare an address to the governor in response to a speech he had given earlier.
What follows is an excerpt from the address to the governor, written by Lee and the other committee members and passed unanimously by the burgesses. We assure your Lordship that we will pursue the most speedy Measures for defraying the Expenses of the late military Expedition against the Indians.
That proper provision has not yet been made. Our Endeavors to discharge these and other Important Duties to their Country were arrested and cut short by a sudden and unexpected Dissolution of the Assembly. Since this, my Lord, our Situation has undergone a total Change. We will, my Lord, proceed forthwith to consider this and other matters with that Calmness and Impartiality which their great Importance may require.
IV, 5 Jun Needless to say, the address did little to improve relations between the governor and the burgesses. The House of Burgesses, still disturbed by the gunpowder incident, appointed a committee, of which Lee was a member, to investigate the powder magazine and the supplies it contained IV, 5 Jun We understand that sundry Persons unknown to us broke open the Magazine, and took out several Arms, but we assure your Lordship that so soon as this transaction was known to the House some of the Members interposed and prevailed on such as were to be found, to return what they had taken, and we have Hopes that the rest may be yet reclaimed which we shall not neglect our Endeavors to effect IV, 5 Jun Dunmore, loathe to be of any assistance in the matter, sent the following message several days later in reply.
I have received a Paper without date or Signature, desiring I would direct the keeper of the Magazine, to give Access to some Persons, I know not whom, the Paper not saying who they, appointed by the House of Burgesses a Committee to examine into the State of the public Magazine.
I send the said Paper, for the inspection of the House; and beg to be informed, whether the Persons, there alluded to, are authorized, as therein allowed, to desire Access to the Magazine IV, 5 Jun Nothing more is recorded in the Journal concerning the matter. On June 8 Dunmore informed the burgesses that he felt Williamsburg was no longer safe and he was removing himself and his family to the Fowey in the York River.
After considering the message, the burgesses appointed a committee, including Francis Lightfoot Lee, to draft a reply.
Their answer expressed concern for Dunmore and his family and offered to pass any measure necessary to secure their safety. The burgesses also expressed appreciation that the governor was willing to try to carry on governmental affairs, but that due to the distance and inconvenience entailed it would be much more agreeable for him to return to Williamsburg IV, 8 Jun Dunmore never returned to Williamsburg, attempting instead to recover his power through military raids.
Lee's career in Congress is rather difficult to follow in much detail, for his letters concern mainly military affairs and the general political issues rather than his own contributions. His service must have been satisfactory, however, for he was re-elected in , , and Lee stood for re-election as burgess for Richmond County again in , but was defeated I, 1 Apr There is no mention of Lee's defeat in any available contemporary sources other than Landon Carter's diary, so there is no way of knowing the reason for the lack of support of the majority of Richmond voters.
Carter, however, was quite bitter over the matter, especially since his son, Robert Wormeley Carter was also ousted. So it may have been that the majority of voters feared an over-powerful aristocratic rule. However, Carter inadvertently offered another possible explanation. It may have been that Lee would have won if he had been at home to campaign.
Or it may have been that the Richmond voters wanted a representative who would spend more time tending to matters at home rather than sitting in Congress in far-off Philadelphia. At any rate, Carter was evidently not the only man upset over Lee's defeat. A man could run for burgess for a particular county only if he owned land in that county. Sometimes a friend would give a would-be candidate the required amount of land in a county other than the one in which the candidate resided.
The gift made the candidate a landowner in at least two counties, allowing him to run for burgess for a county other than his home county. This was evidently considered a slightly underhanded maneuver, but it was done from time to time.
Carter records an attempt at this scheme in which Ball, a landowner in Lancaster County, intended to give Lee the amount of land required in order to allow him to run for burgess of Lancaster. Lee a Burgess to Convention in Lancaster. Ball by a deed of gift to make him a freeholder to be recorded in Court before. I said it would be lame and if Lee had the Spirit I took him to have, he would not so easily be baited into a service in which in his own County, he had been so insulted I, 8 Apr Evidently, Carter's faith in Lee was justified, for there is no further mention of the scheme, in either Carter's diary or any other sources consulted.
A relatively small number of Lee's letters survive. Most of them are from his years in Congress. While they shed little light on the actual details of Lee's role, they do provide an interesting insight into his personality and concerns.
One of Lee's correspondents was Landon Carter. Lee kept Carter informed of the latest military news and important developments in Congress. Carter, who was in favor of independence, had heard that independence had been introduced and voted down three times by Congress. Lee wrote and assured him that such was not the cause V, vol. Agriculture was another favorite topic between the two, and they seemed to be quite interested in the process of making sugar, both from cane and from corn VI, Lee to Carter, 14 Jan Francis Lightfoot also wrote regularly to Richard Henry when the two were separated.
There is true rascality in the post office. Most of the correspondence between Francis Lightfoot and Richard Henry concerns the Silas Deane affair, an unfortunate set of circumstances which divided Congress and tainted permanently the reputations of Arthur and William Lee who, according to recent studies seem to have been innocent of wrongdoing and Silas Deane.
Lee's prime concern in Congress seems to have been the Continental army. There are in existence at least two letters to Lee from Baron von Steuben. Lee had been a member of the Congressional committee that greeted the Baron on his arrival in America. Lee, 13 Oct Steuben was seeking Lee's aid in collecting the money owed him.
The letter warned Pennsylvanians of the proximity of an enemy fleet, and urged the defense of Philadelphia. The language used was strong, as the following excerpt will illustrate. It is vain to hope for lenity from your inveterate foes. Their tender mercies are cruelty. The property of those who have acted as their friends is not safer than those whom they consider as their enemies. Devastation of every kind marks their footsteps. Lee also wrote and signed for the committee a letter to the governor of Maryland late in , exhorting him to supply as much beef, pork, and salt for the army as possible V, vol.
III, p. In , Lee helped frame resolutions which put forth limitations on the formation of new state governments. Francis Lightfoot Lee signed the Declaration of Independence, and he and Richard Henry were the only pair of brothers to do so. He was also a member of the committee that framed the Articles of Confederation.
He felt that the United States should submit to no peace treaty with England that did not guarantee Americans free navigation of the Mississippi River and rights to the Newfoundland fisheries. He served ably in debates on the fisheries XXII, p. Lee left Congress in the spring of , hoping to leave public life and retire to Menokin. Even during his service in Congress, he had felt an obligation to serve his locality.
It was during this time that he wrote in a touching letter to his wife, Rebecca:. Your supply of cash, gave me pleasure, as it was one more instance, added to thousands, of your affection; but upon the whole I could not help being a little angry at your having disfurnished yourself; small as it was it might have been of some little use to you, here it is a drop in the ocean.
Lee had joined the Revolutionary movement at an early date. From the time of the Stamp Act until the outbreak of war a decade later, he participated in most of the Virginia protests and assemblies. He rarely debated on the floor in Congress , but often opposed the position of his brother Richard Henry, and served on the military and marine committees as well as that charged with drafting the Articles of Confederation.
In , weary of office and longing for the peace and quiet of Menokin, Lee left Congress. Except for a few years in the State legislature, he abandoned public service altogether and lived quietly. As such, he had some illustrious ancestors and collateral line descendants through his siblings. Arthur Lee. While he may not have been the most well-known of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, Francis Lightfoot Lee was nonetheless an important part of the American cause of independence, and did his part in helping the colonies to achieve it.
He is part of the reason the colonies became the United States of America. Will established Ancestral Findings in and has helped genealogy researchers for over 25 years. He is also a freelance photographer, husband of twenty-eight years, father of four children, and has one grandchild. Facebook Pinterest Twitter Email Reddit. You may also like. Will Moneymaker Will established Ancestral Findings in and has helped genealogy researchers for over 25 years. View all posts. On the debit side of Lee's tenure as a Loudoun burgess, which lasted until , his biographer, Alonzo Thomas Dill, recounts that Lee was often absent from assembly sessions and, when present, found them boring.
He confided to younger brother William that "the people [of Loudoun] are so vex'd at the little attendance I have given them that they are determined it seems to dismiss me from service, a resolution most pleasing to me. Such apathy coincided with his concerns for Virginia's grievances against Great Britain, which began in earnest during the Stamp Act crisis. That act, passed by Parliament in March , decreed that colonists had to apply stamps to nearly every official document and publication.
The act's purpose was to raise money to support British armies in North America, even though the war against the French had ended in As a protest against the Stamp Act, county courts in Virginia did not meet from early winter until early summer The resolutions threatened "Death and Disgrace" to persons paying the stamp tax. The Stamp Act was repealed that spring. The ad marked Francis Lee as one of a group of radicals asserting the colony's right to formulate its laws, independently of Parliament.
To this effect, he was appointed in to a prestigious committee of burgesses "to protest British policies. By then, his marriage to Rebecca "Becky" Tayloe, a Williamsburg belle, was a year old, and he had moved to Richmond County, where he served as a burgess from to During those years, Francis Lee played a behind-the-scenes role in drafting documents and creating committees that led to the colony's break from Britain.
In , he helped to organize Virginia's Committee of Correspondence, the first of many colonies' groups of the same name. These committees kept in touch with other colonies in their struggles for economic and political rights. In and , he was Richmond County's delegate to the first and second Virginia conventions -- the former forbidding import of British slaves or goods and export of the colony's goods to Great Britain; the latter authorizing the arming of each county's militia.
In those years, his fellow burgesses also chose Francis Lee as one of two Virginia representatives to the first and second continental congresses.
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