Existing comment:
Richard Henry Lee, 1732-1794
On June 7, 1776, it fell to Richard Henry Lee, delegate from Virginia at the Second Continental Congress, to offer the resolution that "these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States."
Lee was a tobacco planter and a seasoned member of the Virginia House of Burgesses. An aristocrat with an innate sense of his natural rights, Lee had long fought England's attempts to undermine colonial liberties. From the time he first came to Congress, he had used his powerful oratory to unite his colleagues in resistance to British tyranny. Absent in Virginia (where he was helping with the formation of a new state government) when his resolution was adopted on July 2, Lee later returned to sign the Declaration of Independence.
Charles Willson Peale, c 1795-1805 |