Arthur Lee
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Arthur Lee
Arthur Lee (1740-1792) was a propagandist for the American Revolutionary cause and an agent in Europe for the Continental Congress.
Arthur Lee was a member of the famous Lee family of Virginia and the younger brother of two signers of the Declaration of Independence, Richard Henry Lee and Francis Lightfoot Lee. Arthur was educated in the British Isles at Eton, Edinburgh (where he received his doctor of medicine degree in 1764), and the Middle Temple. He was admitted to the bar in 1775. During the decade preceding 1776, he was an impassioned propagandist for American rights. He wrote numerous political pamphlets and letters and staunchly defended the English radical John Wilkes. He was Benjamin Franklin's rival as America's chief spokesman in Great Britain.
In 1775, as confidential agent of the Continental Congress, Lee began a series of negotiations with the French and Spanish to secure desperately needed war materiel for the American army. A year later he was appointed one of three commissioners to negotiate a French alliance. As the other commissioners, Franklin and Silas Deane, energetically, ingeniously, and perhaps compromisingly made contracts to start guns and supplies across the Atlantic, spasms of suspicion seized Lee. He believed that Deane, especially, and various scheming Frenchmen were reaping huge, dishonest profits at the expense of American patriot blood and treasure. Lee thought that Franklin aided the plots by boudoir intrigues in Paris and pettifogging letters home. To expose all this, Lee made furious accusations to Congress, which resulted in 1778 in Deane's recall just as the commissioners signed the long-sought French alliance.
Though Lee's charges led to Deane's disgrace and perhaps restrained war profiteering, their principal effect was to divide Congress into warring factions. Lee found ready support from his brothers and their New England allies (especially John and Sam Adams), who were ready to believe the worst about Franklin. The "Lee-Adams faction" preferred to minimize American connections with Europe and to depend instead on simple American courage and perseverance.
In general, however, Lee found Congress cool both to his accusations and to his view of American national policy in the 3 years he served as a Virginia delegate (1781-1784). After vigorously opposing the Federal Constitution, he spent his last years as a Treasury board official (1785-1789) and in embittered retirement in Virginia.
Further Reading
Letters related to Lee's public career are in Francis Wharton, ed., The Revolutionary Diplomatic Correspondence of the United States (6 vols., 1889), and Edmund C. Burnett, ed., Letters of Members of the Continental Congress (8 vols., 1921-1936). There is no adequate biography of Lee. Richard H. Lee, Life of Arthur Lee (2 vols., 1829), though eulogistic, inaccurate, and expurgated, contains details on his life and long selections from his correspondence. Relevant material on Lee's family appears in Burton J. Hendrick, The Lees of Virginia: Biography of a Family (1935).
Additional Sources
Potts, Louis W., Arthur Lee, a virtuous revolutionary, Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1981.
Riggs, A. R., The nine lives of Arthur Lee, Virginia patriot, Williamsburg, Va.: Virginia Independence Bicentennial Commission, 1976.
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Arthur Lee
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Arthur Lee
Lee, Arthur, 1740-92, American Revolutionary diplomat, b. Westmoreland co., Va.; brother of Francis L. Lee, Richard H. Lee, and William Lee. Educated in Great Britain, he returned to Virginia to practice medicine, but soon decided to study law and went (1768) to London. There, like William Lee, he became a partisan of John Wilkes and a political pamphleteer. In 1770 he became agent for Massachusetts in London. After the outbreak of the American Revolution, he was made a commissioner for the Continental Congress to seek foreign aid. In 1777 he went to Spain, but was unable to obtain a formal treaty; he was also refused recognition at the Prussian court in Berlin. With Benjamin Franklin and Silas Deane he helped persuade Pierre de Beaumarchais to act as agent for supplying aid to the rebellious colonials. In Paris, however, he quarreled with Franklin and Deane, and his unfavorable reports to Congress resulted in the recall of Deane and a halt on payments to Beaumarchais. In 1779 he was recalled. He later served in the Continental Congress.
Bibliography
See B. J. Hendrick, The Lees of Virginia (1935).
Houghton Mifflin Chronology of US Literature:
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Works by Arthur Lee
(1740-1792)
| 1768 | "The Monitor's Letters." The friend of John Dickinson publishes a complementary series of letters to his Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania (1767-1768) in the Virginia Gazette. They would be included with Dickinson's letters in the pamphlet The Farmer's and Monitor's Letters (1769). Lee would write at least thirty-one additional "Monitor's Letters" for newspapers over the next eight years. |
| 1774 | An Appeal to the Justice and Interests of the People of Great Britain. The best known of Lee's many pamphlets opposes Britain's taxation policies based on principle and expediency and appeals to the British sense of fair play. A Second Appeal would appear in 1775. |
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Arthur Lee (diplomat)
Dr. Arthur Lee (20 December 1740 – 12 December 1792) was an American diplomat during the American Revolutionary War.
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Life
He was the son of Hon. Thomas Lee (1690–1750) and Hannah Harrison Ludwell (1701–1750). His brothers, Richard Henry Lee (1732–1794), Francis Lightfoot Lee (1734–1797) and William Lee (1739–1795), were also Revolutionary-era diplomats.
He attended Eton College in England and studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh, where he graduated in 1765. He then studied law in London, and he practised there from 1770 to 1776.[1] During this time Lee wrote many influential pamphlets and essays opposing slavery and British continental policies. He wrote one of his more famous works "An Essay in Vindication of the Continental Colonies of America" in 1764. Lee was against the Townshend acts and became a major proponent of American resistance to the British.[2]
In 1770, he was named Massachusetts correspondent to Britain and France and at this time he began corresponding with Sam Adams, and they became lifelong friends although they probably didn't meet personally until sometime after 1780. He did not while in London appreciate the extravagant lifestyle of Benjamin Franklin, and he told Sam Adams he would never be a good negotiator between a free people and a tyrant.
During the American Revolution he was dispatched as an envoy of the Continental Congress to Spain and Prussia to gain their support for the rebel cause, but he was unsuccessful in his endeavors.[2]
Later, in Paris, after helping to negotiate the Treaty of Alliance (1778) with France, he fell out with Benjamin Franklin and Silas Deane. He persuaded Congress to recall Deane to America, but he was himself recalled soon afterward.[2]
In addition to his diplomatic duties, Lee was arguable one of Americas first spies and gathered information in France and Britain. He also successfully identified Edward Bancroft, secretary to the American legation in Paris, as a spy. Virginia sent Lee as a delegate to the Continental Congress in 1782.[1]
Arthur Lee built and lived at Lansdowne, a mansion which still stands in Urbanna, Virginia,[2] a small waterfront town on Virginia's Middle Peninsula. It is presently a private residence, and he is buried in a small family graveyard adjacent to the building.
Ancestry
Arthur Lee was the son of Colonel Thomas Lee, Hon. (1690–1750) of Stratford Hall Plantation, Westmoreland County, Virginia. Thomas married Hannah Harrison Ludwell (1701–1750), the daughter of Colonel Philip Ludwell II (1672–1726) of Green Spring Plantation, and Hannah Harrison (1679–1731).
Arthur's father, Thomas, was the son of Colonel Richard Lee II, Esq., known as “Richard the Scholar” (1647–1715) and Laetitia Corbin (c. 1657 – 1706). Richard Lee II, was the son of Col. Richard Lee I, Esq., known as "The Immigrant" (1618–1664) and Anne Constable (c. 1621 – 1666).
Arthur's paternal grandmother, Laetitia, was the daughter of the Lees' neighbor and councillor (attorney), Hon. Henry Corbin, Sr. (1629–1676) and Alice (Eltonhead) Burnham (c. 1627 – 1684).
Arthur's paternal great-grandmother, Anne, was the daughter of Thomas Constable; she became a ward of Sir John Thoroughgood.
References
- ^ a b "LEE, Arthur, (1740 - 1792)". Biographical Dictionary of the U. S. Congress. http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/biodisplay.pl?index=L000188. Retrieved January 22, 2012.
- ^ a b c d Chisholm 1911.
- Attribution
Chisholm, Hugh, ed (1911). "Lee, Arthur". Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.
External links
- Potts, Louis (200), Arthur Lee, Oxford University Press, http://www.anb.org/articles/01/01-00505.html?a=1&f=%22arthur%20lee%22&d=10&ss=0&q=1, retrieved 13 Nov 2011
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Gale Encyclopedia of Biography
Gale Encyclopedia of Biography. © 2006 by The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved.
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Columbia Encyclopedia
The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition Copyright © 2012, Columbia University Press. Licensed from Columbia University Press. All rights reserved. www.cc.columbia.edu/cu/cup/.
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Houghton Mifflin Chronology of US Literature
The Chronology of American Literature, edited by Daniel S. Burt. Copyright © 2004 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
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