Quote of the Day (Richard Henry Lee, With an Early Blow for American Liberty)

“As the Stamp Act does absolutely direct the property of the people to be taken from them without their consent expressed by their representatives and as in many cases it deprives the British American Subject of his right to trial by jury; we do determine, at every hazard, and paying no regard to danger or to death, we will exert every faculty, to prevent the execution of the said Stamp Act in any instance whatsoever within this Colony. And every abandoned wretch, who shall be so lost to virtue and public good, as wickedly to contribute to the introduction or fixture of the Stamp Act in this Colony, by using stampt paper, or by any other means, we will, with the utmost expedition, convince all such profligates that immediate danger and disgrace shall attend their prostitute purposes.”--From the Leedstown (or Westmoreland) Resolves, co-authored by Richard Henry Lee, February 27, 1766

The half-century relationship between John Adams and Thomas Jefferson is so overwhelming that it practically sucks the air out of all remaining discussion of the Continental Congress. You’d think they were the only important allies in the struggle to declare American independence. But not only were they not the only allies in Independence Hall in 1776, but Jefferson probably wasn’t even Adams’ key partner in the Virginia delegation.

It might have been Jefferson who wrote the Declaration of Independence, but it was fellow Virginian Richard Henry Lee—born on this day in 1732—who introduced the blockbuster resolution “that these united Colonies are, and ought to be, free and independent States” (language that Jefferson incorporated as the climax of his document).

Revolutionary War historian Pauline Maier (American Scripture: Making the Declaration of Independence) has gone so far as to state, to American Heritage magazine, that Jefferson was “the most overrated person in American history." That might be stretching matters, but there’s no doubt that the Sage of Monticello benefited enormously from founding one of America’s two enduring parties and from his prolific, superb writing.

In contrast, Lee’s image in the popular imagination has been shaped disproportionately by the musical 1776, where, in his big number, he acts, in the words of historian-novelist Thomas Fleming, in an essay contributed to Past Imperfect: History According to the Movies, like “a giggling buffoon“ for whom “the idea of independence would never have occurred to him in a million years [without Adams and Ben Franklin]" before he "rides wildly off to do their bidding.” Adams, predictably, can’t wait to see the last of this galoot.

That scene might be the biggest departure from fact in the musical. The reality, as Fleming observes, is that Lee was, “after Adams, the most powerful orator in Congress.” (Certainly more so than Jefferson, who, throughout his long public career, could barely manage to make himself audible.)

Adams found few delegates outside of New England so congenial, in politics and temperament, as Lee:

* The latter’s deep, classics-based education gave him a common background and frame of reference as the Harvard graduate;

* His austerity made him, in Fleming’s words, a kind of “Virginia puritan”;

* His first bill in the House of Burgesses in 1759, proposing an end to the trafficking in slavery in Virginia, would have appealed to the deeply antislavery Adams;

* As a Virginian, Lee could be listened to in a way denied to John and cousin Samuel Adams, who were widely regarded as representatives of a hotbed of radicalism in Massachusetts;

* His bitterness toward corrupt elites (even though he himself was from a longstanding colonial aristocracy) in his state mirrored that of the rising Massachusetts lawyer-farmer; and

* His speeches on behalf of independence were exceeded only by the Adams cousins in number and fire.

That last quality is important. The American Revolution has frequently been contrasted with the French and Russian Revolutions as supposedly “conservative.” But that notion is deeply misguided, as Gordon S. Wood demonstrated in his brilliant Pulitzer Prize-winning study, The Radicalism of the American Revolution. You can sense just how mistaken it is by re-reading the quote that started this post--or, better yet, by reading the Westmoreland Resolves in their entirety.

Lee and the other signers of this document are not merely announcing their opposition to the controversial Stamp Act, or even that they will act against those who aim to collect it. No, they are threatening “immediate danger and disgrace” even to anyone who uses the hated stamps. Few other pre-Revolutionary documents bristle so much with ferocity.

There is a sequel to this story about the alliance between Adams and Lee. I’m not speaking here merely of the praise the aged Declaration signer and President heaped on his old colleague when Lee’s grandson wrote him in 1821 about the Virginian’s contribution to independence. (“As a public speaker, he [Lee] had a fluency as easy and graceful as it was melodious”).

No, I mean what happened on January 19, 1907--the centennial of the birth of Robert E. Lee, Richard’s great-nephew. The guest speaker for the celebration in Lexington, Va., at Washington and Lee University was Charles Francis Adams Jr.--great-grandson of John Adams.

A Union colonel during the Civil War who had fought against Lee at the Battle of Gettysburg, Adams had come to appreciate the Confederate’s refusal to obey Jefferson Davis’ desire for a guerrilla campaign at the end of the war, as well as the general’s personal qualities. Adams’ Lexington address had an extraordinary impact, raising the reputation of Lee in the North (where, until then, something of the odor of treason still clung to him) to match its nearly demigod level in the South.

Paul Nagel, a biographer of both the Adams and Lee clans, summed up the effect of Adams’ speech in The Lees of Virginia: “An old warrior himself, Adams had converted a Confederate general into civilization’s hope by arguing that Lee’s gentle, loving, selfless virtues must somehow recapture America.”

More than a century and a quarter after the summer of independence in Philadelphia, the Adams family of Massachusetts had, in its way, returned the favor to their Virginia allies and friends, the Lees.