First Founding Father

by Harlow Giles Unger

  Like Richard Henry, most Virginians had hoped the king and Parliament would respond favorably to the Continental Congress petition for redress—much as they had responded by repealing most of the Townshend Acts in 1770 in the aftermath of the Boston Massacre. Indeed, all England seemed to support the American petition. When Parliament reconvened in January 1775 petitions from London, Bristol, Birmingham, Liverpool, Manchester, and almost every other English trading city asked for restoration of normal relations with the colonies. Everyone hoped for peace, it seemed, but George III and a small group of ministers in Parliament. On January 12, however, the king dashed the last hopes of the Americans for peace.

  After reading the petition of the Continental Congress the king simply sneered, complimented its eloquence, and laid it aside. A fortnight later he rejected it and demanded that Parliament halt trade with the colonies, provide army protection for Loyalists, and arrest protesters as traitors. As the House of Commons debated passage of legislation to transform the king’s pronouncements into law, Irish member Edmund Burke pleaded with his colleagues to reconsider.

  “The use of force alone is but temporary,” he protested. “It may subdue for a moment; but it does not remove the necessity of subduing again, and a nation is not governed which is perpetually being conquered.”9

  Parliament relented only slightly after Burke’s speech by offering a blanket pardon to repentant rebels—with the exception of such “principal Gentlemen who… are to be brought over to England… for an inquiry… into their conduct.” Among them were George Washington, Patrick Henry, Richard Henry Lee, John Hancock, Samuel Adams, John Adams, and other radicals the government believed were in “a traitorous conspiracy” against a monarch seated by “Divine Providence.”10

  17. George III sneered at American petitions for peace and reconciliation with England, declaring them in rebellion and increasing the number of troops he sent to suppress Americans.

  As punishment for such a crime, British law dictated hanging by the neck, and “while you are still living your bodies are to be taken down, your bowels torn out… your head then cut off, and your bodies divided each into four quarters”—a fate Richard Henry Lee, for one, did not relish.11

  When news reached America of the king’s rejection of the congressional appeal, Virginia’s former burgesses—now calling themselves assemblymen—called for another Virginia Convention. They picked Richmond as their site rather than Williamsburg, where a build-up of British naval strength in nearby waters raised the menace of arrest for Richard Henry Lee, Patrick Henry, and other Virginia political leaders. A town of only 600 residents and 150 homes, Richmond had no assembly hall as such. The largest seating area was in St. John’s Anglican Church on Richmond Hill, with space in its pews for about 120 people.

  On March 20, 1775, the delegates sidled into the pews—Richard Henry Lee, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and other renowned Virginians. Patrick Henry took a seat in the third pew on the gospel, or left, side of the church facing the front. He stood to propose three resolutions, the first two merely parroting resolutions of Maryland’s Assembly the previous December: “That a well-regulated militia, composed of gentlemen and yeomen, is the natural strength and only security of a free government; that such a militia in this colony would forever render it unnecessary for the mother country to keep among us, for the purpose of our defense, any standing army of mercenary soldiers… and would obviate the pretext of taxing us for their support.”12

  As Washington and Lee listened intently, Patrick Henry broke new ground with a third resolution calling for nothing less than war: “That this colony be immediately put into a state of defense, and… prepare a plan for embodying, arming, and disciplining such a number of men, as may be sufficient for that purpose.”13

  Richard Henry Lee shot to his feet to second Henry, as spectators at the rear of the church applauded and a crowd that had gathered outside the door cheered. When the delegates had finished expressing their views, Henry stood “with an unearthly fire burning in his eye,” according to a clergyman on the scene.14

  18. Patrick Henry tells Virginia’s former burgesses at a meeting in St. John’s Church in Richmond, “If we wish to be free… we must fight!”

  We have petitioned—we have remonstrated—we have supplicated—we have prostrated ourselves before the throne… we have been spurned, with contempt.… There is no longer any room for hope. If we wish to be free… we must fight!

  Henry paused, stood tall, then hurled his arms apart defiantly and looked to the heavens, playing the scene like the veteran actor he was. In loud, triumphant notes he proclaimed, “I repeat it, sir: We must fight!

  Gentlemen may cry peace, but there is no peace.… The war is actually begun!… Our brethren are already in the field!… Why stand we here idle? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?

  He paused. A frightening silence engulfed the church.

  “Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take, but as for me.…”

  He paused again, looked to heaven as if addressing God himself, and called out,

  Give me liberty or give me death!15

  The audience sat in stunned silence, unable to think, let alone speak or applaud. Patrick Henry’s triumphant words resounded beyond the walls of Richmond’s Anglican church, across the colony and continent—and across the sea. “Henry was thought… to speak as man was never known to speak before,” Williamsburg attorney Edmund Randolph noted. George Washington wrote to his brother, “It is my full intention to devote my life and fortune in the cause we are engaged in.”16

  After delegates had caught their collective breaths Richard Henry Lee again stood to second Henry’s resolutions, and the convention passed them, ordering Virginia “to be immediately put in a posture of defense.” It appointed a committee to prepare a plan for “embodying, arming, and disciplining” the Virginia militia and elected delegates to attend the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia in May, among them Richard Henry Lee and George Washington.

  On March 27 the convention adjourned, but in every county across Virginia men and boys sewed the words “Liberty or death” on their shirt fronts and rode to their county courthouses to join local militias to fight the British.

  Richard Henry Lee received “intelligence from London from our most vigilant, sensible, and well-informed friends” (read, Arthur and William Lee) that the government had compiled a “black list” of thirty-two Americans, including some Virginians, who would be subject to arrest on sight and immediate deportation for trial in London. Apart from himself, other notables on the British black list were Boston activist Samuel Adams and his political ally, the wealthy merchant-banker John Hancock. As Lee learned, Lord Dartmouth, the secretary of state for colonial affairs, had sent blanket orders from London to America’s royal governors and commanding generals to use whatever means necessary to enforce the Coercive Acts in Massachusetts and “arrest the principal actors and abettors.”17

  “Some Virginians are in the black list,” Richard Henry Lee wrote to his friend and fellow plantation owner Landon Carter. “God put us into the hands of better men and better times, which will surely be the case if we provide ourselves immediately with arms and ammunition, learn the discipline, behave like men, and stick close.”18

  On April 18, 1775, British general Thomas Gage sent troops from Boston to destroy a militia arsenal in Concord, while a detachment went to Lexington to arrest Adams and Hancock, who were hiding there after fleeing Boston. Patriot spies fanned out across the countryside to warn of the approaching British troops, with silversmith Paul Revere reaching Lexington at midnight—in time to warn Adams and Hancock to flee.

  As the British approached Lexington, 200 “minutemen”—armed locals determined to repel the British—positioned themselves on the village green to face the dreaded Redcoats.

  While the main British force marched to Concord five miles distant, a detachment of 700 tro
ops quick-marched into Lexington. A shot rang out, then another, and still more. When the firing ceased, eight minutemen lay dead and ten wounded on Lexington green, the first casualties in a revolution that would send the world’s greatest empire into irreversible decline.

  As the main British force in Concord searched in vain for Patriot arms, minutemen attacked a platoon of British soldiers guarding Concord’s North Bridge. Realizing the Patriots had removed most of the arsenal, the British commander ordered his men to return to Lexington, only to encounter a growing rain of sniper fire. Minuteman ranks had swelled into thousands. Musket barrels materialized behind every tree, every boulder, every stone wall. One thousand reinforcements arrived to protect the British retreat, but the minutemen had grown to 4,000, then 6,000, 8,000, and 10,000. They came from everywhere; town after town sent 100 men, 200, or as many as they could muster to rally around their fellow countrymen. In the end they slayed 73 British soldiers and wounded 174, suffering 49 dead themselves, with 42 wounded. The decimated British troops wreaked revenge in every town, looting and burning houses, bayoneting anyone who stood in their way, civilian or military.

  Incensed by reports of the encounter, Richard Henry Lee wrote to his brother William of the “shameful” British assault, saying, “The wanton and cruel attack on unarmed people after they had brutally killed old men, women, and children… roused such an universal military spirit throughout all the colonies and excited such universal resentment against this savage ministry and their detestable agents that no doubt remains of their destruction with the establishment of American rights.”19

  Lee said thousands of colonists from farms and villages and cities across New England, their passions aroused by the incident on Lexington Green, were gathering arms and rallying to the side of the minutemen outside Boston. “The provincials are since increased to 20,000 and lay now encamped before Boston,” Lee continued his letter to his brother. “All communication is cut off between town and country.”20

  By then both Samuel Adams and John Hancock had reached Philadelphia safely, joining Samuel’s cousin John Adams and Richard Henry Lee at the opening session of the Second Continental Congress. The Patriot propaganda machine that Samuel Adams had organized in Boston sent riders like Paul Revere across the colonies to describe the events at Lexington and heighten American Anglophobia with tales of British atrocities—some true, some tall, all terrible, and many false. Besides accusing the British of setting fires to homes, shops, and barns in Lexington, Samuel Adams told newspapers that the British had “pillaged almost every house they passed.

  But the savage barbarity exercised upon the bodies of our brethren who fell is almost incredible. Not content with shooting down the unarmed, aged, and infirm, they disregarded the cries of the wounded, killing them without mercy, and mangling their bodies in the most shocking manner.21

  In Virginia the Continental Association boycott of British trade was taking hold, with dock hands at Lee’s Stratford Landing and other Potomac River and Chesapeake Bay ports refusing to allow any ships to unload cargoes from Britain and forcing them to leave—“scarcely allowing [them] to get fresh provisions,” according to Richard Henry.

  “All North America,” he assured his brother Arthur, “is now most firmly resolved to defend their liberties ad infinitum against every power on earth that may attempt to take them away.”22

  Richard Henry Lee and the rest of the Virginia delegation to Congress were already at war with the British government when they gathered in Philadelphia. Indeed, George Washington appeared in his uniform as a colonel and commander of the Virginia militia, and Patrick Henry had already organized a militia in central Virginia’s Piedmont hills where he lived. Although Congress elected Boston merchant-banker John Hancock president, Richard Henry Lee arrived with Patrick Henry and George Washington poised for a military response to the British and boasting that “Virginia’s Frontier Men… can furnish 1,000 rifle men—men that for their number make the most formidable light infantry in the world.”23

  Knowing that his brother Arthur would pass the information to key political figures in London, Richard Henry Lee sent information he hoped might make British war hawks reconsider.

  The six frontier counties can produce 6,000 of these men who, from their amazing hardihood, their method of living so long in the woods without carrying provisions with them, the exceeding quickness with which they can march to distant parts, and above all the dexterity to which they have arrived in the use of the rifle gun. There is not one of these men who wish a distance of less than 200 yards or an object larger than an orange. Every shot is fatal.24

  On June 2 Congress received a letter from Dr. Joseph Warren, the new president of the Massachusetts Provincial Congress, urging it to assume control of the disorganized intercolonial army laying siege to Boston. “The army now collecting from different colonies is for the general defense,” Warren wrote.

  The sword should, in all free States, be subservient to the civil powers… we tremble at having an Army (although consisting of our own countrymen) established here without a civil power to provide for and control them.… We would beg leave to suggest to your consideration the propriety of your taking the regulation and general direction of it.… The continent must strengthen and support with all its weight the civil authority here; otherwise our soldiery will lose the ideas of right and wrong, and will plunder, instead of protecting the inhabitants.25

  A week later John Adams proposed that the Continental Congress make the Patriot forces besieging Boston a “Continental Army.” Richard Henry Lee and the others agreed and immediately appropriated £6,000 for supplies. Two days later British General Thomas Gage imposed martial law in Boston and declared all Americans in arms and those siding with them to be rebels and traitors. Congress responded by electing a five-man committee to draft rules for administration of the army and to name a commanding general. With each delegation eager to name a worthy Patriot from his state, the committee decided to give the top position to the most qualified man they could find and create subsidiary positions for four major generals and eight brigadier generals, giving each colony at least one general in the combined army.

  As for commander-in-chief, John Adams had mingled discreetly among the delegates for several days—southerners as well as northerners—listening to and trying to understand every view and sentiment. Teaming with Richard Henry Lee, he concluded that delegates from middle and southern colonies harbored “a jealousy against a New England Army under the Command of a New England General.”26 Connecticut delegate Eliphalet Dyer suggested that selecting a non-New Englander “removes all jealousies, more firmly cements the southern to the northern and takes away the fear of the former lest an enterprising New England general, proving successful, might with his victorious army, give law to the southern or western gentry.”

  It was evident to all that George Washington had the most “skill and experience as an officer” of any southern candidate.27 He had commanded the Virginia Regiment for nearly five years during the French and Indian War, gaining an intimate knowledge of wilderness battle tactics.

  On June 10 Maryland’s Thomas Johnson nominated Washington, with John Adams seconding the nomination. “I had no hesitation to declare,” Adams explained, “that I had but one gentleman in mind for that important command, and that was a gentleman from Virginia… whose skill and experience as an officer, whose independent fortune, great talents, and excellent universal character, would command the approbation of all the colonies better than any other person in the Union.”28

  John Adams had now joined Richard Henry Lee and a small but growing minority of American leaders in heralding a union of the thirteen provinces. Although the vast majority of Americans and their leaders still claimed that each of the thirteen colonies were independent countries, a handful—Richard Henry Lee, John Adams, and Patrick Henry as the most prominent—envisioned the states eventually uniting as an independent nation.

  Congress voted unanimously to nam
e Washington commander-in-chief, then resolved to raise six companies of riflemen in Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia to march to New England to support the troops encircling Boston.

  By default Richard Henry Lee took charge of logistics. Seldom did the number of delegates attending Congress exceed fifty. Together they had all the responsibilities of the executive, legislative, and even judicial branches of government. Untrained in waging war, they did the best they could, attempting to divide the workload by forming committees for intelligence, foreign affairs, military affairs, and marine matters, among others. Seldom knowing how to proceed, most committees willingly ceded leadership and responsibility to the few men like Richard Henry Lee whose personas displayed leadership. His education; his travels in Britain and Europe; his ties to Washington, Patrick Henry, and other Virginia leaders; his connections to opposition figures in Britain through brother Arthur Lee; and his links to the powerful Lee family international trading and shipping enterprise all marked him as a leader.

  “Ten thousand men are now encamped before the town [of Boston] between which and the country there is no intercourse,” Lee told Congress. “[British General] Gage refuses to let the people in or out.

  The besieging army keep the one besieged in constant alarm.… Connecticut has 12,000 men in arms, the Jerseys a good many, and the Province [Pennsylvania] at least 8,000. There are 2,000 in this city [Philadelphia] well-armed and disciplined men. In short, every colony this way is well prepared for war.29

  At Richard Henry Lee’s behest, Congress urged Arthur Lee in London to seek the support of the lord mayor of that city, the notorious John Wilkes. There was no need to do so, however. Arthur Lee and Wilkes had already formed a close friendship, and Wilkes was doing his best to help the Americans by demanding Parliament grant Americans representation in that body.