Memoir of the Life of Richard Henry Lee and His Correspondence with the Most Distinguished Men in America and Europe, Illustrative of Their Characters and of the Events of the American Revolution.

LEE, Richard Henry.

Item Number: 128505

Philadelphia: H. C. Carey and L. Lea, 1825.

First edition of the memoir of one of America’s most significant Founding Fathers and the author of the considerably influential anti-federalist Letters from a Federal Farmer to the Republican. Octavo, two volumes bound in full contemporary sheep with morocco spine labels lettered in gilt, engraved frontispiece portrait of Lee. In very good condition, rebacked. Ownership inscription. First editions are scarce, especially in this condition.

“In the First Congress Lee gained fame as an orator the equal of Patrick Henry. He contributed to a declaration of rights of the colonists; he helped implement a continental association modeled on Virginia’s to halt trade with Great Britain; and he moved endorsement of Massachusetts’s defiant Suffolk County Resolves… he discussed establishing independent state governments with John Adams and in the spring of 1776 had Adams’s suggestions published in Virginia. In early May the two obtained a congressional resolution advising colonies to form state governments, and on 7 June, in response to the Virginia Convention’s instructions of 15 May 1776, Lee moved his famous resolution that Congress should declare the colonies ‘free and independent states.’ He left to help Virginia set up its new government before Congress adopted Thomas Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence on 4 July” (ANB).