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Richard Henry Lee
Photographer: Allen C. Browne
Taken: August 9, 2015
Caption: Richard Henry Lee
Additional Description: This 1795-1805 portrait of Richard Henry Lee by Charles Willson Peale hangs in the National Portrait Gallery, in Washington, DC.

“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.” — National Portrait Gallery
Submitted: August 16, 2015, by Allen C. Browne of Silver Spring, Maryland.
Database Locator Identification Number: p322845
File Size: 2.235 Megabytes

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