First Founding Father: Richard Henry Lee and the Call for Independence

Perhaps your only exposure to Richard Henry Lee is from the musical 1776, where he is dismissed as rather a comic figure. Perhaps you have never heard of him at all. Either way, prepare for an eye-opening treat of an introduction in this new biography by master biographer Harlow Giles Unger. Lee was as key a player in the American Revolution as Washington, Adams, Franklin, and arguably an even more important Founder than Jefferson. Yes, that’s right – as Unger explains, it was Richard Henry Lee who brought to the Continental Congress the Independence Resolution; Lee who convinced the legislature of Virginia, the largest and most influential of the original colonies, to break from England, leading the way for all the others to follow; Lee whose original proposal was even incorporated, word for word, into the finished Declaration of Independence. Not only that, but Lee and his family carried forward the Revolution with their leadership and money, without which it could never have succeeded. This wonderful man is brought to life in Unger’s pages, which shine with appreciation and respect for a man who justly deserves them and deserves to be remembered as first among America’s Founding greats.