Richard Henry Lee (January 20, 1732 – June 19, 1794) was an American statesman and Founding Father from Virginia,[1] best known for the June 1776 Lee Resolution, the motion in the Second Continental Congress calling for the colonies' independence from Great Britain leading to the United States Declaration of Independence, which he signed.

In 1748, at 16, Lee left Virginia for Yorkshire, England, to complete his formal education at Queen Elizabeth Grammar School, Wakefield.

In 1766, almost ten years before the American Revolutionary War, Lee is credited with having authored the Westmoreland Resolution[4] against enforcement of the British Stamp Act 1765, which was publicly signed by prominent landowners who met at Leedstown, Virginia, on February 27, 1766.

Lee was elected the sixth president of Congress under the Articles of Confederation on November 30, 1784, in the French Arms Tavern, Trenton, New Jersey.

[5] Lee abhorred the notion of imposing federal taxes and believed that continuing to borrow foreign money was imprudent.

Throughout his term, he maintained that the states should relinquish their claims in the Northwest Territory, enabling the federal government to fund its obligations through land sales.

He wrote to friend and colleague Samuel Adams: I hope we shall shortly finish our plan for disposing of the western Lands to discharge the oppressive public debt created by the war & I think that if this source of revenue be rightly managed, that these republics may soon be discharged from that state of oppression and distress that an indebted people must invariably feel.

With Congress unable to muster magistrates or troops to enforce the dollar-per-acre title fee, Lee's plan ultimately failed, although the survey system developed under the Land Ordinance of 1785 has endured.

In 1792 he became the second president pro tempore, but later that year he was obliged to resign due to his failing health, and he retired from public life.