Here is the man responsible for starting our move towards independence. He was no local yokel. Note his education. Once again, it is our educated or uneducated children that will lead our country in the near future. Personally, my hopes for our countries future lies in those children that will be well educated, not someone who prides themselves on their lack of education.



Richard Henry Lee of Virginia was the classical yeoman farmer and a justice of the peace. The Virginia-born aristocrat benefited from an English private school education. At first an "indifferent figure," he later rose to the radical occasion and became an admired orator who, according to Patrick Henry, "reasoned well, and declaimed freely and splendidly" with a "deep and melodious" voice. At the second Continental Congress, he put forth the motion to cut maternal ties with Britain.

"That these united colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent states; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British crown; and that all political connexion between them and the state of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved... Let this happy day give birth to an American republic." ("Lives of the Signers to the Declaration of Independence," 1856, via Colonial Hall)

As it was his proposal, Lee would have been chair of the Committee of Five and its likely scribe, but his wife's illness called him away. His sub: Jefferson
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