ARTHUR LEE

Westmoreland County, Virginia
December 20, 1740–December 12, 1792
Provocateur Extraordinaire

Arthur Lee studied law in London and medicine in Edinburgh, Scotland, and practiced law in London for many years. Like his older brothers, Richard Henry and Francis Lightfoot, he was no great fan of British taxation policies in America. While he was in England he produced pamphlets and essays decrying his host country’s slavery and anti-American policies, including his popular 1764 tract, An Essay in Vindication of the Continental Colonies of America. He took up the patriot cause when he got back to America, where he was well received at first. He wore out his welcome eventually. Arthur Lee was an example of patriots who supported independence, but all too often got in the way instead of helping.

A Spy in England’s Midst

Arthur Lee, who was born and reared in Virginia, traveled to London (the date is unknown) to study law. While he was living in London, Congress authorized him to gather information on the feelings of European governments regarding the Americans’ cause. Even then, government lived by poll results.

Although Lee had never set foot in Massachusetts, he represented the province in England. Consequently, Samuel Adams kept him apprised of events in Massachusetts.

Lee struck up a friendship with a French playwright named Pierre Augustin Caron, who wrote under the name of Beaumarchais. Caron was a secret agent for the French monarchy and arms supplier to the Americans during their rebellion. On June 12, 1775, Beaumarchais advised Lee in a letter that he was forming a company to “send help to your friend in the shape of powder and ammunition in exchange for tobacco.”

Lee was in no position to do anything about procuring goods on behalf of his “friend,” clearly the colonies, at the time. Besides, he was not a particularly skilled negotiator, as his record in soliciting foreign governments’ aid proved.

Lee no sooner returned to the colonies in 1776 than he was asked to go back that same year to Europe, this time to France, as part of a diplomatic mission with Silas Deane and Ben Franklin.

REVOLUTIONARY REVELATIONS

Lee had met Franklin in London, where Lee vied for top billing as an envoy to the British government. He had no use for the older man. Lee suggested in a letter to Samuel Adams that Franklin was a philanderer who would never be a good negotiator between a free people and a tyrant.

Three Americans in Paris

Deane and Beaumarchais apparently worked out an arrangement regarding Beaumarchais’s supplying materiel to the United States. Lee was under the impression, based on what Beaumarchais had told him in London, that the supplies were a gift. Deane was under the impression that they were part of a business deal that Congress was paying for with produce or money at some unspecified date. After the war, Beaumarchais insisted that the United States government owed him 3.6 million livres. (The franc did not become the official French currency until the French Revolution occurred.) The government held back on payment after reviewing the receipts the American commission had given the French government. Discrepancies revealed the French had already paid Beaumarchais one million livres for the materiel.

After several reviews of the accounts, Lee claimed that Beaumarchais owed the United States 1.8 million livres, since he had already been paid by the French government. The convoluted situation led Lee to claim that Deane and Franklin were cooking the books in France, and at least one of them, Deane, was making a few livres of his own.

Because Lee suspected Deane of skullduggery and he just did not like Franklin, he notified Congress that they were not helping the Americans much. Deane did not have too high an opinion of Lee, either.

Just for good measure, Lee observed in his November 27, 1777, journal that Deane favored an alliance with Britain. Franklin, he noted, thought just the opposite.

Lee decided that removing Deane from the commission was in America’s best interest.

Lee Completes His Service

Congress recalled Deane based on allegations of misconduct that Lee filed with them. John Adams arrived to replace Deane. He discovered quickly that nothing would get done unless he did it.

Quotations to Live (and Die) By!

“MY TWO COLLEAGUES WOULD AGREE ON NOTHING.”

—JOHN ADAMS

Franklin could not be found most of the time, and Lee seldom arrived at the commission’s office before 11 A.M. Somehow, they wrapped up the treaties with the French and Lee moved on.

Congress dissolved the commission in France late in 1778 and sent Lee to Madrid, where he negotiated unsuccessfully for help from the Spanish.

FEDERAL FACTS

Lee was never one to support something he did not believe in. In his last term in Congress, he found himself on the wrong side of a national argument. He opposed the federal Constitution because he thought it would create an oligarchy (a small group of people, usually wealthy ones) and because it lacked a bill of rights.

Meanwhile, in Philadelphia, the furor over the Deane affair and gossip about the hatred between Franklin and Lee tarnished Lee’s reputation at home and abroad.

Eventually, Lee returned to the United States and a hostile reception from Congress, which had separated into quarreling factions as a result of the Deane debacle. Lee returned to Virginia in 1780, where he served in the Virginia General Assembly, in 1781–83, 1785, and 1786, and as a member of the Continental Congress in 1782–84. (The House of Burgesses was renamed the Virginia General Assembly in 1776.) He completed his government service from 1784–89, when he served as a Treasury board official.

Being on the wrong side of an issue did not bother Lee. He simply wanted to serve his government, opposing views notwithstanding.

Finally, Lee, disillusioned and embittered, went home to Virginia to live out his final years. He outlived Deane and Franklin, but he could not outlive the damage to his reputation that he incurred due to his personal differences with them. His heart had been in the right place, but it overruled his head. Arthur Lee was proof that good intentions did not always lead to good results, but he supported his country nonetheless.