page_title: Richard Bland Lee
section_title: Virginia House of Delegates
hierarchical_section_title: Richard Bland Lee / Public life / Virginia House of Delegates
caption_attribution_description: English: Virginia State Capitol front view 1865.
context_page_description: Richard Bland Lee was a planter, jurist, and politician from Fairfax County, Virginia. He was the son of Henry Lee II of "Leesylvania" and Lucy Grymes, as well as a younger brother of both Maj. Gen. Henry Lee and of Charles Lee, Attorney General of the United States from 1795 to 1801, who served in both the Washington and Adams administrations.
context_section_description: Richard served as a member of the Virginia House of Delegates from 1784 to 1788, 1796, and again from 1799 to 1806. During his second term in the state legislature he was involved in debates surrounding the ratification of the United States Constitution which he wholeheartedly supported. Following ratification he opposed efforts by Patrick Henry and others to call a second constitutional convention to add a bill of rights, believing the new system should be given a chance to operate before wholesale alterations were made. He also believed that the new congress could be trusted to add the necessary amendments.
  It was also during this term that the election of Virginia's first two United States Senators took place. Lee was a strong supporter of James Madison's candidacy. Ultimately however, Madison was rejected by the Henry led House of Delegates on the assumption that he would not push for addition of a bill of rights. A contention Lee worked hard to counteract.  Following this rejection Lee continued to work on Madison's behalf in his congressional race, proposing publication of letters between Madison and other's "...as would counteract the report industriously circulated in the assembly and consequently in the state that you were opposed to every amendment to the new government, and in every mode ..." Unwilling to risk publication of letters critical of others, Madison rejected this idea, but would nevertheless defeat future President James Monroe in a hard-fought contest.
  In both of these debates Lee recognized the power of Patrick Henry's oratory, lamenting the weakness of opposition to him. In a letter from Lee to Madison he complains:
  Our Assembly is weak. Mr. [Patrick] Henry is the only orator we have against us and the friends to the new government being all young and inexperienced, form a feeble bond against him.
  While Henry was ultimately able to get the Virginia legislature to pass the measure urging Congress to call a new constitutional convention, Congress refused to do so, instead passing the first ten amendments to the constitution that make up the Bill of Rights.
caption: Virginia State Capitol built in 1785, as it appeared in 1865
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