Nothing marked Friday, June 7, 1776, as an unusual day in Philadelphia. Residents of the city would not have taken much notice of Richard Henry Lee walking the three blocks from his temporary quarters in the home of Dr. William Shippen to the Pennsylvania State House, as he had done for several weeks prior as a member of Virginia’s delegation in the Second Continental Congress.

There was little in Lee’s manners or features that stood out, save his tall and lanky frame and the vanishing hair of a 44-year-old man in 18th-century America. Passers by might have noted the black silk glove covering Lee’s mangled, one-finger left hand, the stark reminder of a hunting accident he suffered years ago.

One document in a stack of papers Lee carried looked like any other about the mundane business of the Congress trying to come to grips with fielding an army against Great Britain while also remaining loosely tied to the mother country. It was a document to sever that tie and declare Britain’s American colonies “free and independent states.”

More than two weeks had passed since that colony’s domestic political body instructed its representatives in Philadelphia to declare independence. Lee believed this necessity had been necessary for some time leading up to June 7, 1776. He was eager to introduce the resolution and for Congress to pass it.

Yet when Congress gaveled to session at 10 am, Lee calmly took his seat among the Virginia delegation. Congress went about its business, reading reports from the front that did not portend good news for the colonies, discussing compensation for a merchant whose vessel had been seized by American naval forces, the issue of recruiting more troops for the Continental Army, and more.

As this business wrapped up, the President of Congress, John Hancock, called Lee to the floor. Lee rose from his chair and read a short, simple resolution:

Resolved, 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 connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved.

Independence. This was a momentous step. Lee’s measure surprised some delegates. Opponents of Lee’s motion sought to table any discussion about it until the next day, giving them time to orchestrate a coordinated rebuttal. Discussion resumed on June 8 and lasted from 10 am to 7 pm. Congress picked it up again on Monday, June 10. After this lengthy back-and-forth debate, one delegate proposed yet again that any further discussion be tabled, this time until July 1. In the meantime, Congress created a committee to “prepare a declaration of independence” should Lee’s measure pass early the next month.

Lee’s fight against Great Britain’s harsher-growing measures against the American colonies had been ongoing for a decade by June 7, 1776. With independence now being discussed and debated openly in the Pennsylvania State House by delegates of 13 colonies, Lee suddenly departed Philadelphia before the July debates. 

Lee’s opposition to Great Britain stemmed largely from British policies that hurt his personal and business interests. He announced his return to Virginia on June 13 to handle personal and political matters there, thereby missing the discussions centered on the independence of the American colonies proposed by his resolution.

The absence of Richard Henry Lee opened the door for Thomas Jefferson to sit on the committee drafting a declaration of independence. In his initial draft, Jefferson included Lee’s resolution, though he added a flourish to it. He sent a copy to Lee for his opinion, and so Lee could compare Jefferson’s draft with the one ultimately adopted by Congress. Lee told Jefferson that Congress’s final draft “mangled” Jefferson’s original manuscript, but pacified his fellow Virginian by concluding, “the Thing is in its nature so good, that no Cookery can spoil the Dish.” One edit that Congress made was to remove Jefferson’s adaptation of Lee’s resolution and replace it with the original text of what Lee read to Congress on June 7, 1776, a change that must have pleased Lee, the man who formally introduced independence to the government of the American colonies.