Thomas Jefferson held the quill, but Richard Henry Lee stood up in the Second Continental Congress on June 7, 1776, and moved that the colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent states. This episode explores how a Virginia aristocrat educated in England became a radical organizer through the Westmoreland Resolution and the committees of correspondence.

We look at how illness forced Lee to miss the vote on the Declaration he helped set in motion, his defense of his own plantation against British raiders in 1781, and his term as president of Congress under the Articles of Confederation. We also cover the Land Ordinance of 1785 and its six-mile townships, his opposition to the Constitution without a bill of rights, and his service as one of only two Anti-Federalists in the first Senate.

• How Lee’s English schooling demystified the British Empire instead of making him a loyalist
• How committees of correspondence worked as an alternative information network
• Why Lee’s plan to pay the war debt through Western land sales failed
• Why surveyors chose six-mile squares over Jefferson’s ten-mile grid
• How Lee acted as an inside critic who pushed for the Bill of Rights