Apr 17, 2012 - Sale 2276

Sale 2276 - Lot 59

Price Realized: $ 11,400
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 5,000 - $ 7,500
SIGNER FROM VIRGINIA--FIRST OF 8 LETTERS LEE, RICHARD HENRY. Autograph Letter Signed, as member of Continental Congress, to Brigadier General George Weedon, urging that Virginia recruits be sent to Valley Forge without delay. 3 pages, folio, on a single folded sheet; toned, small marginal seal hole, partially intact seal. "Belleview" [Stafford County, VA], 14 March 1778
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"i am sure you will serve america and honor yourself." Richard Henry Lee (1732-1794) was a signer of the Declaration of Independence, writing from his family home in Virginia. This letter shows his close involvement in military matters.
"The strongest motives of public good and the success of the Army induces me to wish most earnestly that not a moment may be lost in hastening up the drafts and other troops from this state to Head Quarters. . . . I am sure you will serve America and honor yourself by an immediate and particular attention to this important business." While some soldiers will need to be inoculated against smallpox first, Lee urges Weedon "immediately to send on all that have had the small pox to reinforce the Army." Lee also offers to help coordinate the troop movements himself: "I shall go directly to Westmoreland, where Capt. Geo. Turberville & Capt. Fauntleroy in Richmond may by my means be furnished with your positive orders to march all the draughts & other soldiers from Lancaster up the northern neck." He concludes with an urgent appeal to Weedon's patriotism: "I am very sure that you will do a most essential service by executing this business with the vigor and dispatch that the nature of it certainly demands." Quoted in Ward, Duty, Honor or Country, page 129.