A younger son of Thomas Lee, William Lee was the best businessman in the Lee Family of Virginia and used his skills as a merchant, trader, and radical London politician to help win the American Revolution through a clever bit of “militia diplomacy”.
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This episode follows William Lee of Stratford Hall, a younger son of the Lee family who was trained in the tobacco economy rather than given the advantages of his older brothers. After his father’s death, he worked under Philip Ludwell Lee as a clerk, steward, and estate manager, overseeing tobacco rents, warehouses, and shipping operations at Stratford Hall, the seat of the Lee family of Virginia and a major center of commerce in the colonial tobacco trade. The experience taught him how the Atlantic tobacco trade worked and how British merchants and factors controlled much of its profit.
William Lee then became a London tobacco factor and built his own merchant house in London, starting in 1768. He strengthened it through his marriage to Hannah Philippa Ludwell, which brought him capital and the historic Green Spring estate. From Tower Hill, he sold tobacco directly for his Virginia relatives and supplied them with imported goods, while also becoming active in London’s civic politics. He rose to sheriff and then alderman of the City of London, and in that role, he publicly presented petitions critical of the Lord North ministry’s conduct in America.
As the war worsened, Lee warned that the colonies could not depend on British goodwill and would have to rely on their own efforts. In 1777, he left London, gave up his business, and went to Nantes as a commercial agent for the United States. There, he found corruption in the American supply system and reported what he saw, clashing with Thomas Morris, Silas Deane, Jonathan Williams, Benjamin Franklin, and Robert Morris.
After being pushed out of Nantes, Lee was sent to Berlin and Vienna, where he received no useful audience. Cut off from official diplomacy, he traveled to Aix-la-Chapelle and drafted an unauthorized treaty with a representative tied to Amsterdam merchants. The treaty was later discovered on Henry Laurens and used by Britain as grounds for war with the Dutch Republic, which forced Britain to divert ships from America and helped weaken its blockade before Yorktown.
After the war, Lee returned to Virginia without compensation or public thanks. He died in 1795.
Chapters
0:00 The Lee Family of Virginia and the Sinews of Empire
2:51 The Education of William Lee
5:24 William’s Stratford Hall Apprenticeship
8:31 William’s Success as a London Tobacco Merchant
11:59 William Lee’s Rise in London Politics and Power
16:29 William’s Flight to France
18:22 Silas Deane and Benjamin Franklin: More Corruption in Nantes
20:53 William’s Militia Diplomacy Masterstroke
25:25 The Dutch Treaty Triggers War
27:53 A Bitter Homecoming: Forgotten, Alone, and Blind
31:54 The Legacy of William Lee
Sources Referenced in this Episode:
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Potts, Louis W.: Arthur Lee: A Virtuous Revolutionary, https://amzn.to/4vpFLOF
Riggs, A.R.: The Nine Lives of Arthur Lee, Virginia Patriot, https://amzn.to/3Rh08Pd
Nagel, Paul C.: The Lees of Virginia: Seven Generations of an American Dynasty, https://amzn.to/4uCI6o9
Hendrick, Burton J.: The Lees of Virginia, https://amzn.to/4uCN4BF
Lee, Cazenove G. Jr.: Lee Chronicle: Studies of the Early Generations of the Lees, https://amzn.to/4vGzbDe
McGaughy, J. Kent: Richard Henry Lee of Virginia, https://amzn.to/4ewtGA4
Burt, Nathaniel: First Families: The Making of an American Aristocracy, https://amzn.to/3Sopnj2
American Revolutionaries in the Making By Charles S. Sydnor, https://amzn.to/4dZsPaZ
The First Gentlemen of Virginia By Louis B. Wright, https://amzn.to/43dW3Oh
Tobacco Culture By T. H. Breen,https://amzn.to/43N4FLY