New York Septr. 29. 1787
Dear Sir,
According to your request I now enclose you the Amendments that I proposed to the new Constitution.1 I incline to think that unless some such alterations & provisions as these are interposed for the security of those essential rights of Mankind without which liberty cannot exist, we shall soon find that the New plan of Government will be far more inconvenient than anything sustained under the present Government. And that to avoid Scilla we shall have fallen upon Caribdis.
I am yours sincerely,
Richard Henry Lee
Receiver's copy, Daughters of the American Revolution, Washington, D.C., 2000X-48b. Endorsed by Gerry: "Colonel R H Lees propositions to amend the Constitution, Sepr 1787."
1 These proposed "Amendments" had first been introduced in Congress during debate on September 27, but were not entered on the journals. Cf. Melancton Smith's
, September 27, note 12; and JCC, 33:540 - 44. Lee also sent copies of the amendments to George Mason (October 1), William Shippen, Jr. (October 2), Samuel Adams (October 5), and Gov. Edmund Randolph (October 16). Manuscript copies were widely circulated in Virginia and the amendments were first published in the November 16 edition of the Winchester Virginia Gazette. They were published again, together with Lee's October 16 letter to Randolph, in the December 6 issue of the Petersburg Virginia Gazette, which was reprinted in the Pennsylvania Packet on December 20. The Packet printing was subsequently reprinted in newspapers and pamphlet anthologies throughout the United States and these constituted Lee's chief public opposition to the Constitution. For the distribution and printing of Lee's amendments and the intense opposition they provoked, see Doc. Hist. of Ratif., 8:59 - 61, 14:364 - 66. For an assessment of Lee's pivotal role in rousing early doubts about the proposed constitution in its present form, see Richard Leffler, "`A Peep Behind the Curtain': Richard Henry Lee and the Early Opposition to the Constitution," Documentary Editing 9 (September 1987): 1 - 6.
It had long been assumed, based upon slim contemporary evidence, that Lee also wrote the letters of "The Federal Farmer," dated October 8 - 10, 12 - 13, in rebuttal to "The Republican." They became available in New York in pamphlet form as early as November 8. One of the most significant antifederalist publications penned during the debate over the Constitution, Observations Leading to a Fair Examination of the System of Government Proposed by the Late Convention. In a Number of Letters from the Federal Farmer to the Republican went through four editions, three of which are extant (Evans, Am. Bibliography, nos. 20,454 - 56). It was widely distributed and elicited numerous essays by detractors and supporters that were published in newspapers throughout the states. They were followed in May 1788 by An Additional Number of Letters from the Federal Farmer to the Republican (ibid., no. 21,197).
The attribution of these pseudonymous essays to Lee was first questioned by William W. Crosskey in a cryptic note in the second volume of his Politics and the Constitution in the History of the United States, 3 vols. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953 - 80), 2:1300, and thoroughly refuted two decades later by Gordon S. Wood. Arguing that the link to Lee rested solely on an assertion by "New England" in a December 24 article in the Connecticut Courant, Wood traced the growing acceptance of that assumption over the next two centuries. Examining Lees's writings and the Federal Farmer's letters afresh, Wood found it unlikely they were "the product of the same mind," and concluded that "nothing of what we know of Lee's life and career, none of the remains of his correspondence, nothing in his grandson's Memoir published in 1825 suggest that Lee was the author of the Federal Farmer essays." Besides, he argued, other evidence "points to the likelihood that he was a New Yorker." See "The Authorship of the Letters from the Federal Farmer," WMQ, 31 (April 1974): 299 - 308. For the essays themselves and a review of their publication, see Doc. Hist. of Ratif., 14:14 - 54; and Storing, Complete Anti-Federalist, 2:214 - 357, which also includes the "additional" letters.
In a similar vein, six essays by "Cincinnatus," published in the New York Journal from November 1 to December 6 in answer to an October 6 speech by James Wilson to the citizens of Philadelphia, were also attributed by contemporaries to Richard Henry Lee, a claim equally ignored by recent authorities. See Doc. Hist. of Ratif., 13:529 - 34, 14:11 - 14, 124 - 28, 186 - 91, 303 - 10, 360 - 64; and Storing, Complete Anti-Federalist, 6:5 - 33.