Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 145, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 June 1916 — LET FAME PASS BY [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

LET FAME PASS BY

How It Was Richard Henry Lee Did Not Write Declaration of Independence. HERCHEZ la femme.” / Wherever and whenever I . man performs a great, noteworthy action the eternal feminine seems sure to have a hand. Even the Declaration of Independence would not have been written as it is or by the hand that penned it but for a woman. Thomas Jefferson would not have won eternal fame by writing the famous document whereby the colonies declared themselves free and independent of England if there had not “been a woman in it." But for a woman, a man’s love, the devotion of two tender hearts, another man would be credited with the Declaration of Independence, and Thomas Jefferson in all probability would be known to posterity only as one of the signers. There was a woman in the case—but not one connected in any romantic way with Jefferson. Mrs. Richard Henry Lee, wife of a delegate to the Continental congress from Virginia, was the woman. She was no female political intriguer, such as at different times-have helped,to sway the destiny of nations. She exerted no influence over Jefferson, or over the first congress. She merely became seriously ill in her Virginia home on June 10, 1776, necessitating the presence of her husband at her bedside, and thus clearing the way for Jefferson to become famous as the ere-

ator of the Declaration of Independence. But for Richard Henry Lee’s love for his wife, his would be the name to go ringing down through all time in place of that of Thomas Jefferson. Lee was the man originally selected by the delegates to Introduce in congress a resolution declaring the colonies free ,and independent. He did this on June 7, 1776. Congress, after much deliberation, agreed to the appointment of a committee of five to draft a Declaration of Independence, and Lee, victor in the fight that had raged against his resolution, was to have been made chairman. As such, and qualified in every way, he would have been the one selected to draft the document. In fact, this arrangement had been made and settled —and then, on the night of June 10, on the eve of the triumph of his career, Lee received word that his wife lay seriously ill at home and begged for him to come to her side. Had Lee been a less devoted husband, he might have wavered. On one hand were the highest political honors, honors that he long had been striving for; on the other, a loving wife. Lee did not hesitate. * “Many other men may be able to take my place in drafting my country’s Declaration of Independence,” he said, "but no one else in the world can take my place at the side of my sick wife.” He mounted a horse at once, and turned his back on Philadelphia and one of the most significant crises in the world’s history. He went straight to where his wife lay waiting for him, and back in Philadelphia Thomas Jefferson was appointed chairman of the committee, and the rest Is history.

Richard Henry Lee.