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After being released from jail in March 1810, Lee moved his family for a time to Alexandria, Virginia. In July 1812, after the outbreak of the [[War of 1812]] with Britain--a war he had opposed--Lee was involved in a riot in [[Baltimore, Maryland|Baltimore]], [[Maryland]], when he and several other Federalists defended a Federalist newspaper office against a Republican mob. Following the disorder, Lee and his friends were jailed; the mob subsequently broke into the jail and beat the men so badly that one later died, and Lee himself was left with permanent injuries, both physical and mental. He returned to Alexandria to recover (only partially successfully), then left the country in May 1813, touring the [[West Indies]] to fully regain his health. After fruitless wandering through the Caribbean, Lee began his return to the country in early 1818, but made it only as far as Cumberland Island on the [[Georgia]] coast, dying on March 25 at the plantation of Nathanael Greene's daughter Louisa.
After being released from jail in March 1810, Lee moved his family for a time to Alexandria, Virginia. In July 1812, after the outbreak of the [[War of 1812]] with Britain--a war he had opposed--Lee was involved in a riot in [[Baltimore, Maryland|Baltimore]], [[Maryland]], when he and several other Federalists defended a Federalist newspaper office against a Republican mob. Following the disorder, Lee and his friends were jailed; the mob subsequently broke into the jail and beat the men so badly that one later died, and Lee himself was left with permanent injuries, both physical and mental. He returned to Alexandria to recover (only partially successfully), then left the country in May 1813, touring the [[West Indies]] to fully regain his health. After fruitless wandering through the Caribbean, Lee began his return to the country in early 1818, but made it only as far as Cumberland Island on the [[Georgia]] coast, dying on March 25 at the plantation of Nathanael Greene's daughter Louisa.
==Character and Beliefs==
Historian M. E. Bradford described Lee as "the definitive military Federalist." Like many officers in the Continental Army, his frustrations in dealing with the limitations of the state governments and militias and of Congress under the [[Articles of Confederation]] led him to support a more powerful federal government, one that could above all adequately defend the nation in time of war. Before the writing of the Constitution, he wrote to a kinsman, "[We need] wisdom & vigor in a supreme power, created by the whole." As a member of the Virginia gentry, and a man steeped in tales of ancient virtue, he also feared that America under the Articles was drifting towards radical democracy, with its threats of anarchy and demagogic rulers. The Constitution was, to him, a check on the potential for mob rule.
At the same time, Lee's nationalism did not extend to support for a complete centralization of government power. The economic policies of such Federalists as Alexander Hamilton quickly alienated him, and he came to fear that the new national authority would attempt to usurp the rightful powers of the states. In addition, as a Southerner, Lee worried early on that the federal government would become dominated by Northerners, who would run it for the benefit of their section alone. As early as April 1790, he contemplated the possibility of Southern secession as a response to this threat, writing to James Madison, "To disunite is dreadful to my mind, but dreadful as it is, I consider it a lesser evil than union on the present conditions"--these being Hamilton's "funding and assumption" proposal, among other things.
Though not as openly religious as some of the [[Founding Fathers]], Lee was nonetheless a firm Christian. He was a member of the Episcopal Church throughout his life, and his opposition to the [[French Revolution]] (which sparked his return to the Federalists) was based partly on his view of it as a mortal threat to Christian civilization. In one of his last letters, he urged his sons to place their trust in the Christian faith, without being dogmatic about their particular branch of it.
==Family==
==Family==