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At the Institute’s core is the Gilder Lehrman Collection, one of the great archives in American history. More than 85,000 items cover five hundred years of American history, from Columbus’s 1493 letter describing the New World through the end of the twentieth century.

Lee, Richard Henry, 1732-1794 to William Lee

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Gilder Lehrman Collection #: GLC03719 Author/Creator: Lee, Richard Henry, 1732-1794 Place Written: Virginia Type: Autograph letter signed Date: 19 June 1771 Pagination: 3 p. : address : docket ; Height: 32 cm, Width: 21 cm Order a Copy

Signed with initials "RHL". Describes the Regulator movement in North Carolina, a rebellion by backcountry farmers against lawyers, whose high legal fees and manipulation of debt laws were hurting them. North Carolina Governor William Tryon, although he claimed to agree with the insurgents, resorted to suppression by force: he "fell upon the unsuspecting multitudes and made great slaughter with cannons." The royal governor needed more than a thousand troops to defeat the Regulators at the Battle of Alamance on May 16, 1771.

Lee, Richard Henry, 1732-1794
Lee, William, 1739-1795
Tryon, William, 1729-1788

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