opposed to him because of his championship of labour. He therefore founded La Réforme in which to advance his propaganda. Between Ledru-Rollin and Odilon Barrot with the other chiefs of the “dynastic Left” there were acute differences, hardly dissimulated even during the temporary alliance which produced the campaign of the banquets. It was the speeches of Ledru-Rollin and Louis Blanc at working-men’s banquets in Lille, Dijon and Châlons that really heralded the revolution. Ledru-Rollin prevented the appointment of the duchess of Orleans as regent in 1848. He and Lamartine held the tribune in the Chamber of Deputies until the Parisian populace stopped serious discussion by invading the Chamber. He was minister of the interior in the provisional government, and was also a member of the executive committee[1] appointed by the Constituent Assembly, from which Louis Blanc and the extremists were excluded. At the crisis of the 15th of May he definitely sided with Lamartine and the party of order against the proletariat. Henceforward his position was a difficult one. He never regained his influence with the working classes, who considered they had been betrayed; but to his short ministry belongs the credit of the establishment of a working system of universal suffrage. At the presidential election in December he was put forward as the Socialist candidate, but secured only 370,000 votes. His opposition to the policy of President Louis Napoleon, especially his Roman policy, led to his moving the impeachment of the president and his ministers. The motion was defeated, and next day (June 13, 1849) he headed what he called a peaceful demonstration, and his enemies armed insurrection. He himself escaped to London where he joined the executive of the revolutionary committee of Europe, with Kossuth and Mazzini among his colleagues. He was accused of complicity in an obscure attempt (1857) against the life of Napoleon III., and condemned in his absence to deportation. Émile Ollivier removed the exceptions from the general amnesty in 1870, and Ledru-Rollin returned to France after twenty years of exile. Though elected in 1871 in three departments he refused to sit in the National Assembly, and took no serious part in politics until 1874 when he was returned to the Assembly as member for Vaucluse. He died on the 31st of December of that year.
Under Louis Philippe he made large contributions to French jurisprudence, editing the Journal du palais, 1791–1837 (27 vols., 1837), and 1837–1847 (17 vols.), with a commentary Répertoire général de la jurisprudence française (8 vols., 1843–1848), the introduction to which was written by himself. His later writings were political in character. See Ledru-Rollin, ses discours et ses écrits politiques (2 vols., Paris, 1879), edited by his widow.
LEDYARD, JOHN (1751–1789), American traveller, was born in Groton, Connecticut, U.S.A. After vainly trying law and theology, Ledyard adopted a seaman’s life, and, coming to London, was engaged as corporal of marines by Captain Cook for his third voyage (1776). On his return (1778) Ledyard had to give up to the Admiralty his copious journals, but afterwards published, from memory, a meagre narrative of his experiences—herein giving the only account of Cook’s death by an eye-witness (Hartford, U.S.A., 1783). He continued in the British service till 1782, when he escaped, off Long Island. In 1784 he revisited Europe, to organize an expedition to the American North-West. Having failed in his attempts, he decided to reach his goal by travelling across Europe and Asia. Baffled in his hopes of crossing the Baltic on the ice (Stockholm to Abo), he walked right round from Stockholm to St Petersburg, where he arrived barefoot and penniless (March 1787). Here he made friends with Pallas and others, and accompanied Dr Brown, a Scotch physician in the Russian service, to Siberia. Ledyard left Dr Brown at Barnaul, went on to Tomsk and Irkutsk, visited Lake Baikal, and descended the Lena to Yakutsk (18th of September 1787). With Captain Joseph Billings, whom he had known on Cook’s “Resolution,” he returned to Irkutsk, where he was arrested, deported to the Polish frontier, and banished from Russia for ever. Reaching London, he was engaged by Sir Joseph Banks and the African Association to explore overland routes from Alexandria to the Niger, but in Cairo he succumbed to a dose of vitriol (17th of January 1789). Though a born explorer, little resulted from his immense but ill-directed activities.
See Memoirs of the Life and Travels of John Ledyard, by Jared Sparks (1828).
LEE, ANN (1736–1784), English religious visionary, was born in
Manchester, where she was first a factory hand and afterwards a
cook. She is remembered by her connexion with the sect known as
Shakers (q.v.). She died at Watervliet, near Albany, New York.
LEE, ARTHUR (1740–1792), American diplomatist, brother
of Richard Henry Lee, was born at Stratford, Westmoreland
county, Virginia, on the 20th of December 1740. He was
educated at Eton, studied medicine at Edinburgh, practised as
a physician in Williamsburg, Virginia, read law at the Temple,
London, in 1766–1770, and practised law in London in 1770–1776.
He was an intimate of John Wilkes, whom he aided in one of his
London campaigns. In 1770–1775 he served as London agent
for Massachusetts, second to Benjamin Franklin, whom he
succeeded in 1775. At that time he had shown great ability as
a pamphleteer, having published in London The Monitor (1768),
seven essays previously printed in Virginia; The Political
Detection: or the Treachery and Tyranny of Administration, both
at Home and Abroad (1770), signed “Junius Americanus”; and
An Appeal to the Justice and Interests of the People of Great
Britain in the Present Disputes with America (1774), signed
“An Old Member of Parliament.” In December 1775 the
Committee of Secret Correspondence of Congress chose him its
European agent principally for the purpose of ascertaining the
views of France, Spain, and other European countries regarding
the war between the colonies and Great Britain. In October
1776 he was appointed, upon the refusal of Jefferson, on the
commission with Franklin and Silas Deane to negotiate a treaty
of alliance, amity and commerce with France, and also to
negotiate with other European governments. His letters to
Congress, in which he expressed his suspicion of Deane’s business
integrity and criticized his accounts, resulted in Deane’s recall;
and other letters impaired the confidence of Congress in Franklin,
of whom he was especially jealous. Early in 1777 he went to
Spain as American commissioner, but received no official
recognition, was not permitted to proceed farther than Burgos,
and accomplished nothing; until the appointment of Jay,
however, he continued to act as commissioner to Spain, held
various conferences with the Spanish minister in Paris, and in
January 1778 secured a promise of a loan of 3,000,000 livres,
only a small part of which (some 170,000 livres) was paid. In
June 1777 he went to Berlin, where, as in Spain, he was not
officially recognized. Although he had little to do with the
negotiations, he signed with Franklin and Deane in February
1778 the treaties between the United States and France. Having
become unpopular at the courts of France and Spain, Lee was
recalled in 1779, and returned to the United States in September
1780. He was a member of the Virginia House of Delegates in
1781 and a delegate to the Continental Congress in 1782–1785.
With Oliver Wolcott and Richard Butler he negotiated a treaty
with the Six Nations, signed at Fort Stanwix on the 22nd of
October 1784, and with George Clark and Richard Butler a
treaty with the Wyandot, Delaware, Chippewa and Ottawa
Indians, signed at Ft. McIntosh on the 21st of January 1785.
He was a member of the treasury board in 1784–1789. He
strongly opposed the constitution, and after its adoption retired
to his estate at Urbana, Virginia, where he died on the 12th of
December 1792.
See R. H. Lee, Life of Arthur Lee (2 vols., Boston, 1829), and C. H. Lee, A Vindication of Arthur Lee (Richmond, Virginia, 1894), both partisan. Much of Lee’s correspondence is to be found in Wharton’s Revolutionary Diplomatic Correspondence (Washington, 1889). Eight volumes of Lee’s MSS. in the Harvard University Library are described and listed in Library of Harvard University, Bibliographical Contributions, No. 8 (Cambridge, 1882).
LEE, FITZHUGH (1835–1905), American cavalry general, was born at Clermont, in Fairfax county, Virginia, on the 19th of November 1835. He was the grandson of “Light Horse Harry” Lee, and the nephew of Robert E. Lee. His father, Sydney Smith Lee, was a fleet captain under Commodore Perry in Japanese waters and rose to the rank of commodore; his
- ↑ Arago, Garnier-Pagès, Marie, Lamartine, and Ledru-Rollin.
