Address to Freeholders of Fairfax, Loudoun, and Prince-William.

• imprint_number: 1794.031
• title: To the freeholders of the district of Fairfax, Loudoun, and Prince-William. As it is not improbable that Mr. Lee will inforce his address to his constituents by suggesting that his colleagues were informed of it, and would, if they had been able, have refuted its doctrines; it becomes the duty of those who have the means of information, and who have formed a different opinion of his conduct, to obviate such a belief – when their neglect is more properly to be ascribed to the employment of their stations, and a contempt for the attack.
• sequence_number: 31
• year: 1794
• place_issued: Virginia
• issuing_press: Uncertain
• author: -----
• notes: An anti-administration commentary on the pro-British thinking of Richard Bland Lee (1761-1827), then the U.S. congressman for the district centered on Alexandria, during the ongoing Anglo-French War which disrupted the Atlantic trade that was the port-town's life-blood.
  The only known copy, held by the New York Public Library and filmed by the Early American Imprints Series, lacks its title page, and so printer credit; title noted above is a caption title; content indicates that it was published after the adjournment of Congress on June 9, 1794. Some authorities credit authorship here to William Armisted Burwell (1780-1821); however, the work is clearly not that of a fourteen-year-old boy; address is argued as a lawyer would present a case in court, and Burwell did not study for the law until he left William & Mary in 1798; so such an attribution is obviously incorrect.
  Lee's pro-administration stance led to being denied re-election to Congress in 1794, perhaps as a result of this address; he lost his seat to Richard Brent (1757-1814) of Prince William, an anti-administration lawyer who could have been the author of this title. Evans credited this item to an unknown Richmond press; however, Alexandria supported a press conducted by merchant Ellis Price and printer Henry Gird at this time, so this imprint could just as easily been issued there as in the state capital, thus the indeterminate location attribution here.
  
  
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