The hero of Paulus Hook, the leader of Lee’s Legion, the eulogizer of Washington, sat alone in a dank cell. “This depot of misery,” he described it to his son-in-law Bernard Carter.1
Henry Lee was isolated, humbled, and destitute. His name was in ruins. And despite his attempts to shield them from the consequences of his own actions, his family was left with little. Originally imprisoned in Westmoreland County, after a few months Lee was hauled north to Spotsylvania Courthouse to serve time for yet more debt.
The bars and chains keeping him from freedom provided no sanctuary from the hounding creditors. William Brock, representing William Augustine Washington, appeared at Spotsylvania Courthouse curious to know when Lee would settle his debts, but the prisoner shrugged him off, saying that he was “too much indisposed to attend to any business.”2
There was another matter preoccupying his mind.
Remarkably, as he languished in his cell, Lee had conjured a way to transcend the despair, to find release, not in body but in mind. He had returned to the central epoch in both his and the country’s formation.
Though a soldier, a politician and a planter—to varying degrees of success—Lee was at heart a historian. He had argued for the creation of monuments to Greene and Washington as a means to elucidate their deeds for future Americans. He had used his soaring rhetoric to the same purpose in his eulogy for the second of those two great generals. Even his diatribe against Jefferson in 1808 was in essence a chronicle of the era. Now, to cut through the prison gloom, to revisit long-past days of grandeur from his squalid present, and perhaps most important, to enshrine his own place in the saga of America, Lee set out to sketch a record of the Revolution.
The idea of the project was conceived before his incarceration; in its original iteration it was to be a biography of Greene. But Lee soon realized that he knew far too little about the Rhode Islander’s life prior to the Revolution to fill an entire book. So his focus shifted. He would compose a memoir of the conflict, centered on the campaign in the Southern states, where he had spent the final years of his service and played such a crucial part in the climactic battles at the war’s conclusion.
Initially he drew upon his own memories. But in some cases these had grown dim. Nearly thirty years had passed since Lee rode home to Virginia, leaving his Legion and Greene’s army behind. So as he proceeded with the project, he filled the gaps in his recollections with the memories of old comrades.
“The books extant upon our war deal so much in the general as to overlook all individual,” he wrote to Charles Simms, a veteran of the Virginia Line who helped Lee gather firsthand accounts from other offices, “which can only be sought for in the memory of living actors of the manuscripts of the dead, thus I am very troublesome where my wishes are indulged in by my brother officers.”3
In fact, word of the endeavor heartened Lee’s old comrades. John Mercer, another Virginian veteran, happily lent his firsthand account of the Battle of Brandywine. “Whatever General Lee writes on this subject will most probably from his genius and reputation bear a value with distant posterity,” he enthused.4
William R. Davie, the commissary general of Greene’s army and, like Lee, a cavalry officer turned politician, lent his own memories of the Battle of Charlotte, which had been committed to paper “while circumstances were fresh in my memory.” Davis wrote to Lee, “I rejoice that you have imposed on yourself the task of writing the History of the Revolutionary War, by which you will add a claim to the gratitude of your country, perhaps even more important, than the brilliant services you have rendered her in the field.”5
Revolutionary pamphleteer William Goddard, thrilled by Lee’s project, wrote to express to the author his delight that “Brother Officers dear to your heart, many of them beloved friends of mine would, through your sympathy and generosity be rescued from the Gulph of oblivion.”6
Christopher R. Greene, a young relative of the general, whom Lee had never met, wrote reverently to Lee, sharing materials at Goddard’s urging and buoying the old hero with flattery: “when time shall have enforced on you, the immutable law of Nature, your memory may never be obscured.”7 Phebe Champe, the widow of John Champe, whom Lee had dispatched to apprehend Benedict Arnold, shared her husband’s papers. Even Nathaniel Pendleton, who had so recently sought Lee’s arrest, eventually lent his diaries from the era.8
These materials provided the missing pieces of his story, while the enthusiasm and encouragement pushed Lee to consecrate the shared past. Lee’s Memoirs answered the question he raised in their pages: “When future generations shall inquire, Where are the men who gained the highest prize of glory in the arduous contest which ushered in our nation’s birth?”9
Lee’s own role in the pivotal events, his connections with key players, his knowledge and love of history, and his rhetorical genius all made him the perfect author for the story. As Davie declared, “this work seems to have been reserved by Providence by your pen.”10
Lee submerged himself in the project, sitting on the grassy lawn outside the Spotsylvania Courthouse or in his damp cell, escaping from his present troubles, passing the days. Letters and documents arrived, and the writing went on. The result was both sprawling and intense, littered with vivid details that had lingered in his mind for so many years. “The determination of the mind to relinquish the soft scenes of tranquil life for the rough adventures of war,” the manuscript began, “is generally attended with the conviction that the act is laudable; and with a wish that its honorable exertions should be faithfully transmitted to posterity.”11
The story began in 1777, as Ticonderoga fell under the boot of Burgoyne; it ended only when Leslie sailed away from Charleston in 1782. Between these were exciting episodes featuring the faces of old friends now long gone: the hair-raising escape on the Schuylkill River with Alexander Hamilton, Champe’s daring spy adventure, the American army’s dash across the Dan, and the journeys through South Carolina’s swamps with Francis Marion.
Ancient heroes strode across the pages, mingling with those of the current age. Quintus Maximus and Publius Scipio rubbed elbows with George Washington and Nathanael Greene. The Battle of Brandywine recalled the Battle of Cannae.
The embellishments were poetic, the details vivid. Lee painted the scorching sun and foggy morn that preceded the attack on Fort Granby; the hissing of flaming arrows descending on Fort Motte; the worn shoes, tattered clothes, and threadbare blankets during marches; the British muskets glittering in the sun before battle; and the bodies of the dead rotting in the pouring rain after. “This night succeeding this day of blood was rainy, dark and cold; the dead unburied, the wounded unsheltered, the groans of the dying and the shrieks of the living, cast a deeper shade over the gloom of nature,” he wrote of the hours following the conflict at Guilford Courthouse. His pen conjured to life the defeated British army, marching at Yorktown with their colors cased, drums beating.12
To a manuscript swelling in size to hundreds of pages, Lee appended letters and statistics and, true to form, many opinions: General Charles Lee, whom he had admired since their dinner at Mount Vernon so long ago, had been needlessly maligned in the wake of Monmouth; he was “guilty only of neglect,” rather than disobedience.13 The Siege of Ninety-Six had failed because of the blunders of Tadeusz Kosciusko, who was, Lee wrote, an “extremely amiable, and, I believe, a truly good man, nor was he deficient in his professional knowledge; but he was very moderate in talent.”14
There were topical asides. Lee labeled slavery a “dreadful evil, which the cruel policy of preceding times had introduced,” and rued that the Constitution had not stipulated its gradual prohibition.15 And he defended America’s original inhabitants. “I could never see the justice of denominating our Indian borderers savage,” he observed. “They appear to me to merit a very different appellation, as we well know they are not behind their civilized neighbors in the practice of many of the virtues most dear to human nature.”16
There was also history to set straight. Charles Stedman, a British soldier who had fought in and later penned a history of the war, had castigated Lee and his Legion over the brutal encounter with Colonel John Pyle and his men in North Carolina. As he had written in 1794, “humanity shudders at the recital of so foul a massacre.” It was not foul, Lee asserted, but unintentional. “The fire commenced upon us, and self-preservation commanded the limited destruction which ensued.”17
And there were scores to settle. Thomas Jefferson had risen to the presidency, and Lee’s political fortunes had faded. Narrating the course of the Revolution, in which the former had been a spectator, the latter a solider, presented Lee with a chance to dent the legacy of his nemesis.
When Benedict Arnold had sailed up the James River and sacked Richmond early in 1781, Virginia, governed by Jefferson at the time, had wilted. Surprised that the traitor and his legion would set their sights on the capital, the state’s chief executive had failed to take proper precautions—a restoration of the state’s militia, Lee estimated, would have easily snuffed out Arnold’s expedition.
“But unfortunately we were unprepared, and efforts to make ready commenced after the enemy was knocking at the doors,” Lee charged. “The government which does not prepare in time, doubles the power of its adversary, and sports with the lives of its citizens.”18
Though Lee scarcely mentioned Jefferson, this was an attack on the Sage of Monticello—and one that stung sharply. After Arnold had burned and left Richmond, Jefferson’s actions were investigated by Virginia’s General Assembly. The investigation cleared him of any wrongdoing, but he was not retained for another term. He later admitted that he had been “unprepared by his line of life and education for command of armies.”19 The taint of the retreat from Richmond remained with Jefferson; when he sought the presidency, critics, referencing the summit he traversed to escape from Monticello when the British approached, branded him “the coward of Carter Mountain.”20 Now Lee chiseled this embarrassing episode into history, to Jefferson’s horror.
“It will scarcely be credited by posterity, that the governor of the oldest state of the Union, and the most populous,” Lee disdainfully concluded, “was driven out of its metropolis, and forced to secure personal safety by flight, and that its archives, with all its munitions and stores, were yielded to the will of the invader. . . .”21
Lee made sure to underline his connections to and shower praise on treasured friends and heroes. Greene was a “Soldier of consummate talents,” Washington constantly striving to “perfect his army in the art of war.”22 But the hero of the Memoirs, mounting his horse and dashing across the pages, was, naturally, Lee.
There was no mention of the court martials, or the wild ambition that had led him to turn down Washington’s offer of a promotion. Nor did he write of the fit of pique that had ended his participation in the war. Instead he took the opportunity to embellish his significant contributions. This was most clearly evident in his sly suggestion that he had not merely endorsed but rather proposed that Greene take the American army south after the Battle of Guilford Courthouse—the strategy that eventually carried the day in the Southern campaign.
The Memoirs were classic Henry Lee: self-serving, discursive, flamboyant, erudite, provocative, and—as time would reveal—a definitive account of the subject.
The book, Lee told Simms, was largely completed by January of 1810. But, he explained, it was “written with too much freedom for the times and will appear without my name.” Its commentaries were sure to be controversial. He hoped to have the final product perused and edited by friends—though this was impossible at the moment—and that it would be printed in two volumes and available via subscription.23
By the spring Lee had begun to see the light at the end of the tunnel. Taking advantage of Virginia’s bankruptcy laws, he compiled a lengthy list of his possessions, which would be dispersed to pay off remaining debts. This was not an easy thing for him to do; it meant trading his children’s inheritance for his own freedom. To Bernard Carter, he confessed how difficult it was “for a man whose property is large to bring himself to deprive his family of it.” Straining to preserve something for their future comfort, he had Carter shelter $4,000 worth of furniture as well as six hundred acres of land in Loudon County.24
The rest of his assets, though—a collection of land staggering in size, ranging across Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Tennessee—were dispersed to meet the multitude of financial obligations. On March 20, after over a year in prison, Lee was freed, “discharged from the custody of the Sheriff or Keeper of the jail of the said County.”25 His manuscript in hand, Lee returned to Stratford Hall to reunite with Anne and their children.
Anne Lee had to strain to see the traces of the dashing governor she had long ago fallen in love with in the man who returned to her from prison. During his absence Carter Berkeley, who had married her now dead sister, had offered his spacious Fredericksburg home to Anne and her children. But Lee had pleaded with her to wait for him at Stratford Hall. “Mr. Lee constantly assures me, his intention is, to live with his family: after his release from his present situation,” she informed Berkeley.26
So the family was at last reunited in the spring of 1810. Lee’s book was not yet completed, despite his earlier claims. He continued the labor, the profits of which would now be put towards helping his family. Richard Bland Lee had lent his older brother $7,000. Now the elder Lee conveyed the rights to his memoirs as payment of that debt and convinced his younger brother to buy lots in Alexandria with the proceeds of the book and hold them for Anne and her children. Lee had dragged his wife and children to the brink of destitution, but he did what little was in his power to aid them.27
In May, Richard Bland Lee was busy soliciting potential publishers and distributing a prospectus for the work, which would be titled Memoirs of the War in the Southern Department of the United States by an Officer of the Southern Army.28
Despite his infamy, Lee was able to still dip a toe into politics, serving as a judge on the Westmoreland County Court shortly after his return to Westmoreland County. But his time in the Northern Neck was coming to an end.29 He passed his life interest in Stratford Hall on to Henry IV, in order to pay yet another debt. Lee’s oldest son had dutifully supported his father, even writing letters following up on his still-not-yet-awarded congressional medal while he languished in jail.30
Anne had agreed to wait for his release, but she would no longer gamble her family’s fate on his reckless behavior. Instead she exerted her own will over their destiny, seeking out a new and at last stable home.
With a new master at Stratford, her family would move north to Alexandria. The bustling port town was bounded in two directions by “Washington”: the growing capital city was to its north, across the Potomac. And to its south was Mount Vernon, whose dead master’s memory lived on in the hearts of the town’s Federalist denizens.
The Lees had family in Alexandria. William Henry Fitzhugh, a cousin of Anne’s, owned property there. Edmund Jennings, Lee’s pious younger brother, was a local politician and served on the vestry of Christ Church. Richard Bland Lee, Lee’s harried brother, also soon arrived in Alexandria after selling his plantation, Sully, a consequence of the financial troubles brought on by his elder brother.31
The city was buoyant, full of culture, home to a theatre and a firehouse, and filled with friends. And the quality of the schools and doctors was what Anne desired for her children—and had not been available on the Northern Neck. The new home Anne secured in Alexandria was a modest two-story Federal affair built, like so many dwellings in the town, of red brick, sitting quietly at 611 Cameron Street. Its owner, John Bogue, a prosperous local cabinetmaker who had participated in George Washington’s funeral procession, leased the home when he moved to a larger residence.32
In the final weeks of 1810 the family gathered their scant remaining belongings—a few books, a clock, and a cradle—and headed to their new home. Left behind were the dark memories of Stratford Hall; the only marker remaining there was the growing horse-chestnut tree that Anne had planted in the garden under the eyes of her youngest son, Robert.33