During Sunday services at Alexandria’s Christ Church, parishioners shuffled into the Georgian building and along its bricked floors, taking their seats in the elevated box pews nestled inside.
Customarily, parents faced the parson, children away. As the Reverend William Meade began his services, young Mary Louisa Slacum locked eyes with an elderly man seated with his family across the aisle. His bright black eye cut a startling contrast to the white binding wrapped around his forehead and under his chin. His glance terrified the girl. It struck a similar note of fear in the heart of the town’s other children, though they were told that this monster had once been a great warrior in the struggle for independence.1
At the conclusion of a sparkling banquet in Alexandria on Christmas night, 1812, the Reverend Dr. John Pierce, a visitor from Massachusetts, spotted a frightening figure. A late arriver joined the party, his head covered by black cloth. His face was decorated with scars; the entire length of his nose was split, his left eye shut. This mangled man, the astonished Pierce learned, had been a Revolutionary War officer and an intimate of George Washington. And indeed when he joined the group, with a charm incongruous to his appearance, he held the company rapt with remarkable tales of that great man.2
Years of financial strain and the shame of debt had wounded Henry Lee’s spirit, and Baltimore’s mob had broken his body. Time and fate had disfigured the dashing cavalier; little consolation came from the whispers of fathers who told their children that there was a hero behind the bandages.
Doctors and the passing of days had resuscitated Lee to a point. But his suffering was still great. His debts lingered, but the memoirs he had so labored on, the ones he had found release in, and through which he hoped to buoy his family’s fortunes, were at last published in the fall of 1812. “The patriot will be always delighted, the statesmen informed, and the soldier instructed,” declared Bradford & Inskeep. Lee’s memoir, they promised, “bears in every part the ingenious stamp of a patriot soldier; and cannot fail to interest all who desire to understand the causes, and to know the difficulties of our memorable struggle.”3
Appraisals were positive. For seven dollars readers could read a “vindication” of Nathanael Greene, written by a “partisan officer in the War for Independence” who greeted “hostiles” as “honors.” Boston’s Repertory claimed Lee’s “felicity at narrative has a signal charm” and described the book as “a durable monument to his own memory.”4
The American Review of History and Politics, though not entirely uncritical, said that “American readers of every description must follow with lively solicitude and unabated interest, the author of these Memoirs, in almost all his details concerning the sufferings, privations, and extraordinary marches of the troops.”5 And in a reference to Baltimore, the reviewer claimed that to “call up a blush into the cheek, of every American not absolutely callous to the national disgrace, he has but to produce these Memoirs. They will, we trust, soon be, on every account, in the hands of all his countrymen.”6
Lee likely took some solace from the encouraging notices, if he was able to read them; his vision had suffered—the legacy of the hot wax drizzled in his eyes—and the tasks of reading and writing proved laborious. But the reviews did not translate into sales; the much hoped for windfall never appeared.
Apart from his disfigured façade, the beating had also damaged Lee’s insides, crushing his organs and causing constant discomfort. In search of some tonic and to evade his ever pressing financial obligations, he made one last attempt to escape. Exchanging the cold of Virginia’s winter for the warmth of a tropical sun, Lee hoped, would ease his suffering and provide distance not only from his debts, but also from his unhappy circumstances in America. Absence from his family, from whom he had so often parted, was no deterrent.
In early 1813, Lee approached Secretary of State James Monroe again about passage to some southern spot. The proposition was still complicated. Wartime embargoes blocked the Chesapeake Bay. Lee had no means of securing a ship; “without money, as I am, it will be difficult to execute my object,” he warned Monroe.7 In January, when he wrote to Madison offering another round of military advice, Lee lamented “my painful face & the coldness of the season.”8 His degraded condition tugged at the heart of the president. Despite interludes of political disagreement, his friendship with Lee had endured since they were boys under the wing of John Witherspoon in Nassau Hall. Now, at last, he intervened.
At the behest of the president, Monroe spurred Brigadier-General Robert B. Taylor, who commanded military operations around Norfolk, to remove the obstacles; it was, after all, a personal concern. “Genl. Lee in whose welfare the president takes much interest,” Monroe wrote, “is desirous of passing to an island in the West Indies for the recovery health.”9 Taylor did as he was instructed, making arrangements with Admiral John Borlase Warren, then presiding over the British navy in North America, to permit Lee’s departure. A passport was produced, along with a note of permission from Warren allowing Lee to “pass without molestation from Alexandria to the West Indies.”10
He initially intended only to spend a short time away, and then, once he was healthy once more, to return home. There was a wistful tenor to Lee’s correspondence in the days before his departure. When he wrote to Ferdinand O’Neal, a member of his Legion, about the pending voyage, he talked optimistically of a homecoming taking him through Savannah, O’Neal’s home. There he would once again enjoy the treasured company of his “few surviving comrades.”11
In May, Lee hobbled out the door and down the steps of 607 Oronoco Street and disappeared. Anne and their children—sons Carter, Smith, Robert, and baby Mildred, objects of his affection but victims of his tragic life story, were left behind. Before leaving, he did what little he could for them, selling the European copyrights to his memoirs to John Howard Payne in hopes the transaction would provide some material comfort.12 The remaining unsettled debts fell to his stern brother, Edmund Jennings, who had persuaded Lee to meet his obligations before fleeing, to settle. “If I should be obliged to pay this money, it will almost be my ruin,” Lee’s younger sibling fretted, eyeing the financial morass his brother had pulled so many family members into.13
Lee was a destitute traveler, with little to his name but notes for planned biographies of Washington and Greene and a small leather journal. He also carried an effusive letter of introduction from the president “in Hope that it may contribute to secure to him the attention which is due to his services and character.”14
Lee sped away from home and sailed south, passing through Port-au-Prince, its bay wrapping around the Gulf of Gonave in the Kingdom of Haiti and then southeast through the Caribbean Sea to the island of Barbados, arriving on its pearlescent shores in June. Colonial Governor George Beckwith welcomed the wanderer warmly.
Away from America, Lee could not put the war with Britain out of his mind. Striking up a dialogue with Beckwith that the Englishman “neither sought nor shunned,” he shared “reflections on the sad and wanton war, waged by my Country against yours,” that “makes me wonder and weak by terms.”15
Lee, presuming to speak for Madison and Monroe, conducted rogue diplomacy, pressing Beckwith about a possible treaty. The governor wisely viewed Lee’s diplomatic initiative with a jaundiced eye, speculating that the president and secretary of state “were pleased to hold a different language” in private conversations with Lee.16
In his exile, ending the war became an obsession with Lee. The British sailors and soldiers he met in Barbados, Lee claimed, were uniformly opposed to the conflict. And in his experience, Americans shared those sentiments. “I have never met with but a single individual, who applauds the war,” he informed Rufus King, the former minister to Britain and current Federalist senator from New York. The war was unwinnable and would only lead to woe. America’s aim in fighting the war—that Britain would cede her maritime rights—was unachievable, a reality that should “induce us to sheathing our swords.”17
Lee was fixated on extricating his country from this “fatal labyrinth.” He persisted in unwanted mediation, writing to Monroe to suggest that legislation forbidding naturalized citizens from serving in the Navy would swiftly end the war and relieve American citizens from fighting for the rights of non-natives. “But really my heart so honestly deplores the war,” he confessed to Madison, “that I turn with delight to its only pleasant part—how can its conclusion be most easily effected?”18
His efforts to end the war served almost as a form of therapy; “Bitter as are my reflexions on the past and personally uncomfortable as is the prospect before me I forgot my own sorrows in those of our afflicted country,” he explained to King.19
For a period, his health seemed to improve. “Had I not escaped from my country, the climate must have finished me ere now,” Lee told the president. “As it is, I am much bettered & have the agreeable prospect of being restored to my usual health & strength.” In thanks, Lee sent Madison a bottle of fine five-year-old Madeira and the largest green turtle he could find.20
Before leaving home, he had had “one foot in the grave,” and the removal to the islands lifted Lee’s spirits—but only for a time. Comforted by the warmth of the sun and vistas of turquoise waves, the initial improvement he claimed in his health was more psychological than physical. It quickly gave way to more distress. “Since that period,” Lee wrote Madison in the fall, still at Barbados, “I have successively experienced the ebbs & floods common to continued disease, which confound my hopes & leaves in incertitude the issue which awaits me.”21 Beckwith had a starker appraisal of Lee’s condition. “I apprehend he will never recover those wounds and bruises, especially about the head, which he recovered from the Baltimore rioters.”22
Before the close of 1813, Lee began to pine for another, more restorative venue, such as one of the southern European states.23 Failing that, he began to roam from island to island—from Havana to Port-au-Prince, zigzagging among the Bahamas, taking temporary refuge in the Turks Islands, then Caicos, then New Providence in search of a relief. He relied on the charity, patience, and gullibility of strangers, who cared for the wilted figure because of his storied past and silver tongue.
In Barbados he struck up a friendship with Thomas Storm, the son of a New York politician working for the State Department. Six months after his arrival in Barbados, he left for Puerto Rico, claiming improvements in health and his intentions to return home in the spring. There he found shelter with a government functionary named Alexander Bininez, an “amiable and learned gentleman” in whose home he claimed to be “happy in my misery.”24 In Caicos he fell in and lived with John McIntosh, a British loyalist banished from his Georgia plantation after the Revolution. McIntosh’s daughter helped care for Lee during one of his increasingly frequent periods of immobility; he even hoped to introduce her to his son Henry.25
On the island of Nassau, Lee crossed paths with an old foe. During the siege of Augusta in 1781, he had pried the wily commandant of Fort Cornwallis, Thomas Brown, away from his post and mercifully shuttled him to safety in Charleston, lest the American soldiers, seeking revenge, slay the loyalist colonel. Banished to the islands, Brown married well and settled on a vast plantation. Discovering this, Lee sought out Brown, in pursuit of some compensation for his act of kindness so many years before.26
When they did meet, Brown was likely startled. Lee had become a pathetic parody of his younger self. While once he had raced across the country in his sharp tunic and plumed helmet, his elegant Legion in tow, improvising sieges, striking fear into the enemy and inspiring love in his men, now he was a threadbare pauper, shuffling from port to port, living off his wits, using what was left of his magnetism to hoodwink those credulous enough to be cast under his spell.
The root of Lee’s downfall had been reckless optimism. But when his financial dreams collapsed and he was backed into a corner, his scruples were gradually discarded out of necessity in the desperate attempt to preserve his freedom and protect his family. Now, in this last act of his life’s story, he was little more than a scoundrel attempting to survive to see another day.
Few American papers reached the islands, not enough to satisfy Lee’s voracious intellect. Makeshift companionship with his new acquaintances was insufficient to sate his hunger for conversation. His thoughts turned tenderly homeward, towards the wife he had forsaken. When word arrived in Puerto Rico in September 1814 that ten thousand battle-tested British soldiers were sailing towards the Chesapeake, he fretted. Should war arrive on the Potomac, he urged Anne to flee Alexandria for the countryside, or she would “encounter disagreeable scenes.” He lamented, “Oh that I was with you and feeble as I am. But I can only pray for your safety.”27
So far away, he now longed to play the role of provider for those he had impoverished, pined for attention from the ones he had deserted, and wished to instruct the young children in whose lives he had been but a ghost.
Henry IV, the master of Stratford Hall, who had inherited his father’s dashing spirit, carried on the family’s military tradition. Bringing his father great joy, he received a commission from Madison, became Major Lee, and was stationed in Washington before marching to the Canadian border as an aide to General James Wilkinson. The elder Lee relied on his son to negotiate land prices—his addiction for acquisition unending—and pleaded with him to “take care of my wife and children,” knowing he would now never be able to do so himself.
Charles Carter, the oldest of Lee’s children with Anne, had been sixteen when his father left Virginia. In 1816 he began college, according to his father’s desires, at Harvard. Of the three youngest boys, he was the child Lee knew best, the one most often in his thoughts. Through lengthy letters, Lee hoped to inculcate not only Charles Carter with his paternal wisdom, but through him Smith and Robert as well.
The letters were long and discursive, full of advice to cultivate his son’s virtue and stir his intellect. He reminded the boy of his “abhorrence to lying,” saying “that it led to every vice and cancelled every tendency to virtue.” He demanded to know Charles Carter’s curriculum, and suggested one of his own. Carter should “read the best poets, the best orators, and the best historians; as from them you draw principles of moral truth, axioms of prudence and material for conversation.” And avoid novels, he urged. The father had idolized history’s heroes and great scholars, and so too should the son. “Epaminondas—Imitate this great man,” he enthused. The names of Socrates, Locke, Hume, Sophocles, and of course Washington dotted the multi-paged missives.28
In one letter Lee expounded on religion, revealing his own Deism and reliance on reason and—shockingly for the times—casting doubt on Christ’s divinity. “Whether Christ was an inspired man as some believe, or the son of god as Christians assert and some of them believe,” he wrote, “all must acknowledge the excellence of the morality he taught and wish its spread for the good of mankind.” He confessed a hatred of religion’s “two great enemies, superstition and enthusiasm,” as well as a disdain for both Evangelicalism and the pageantry of Catholicism. “What I understand to be pure religion is a heart void of offense to God and man and a belief or faith in one God who delights in right and disproves of wrong,” he explained, contending that “the forms and ceremonies of religion differ, but in essence they all worship the almighty creator and rest on his providence and protection here and hereafter.”29
When the long letters went unanswered, he grew impatient in his loneliness, pleading for any little bit of information about his family: “will you not give me the delight in reading your letters?” he badgered Charles Carter.30 “Although I never hear from you nor any of my children, my dear wife, I write whenever I can,” he complained to Anne.31
The letters he did occasionally receive from Henry, Charles Carter, and his wife, were read and re-read, lifting his spirits and filling his heart. When letters to his middle daughter went unanswered, he asked incredulously, “how can my darling Anne neglect me—Mamma’s revived my drooping body, your sister’s comforted my afflictions, and your brother H[enry] and C[arter]’s completed my victory for a while over pain.”32
Lee wondered about the youngest children, mysteries to him. “Smith is ever in my thoughts. I never knew him thoroughly and I wish much to know him intimately as I did Carter—my absence has prevented me,” he lamented to his wife Anne. “I long to get a thorough knowledge of you,” he anxiously wrote to the boy, “which I am deprived of and the most proper period of your life will pass before I can execute my wishes. . . .”
Daughter Mildred, he knew “nothing about” and he wrote that he feared “I never shall.” Then there was the youngest boy, just ten years old. “Robert is as good as ever I trust—it is in his nature,” he wrote to Anne. Perceptively, he claimed to see glimpses of his most disciplined and pious sibling in this son: “he always seemed to me to be a copy of my brother Edmund.”33 Another letter, written to Charles Carter, concluded, “Hug my dear Robert for me. . . .”34
Little gestures were proffered to fill the space left by his absence. With his letters Lee sent baskets filled with books, yards of cloth, coffee, coconuts, pineapples, shells, and ginger, along with other “trifles” such as a whale bone and a single pearl.35 There was little more he could do. When he heard that Anne was in financial distress, forced to sell the family’s horses, he could only protest impotently that her, “self privations cannot be permitted—if I ever approach you, I must alter the condition. God of heaven, how cutting to my heart the knowledge of your situation.”36
What Lee left unexpressed in letters he poured into his diary. The little day book he carried along from destination to destination was a confessional, a conversation partner, a sounding board for a mind that remained acute while his body faltered. Its early pages documented his journey. “My previous wound received from the mob of Baltimore,” he scrawled in his nearly indecipherable cursive, was “menacing me with a continuance of disease.”37 His diary celebrated those who had shown him kindness and offered him friendship: “William Oxley, always sincere and full of friendship,” “Thomas Applewhaite, aged 73, but still young in body and mind.” It cataloged the gifts he scavenged between the islands: a copper kettle for washing, a fish trap, a box of shells, an Indian war club, powder and shot for Charles Carter. There were details of his diet, which included roasted or boiled apples, stewed prunes, gruel, broth with spinach leeks, and rye bread.38
But as months, then years passed, the writing rambled, the pages filled with windy expositions on history, religion, and philosophy. Lamentations on the mortality rates in New Spain, talk of the violent volcano of Forallo, inquiries into the conquerors of India and possessors of China. Pertinent fragments from the tragedies of Philoctetes and Electra, favorite passages from Voltaire, Johnson, Gibbon, commentary on Timius Beh Tamerlance, quotations from Confucius and Cicero for “my dear son CCL and thru him to my equally dear Smith and Robert.”39
There was also wisdom for his children from a man who had served as Lee’s own mentor; Lee hoped, no doubt, that Washington’s example would serve as a similar guide to future generations of Lees: “The great and good Washington once told me in a letter answering one from me suggesting a mode of conduct—to take care how I executed the proposed matter for ‘a man ought not only to act from honest principles, but he ought to appear so to do.’ ”40
And there were passages in which Lee perhaps saw his own reflection. One from Sophocles: “Let mortals, hence be taught to look beyond the present time, nor dare to say, a man is happy, till the last decisive hour shall close his life without the taste of woe.”41 And another from Elijah Fenton: “Calmly he looked on either life, and here. And saw nothing to regret, or there to fear.”42 There was too an appropriate maxim nestled among musings on Tacitus: “Obligations are only acknowledged when we can requite them; if they exceed our ability, to be insolvent is painful, and gratitude turns to hatred.”43
Lee’s diary was the testament to an astonishing intellect, and a steel trap of a memory. But it was also the record of a lonely, sick man, caught in his own thoughts, struggling desperately to make terms with his failures, and using what was left of his darkening mind to create a makeshift epitaph as he stewed over his past and came to terms with the fact that he had no future.
The state of Lee’s health would fall and then ascend ever so slightly. Reports of advances were often followed by complaints of agony. “I can scarcely go thro the task of writing to you my dear wife and to my H[enry], so debilitated am I and so constant are the pains I suffer,” he wrote to Anne from Nassau.44 In 1816 Lee placed himself under the care of a “celebrated” Spanish physician whose treatments were said to have cured all his patients “not actually in the arms of death.” His treatments seemed to lift Lee a little; he rued not meeting him sooner, thinking perhaps he could have been cured.45 Indeed, in time he reported that his “obstinate” disease “at last yields to the skill” of the Spaniard.46 The pain lessened, though did not vanish. “Although I never shall (I fear) be well,” he wrote, “yet as I continue as I am I shall be satisfied.”47
The doctor placed him on a strict and unappetizing diet, forbidding meat and liquor, prescribing gruel for breakfast and peas or pea soup for dinner. “This fare so long continued puts me so low that the remedy may prove destructive to me,” he whined.48 Before this, despite his destitution, Lee had ordered beef flanks and ribs, venison hams, and gallons of pickled oysters from New York.49
As the years passed, he often mentioned a return from “my miserable exile.”50 Writing from Caicos, in the summer of 1816, he hoped the lessening of pain would allow for a homecoming in just a few months.51 The following spring, in Nassau, he talked about an impending voyage to America and even asked Anne to tell both Henry Lee IV and Richard Bland Lee of his imminent arrival.52 But there were always obstacles. He wished to continue with the Spanish doctor a few months more, “to see if the severe pain to which I am a prey 16 hours of the 24 can be mollified more if not subdued.”53 He was particular about his conveyance home, demanding a ship that would afford him the comfort of his own cabin. He also had no money.
In late 1817, Lee was lingering in Nassau, having taken refuge in a boarding house in New Providence. Its owner was an aged widow, Mrs. Baldwin, who took him in as others had done over the past five years, mothered him, cared for him, and clothed him. In the winter a young lawyer from Baltimore, James Causten, arrived on the island, pursuing a spoliation claim on naval cargo apprehended by the French, and took a room at the old woman’s home.54
When Lee caught word of Causten’s presence in New Providence, and of the ship that had brought him there, he introduced himself at once. His appearance—Lee was shabbily dressed and obviously laboring in pain—perplexed Causten, who knew the old hero’s name and his Revolutionary exploits. Lee, clinging to the young man as if they were old friends, claimed he had booked passage on a ship soon to depart for the United States, but preferred to travel home in the company of Causten. Not wanting to deny a favor to an old and enfeebled patriot, he acquiesced.55
A date for departure was set; Baldwin opened her home to host a grand farewell turtle dinner in her ward’s honor. There was a complication, though. Lee still owed money to various individuals who had offered him assistance. Naturally he had not a penny to pay any of it back. He asked for Causten’s assistance, but the lawyer had only the funds necessary for their pending voyage. Lee coaxed the money from Baldwin in exchange for a promissory note from a firm in Savannah. His debts paid, Lee joined Causten onboard his small ship, the Betsy—destined for St. Mary’s on the southeast coast of Georgia—and at last sailed home.56
Causten was distressed by Lee’s terrible condition; the old general, sick for so long, brushed off his young friend’s concerns and proceeded, even in his wretched state, to do as he had always done: mesmerize his companion with all manner of conversation, including, of course, tales from the Revolution and of Washington. He also dwelt upon the riot in Baltimore, offering up a narrative—the story that he had just happened to be in the city and by chance had paid a call at the home of Alexander Hanson—that did not square with reality.57
It was a typical performance, complete with attempts to involve Causten in convoluted financial schemes. Colonel Brown, the old Tory whom Lee had visited in Nassau, he said, had given him the deed to land in Florida, including a parcel on Tampa Bay. Lee wanted Causten to take the titles and sell them; they would then split the profits. But Causten didn’t wish to be entangled in Lee’s speculations.58
In the peace following the Revolutionary War, Nathanael Greene had purchased land on the southern tip of Cumberland Island off the Georgia Coast, where he had planned to construct a summer home. His death in 1786 dashed that dream, but his wife Catharine remarried, moved to the island, and built a mansion on her late husband’s land.59
The house was a grand affair looking down on the Atlantic, four stories tall, with four chimneys at each end and sixteen fireplaces, the foundation atop an Indian burial mound supporting tabby walls. Acres of gardens, orchards, and live-oaks surrounded the house.60 Remembering its location and nearness, Lee asked to be deposited on the island so that he could pay proper homage to his old friend. Greene, of course was long dead; his wife had followed him in 1814; their daughter Louisa, living there with her husband James Shaw, was now the mistress of Dungeness. Lee had met Mrs. Shaw fleetingly in her childhood. He did not know her or how she would receive this comrade of her father’s, but he insisted on making landfall near her home.61
In the late afternoon of February 10, 1818, Phineas Miller Nightingale, Shaw’s fifteen-year-old nephew and Greene’s grandson, was playing on Dungeness’s grounds when he saw a schooner heading towards the property’s wharf. Growing curious, he studied the unfolding scene: The small ship anchored and then dropped a dinghy in the water. A limp old man was deposited therein, and then joined by the captain and two sailors. They rowed to land, and the sailors stood up, formed a chair with their arms and hands, lifted the old man, and carried him ashore. They then dropped off all his worldly possessions: a ragged horsehair-trunk and a cask of Madeira. After five years of absence, Henry Lee had returned to the country he had helped free and found.62
Spotting young Nightingale, Lee waved at him. The boy came face to face with a wraith. Lee was ghostly white, emaciated and impoverished, barely clothed, and barely able to move. Asking and discovering the boy’s identity, Lee, overjoyed, threw his arms around him. Leaning on his shoulder, he walked a short distance to a log. There he sat down and asked that the boy convey a message to his aunt. General Lee had arrived. “I am come purposely to die in the house and in the arms of the daughter of my old friend and compatriot.”63
A carriage was sent for; Lee was conveyed to the mansion and greeted warmly. The Shaws happily gave him a room. He went there at once, seeking seclusion. In the weeks that followed he rarely left it. Once a day, though, he asked for Nightingale, the direct blood descendant of the beloved Greene, and with his arms around the boy’s neck strolled delicately through the gardens along a picturesque path bordered by groves of orange trees. Once returned to his room, he found relief in the serene sight of the ocean, the touch of its breeze, and the harmonies of the song-birds whose concertos had arrived with spring.64
He was able to write once more to Anne, telling her he was in Georgia, where he planned to “stay a short time only” and hoped that his son Henry or brother Edmund would meet him. “Do not write,” he concluded, “but embrace my girls and boys with love for me.”65
What meals Lee could digest were served in his room; he rarely had the strength to dine with the family. He was so close to home at last, but his infirmities multiplied. He grew unable to walk; he was confined to his bed, powerless to sit up, even. Soldiers stationed nearby came to pay their respects; in moments without pain, he dazzled them with old anecdotes from the Revolution, worshipful stories of Washington and Greene, and eloquent dissertations on politics, frosted with venomous attacks on Democratic-Republicans. In less lucid moments, when the depression was strong and the pain unbearable, his shrieks and agonized groans filled the house, echoing off its six-feet-deep walls.66
Shaw sent her maid, a woman called “Mom Sarah” to attend the ailing guest, only to have him hurl his boot at her. When she threw it right back at him, earning his admiration, Lee relented and at last permitted her to enter his room. His gallbladder was ruined—a memento from Baltimore’s mob. Doctors were called for, but the few remedies within their power were useless. When a surgical procedure was suggested, Lee refused. “My dear sir, were the great Washington alive, and here, and joining you in advocating it, I would resist.”67
The pain grew constant, his life clearly fading. On Tuesday, March 24, 1818, Lee became unable to speak. The following day, in the afternoon, he died.68
Immediately, news of the death spread across the sound. Military vessels docked in the Atlantic flew their colors at half-mast. Their sailors, and soldiers from neighboring bases, arrived en masse at Dungeness for the interment. Marines and infantrymen served as an escort and their commanding officers as pallbearers; swords were sheathed and crossed atop the casket.69
The funeral procession had but a little way to go, to a small family cemetery half a mile from Dungeness. As it traveled, minute guns echoed across the ocean from the deck of the SS John Adams, which was docked nearby. When the body was lowered into the ground, more salutes were fired. Far from home and family, but finally free of pain, Henry Lee rested at last.70
James Causten’s brief encounter with Lee was mystifying—and archetypal in its way. Causten had happily fulfilled the veteran’s wish, conveying him back to America. He was awed by his storied history, overcome by his charisma and conversation, but left bewildered by his inconsistences. When he left Lee at Cumberland Island, a sailor approached Causten and inquired why he had brought “that old rascal” stateside. Appalled by such a question, Causten defended his new friend, only to hear a number of tales from other officers about Lee’s misdeeds.71
When Causten traveled to Savannah on the widow Baldwin’s behalf to redeem the note of credit Lee had given her in return for the money to clear his debts in New Providence, he was greeted by a knowing smile at the firm supposedly holding Lee’s funds. Over the years, many had come there seeking redemption on promissory notes given by Lee, he was informed, though he never was entitled to a single cent in their hands. The American hero, crowned with “a halo of fame,” who had entered his life with prospects so fair, had ended it by swindling a kindly old widow.72
Causten could not reconcile it all. He knew that Lee’s few remaining belongings of value—the deed for the land in Florida and the manuscript of his memoirs—were still in that battered trunk left on Cumberland Island. He learned that Anne Lee was in Alexandria and set out to meet her, to tell her of her husband’s last days and of the location of his possessions, and to reclaim the money stolen from Mrs. Baldwin.73
When he arrived at the red brick house on Oronoco Street, Causten was ushered into the parlor, where Mildred Lee sat, playing a piano. By the time he had arrived in Alexandria, letters had arrived from Henry IV and Richard Bland Lee bringing word of her father’s fate. When he asked to speak to the girl’s mother, he was told she was unwell and confined to her room. But he had come all the way from Baltimore, and he only wished for a few minutes of her time to convey the last words of her late husband. Mildred then disappeared. Moments later she returned, to explain that her mother did not wish to hear them.74