Henry Lee III

Henry Lee is a redirect to this article. For the politician in Oregon, see Henry AG Lee .

Henry Lee, by William Edward West, about 1838

Henry Lee III (born January 29, 1756 in Dumfries , Prince William County , Colony of Virginia , † March 25, 1818 on Cumberland Island , Georgia ) was a cavalry officer of the American Revolutionary War , politician, governor of Virginia and author. He was the father of Robert E. Lee , the most prominent general in the Southern Army in the Civil War .

Cavalry officer in the War of Independence

Coat of arms of the Lee family

Henry Lee, youth portrait

He was the son of Henry Lee II and Lucy Grymes. Coming from one of the richest families in the country, his cousins Arthur , Francis and Richard were also important personalities, while Henry Lee, soon to be named Light Horse Harry (because of the light cavalry), initially shone through military success.

In 1773 Lee graduated from the College of New Jersey , which would later become Princeton University . In the historical descriptions, the blond, blue-eyed Lee is described as witty and enthusiastic. As a perfect rider he was made for the cavalry branch and joined the troops of his future mentor George Washington as early as 1775. As captain of the Virginia Light Dragoons he was initially deployed in the northern combat area, where he successfully commanded raids against the British supply lines. Washington recognized the talent and promoted him to major in 1778 , whereby Lee now commanded three cavalry companies and a rifle squadron .

With the surprise conquest of the fort at Paulus Hook (today Jersey City ) on August 19, 1779, he celebrated his first military success. For this he was made lieutenant colonel and received a gold medal, the highest honor that was bestowed below the rank of general during the American Revolutionary War . During the campaign in North Carolina in 1780 he fought with his dragoons under General Nathanael Greene just as devotedly and brilliantly, in order to prove himself at the battles at Guilford Court House and at Eutaw Springs and Camden as well.

After the British surrendered in Yorktown , Lee said goodbye due to poor health and married his cousin "Divine Matilda" Lee. Stratford Hall had been brought into the marriage as a dowry , but Lee was less interested in agriculture than in politics.

Henry Lee was accepted into a so-called field box in the League of Freemasons during the War of Independence . His mother's lodge was Hiriam Lodge 59 in Westmoreland County (Virginia) after the war .

The politician

After the war, he was elected to the Continental Congress in 1785 , where he advocated a strong central government. Three years later he was considered one of the political leaders who also persuaded Virginia's deputies to sign the constitution.

In 1790 his wife died after only eight years of marriage, leaving behind three minor children and a deeply grieving husband.

Between 1791 and 1794 he served as governor of Virginia, in the latter year also serving as commander- in -chief with the rank of major general of those troops that his close friend, President George Washington , had raised to suppress the so-called " whiskey rebellion ". During his tenure in Richmond , he fell in love with Ann Hill Carter of neighboring Shirley Plantation and married her in 1793.

The Federalist also sat in the United States House of Representatives from 1799 to 1801 . When Washington died at the age of only 67, it was Henry Lee who, in an honorable resolution at the request of Congress, was the memorable but glorifying phrase "First in, first in peace and first in the hearts of his countrymen (...) second to none in the humble and endearing scenes of private life ”.

If Lee was brave as a military leader and straightforward as a politician, he was not very successful as a businessman. In an effort to support his family of six, he had become hopelessly in debt with land speculations . Because of this, he was imprisoned in 1808/09. Three years later, a new prison led to a turning point in his life. He was seriously injured by an angry mob when he, Alexander Contee Hanson , and several other politicians, and he demonstrated outside a prison to protect Hanson's Federalist Papers , which previously criticized President James Madison and the war of 1812 .

Like many other politicians and military men who got into financial difficulties of that era, he worked as a book author. But he even wrote it while in the aforementioned custody. In the "Memoirs of the War in the Southern Department" he described the struggles in which he had once participated. After the first edition in 1812, the work, which is still regarded as a reference, was reissued in 1869 in which his son, the famous Southern General Robert E. Lee , had inserted a biography of his father's life.

Henry Lee never recovered from his injuries. He died in the house of the daughter of his former superior Greene after returning from the West Indies, where he had "withdrawn" from his creditors and also wanted to protect his health.

According to him, Lee County named in Virginia.

Works

• Memoirs of the War in the Southern Department. New York 1812.

literature

• Thomas Boyd: Light-horse Harry Lee. C. Scribner's Sons, New York / London 1931.
• Noel B. Gerson: Light-Horse Harry. A Biography of Washington's Great Calavry Man, General Henry Lee. Doubleday & Company, Garden City 1966.

Web links

Wikiquote: Henry Lee  - Quotes

• Henry Lee III in the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress (English)
• Henry Lee III in the database of Find a Grave (English)
• Henry Lee III in the National Governors Association (English)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Lee. In: Eugen Lennhoff, Oskar Posner, Dieter A. Binder: Internationales Freemaurer Lexikon . Herbig, Munich 2006, ISBN 978-3-7766-2478-6 .