Richard Henry Lee

“ That body disapproved of the scheme, and Lee declined Burgoyne's offer. Lee was employed at Newport in December 1775, and at New York in January following, where he did good service in beginning the erection of the defences. On the news of the death of Richard Montgomery (31 Dec. 1775) he was nominated to the command of the American forces in Canada, but was counter-ordered to Charleston, South Carolina, where he defeated the British attack on 28 June 1776. According to some American accounts, the credit of the defence was chiefly due to the engineer, Moultrie. ”

“ Resolved That these united colonies are and of right ought to be free and independent states; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the british crown and that all political connection between them and the state of great Britain is and ought to be totally dissolved
That it is expedient forthwith to take the most effectual measures for forming foreign Alliances. ”

“ The growth of race ascendency and the expanse of race domination are unceasing. The picture is unique and the nation one, however the theater enlarges, however the scenes shift, however the actors differ in the drama. Gen. Lee was a representative democrat or republican, for I use the words in their generic sense. His grandfather was that young American Capt. Henry Lee, the ardent youth of nineteen, who at the head of his company of Virginia horse reported to Washington for duty when the first army of Continentals were ranging themselves upon the plains of Boston. ”

“ He was now chairman of a committee of vigilance, and had come to Boston in discharge of his political and semi-belligerent functions.
General Charles Lee was a military man of a different stamp; an Englishman by birth, and a highly cultivated production of European warfare. He was the son of a British officer, Lieutenant-colonel John Lee, of the dragoons, who married the daughter of Sir Henry Bunbury, Bart., and afterwards rose to be a general. Lee was born in 1731, and may almost be said to have been cradled in the army, for he received a commission by the time he was eleven years of age. ”

“ William Henry Fitzhugh Lee, second son of Gen. Robert Edward Lee, is dead. The bells here tolled late yesterday evening. A few hours before the general had crossed over the river and was at rest under his roof tree at Ravensworth, the southern sun lighted his deathbed and the autumn breeze sang his requiem. Afterlife's fitful fever he sleeps well. He was sick a long time, and as his disease was incurable, death was a relief. ”

“ Robert E. Lee, the son of Henry Lee, an officer of engineers upon his staff. He was four times brevetted for gallant conduct and came back famous. When Gen. Albert Sidney Johnston led the Utah expedition in 1858 there marched on foot in his columns Lieut. William Henry Fitzhugh Lee, the son of Robert E. Lee. He was not a soldier by education, but by instinct. A graduate of Harvard College and the stroke oar of his class, he was well prepared for military life, and the third of his line to bear arms for the United States. ”

“ And every man in that thin, dishevelled line felt his heart throb with the exultation of action long desired and long delayed. Every man but one, and he the one on whom rested the responsibility of the attack.
“Anybody but Lee!” Dunn had said with a groan, when he heard who was to lead the attacking column. And Richard, having gone with him to report some scouting work to the council of officers, and recalling Lee’s fierce opposition to any plan for battle, groaned too.
“His envy of General Washington and his imprisonment among the British have made him half Tory. ”

“ Colonel Lee was a Virginian by birth and a graduate of West Point, but at the beginning of the Civil War resigned his commission. His brother, Samuel Phillips Lee, however, who was then a Commander in the Navy, remained in the service and eventually became a Rear Admiral. Although differing so widely in their political views, the two brothers were respected and beloved by their associates, and never allowed their opinions upon matters of state to interfere with their fraternal affection. The only daughter of Colonel Lee, Mrs. Henry Harrison, usually spends her winters in Washington. ”

“ It was while Lee's reader that he began, under the inspiration of Alison and Goodsir, to form at Christ Church an anatomical and physiological series on the plan of the Hunterian Museum in London, then under the care and exposition of Richard Owen. In 1846 he was admitted a licentiate of the Royal College of Physicians of London, being elected a fellow of the college in 1850, and delivering the Harveian oration in 1865, the first occasion on which it was given in English. ”

“ Lee was no more successful in finding other patrons, and considering himself and his invention treated with contempt, he embraced the offer made to him by Sully, the sagacious minister of Henry IV., to proceed to Rouen and instruct the operatives of that town—then one of the most important manufacturing centres of France—in the construction and use of the stocking-frame. Lee accordingly transferred himself and his machines to France, in 1605, taking with him his brother and seven workmen. ”

“ The stamp appears upon it from his boyhood, and grows more plain as his years progress."
The old homestead in which Lee was born deserves some notice on its own account. It was built by Thomas Lee, a grandson of Richard Lee, the emigrant who came to Virginia about the time that Charles I was losing both his crown and his head. While Charles II was still in exile, this same Thomas Lee offered the king a haven in Virginia, which was not accepted. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Garrick, however, compelled Lee to return to Drury Lane, where he reappeared, 27 Dec. 1750, as George Barnwell in the 'London Merchant.' Here he remained during this and the following season, playing secondary characters, except when he was allowed for his benefit on one occasion to enact Hamlet and Poet in 'Lethe,' and on another, Lear and Don Quixote. On 23 Feb. 1751 he was the original Earl of Devon in Mallet's 'Alfred.' Buckingham in 'Richard III,' Aboan in 'Oronooko,' and Lycon in 'Phædra and Hippolytus' were also assigned him. ”

“ He dedicated his earliest translation to Sir Henry Lee, master of the leash in Queen Elizabeth's household, who may perhaps be identical with Sir Henry Leigh of Egginton, high sheriff of Derbyshire in 1612. Hellowes certainly served as groom of the leash under Sir Henry Lee or Leigh as early as 1574 (see title-page of No. 1 below) . Resigning that office in January 1597, he became groom of the chamber in the royal household, and on 27 Jan. 1599–1600 received a pension of 12s. a day for life (Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1595–7 p. 353, 1598–1601 p. 387) . ”

“ Lee dashed at her Peonia Giant, who was then consuming his fish, and wishing he understood why the British Minister had worn no gloves, while he himself had sacrificed his convictions by wearing the largest and whitest pair of French kids that could be bought for money on Pennsylvania Avenue. There was a little touch of mortification in the idea that he was not quite at home among fashionable people, and at this instant he felt that true happiness was only to be found among the simple and honest sons and daughters of toil. ”

“ The bills drawn by him on his agent in England to repay the advance of 3,000l. had been returned protested, Lee's property in England having been confiscated. Congress granted him thirty thousand dollars by way of indemnification, to be repaid if he recovered his English estates. Lee repaired to New York, and took command of the right wing of Washington's army. Artemus Ward had long since retired, leaving Lee second only to Washington in rank. He proved himself an intractable subordinate. ”

“ The eye of the yeoman and peasant sought in vain the tall form of old Sir Henry Lee, of Ditchley, as, wrapped in his lace cloak, and with beard and whiskers duly composed, he moved slowly through the aisles, followed by the faithful mastiff, or bloodhound, which in old time had saved his master by his fidelity, and which regularly followed him to church. Bevis, indeed, fell under the proverb which avers, “He is a good dog which goes to church;” ”

“ The 'Lee Papers' are in course of publication by the New York Historical Society. Vol. i., dealing with the period 1754-72, appeared in 1871; vol. iii., containing the full minutes of Lee's court-martial, appeared in 1878; vols. ii. and iv. are not yet published. The latest biography of Lee is in Appleton's Encyclopædia of American Biography. See also Account of General Charles Lee in Sir H. E. Bunbury's Life of Sir Thomas Hanmer, with notices of a Gentleman's Family, London, 1838; Lee Papers in Transactions of the Historical Soc. of New York ”

“ I fail to seize again, to my wonder, the particular scene of our acclamation of Lee's surrender, but I feel in the air the exhalation of our relief, which mingled, near and far, with the breath of the springtime itself and positively seemed to become over the land, over the world at large in fact, an element of reviving Nature. Sensible again are certain other sharpest vibrations then communicated from the public consciousness: Ashburton Place resounds for me with a wild cry, rocks as from a convulsed breast, on that early morning of our news of Lincoln's death by murder ”

“ General Lee was tried for disobedience of orders in not attacking the enemy; for misbehavior before the enemy; a disorderly retreat; and insolent letters sent to the Commander-in-Chief, after the battle, and was sentenced to “suspension from command for twelve months.” A reasonable self-control, which he never had exercised, might, even at this crisis of his history, have saved him his commission. He died ignominiously, and even in his will perpetuated his hatred of religion and his Maker. ”

“ If she cannot be contented like other people, what need is there for abusing us just because she feels herself no taller than we are? What does she expect to get from her sharp tongue? What does she know, any way?"
Mrs. Lee certainly knew very little. She had read voraciously and promiscuously one subject after another. Ruskin and Taine had danced merrily through her mind, hand in hand with Darwin and Stuart Mill, Gustave Droz and Algernon Swinburne. She had even laboured over the literature of her own country. She was perhaps, the only woman in New York who knew something of American history. ”

“ Certain it was that she seldom seemed to realise how very severe a tax it might be on a man, who had been hard at work in a contentious atmosphere all day and all the evening, to sit up by a sick-bed or break his sleep to soothe an invalid. Yet by a curious contradiction if there was ever any occasion when Sir Henry was tempted to leave politics altogether, or there was some possibility that he might be defeated by a rival in the contest for leadership, no one was more stubborn than241 his wife in the determination that he should suffer no such thing. ”

“ In his shirt and a blanket coat, without a hat, he was tied on a spare troop-horse and hurried to the British camp through eighty miles of hostile country, whence he was sent to New York. The importance attached by the Americans to his capture is attested by their offer of six Hessian officers of rank in exchange. Sir William Howe [q. v.] rejected the offer, on the ground that Lee was a British deserter, a pretension he had to abandon under threat of reprisals. He was instructed from home to treat Lee as a prisoner of war, subject to exchange when convenient. ”

“ On 28 June 1778 Lee came up with Clinton's rear-guard near Monmouth Courthouse, but he gave such extraordinary directions that La Fayette sent warning to Washington. When Washington came up he found Lee's division retreating in disorder, with the British close at their heels. Washington blamed Lee for the disaster, and sent him to the rear.
On 2 July 1778 Lee was tried at Brunswick, New Jersey, by a general court-martial, of which Major-general Lord Stirling was president, on three charges, vie. (1) disobedience of orders in not attacking the enemy ”

“ Lee's society, where rivals and enemies beset him on every hand. He was little better than a schoolboy, when he ventured on their ground, but when he could draw them over upon his own territory of practical life he rarely failed to trample on his assailants. ”

“ He is a Mr. Lee, who has spent nearly all his life abroad; two of his sisters have married German princes, and from knocking about so much he has become a thorough cosmopolite. As he is intelligent, with nothing to do but amuse himself, he is a very agreeable partner, and I mean to dance with him again as soon as possible. I don't know why I have tried your patience by writing so about a person you have never seen; unless it's to show you that I haven't irrevocably given up the world, the flesh and the devil, but am conscious of a faint charm about them still when taken in small doses. ”