Light-Horse Harry: A Biography of Washington’s Great Cavalryman, General Henry Lee (Heroes and Villains from American History)

by Noel B. Gerson

  There was no sign of a crowd outside, and in the afternoon the militia was withdrawn. The sheriff, a conscientious man, vainly appealed to both the militia and the city authorities for help, saying he and his few deputies could not cope with the situation if another mob formed.

  Shortly after nightfall the attackers who had laid siege to the house reappeared, completely surrounding the jail. They were raucous, very noisy and obviously thirsting for blood. It soon became evident they intended to storm the building, and the sheriff, accompanied by his deputies, went out to plead with them. The mob refused to listen, swept the few officials aside and poured into the jail.

  Escape seemed impossible, but Harry saw one chance. At his suggestion Hanson and the others blew out the candles that lighted their cells, and when the crowd broke down the doors, they tried to slip away in the dark. But their efforts proved futile, and Light-Horse Harry Lee stepped forward, alone.

  His fellow citizens accomplished what no foreign enemy had ever been able to do. Harry was knocked to the ground, clawed and kicked. He was beaten with clubs and staves until he was unconscious, and then dozens of men trampled on him. Not one of the unfortunate prisoners escaped unharmed, but as Harry lay alone, his fate was worse than that of most of his companions. The scores of men who ran into the prison saw his crumpled body, and new blows were rained on him.

  The mob assumed its victims were dead, but one man conceived the idea of jabbing the faces of the unconscious to “test” them. Those who moved or groaned were subjected to still more beatings. There is no precise record of how long the senseless torture lasted, but by the time the mob finally withdrew, there were several deep, jagged cuts on Harry’s face, one shoulder was dislocated and he was suffering from severe internal injuries.

  Several physicians had arrived at the scene, and the sheriff led them into the slaughterhouse after the mob withdrew. Two of Hanson’s friends were dead, and the rest — about thirty-five in all — were unconscious. The injured men were taken off to the various Baltimore hospitals before a new mob could be formed.

  Harry had been battered beyond recognition, and the physician who was treating him, a man named Hall, is alleged to have said, after working over him for more than a half-hour, “My God, this is General Lee!”

  Drunken mobs were still roaming the streets, terrorizing passers-by, and most citizens retired behind the locked doors of their homes. The militia remained at its barracks on the outskirts of the city, its commanders later offering the lame excuse that no one had notified them there had been any violence.

  The authorities at the hospital where Harry was being treated held a hurried conference. They were horrified by the outrage, and were afraid that their patient, one of the nation’s most distinguished citizens, might be murdered if the mob learned he was still alive. In the early hours of the morning a carriage drew up at the hospital door, and the unconscious body of Harry was placed inside, two physicians climbing in with him. A volunteer posse of Baltimore gentlemen who had been rounded up during the night surrounded the coach. All were heavily armed, but it was not necessary for them to use violence. They left the city without attracting notice, and rode for the town of Little York, across the Pennsylvania border, reaching it soon after daybreak.

  There, in a tiny hospital, attended day and night, Harry Lee fought against death, and his battle was perhaps the greatest and most difficult of his life. For a week the physicians were afraid he would not recover. But, on the seventh day after the attack, when Anne arrived at Little York after making arrangements for Mrs. Richard B. Lee to take care of the children in Alexandria, Harry opened his eyes and recognized her.

  Four more days passed before he recovered the powers of speech. Anne spent two weeks with him, and Harry remained at the hospital until mid-September, when the physicians finally pronounced him sufficiently well to travel. He was still unable to walk, however, and internal pains were so intense he could sleep only in short snatches. One of the slashes on his face had become infected, and his eyesight was imperiled. He went home to the house in Alexandria an invalid, with a crippled body that would never be completely healed.

  Harry knew nothing of the sensation that the senseless attack had created throughout the country. The first news reports had declared him dead, and newspapers everywhere had printed his obituary, the majority praising him in glowing terms. Only a few of the more rapidly Republican-Democratic papers tried to excuse the riots and the vicious mistreatment of helpless men.

  The news that Harry was still alive created still more headlines, and when his carriage rumbled through Washington City, large crowds gathered to stare in silence at the drawn curtains. Still another crowd assembled at the house in Alexandria, but no one spoke or moved as the invalid was carried inside.

  President Madison, ordinarily the most cautious of men, left no one in doubt of his feelings. Less than twenty-four hours after Harry’s arrival he paid a call on his old friend and issued a public statement denouncing the rioters as “barbarians and hypocrites who have done nothing to advance our national cause, but instead spent their wrath on a citizen whom this nation will forever honor.”

  The name of Robert E. Lee first appeared in print on the occasion of the President’s visit. The boy, four months short of his sixth birthday, was told by Madison, “Let your father’s honor and matchless gallantry set an example that you will never forget.”

  The next day Secretary Monroe came to see Harry, and the following week a select committee of senators and congressmen paid him a visit. Members of both political parties were in the group. Anne tried to insure her husband as much privacy as possible while he recovered what he could of his strength, but the task was not easy. She could not turn away Mrs. Madison, who came twice weekly, nor Mrs. Monroe, nor the President — who appeared unannounced on several occasions, nor the many members of the Lee clan. One of the most welcome of the callers was Chief Justice Marshall, who read aloud to Harry from the current newspapers when he discovered that the invalid was still troubled by poor eyesight.

  It is unlikely that Harry knew his relatives, friends and old associates, many of them now the most important men in the land, were paying him a final tribute. He remained optimistic, in spite of his ceaseless pain, and assured everyone that he would soon be completely well again. Those who believed otherwise did not disillusion him.

  Anne was not fooled. “Each day he is a little stronger,” she wrote to Mrs. Richard Lee, “but only a little. I weep for him, but my tears will not cure him.”

  XX: “BRAVE DEATH, WHEN PRINCES DIE WITH US”

  By January 1813 the United States was compelled to face the fact that her Army was being commanded by incompetents and blunderers. The officers and men of the little Navy were performing near-miracles against almost superhuman odds, but the military establishment, although growing rapidly, was an almost formless body without a head.

  Official eyes in Washington City turned in speculative wonder across the Potomac, and men in high places asked each other whether Harry Lee might be strong enough to take command in the near future. A desperate James Madison decided to find out, and formally offered Harry a commission as senior Major General of the Line, the highest rank in the Army.

  Had the offer been received before the riot in Baltimore, Harry would have accepted instantly, in spite of his delicate bronchial condition. Now, however, he had learned to live with incapacitating pain, and had finally reached the point where he doubted that his recovery would ever be complete. Injuries sustained in a mindless attack by a savage mob forced him to reject the position he had long coveted above all others — and deprived his country of the talents of her most competent living soldier.

  “Should I get well,” he replied to the President, “I will cheerfully give you my assistance in the war wherever it may be deemed useful.”

  Any help from Harry Lee was better than none, and Madison took him at his word. At his request Harry prepared a series of recommendations on the disposition and r
ealignment of troops, all of which were adopted and subsequently proved that the daring strategist-tactician of the Revolution had not lost his cunning. Whether the Army would have made a better showing had he been in command during the earlier years of the war before Andrew Jackson and other new leaders emerged is an interesting but unanswerable question.

  The help Harry was able to give his country was limited by his physical condition, however, and he suffered severely from the damp cold of Alexandria in winter. His bronchial condition became aggravated by his other ailments, and the physicians again urged him to seek a warmer climate where he could recuperate at leisure.

  Harry and Anne discussed the problem at length, and it was decided that he should travel alone. All of their children with the exception of their youngest, a baby daughter, were in school, and Anne was reluctant to uproot the entire family. Harry had just enough money to live abroad fairly comfortably while he regained his health, and during that time Anne and the children could live on her inheritance from her father and sister. Again Harry asked President Madison and Secretary Monroe for help, and his appeal was extraordinary.

  He knew no Spanish, he said, and had forgotten most of the French he had learned. Therefore, even though the United States was at war with England, he wanted to go to a British possession in the Caribbean. Neither Madison nor Monroe thought the request unusual, and at the President’s direction the Secretary of State opened negotiations with the enemy through third parties.

  As it happened, Admiral Sir John Warren, the commander of the Royal Navy’s North American fleet, with headquarters in Jamaica, was a student of military affairs who had been an admirer of Harry Lee. He could see no harm in allowing a man broken in health to rest beneath the Caribbean sun, even if he was an “enemy alien.” Sir John granted permission for Harry to visit any West Indian island he wished except Jamaica.

  The question of transportation was another stumbling block, but Monroe and Sir John overcame that obstacle, too. A Portuguese schooner was sailing from Quebec for Barbados, and the United States allowed the ship to put into Baltimore. Instructions were sent to both American and British men-of-war not to molest the merchantman on the high seas.

  Virtually nothing is known of Harry’s farewell to his family except that he said goodbye to them in Alexandria. Anne remained at home, and so did Charles, who would be leaving soon for college. Harry’s children by his first marriage did not go to Baltimore to see him off, either. And although no one realized it at the time, he would not see his wife and family again. If relations between husband and wife were strained, their later correspondence did not reveal it. What did happen was that they drifted farther and farther apart. Anne became increasingly immersed in her children — while Harry spent his last years as, almost literally, a lost soul.

  Initially he found Barbados much to his liking. He arrived there in the early spring of 1813, and the warm weather was all he had hoped it would be. He wrote a letter to President Madison in which he insisted he would soon be completely recovered. And, as a token of his appreciation, he sent the President some Madeira, a gift he could ill afford, and the largest live turtle he could locate in Bridgetown, the capital of Barbados. “When you and your lady dine on turtle stew,” he declared a trifle wistfully, “I hope you will think of me.”

  The British in Barbados treated the convalescing alien enemy with every consideration, and he became friendly with Sir George Beckwith, the governor, who often invited him to dine at Government House. They found themselves in agreement on most phases of the war. The British would not be able to subdue the United States, which, in turn, would find it impossible to conquer Canada. As a matter of national principle Great Britain would not give up her self-assumed right to stop the ships of neutral nations on the high seas to search for deserters, but in practice Royal Navy vessels would not halt American merchantmen once peace was achieved. Both men proved to be accurate prophets.

  Harry, with little to occupy him except reading, kept in touch with the news of the world, and predicted the fall of Napoleon. The British had been gaining valuable experience in their war against the master of the Continent, he said, and would beat him once they understood the principles of containing his cavalry. Had Napoleon been able to read Harry’s letters to Secretary Monroe on the subject, the outcome of the Battle of Waterloo might have been different.

  By January 1814 sleepy Bridgetown had nothing more to offer the bored invalid, who still clung fiercely to the belief that he would regain his health. “I am getting well, and will soon be able to come home,” he declared in a letter that he wrote to Monroe a short time before beginning his own version of a later era’s sport, island-hopping.

  Sir George granted him a passport and gave him a personal letter of introduction to the Spanish Governor-General of Puerto Rico, Don Salvador Meléndez. So Harry sailed to San Juan, in spite of his inability to speak Spanish. In less than six months, however, he was ready to leave, and had become so homesick that he insisted he was healthy again, even though the two English-speaking physicians in the Puerto Rican capital advised him not to travel north.

  He applied to the Royal Navy for a safe conduct permit to travel to the United States, but times had changed during his fifteen-month sojourn in the Caribbean. Warren had returned to England, and the Royal Navy’s American command was now divided between two admirals who were making strenuous efforts to blockade the entire American coast. The request was refused.

  He began to travel, almost aimlessly, from island to island, trying in vain to find some way to lessen his pains and to conquer his all-encompassing boredom. In April 1815 he learned that the United States and Great Britain had signed a peace treaty, and he wrote warm letters of congratulations to Madison and Monroe.

  Often he wrote to his family of returning home in the near future, but his feeble health made a long voyage impossible. So he wandered from Santo Domingo to Turks Island, to New Providence and Caicos and Nassau, vainly searching for a still better climate. He had grown very frail and thin, and a long scar on his face was an ever-present reminder of the Baltimore riot. On cool evenings his bronchial condition bothered him, and he coughed incessantly until the heat of the morning sun enabled him to breathe more easily. Two pains in his back, one of them “low, on the right side,” and the other “about mid-back on the left side” kept him in constant torment.

  He lived in lodging houses in the various small towns of the islands, as he was unable to afford better quarters, and in a sense it was fortunate that he had so little appetite, as his limited funds forced him to eat cheaply. Everywhere he went he was received pleasantly, and was entertained by officials and permanent residents. But his life was lonely, far lonelier than he dreamed possible, and he lived for the letters he received from home.

  Often he complained to Anne and to Henry, Jr. that they wrote infrequently. They tried to keep up a brisk correspondence with him, but their lives were as busy as his appetite for mail was insatiable. Anne was trying to rear a family alone, and Henry, Jr., who had served his country with distinction in the War of 1812, was now holding his father’s former seat in the United States House of Representatives.

  At last Harry found an outlet for his emotions in Charles Carter Lee, who was now a student at Harvard. In long letters, seldom answered, Harry poured out advice that expressed his own philosophy of life. “Encourage your love & practice of virtue,” he wrote. “Pursue learning so that you will fit yourself to be useful to your country and an ornament to your friends.”

  A love of truth was a theme in almost all of the innumerable letters Harry sent to his son. “It is the essence of virtue.” “You know my abhorrence of lying, which leads to every vice.” “Abhor deception.” “Disdain the mean infamous practice of telling untruths.”

  “Dwell on the virtues,” he declared in one particularly long letter, “and imitate, so far as lies in your power, the great & good men whom history presents to your view — Lycurgus, Solon, Numa, Hannibal.”

 
He also quoted George Washington to his son: “A man ought not only to be virtuous in reality, but he must also appear so.”

  Riding a horse at a wild canter and simultaneously striking a target with a pistol or carbine shot were “agreeable, useful and manly pastimes, but secondary always to the pursuit of knowledge.”

  In the realm of philosophy he repeatedly urged Charles to study the works of John Locke, the spiritual father of the American Revolution. “Consult him,” he said, “as the Grecians did the Delphic oracle.”

  The man who dispensed advice now resembled a heavily suntanned derelict. He, who had once been so conscious of his appearance, was still wearing the clothes he had brought to the Caribbean from Virginia. They were worn, and some were actually threadbare, but he could not afford a new wardrobe. He tried to pretend he no longer cared, but in a letter to Anne, written in the spring of 1817 when he was longing to return home and trying to find passage from Nassau on a ship bound for Virginia, he said, “I am reduced to only one remaining hat, of cream-colored felt, which you gave me on my last birthday before my departure. I know the need of making a presentable appearance when I return home, which I pray shall be soon, so I go bareheaded here in order to preserve my hat.”

  Ships did put into Nassau that would have taken Harry to New York or Boston, the principal ports of commerce in the West Indian trade, but he was too ill to travel overland any considerable distance after landing, and therefore waited for a ship that would drop him at Baltimore, the closest major port of call to Alexandria. In February 1818 he met an American merchant master who intended to put into Norfolk, and he immediately bought passage on the ship. His ticket, plus the cask of Madeira wine he bought to bring home with him, virtually exhausted his funds.