Henry Lee IV

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Henry (Black Horse Harry) Lee IV (28 May 1787 – 30 January 1837) was a biographer and historian, born in Stratford, Virginia, to Major General Light Horse Harry and Matilda Lee. He was a half-brother of Confederate General Robert E. Lee. In 1808 he graduated from the College of William & Mary. He served as a speech writer for the statesman John C. Calhoun as well as the presidential candidate Andrew Jackson. When Jackson won, Lee helped write the inaugural address. President Jackson rewarded him by a consular appointment to Algeria; the Senate, however, refused the confirmation. His remaining seven years of his life he traveled abroad dying in Paris, France.

Literary works

  • The Campaign of 1781 in the Carolinas. 1824
  • Observations on the Writings of Thomas Jefferson. 1832
  • The Life of Emperor Napoleon. 1835

Family

On 29 March 1817 he married Anne Robinson McCarty, daughter of Daniel McCarty and Margaret Robinson. Anne and Henry had one child, Margaret, born in the Autumn of 1818 and barely two years later she died in a tragic accident.[1]

Lee′s nickname of “Black Horse” — a pun on the nickname of his famous father, “Light Horse” — arose from a scandal that occurred two years after his daughter′s death. Lee embarked on an affair with his wife′s young sister, Elizabeth, who was his ward at the time.[2][3] According to at least one version of the story, Elizabeth became pregnant, although there′s no record of the child having survived.[2] McCarthy family brought suit to remove Lee as the trustee of Elizabeth's inheritance and recovery of the money. Unbeknownst to the McCarthy's, Lee had misappropriated a portion of the trust for the upkeep of the Stratford plantation, his ancestral home going back six generations. In order to conceal the misappropriation, Lee attempted to marry Elizabeth off to an unscrupulous suitor, without success. [4] The legal fallout forced Lee to sell Stratford out of the family.[2][4] In 1829 Elizabeth McCarty lived at Stratford for 50 years until she died in 1879.

Anne Lee, who had become addicted to morphine while trying to dampen her grief, fled to Tennessee, where she often stayed with the future president, Andrew Jackson, and his wife. Henry Lee later followed, beseeching his wife to forgive him.[2] That is how Lee befriended Jackson and began his political rehabilitation.

Notes

  1. ↑ Pryor, p. 35
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 Davis, Louise Littleton (1989). ""Black Horse Harry" Lee". Frontier Tales of Tennessee. Pelican Publishing Company. pp. 73–75. 
  3. ↑ Storrow, Samuel Appleton (6 Sept. 1821). "Correspondence of Samuel Appleton Storrow". The Robert E. Lee Boyhood Home Virtual Museum. 
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 Nagel, Paul C. (1991). The Lees of Virginia. Oxford University Press. pp. 206–12. 

References

  • Freeman, Douglas Southall R. E. Lee: A Biography Charles Scribner's Sons, New York and London, 1934. Ed. Bill Thayer online section at Accessed February 23, 2008
  • "Lee, Henry." American Authors 1600 – 1900 H. W. Wilson Company, NY 1938.
  • Library of Congress Accessed June 2, 2007
  • Pryor, Elizabeth Brown, and Robert E. Lee. Reading the Man: A Portrait of Robert E. Lee Through His Private Letters. New York: Viking, 2007. googlebooks Retrieved March 10, 2009

External links

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