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

by Noel B. Gerson

  Several of his relatives commented in passing on his curious practice, making notations in their diaries or writing to other members of the clan. Harry himself made no mention of the subject in his Memoirs or elsewhere. Many years later his son, possibly the greatest of all geniuses in American military history, was also silent on the subject, even though he admired every phase of his father’s career. Robert Edward Lee, like Light-Horse Harry, took it for granted that a fighting man made all necessary preparations when war became inevitable.

  II: CAPTAIN OF CAVALRY

  Skirmishes at Lexington and Concord in Massachusetts signaled the active outbreak of the American Revolution in the spring of 1775. Patriotic farmers and artisans by the thousands joined the new Regular Army, the Continentals, which the Congress authorized after electing Washington as commander-in-chief. Others enlisted in the militia of the different colonies, the majority cautiously agreeing to serve for no more than ninety days.

  The British were determined to crush the insurrection, and a powerful fleet commanded by Admiral Lord Howe sailed for the New World to block the American coast and starve the rebels into submission. Meanwhile thousands of seasoned troops were sent south from Halifax, Nova Scotia, while other regiments were dispatched direct from England in troop transports. The War Office in London also hired some additional brigades of German mercenaries, considered by many to be the world’s finest soldiers, and everyone except the beleaguered Americans considered the colonial cause hopeless.

  Boston was already occupied by Redcoats, and New York, Philadelphia, and Charleston were threatened. But the Americans refused to admit they had no chance of winning. A column of ragged irregulars jointly commanded by the dashing Colonel Benedict Arnold of Connecticut and Colonel Ethan Allen of Massachusetts’ Vermont District captured an important British post, Fort Ticonderoga, in New York. Continentals took Montreal, and Arnold led a corps against Quebec. The odds against him were enormous, and although his expedition was forced to retreat, he and his men — among them Harry’s former college friend, Aaron Burr — demonstrated to the world that Americans could fight.

  The odds against General Washington were overwhelming, and not the least of his problems was the inexperience of his senior officers. His chief of artillery was Henry Knox, a plump Boston bookseller who had studied war in the quiet of his library, but had enjoyed no significant field experience. General Nathanael Greene of Rhode Island was a member of the Society of Friends who gave up his religion because of his dedication to the American cause. Lord Stirling, one of America’s few native-born peers, was a New Jersey man whose eagerness for battle was offset by a fondness for strong alcoholic spirits. General Philip Schuyler, a patrician New Yorker, was exceptionally able, but too old for active field service. The Congress placed its hopes in two British veterans, Horatio Gates and Charles Lee, but General Gates had too great a fondness for intrigue, and Lee, who was guilty of cowardice at best and treason at worst, never lived up to his promise.

  Eventually Knox and Greene would establish enduring reputations, but most of the American leaders who would emerge from the war as major figures were inexperienced unknowns in 1775 and 1776. Certainly no one was more obscure than Harry Lee, whose lassitude in joining the colors seems inexplicable at first glance.

  A firm believer in American liberty, a young man who had spent months arduously practicing for combat, he continued to loll in comfort at his parents’ home. Why?

  Paradoxically, in spite of his restless impatience, he was a Lee, and his own training at Princeton, combined with his family traditions, made it impossible for him to act until he believed it legally right for him to take up arms. The fledgling lawyer respected the proprieties, and insisted on observing them.

  Early in 1776 it became obvious to everyone except a few lonely moderates on both sides of the Atlantic that a reconciliation could not be achieved. General Washington spoke openly of independence, and so did Richard Henry Lee.

  The views of these middle-aged gentlemen, one a close family friend and the other a relative, convinced Harry that he should hesitate no longer, and he announced to his family that he intended to enlist in the Virginia militia as a private. His father, who had spent many weeks at Williamsburg and knew something of what was being planned, urged him to wait a few days longer.

  Cousin Theodorick Bland came to Leesylvania for dinner, and quietly told twenty-year-old Harry that he intended to organize a regiment of cavalry to be known as the Virginia Light Dragoons. Harry enlisted on the spot, and became the first to join the unit. For the moment he was an ordinary trooper, holding the rank of private, but it was unthinkable that a Lee should be less than a commissioned officer. Harry may or may not have known that he would serve as a gentleman, but his father certainly had a private understanding with Cousin Theodorick and with Patrick Henry, who was the unanimous choice of the Burgesses for governor of the embryo state of Virginia.

  Cousin Richard Henry Lee was an influential member of a Continental Congress committee that drew up a document called the Declaration of Independence. It was published in July 1776, and a new nation, the United States of America, came into being.

  The last legal obstacle had been cleared away. Governor Patrick Henry created the Virginia Light Dragoons with the stroke of a quill pen, and appointed Theodorick Bland its colonel. Harry Lee, a total stranger to combat whose only knowledge of war came from his studies of the ancients, was immediately granted a commission as a captain and was given command of the Fifth Troop, which existed only on paper.

  July and August were the most hectic months Harry had ever known. All militiamen enlisted as volunteers, and Colonel Bland felt confident that he could fill his ranks quickly. After all, there were thousands of Virginians who were accomplished horsemen. Captain Harry Lee of the Fifth Troop immediately requested — and received — permission to obtain his own men in his own way. From the moment he had been given his appointment, he had been determined to organize a band of cavalrymen that would be the equal of an elite regiment of infantry riflemen formed by a fellow Virginian, Colonel Dan Morgan.

  Harry knew scores of people in the northern part of the state and everyone, of course, knew the Lee family. He rode from village to village and farm to farm, dazzling in his superb new uniform of blue-and-buff, the Continental colors, which he, a mere militiaman, actually had no right to wear. Unfortunately, the tailor on the Lee estate hadn’t known any better, and there wasn’t time for him to make another uniform.

  Word spread from county to county that only the most accomplished and courageous horsemen would be accepted in the Fifth Troop, and Harry was inundated with applications. But he tested every potential member himself, leading the would-be cavalryman on a wild ride, and then turning suddenly to charge with drawn sword at his companion. Those unable to maintain his pace and those who flinched were politely told there was no vacancy in the Fifth Troop.

  The formal but hastily drawn tables of organization specified that there would be four officers, twelve noncommissioned officers, and eighty-four men in each troop. But Harry soon discovered that military red tape was interfering with his ideal. He was unable to obtain the supplies he requisitioned from the overburdened regimental quartermaster, the ordnance officer gave him only a fraction of the gunpowder and bullets he needed, and the regimental adjutant drove him to distraction with demands that he fill out forms in quadruplicate for each new recruit.

  “Hannibal,” the irritated Harry wrote to his parents, “would have been a miserable failure had he been hampered and badgered by so many incompetents who think themselves soldiers only if they imitate the pompous manners of the enemy.”

  The ranks of the Fifth Troop were closed when one lieutenant and two ensigns, nine noncommissioned officers, and seventy privates had been admitted. Harry had waited long enough for action, and the addition of each new recruit presented him with more paperwork headaches than he wanted.

  General Washington’s corps of Continentals and militia was muster
ing on Long Island to meet the British army commanded by General William Howe, who had replaced General Thomas Gage after the Redcoats had evacuated Boston. The young commander of Dragoons assumed that the regiment would ride north to join in the battle that was looming, but fresh disappointments and delays were in store. Only a few weeks earlier the enemy had been repulsed at Charleston, and a great many leaders of the Burgesses were afraid that the Royal Navy might try to stage a landing somewhere on the Virginia coast, too.

  Inasmuch as few of the new units were yet ready for combat outside the state, the Assemblymen persuaded Governor Henry to keep all regiments other than those specifically requested by General Washington within the state boundaries. The governor agreed, thinking it likely that some of the more powerful Indian nations, who were being encouraged by the British, might raid the settlements in the western portion of the state.

  Harry was confident that he and his troop would be permitted to ride north, and his junior officers started preparing for the journey when he went off to apply for the privilege. He tasted military discipline for the first time when his request was brusquely rejected. Colonel Bland showed him the governor’s order, told him there was nothing to discuss and dismissed him. The humiliated captain returned to his own bivouac, fuming.

  While the hard-pressed Washington was losing the Battle of Long Island and, subsequently, abandoning New York to General Howe, who was knighted by a grateful monarch for his victory, the Fifth Troop of Virginia Light Dragoons rode out on daily practice forays and waited in ill-tempered disgust for a foe that never appeared.

  By any standard, the little unit was extraordinary, but no one outside the organization quite realized it. The lieutenant was Harry’s age, twenty, and the two ensigns were eighteen and seventeen, respectively. The oldest man in the troop was the sergeant major, a graybeard of twenty-four. Many of the troopers were still in their late teens, and the youngest were twins of sixteen.

  Everyone was completely at home in the saddle, and could ride bareback if necessary. Every trooper spent hours each day riding at full tilt and cutting down targets dangling from the branches of oaks. No one had to be taught that the care of horses was more important than the welfare of mere men, and the troopers, all of whom owned their own mounts, developed the spirit that has always been so essential to the success of any military organization.

  Harry himself did not know it, but he was already demonstrating qualities of leadership that would soon win him enduring fame as the American Revolution’s greatest cavalryman.

  His opportunity came when word reached Williamsburg that Washington’s poorly equipped, untrained rabble had been forced to evacuate New York on September 14–15, and that only the commander-in-chief’s genius had permitted him to escape from Billy Howe with the better part of his force still intact.

  The new United States faced its first great military crisis, and Patrick Henry unhesitatingly countermanded his previous order, instructing all regiments to release subordinate units ready and able to assist the general, who was beginning a slow, dogged retreat south through New Jersey. The governor wisely refrained from telling anyone that militia units were deserting at an alarming rate, and that each morning Washington’s personal aides were dismayed to find that hundreds more had silently departed for their homes.

  Three troops of the Light Dragoons were ready for service, the Second, Third, and Fifth, and Colonel Bland sent them north together, under the designation of the 1st Battalion. Harry Lee’s Fifth was so anxious to see action that it far outstripped the pace set by the other troops on the first day’s ride, and a messenger was sent ahead to order Captain Lee to wait.

  Lee saw the courier on the road, suspected his mission and ordered the troop to ride still harder. Contact with the other units was lost, and from that time Harry operated independently, never serving either with his regiment or with its 1st Battalion. Neither then nor later did he accept any cavalryman as his immediate superior. In a better-organized army he might well have been court-martialed for his impudence, but the Continentals knew little discipline in the early years of the American Revolution and the militia virtually none. No unit was better or worse than its own commander, and the morale of the Fifth Troop was superb. Harry Lee eagerly sought glory, and his men thirsted for it with him.

  The little unit looked crisp and smart, almost spectacular, funds from the Lee fortune having been spent freely for uniforms. The men wore narrow-brimmed hats, tunics and breeches of blue wool and calf-high boots into which they had tucked long-handled knives, an affectation they had copied from the frontiersmen of Virginia’s Kentucky District. The officers were even more magnificent in burnished helmets with white-dyed horsehair plumes and short blue capes lined in buff-colored silk.

  The residents of Maryland and Delaware villages gathered in the streets to gape at the sartorial splendor of the young warriors, and occasionally a small boy cheered. Adults, who knew of the debacle at New York, realized there was little cause for optimism, and militiamen who had deserted and returned to their homes sneered openly. A fist fight was narrowly averted at the little town of Dover, Delaware, when several veterans of the Battle of Long Island called the troopers “toy soldiers.”

  One morning early in October, Harry, who was riding at the head of the column, saw the ragged Continental vanguard in the distance, and an hour later he reported to General Washington, who had paused for an early midday meal at a farmhouse. The commander-in-chief was pleased to see the young man he had known for so many years, but gave him no instructions and seemed lost in thought.

  Staff officers took Harry to another room, and after offering him a little bread and cold meat, explained the ugly facts of life to him. There was virtually no food in the quartermasters’ wagons, the corps had lost almost all of its artillery, and supplies of lead and powder were dangerously short. The army was shrinking every day, and even the most devout patriots were willing to concede that the American cause was on the verge of being lost.

  A large force of General Sir William Howe’s Redcoats and German mercenaries remained close on Washington’s heels, capturing one town after another as the corps retreated. But Sir William, who personally believed that a policy of conciliation would pay dividends, had chosen not to attack and destroy the enemy. His policy appeared sound, as further bloodletting seemed unnecessary. Each day he took more ground, each day scores of American civilians hastily decided to renew their allegiance to the Crown and each day Washington grew more feeble.

  “We are so weak,” said a mournful Henry Knox, whose artillery consisted of only a few battered cannon that might explode if fired, “that we are incapable of fighting. Howe holds us in the palm of his hand as a tomcat holds a trembling mouse.”

  No one gave the dashing young commander of Virginia’s Fifth Troop orders of any kind. Presumably he was invited to join the retreat, if he wished.

  Fresh shocks were in store. The cavalrymen had carried food for themselves and forage for their mounts on their journey, but now their supplies were exhausted — and the quartermasters could give them nothing to eat. The Fifth Troop was hungry, and Harry decided to take matters into his own hands. His funds were limited, so he was unable to buy food from the New Jersey farmers who were hiding sacks of grain and barrels of pickled beef in their cellars and barns. Washington had given strict orders prohibiting the “requisitioning” of food from fellow Americans, a policy with which the young gentleman from Virginia heartily agreed.

  Harry had excelled in logic in his studies at college, and logic dictated his next move. The British who were following the corps had ample supplies of everything the Americans needed. Therefore he would take what he needed from the enemy.

  The troop set out immediately, riding north and making a wide swing to the west in order to avoid the Redcoat cavalry and light infantry. The tactics Harry devised for his raid were simple. He knew that the British supply wagons followed the heavy infantry, and that only the mounted rear guard threatened his security
. So he carefully scouted the position of the British horsemen before striking, riding forward with only a few of his men to observe the precise situation for himself.

  He was delighted to find that the Redcoats, careless of their own security and refusing to believe that the Americans were capable of mounting even a primitive assault, had allowed a gap of a half-mile to develop between the last of the supply wagons and the first troop of rear-guard cavalry. The fact that his small band was outnumbered by at least ten to one seemed to cause him no concern.

  Timing his attack with an instinct that was to prove almost infallible in the years ahead, he waited until dusk. The growing dark and the weariness of the enemy after a day’s march were factors that helped his bold maneuver. Suddenly he and his troop swept out of the woods, each squad having been given a specific assignment. In less than five minutes the young Virginians had captured more than twenty wagons, and by the time the startled British quartermasters notified the cavalry regiment bringing up the rear, the Americans had vanished.

  At midnight a triumphant Harry Lee, still fresh in the saddle, rode through the American lines with twenty-one wagonloads of supplies, not to mention the mules hauling the carts. He was chagrined because two other wagons had broken down, but his troopers had piled sacks of flour and bags of jerked beef onto their saddles, so little of the precious food had been left behind.

  Washington’s aides awakened the general to tell him the good news, and he offered the son of his old friends the warmest congratulations his austere nature permitted. The Fifth Troop enjoyed a feast before retiring in the open for a well-deserved night’s rest, and the next morning the whole corps enjoyed a hearty meal. Less than fifty men deserted that day, which the adjutant general and his assistants considered almost as welcome as a victory over the enemy.