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

by Noel B. Gerson

  A young woman named Angelica Barnett won dubious immortality by hacking her lover to death with an ax. Her case offered no legal complications; Angelica freely admitted the crime, was sentenced to be hanged and was lodged in the small, cramped two-cell log jail in Richmond. For a time Angelica was the only prisoner, but eventually she was joined by one Jacob Valentine, a merchant sentenced to imprisonment because of an inability to pay his business debts.

  Theoretically Angelica and Jacob should have occupied separate cells. But the jailer was careless, and the locks were on the outer doors of the building, not the cell doors. Angelica was a very attractive young murderess with elastic morals and, of course, as she was under a sentence of death, she had nothing to lose. Time weighed heavily on Jacob’s hands, and he had nothing to occupy him. Inevitably he found his way into Angelica’s cell, they became much friendlier, and before the death sentence could be carried out, Angelica discovered she was pregnant.

  Jacob was something of an amateur lawyer, and advised her to submit a formal plea to the courts, asking for a stay of execution until the baby was born. The news was splashed happily in newspapers throughout the country, and everywhere people formed violent opinions. Some insisted that Angelica should be hanged on schedule, while others declared she should not be hanged at all. She was so notorious that in Boston and Charleston, cities that were proud of their virtue, ladies did not mention the murderess-harlot-mother-to-be by name, but called her only by her initials. To refer to another woman as “an A.B.” was considered a vicious insult.

  The members of the Virginia bench had no desire to kill an unborn baby, and the Supreme Court of the state granted Angelica her reprieve. That, however, was only the beginning. A more or less spontaneous movement started in a dozen places, and large numbers of busy, sympathetic ladies signed petitions asking Governor Harry Lee to grant the admittedly criminal mother a pardon “so that her child will not be orphaned and be made to live on crumbs of charity.”

  Other ladies — and their husbands — were horrified by the prospect of a pardon. It would be a mockery of justice to let a wanton murderess escape unpunished, they believed, and they started counterpetitions. Harry was inundated, and even at dinners could get no peace, as Richmond itself was divided into pro-Angelica and anti-Angelica groups.

  Relatives sent Harry long letters on the subject, and members of the Burgesses delivered speeches and debated the matter on the floor of the Burgesses. So many curiosity-seekers gathered outside the little Henrico County jail that a detachment of militia had to be stationed there to send the good people on their way.

  Harry refused to discuss the case with anyone. The issues were clear, and he neither wanted nor would accept advice. He waited, hoping the furor would die down, but when it did not, he decided to cut it short and issued a very brief proclamation. “Under the powers vested in me,” he wrote, “I hereby grant to Angelica Barnett, spinster, a full pardon for her crime of murder in the first degree. This I do in the name of humanity and the people of Virginia.”

  Harry’s decision appeared to meet with strong public approval, and the Assembly promptly elected him to his second term as governor. Again he had not sought the office, and had done no campaigning on his own behalf.

  He was involved, too, in a venture of far greater importance, which was destined to have a greater effect than that of seeing his name in print. It was directly related, however, to the power of the press, which Harry thoroughly understood. Soon after the beginning of his first term as governor, he and Madison sought some way to counteract the influence of the newspapers that supported the positions taken by Alexander Hamilton.

  It was natural that both should think of their fellow Princetonian, Philip Freneau, who held views similar to their own. They privately petitioned Jefferson to find a position for him, and the Secretary of State obliged by giving Freneau the post of translating clerk in the State Department that would pay for his food and a roof over his head, if little else. A short time later Freneau’s Gazette appeared, and Harry worked hard to enlist subscribers, as did Madison.

  The Gazette was a success before its second edition was published, and its name was soon changed to The National Gazette. Freneau preached the doctrines of liberty, equality and fraternity, and attacked the attempts of the Hamiltonians to increase the powers of the federal government. Although expressing his own views, Freneau was regarded by the Hamiltonians as a mouthpiece for James Madison and Harry Lee. Inevitably, because he wrote opinions similar to those of Jefferson, his superior in the State Department, and because the anti-Hamilton groups were beginning to cluster around Jefferson, there were some who regarded the Gazette as Thomas Jefferson’s newspaper.

  These interlocking alliances worked to Harry’s disadvantage. Freneau became increasingly caustic in his attacks on the administration, and his vitriol eventually aroused the ire of President Washington himself. Jefferson, who saw the President daily, was able to defend his own opinions and position.

  But Harry Lee, in far-off Richmond, came to be regarded by both Washington and Hamilton as the mischief-maker behind Freneau. The President even went so far as to write Harry a letter in which he called the Gazette a scurrilous newspaper.

  Harry had never openly disagreed with Washington in any matter, and did not do so now. But he found himself politically isolated. He had never been on friendly terms with Jefferson, and although both Washington and Hamilton still liked him as a person, neither was willing to take him into the cabinet when Henry Knox thought of resigning. Instead, Knox was persuaded to remain as Secretary of War, and Madison, who had been supporting Harry for the post, fell discreetly silent.

  In short, Harry had no political support except that of Madison, who had limited influence. Enough time had passed for the vow not to accept an administration post to have been forgotten, and the governorship of one of the most important states in the Union should have been a steppingstone to a place in the cabinet or some other high federal office.

  But Hamilton, with the President’s approval, wouldn’t consider a man who had been one of Freneau’s sponsors, and Jefferson wanted no part of someone who was Alexander Hamilton’s close personal friend. Harry was out in the political cold, although he didn’t yet know it. In all justice to him, he probably wanted no political position, although he hinted otherwise in correspondence with Cousin Richard Henry and others in the family.

  Perhaps the truth of the matter is that Light-Horse Harry Lee was just beginning to find himself again after mourning so long for Matilda. And in finding himself, he found Anne Carter. They had been seeing a great deal of each other, and Anne had indicated that she would be willing to marry him.

  But a young eighteenth-century lady was not free to do as she herself pleased, and Anne’s parents were strongly opposed to her marriage with the mercurial governor. Harry had made no secret, in his talks with her, of his desire to accept a commission from the French. She had passed along the word to her parents, and Charles Carter didn’t want his daughter to become the wife — and perhaps the widow — of a man who planned to go to war in an alien land across the Atlantic.

  Occasional rumors were heard in Richmond and elsewhere during this period that Harry had taken a mistress. According to various accounts, this woman was a barmaid, a shopkeeper’s assistant or the daughter of a farmer who lived near Richmond. The story was never substantiated, and may have grown out of Harry’s celibate way of life. There might have been many who found it impossible to believe he was sexually abstinent, and therefore invented a mistress. If such an affair was fact rather than fancy, Harry managed to keep the details secret. There are no records, almost two hundred years later, to indicate that the woman was a real person.

  Inasmuch as he was falling in love with Anne during these months, it is far more likely that the mistress was a figment of gossips’ imagination. An idealist who tried to live according to high principles was not the sort to propose marriage to one woman while living with another.

&nb
sp; In any event, Charles Carter withdrew his objections to the marriage when Harry abandoned his idea of going to France. For the sake of romance it would be pleasant to record that his growing attachment to Anne was responsible for his change of mind, but evidence indicates that the only important factor was President Washington’s letter. Then, but not until then, did Charles Carter relent.

  Anne told her suitor that her father was in a more receptive frame of mind, and Harry rode to Shirley, a few miles from Richmond, to ask for the girl’s hand. Carter agreed, and once again Harry Lee was betrothed to an heiress who would inherit a large plantation and exceptionally handsome greathouse.

  Harry paid his visit to Shirley in May, and thereafter lost no time. He and Anne were married a few weeks later, on June 18, 1793. Henry, Jr. and Lucy acquired a stepmother, there was now a hostess in the drab Governor’s Mansion and Virginia had a gracious, very pretty first lady. The ceremony at Shirley was a quiet one, as befitted a second marriage for the bridegroom.

  The Lee family welcomed Anne, and all of Harry’s friends and relatives sent gifts and their congratulations. There was one notable exception: Thomas Jefferson took no note of the marriage. Perhaps he felt he didn’t know either the bride or groom sufficiently well, or it may have been that he was preoccupied with President Washington’s Proclamation of Neutrality pledging that the United States would remain aloof from Europe’s troubles.

  No matter what the cause of his silence, Harry was annoyed. People could slight him, if they wished, but he considered Jefferson’s aloofness as an insult to his bride. It seems unlikely that the courtly Jefferson deliberately snubbed Anne Carter Lee, even if he disliked her husband. But Harry interpreted the matter as he wished, and quietly seethed.

  The year 1793 was one of the busiest in Harry’s life. He revised the tax structure of Virginia on a more equitable basis, using an individual’s prosperity rather than his mere ownership of land as a standard for determining the taxes that a man owed. This gentle rebuke to Hamilton was a crude form of the income tax that was later to become the Treasury Department’s greatest single source of revenue.

  Virginia obeyed the Proclamation of Neutrality to the letter. Washington’s word was final to Harry in all things, and he called out units of the state militia again and again to seize incoming or outbound ships that were trying to do business with the French. Relations within England were deteriorating, too, in part because of Jefferson’s sympathy with France and the goals of the Revolution there.

  Harry indiscreetly concluded a private letter to Hamilton with a condemnation of Jefferson’s stand on international matters, and the Secretary of the Treasury “happened” to let others see the communication. Word soon got back to Jefferson that Governor Lee was criticizing him and, although the Secretary of State made no direct reply, he reacted coolly whenever the governor’s name was mentioned in his presence. All of the elements of a feud were in the making.

  In November 1793 Harry was elected to his third one-year term as governor. There were no other candidates, and although several of Jefferson’s friends abstained, the actual vote was unanimous.

  Meanwhile the Governor’s Mansion had come to life. Guests were entertained several nights each week at dinner, receptions, and levees, and on at least three occasions, when the house was deemed too small for the size of the party Anne was planning, she transferred the festivities to Shirley.

  She was a good hostess, and her charm was one of her husband’s greatest assets. Harry obviously was much in love with her, and his children worshiped her. Henry, Jr. and Lucy remained devoted to her all their lives, and were close to her long after their father’s death.

  Early in 1794 Harry made what was to prove the greatest political error of his life. He learned of a small dinner that Thomas Jefferson had given at his Monticello estate, and was told that the usually tactful Jefferson had been critically bitter in comments directed at the President.

  Harry exploded. He thought of George Washington as godlike, and all his accumulated resentments boiled to the surface. The President, he believed, should be made aware of such treachery, so he sat down and wrote a long, furious letter to Washington.

  Whether by accident or design, the letter — or a copy of it, also in Harry’s own hand — was sent via Monticello. Harry Lee was not one to strike at a man behind his back.

  Jefferson, who was renowned for his own temper, promptly lost it. He, too, sent a letter to Washington, in which — among other names — he called Harry a “miserable tergiversator,” a “malicious intriguer,” and “a purveyor of falsehoods, half-truths and exaggerations.”

  It is doubtful that Harry ever saw the communication or learned of its contents. Washington was the great master of the art of stifling feuds among his subordinates, and was at his best when snuffing the flames of controversy.

  But, whether Harry did or didn’t hear of Jefferson’s reaction, the fact remains that he had made a bitter enemy. Governor Harry Lee had made a mistake that Colonel Harry Lee would not have tolerated or forgiven: he had underestimated the strength and striking power of a foe.

  For the moment, however, he didn’t care what Thomas Jefferson thought of him. He was unprecedentedly popular in Virginia, he was happy in his private life with a lovely young wife and he had learned to handle his duties as governor so well that he had ample time to spare.

  When Harry Lee wasn’t busy, he became restless, and restlessness always caused him to think in terms of resuming his military career. He wrote a short letter to Henry Knox, indicating that he wouldn’t be averse to accepting an appropriate commission. And he had become sufficiently sophisticated in political matters to realize that Knox wasn’t the real decision-maker. To insure he got his point across, he also sent a similar communication to Secretary Hamilton, the most powerful man in the government, after the President, and the man to whom Washington left innumerable details of policy-making.

  Hamilton surprised and delighted his old friend by replying that it was possible, even probable, that there would be a military assignment of great importance for his old friend in the immediate future, but it would entail rather considerable personal sacrifice.

  Harry’s reply was typical, as Hamilton must have known it would be. There was no sacrifice too great for him to make if the safety and honor of his country were at stake, Light-Horse Harry declared. The stage was set for a new and strange adventure.

  XV: THE WHISKEY REBELLION

  The Whiskey Rebellion of 1794 meant many different things to many different people. Its instigators regarded themselves as martyrs and, with some cause, believed themselves the victims of unjust tyranny. The controversy, the most violent in the United States since the foundation of the Republic, had its roots in one of Secretary Hamilton’s pet financial policies.

  Farmers west of the mountains were cut off from the markets of the seaboard because of the difficulty of transporting their grain to the cities. Similarly, they were not allowed to send their produce off to Europe by way of the Mississippi River because of President Washington’s Proclamation of Neutrality. Consequently they did the next best thing and converted their solid assets into liquid ones, distilling their grain.

  Hamilton’s excise tax on American-made liquor robbed them of nearly all their profits. Meantime the seaboard dwellers, who drank Western whiskey and who still managed to get their rum by way of the West Indies and their other imported spirits by virtue of dubious smuggling operations, remained untouched by the tax. Westerners seethed, and claimed they were being subjected to discrimination identical to that which the American Colonies had been forced to endure in the days prior to the Revolution.

  In some places men merely grumbled, but in southwestern Pennsylvania the farmer-distillers, who were led by Harry Lee’s college friend, Hugh H. Brackenridge, decided to take action. The majority refused to pay the federal tax, and the more violent used intimidation to threaten those law-abiding citizens who tried to comply with the tax law. Eventually and inevitably
, stills and barns were burned, there were raids and counterraids, and several men were killed. Reports to the federal government from Pittsburgh, the nerve center of the insurrection, indicated a state of near-anarchy there.

  President Washington took his usual dispassionate, farsighted view of the situation. In his view the national government represented all the people of the United States, and therefore that government could not tolerate a refusal to obey its laws, either on the part of the states or individuals. However, he hoped that the passage of time would bring the Westerners to their senses.

  Alexander Hamilton shared a portion of the President’s opinion, but his own was far more partisan. His personal authority had been flouted, and the rebellion, if successful, would seriously hamper his efforts to increase the power of the central government. A man of great political sensitivity, he realized that the issue was delicate, and that any attempt to coerce the rebels to submit would be unpopular not only in the West, but in the South as well.

  Thomas Jefferson sat squarely on the opposite side of the fence. Hamilton’s excise tax law, he wrote to James Madison, was “the instrument of dismembering the Union,” and he referred to it again and again as “infernal legislation.” He was in favor of repealing the law, but did not — at that juncture — make his views public, as he did not want to antagonize the President.

  While officialdom talked, pondered, and observed, the situation in the “field” grew steadily worse. The rebels were carrying arms, weapons were being distributed to other malcontents, and it became evident that unless punitive measures were undertaken, the federal establishment, which had just begun to create prestige for itself, would lose the respect of citizens everywhere. The President was reluctant to meet force with force, but at last Hamilton persuaded him to act, and he made the challenge his own, declaring that his reputation and that of the national government were inseparable.