LIFE OF MAJOR GENERAL HENRY LEE, COMMANDER OF LEE'S LEGION IN THE REVOLUTIONARY WAR, AND SUBSEQUENTLY GOVERNOR OF VIRGINIA; TO WHICH IS ADDED THE LIFE OF GENERAL THOMAS SUMTER OF SOUTH CAROLINA. BY CECIL B. HARTLEY. ILLUSTRATED WITH ENGRAVINGS, FROM ORIGINAL DESIGNS, NEW YORK: DERBY & JACKSON, No. 119 NASSAU STREET. Entered according to the Act of Congress, in the year 1859, by G. G. EVANS, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. TENOX LIBRARY NEW YORK PREFACE. GENERAL HENRY LEE was one of the most useful and conspicuous officers in the Revolutionary war. He was the intimate personal friend of Washington; and after the revolution he was equally conspicuous in political affairs, rising to the office of governor of the state of Virginia. Yet we are not aware that any extended biography of General Lee has been published since his decease. His well known work, "Memoirs of the War in the Southern Department of the United States," in two octavo volumes published in 1812, furnishes details of a portion of his military life; and we have drawn freely from it in our account of his services in the South; but our other materials, for the present biography, had to be drawn from a variety of sources. We have endeavored to do the subject justice; and we trust that our humble efforts will serve to place before the country in their true light the services of one of the bravest, most generous, and chivalrous of all the heroes, who served in the war of the Revolution. General Thomas Sumter was also a very distinguished officer in the same war. Unlike Lee, his revolutionary services were confined to the South, but on this field they were of inestimable value. He was the first of the partisan chieftains who openly took the field after the fall of Charleston; and for a considerable period he was considered by Lord Cornwallis the most troublesome of all his opponents. In heroic daring he was unsurpassed by any of the partisan officers; and he was the first to defeat the redoubtable Tarleton, who had rendered himself the terror of the South by his activity, boldness, and cruelty. After the close of the war, General Sumter represented South Carolina in the House of Representatives and the Senate of the United States. We have endeavored to give a clear and impartial account of the lives and services of these eminent patriots in the following pages; which we trust will be read with interest by their countrymen of the present time. |