1001 People Who Made America - Alan Axelrod [75]
Ledbetter, Huddie “Leadbelly” (1885?–1949) Leadbelly was born and raised in Louisiana and became an itinerant blues performer. He was a blues guitar genius and a composer who absorbed folk traditions then synthesized them into a vast repertoire of original “folk-blues” songs. His life, however, was marked by intense violence. Imprisoned for murder in 1918, he was released after six years, having been pardoned by the governor of Texas after he heard him sing. Imprisoned at Angola, Louisiana, for attempted murder in 1930, he was released in 1934 thanks to the efforts of father-and-son folklorists John and Alan Lomax. Leadbelly embarked on a performing career, but nevertheless died in poverty. Of his many songs, “Goodnight, Irene,” “The Midnight Special,” and “Rock Island Line” have become not only enduring classics but lucrative bestsellers—for performers other than the composer.
Lee, Henry “Light-horse Harry” (1756–1818) Lee was the rarest of American officers during the revolution: a skilled cavalry commander. He earned his nickname, “Light-horse Harry,” as commander of dragoons—swift-moving, elite troops who rode into battle then fought, dismounted, as infantry. On the death of George Washington in 1799, Lee wrote the resolution passed by Congress, which called the first president “first in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen.” Light-horse Harry was the grandfather of Robert E. Lee.
Lee, Richard Henry (1732–1794) Although less famous today than John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and the like, Lee was a crucial player in the American independence movement. Prominent in Virginia life and politics, he served in the House of Burgesses from 1758 to 1775 and was instrumental in mounting opposition to the Stamp Act and the Townshend Acts, the onerous British taxation policies that provoked the American Revolution. During the revolution, he worked with Patrick Henry and Thomas Jefferson to create the committees of correspondence, which coordinated policies and military campaigns among the colonies. After the revolution, Lee opposed replacing the Articles of Confederation with the Constitution because he distrusted strong central government. Yet, after ratification, he faithfully served his nation and state as senator from Virginia in the first Congress under the Constitution, from 1789 to 1792.
Lee, Robert E. (1807–1870) One of the illustrious Lees of Virginia, Robert E. Lee graduated from West Point in 1829, second in his class. Since the most promising graduates were customarily assigned to the Corps of Engineers, Lee became an engineering officer—and a brilliant one. It was, however, his heroic performance in the U.S.-Mexican War (1846–1848) that gained him his first fame. General Winfield Scott called him “the very best soldier I ever saw in the field.” With the outbreak of the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln offered Lee command of the Union armies. He refused, because he could not bring himself to take up arms against his “native country”—by which he meant Virginia—and, resigning his U.S. Army commission, joined the army of the Confederacy. Initially serving as military adviser to Jefferson Davis, he rose to become commander of the Army of Northern Virginia, principal force of the Confederate army. Typically outnumbered and outgunned, he nevertheless compiled a remarkable record of victory, produced by his uncanny tactical skill and his charismatic leadership. His defeat at the Battle of Gettysburg in July 1863 was the turning point of the war, and his surrender at Appomattox Courthouse April 9, 1865, was the symbolic end of the Civil War. Despite the bitterness of the conflict, Lee emerged from the Civil War as the nation’s most respected—even most beloved—military commander.
Leisler, Jacob (1640–1691) German-born militia commander Leisler rallied and led New York farmers and merchants in an uprising against Catholics and suspected Catholics in the English colonial administration. The rebellion