The Glorious Cause - Jeff Shaara [353]
HENRY “LIGHT-HORSE HARRY” LEE
Lee remains with Nathanael Greene for the concluding chapters of the war and distinguishes himself and his Legion in every major fight Greene undertakes.
In February 1782, he resigns from the army, claims ill health. He returns home to Virginia, marries his cousin, Matilda Lee, who dies in 1790. He then marries Anne Carter in 1793. He is asked by Washington to command the troops organized to put down the Whiskey Rebellion, and succeeds in restoring the peace without the loss of a single man. He serves in the United States Congress for five years, until 1788, as governor of Virginia until 1795, and returns to Congress in 1799.
Lee engages in several unwise business dealings, shows such an astounding lack of business sense that he becomes completely destitute. His creditors show no mercy to the former hero, and in 1808, he is confined for two years in a debtor’s prison. Upon his release, he travels to the West Indies, presumably to heal old war wounds, but more likely to escape his creditors. In 1818, returning to Virginia, he dies en route, and is buried at Cumberland Island, Georgia. He is sixty-two. In 1913, his remains are moved to the Lee family vault at the Lee Chapel at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia. He rests there alongside his son, Robert E. Lee.
Henry Lee’s memoirs, published in 1812, are widely considered one of the finest firsthand accounts produced during this era of American history.
SILAS DEANE
Attacked relentlessly by Arthur Lee’s influential friends in congress, Deane retires from public life a broken and humiliated man. He returns to France in 1781, and sinks into a personal despair that inspires him to write extremely unwise letters that pass through the hand of his secretary, Edward Bancroft, who is in fact a British spy. The letters are an exercise in bitterness, with Deane claiming that America should not continue its quest for independence. Bancroft reveals the letters so that they are made public in both England and America, and Deane has now sealed his fate. Accused not only of financial misdealings, but treason as well, he endures his remaining years in exile. He dies en route to Canada in 1789, at age fifty-two.
The man so responsible for engineering crucial French financial support does not receive his due until 1842, when Congress recognizes that Arthur’s Lee’s conspiracy against Deane was without basis, and that in fact Deane’s ledgers are accurate and his accounts entirely honest.
ROBERT MORRIS
The man so responsible for sorting out the financial quagmire of the Revolution rarely receives credit for repeatedly saving Washington’s army. Those in congress who possess none of Morris’ worldly understanding of commerce regard him instead as a man never to be trusted. Caught up in the controversy that surrounds Silas Deane, Morris’ services to congress draw to a close. Despite vicious criticism of his business practices from such notable writers as Thomas Paine, Morris still carries the enthusiastic support of George Washington, and Washington’s friends in congress, including John Adams. Morris is appointed superintendent of finances in 1781, a precursor to what will become the post of Secretary of the Treasury. With considerable financial assistance from the French, he founds the Bank of North America in 1782, and does much to prevent the utter collapse of the fledgling American economy. Receiving little support from either the congress or the states, he resigns in 1784. Exhausted and embittered, he declines Washington’s offer to serve as first Secretary of the Treasury, instead represents Pennsylvania in the United States Senate until 1795.
He continues to play a high-stakes game of business speculation, at one time owns the parcel of land that will eventually become the District of Columbia. He is dealt a serious financial blow by