Henry Lee IV

Henry (Black Horse Harry) Lee IV (28 May 1787 – 30 January 1837) was a biographer and historian, born in Stratford, Virginia, to Major General Light Horse Harry and Matilda Lee. He was a half-brother of Confederate General Robert E. Lee. In 1808 he graduated from the College of William & Mary.

Politics

Henry Lee IV served as a speech writer for the statesman John C. Calhoun as well as the presidential candidate Andrew Jackson. When Jackson won in 1828, Lee helped write the inaugural address. President Jackson rewarded him with a consular appointment to Algeria; the Senate, however, refused the confirmation.

In his remaining seven years of his life, Henry Lee traveled abroad, dying in Paris, France.

Family

On 29 March 1817 he married Anne Robinson McCarty, daughter of Daniel McCarty and Margaret Robinson. Anne and Henry had one child, Margaret. Margaret was born in autumn of 1818, and died at the age of two in a tragic accident.

Lee′s nickname of “Black Horse” — a pun on the nickname of his famous father, “Light Horse” Harry Lee — originated in a scandal two years after his daughter′s death. Lee began an illicit affair with his wife′s young sister, Elizabeth, who was his ward at the time. According to at least one version of the story, Elizabeth became pregnant, although there′s no record of the child having survived. McCarthy family brought suit to remove Lee as trustee of Elizabeth's inheritance and recovery of the money. Unbeknownst to the McCarthys, Lee had misappropriated a portion of the trust for upkeep of Stratford Hall Plantation, the Lee family's ancestral home for six generations. In order to conceal the misappropriation, Lee attempted unsuccessfully to marry Elizabeth off to an unscrupulous suitor. The legal fallout and resulting scandal forced Lee to sell Stratford out of the family. Elizabeth McCarty lived at Stratford for 50 years, from 1829 until her death in 1879.

Anne Lee, who had become addicted to morphine in an attempt to recover from grief at the death of her daughter, fled to Tennessee,. She was often a guest of future president Andrew Jackson and his wife. Henry Lee later followed, beseeching his wife for forgiveness. Andrew Jackson befriended Lee and began to assist in rehabilitating him in political and social life.

Literary works

• The Campaign of 1781 in the Carolinas. 1824
• Observations on the Writings of Thomas Jefferson. 1832
• The Life of Emperor Napoleon. 1835