CHAPTER I

Childhood and Family Pride

HERE I ENCOUNTERED the severest weather known for many years, the rapid mountain streams were frozen to their bottoms, and we were almost buried by successive snow storms. The mountains became impassable, and with my worn out animals and dispirited party I was forced to seek refuge in a large bottom of cotton wood and undergrowth. In this situation I remained until the 22nd of February exposed to many hardships and great suffering from the want of provisions being reduced to the slender allowance of one pint of flour per day to a man, and no meat except occasionally a dog or wornout horse.1

Captain Richard Bland Lee was writing about the winter of 1833–34, which he had spent in the mountains and canyons on the western flanks of the Rocky Mountains, an area then as remote from the United States the moon is today.

When Lee returned to Washington, D.C., weary but proud of his explorations into this crucial area which was coveted by the Mexican, British, and American governments, he was met with a rebuff. His superiors were skeptical and even questioned his veracity.

“Never has the honor of a Lee been doubted!” Richard Bland Lee exclaimed and tore up his report.

Lee’s pride stemmed from his childhood, when he was taught that he followed a family tradition of leadership which went back five generations to Richard Lee the emigrant.

As the son of a younger son, the first Richard Lee knew that he would receive no inheritance; he would need to work hard and use his wits. As a teenager (he was probably born in 1613), Richard journeyed to London where he worked for his cousin, John Lee, who was a merchant in hides and pelts. In London he acquired both legal and commercial experience before sailing for Virginia prior to May 22, 1638 to serve as Clerk for the Quarter Court at Jamestown and factor for his cousin.

The dangers of the fur trade and wilderness did not deter Richard Lee from taking his bride, Anna Constable, a ward of the Governor, Sir Francis Wiatt, into the wilds to live near the Indians of Gloucester Point.

Richard Bland Lee the Congressman (1761–1827).

Back in the tradition of public service, however, was Henry Lee II (1729–1787). Lieutenant-Colonel Henry Lee served as Justice of the Peace, as Burgess, and represented Prince William County in the state conventions in 1774, ’75, ’76 and in the State Senate in 1780. In 1753 Henry Lee married Lucy Grymes, the “Lowland Beauty” whose hand had once been sought by George Washington.

Our protagonist’s father, Richard Bland Lee, was born at Leesylvania in Prince William County in 1761, the third son in a family of five boys and three girls. He was graduated from William and Mary College in Williamsburg where he was elected the forty-fifth member of the recently formed Phi Beta Kappa Society, bringing a declamation titled “Whether Religion is Necessary in Government” to his initiation.3 Thus prepared for government, he was elected to the State House of Delegates at age twenty-three, and to the Virginia Assembly of 1788 where he opposed Patrick Henry’s effort to call a new convention to reconsider the United States Constitution. The next year, he was elected to the First United States Congress.

In spite of his youth, at the First Congress in New York Richard Bland Lee introduced a bill to establish the capital on the Potomac, a bill which seemed to have little chance of passing. Later an approval was won by means of a deal—Southern votes for the assumption of revolutionary debts by the states were promised for approval of the Potomac site—all neatly arranged at Jefferson’s dinner party for Hamilton, Madison, White (of Maryland) and Richard Bland Lee. Thus, by a small minority vote, the District of Columbia was created, and Richard Bland Lee’s name became associated with the new capital. Later when the issue of Jay’s treaty caused a rift in Congress, Lee supported General Washington and was dropped from the Republican party, becoming a Federalist.

While serving in the “City of Brotherly Love” where the Third Congress was held, the thirty-three-year-old Congressman fell in love with twenty-seven-year-old Elizabeth Collins. The daughter of Stephen and Mary Parrish Collins was as proud of her Quaker-New England background as the Lees were of their Cavalier past. The Collins family had produced a gunsmith, yeomen, and merchants in Lynn, Duxbury, and Newbury. Stephen Collins had abandoned his native Massachusetts, moving to New Jersey and then to Philadelphia. There, he soon became a merchant and importer of wealth and prestige, as we see in the following quotation from John Adams’s diary, written on September 1, 1774.

We dined at Friend Collins’, Stephen Collins, with Governor Hopkins, Govern Ward, Mr. Gallaway, Mr. Rhoades, etc. . . . This gentleman is of a fine figure and eminence, as well as fortune, in this place. He is of the profession of the Friends, but not stiff nor rigid. He is a native of Lynn, in New England, a brother of Ezra Collins in Boston. I have been treated by him in this city, both in the former Congress and in the present, with unbounded civility and friendship. His house is open to every New England man. I never knew a more agreeable instance of hospitality. 4

Stephen Collins’s hospitality often had an ulterior motive. When the American shoe market was threatened with ruin shortly after the Revolution, because of the competition from cheap shoes that were being imported from England and France, Stephen Collins waged a campaign to urge Congress to impose a duty on imported shoes, a campaign which he successfully culminated at a dinner party at his home.5

Elizabeth Collins and Richard Bland Lee were married on June 30, 1794, by Bishop White, who was well known in Episcopal circles for his revision of the Anglican Book of Common Prayer: after the Declaration of Independence, he had deleted all references to the Crown from the liturgy. To be married by an Episcopal priest was a forbidden rite for a Quaker, and three months after their wedding, Elizabeth was “read out of meeting” by a Philadelphia Meeting for “Marrying contrary to discipline.” A few months later, her close friend, Dolley Payne Todd,, suffered the same humiliation upon marrying James Madison.

Fortunately, Stephen Collins’s love for his daughter was not affected by her having been censored by the Friends. He visited the young couple who were honeymooning in a log house on Richard Bland Lee’s plantation, “Sully,” and when he died a few months later, his will divided the bulk of his fortune equally between Elizabeth and her brother, Zaccheus Collins. Elizabeth’s share was four houses in the city of Philadelphia, four tracts of land in Mifflin County, tracts in Northumberland County, “lots of ground” on the South side of Market Street “between fifth and sixth Streets from Schuylkill and between Market and Chestnut Streets,” one half of her father’s plate and plated ware, and three certificates of Funded debt “Standing in my name on the books of the Treasury of the United States.” Besides these tangible bequests, Stephen willed his love and fatherly wisdom.

Finally my dear children let me conjure by the tenderest ties of Paternal affection that you be Industrious, frugal & temperate & endeavor to be rich, rather by bringing your wants to your circumstances, then trying in vain to get sufficient to satisfy the accumulation of wants for this consists the Philosopher stone, if there be any such thing in Nature. And that you study to love and to serve each other, “And remember that if thy Brother or thy Kinsman will be thy friend thou should prefer him to a stranger, or thou shews little nature or duty to thy parents.” I have had much experience in the many pleasing seens as well as in the Cross occurrances & vicisitudes of life and finally conclude myself perfectly convinced of the emptiness of all sorts of Ambitious pursuits and the unsatisfactory nature of all human attainments and therefore submit myself freely to a dissolution and change of this Body and without remorse or uneasiness resigne this vital spark of heavenly fire to its original Fountain.6

Defeated for re-election to Congress in 1796, Richard Bland Lee continued to serve in the Virginia House of Delegates as delegate from Loudoun County 1784–1788, 1796, and from Fairfax County 1799–1800 (the countys’ adjustment throwing his home. Sully, into the latter county).

Richard Bland Lee; Jr., was born on July 20, 1797, in his parents’ newly finished house at Sully Plantation. Sully, a museum house today, was described by a visitor in 1797 as a comfortable house, “furnished from Philadelphia with every article of silver, mahogany, Wilton carpetting and glassware that can be conceived or that you will find in the very best furnished houses of Phila. Parlour and Chambers equipped with every luxury as well as convenience.”7 Greatly cherished by the family was a set of blue and white Canton china, which had come all the way from China on one of grandfather Collins’ ships.8

Richard’s grandfather, Stephen ColIins, liked Sully so much that he wrote a letter describing it to his wife.

Richard’s grandfather, Stephen Collins, liked Sully so much that he wrote a letter describing it to his wife.

It is a very clever house, has an elegant hall 12 feet wide: and a handsome staircase and two pretty rooms on the first floor. One is 19 by 20 feet and the other 20 by 17 feet. There is two large and one small chamber in the second story, namely square with a large window in the gable and another good lodging room besides. Indeed it is and will be a very neate handssome house.

The kitchen is about 60 feet from the house and is a finer one than is in a twenty miles square, and it is, in fact, Kitchen and Laundry with very handsome some chimney with cranes in them. Indeed it is, property speaking, compleated Double Kitchen or Kitchen and Washouse. . . .9

The kitchen was always bustling with activity, a magnet for the children. Marvelous odors wafted from the kettles hanging in the fireplace and from the ovens; good-natured servants could be wheedled into giving Richard samples of crisp brown Scratch-Backs, Ash Cake or hot Sally Lunn. The kitchen sink was carved from a single block of stone and seemed immense to the children.

Sully

Sully Plantation was a boy’s paradise: pony rides through fields and apple orchards, dam building in the run, and hunting in the nearby woods. Indian heating stones, flint chips and arrowheads lay near the pear tree-shaded springs. On cold days warmth and company could be enjoyed with George, the blacksmith, in the noisy clang and red glow of the forge.

Four younger siblings soon followed him: Ann Matilda, Mary Collins, Cornelia, and Zaccheus Collins. The household also included two cousins, Portia and Cornelia Lee, about twenty years older than Richard, who preferred living at Sully to living with their bachelor brother William at Greenspring Plantation near Jamestown. They were orphans, born in Europe where their father had served as American plenipotentiary. Portia married when Richard was only two, but Cornelia divided her time between her sister’s home in Alexandria and Sully until she was married in 180610 to John Hopkins, Esq.

When Richard was five years old, his mother described her typical day at Sully in a letter she wrote to Cornelia.

The little room called Old Mistress’ room is in readiness every morning when I keep school for an hour, when, after dismissing the Black part of the pupils, I attempt to instruct the White lady, that is to say, whiter by nature—in the art of drawing, was she a little younger I should have some hopes of her, as it is, I fear my labours are in vain. An hour before dinner I play with the children—after which I read rill night, when my old man with much more accomodating politeness than usual, takes up Anachrsis and reads and comments, until our humble meal, after which we go quietly to rest, to rise the next day and pursue the same thing—“This is all very well you will say“ and should enjoy it, could I mix a little of the variety of this plan with it, it would be better I agree with you, but yet I assure you the evening generally doses in upon me before I am ready for it and I can truly say I know not one heavy hour. 1 have now in prospect a never failing source of amusement to me, which is the slow appearance of vegetation.

The letter ends with the request for another novel. Elizabeth needs novels as “a desert [sic] at intervals to the sounder food of Anacharsis—and as I never have a stomach for solids, in the absense of my dear Old Man—I shall read nothing of Consequence.“11

Life in the country, however, was not lonely. The Lees had many friends, and although Sully was 27 miles from the new capital (a strenuous jaunt for a horse-drawn carriage), interesting guests frequently came to visit. A young cousin, Thomas Lee Shippen, wrote to his father that the Sully hospitality was so overwhelming that he had been forced to delay his trip an extra day.

Mr. Lee’s family is composed of his lady and son 3 months old, Portia and Cornelia Lee who made choice of him as you may have heard on the death of their uncle Frank [Francis Lightfoot Lee, signer of the Declaration of Independence] as their guardian and a young Turberville who is a branch of our family. They all received us with open arms, and tho their caresses were almost beyond description, no one surpassed Mrs. Lee herself, our towns woman and once your patient, always your most passionate admirer. . . . there is no describing or resisting the hospitable importunities of these Lees and indeed these Virginians. If you call at a house determined to stay but one day you are very fortunate if you can get off in 3 days and your servants are always leagued against you. Either your horse wants a shoe, or your carriage a pin or a screw or your clothes which were washed yesterday are not quite dry, or some such excuse is always ready and stay you must.

Now here is a glorious day after the storm and Madame Juba insists upon employing it at the wash tub as she could not possibly wash yesterday in the rain so the inhabitants of Leeton [seat of Mr. Tuberville, husband of Herriet Lee] and a half doz. other Lee families are to come here today to dinner and try I suppose to keep us a week or two in the neighbourhood. God willing we go tomorrow. . . .12

The Lee family was definitely clannish, with a great deal of writing, visiting, and even intermarrying among branches. Two of Richard’s uncles, Charles Lee and Edmund Jennings Lee, had married two of Richard Henry Lee’s daughters. Light Horse Harry Lee’s first wife, Matilda, was a Lee second-cousin.

Uncle Charles lee (1758–1815), who had been appointed Attorney General by Washington, served under John Adams and was one of the lawyers for the defense of Aaron Burr in his trial for treason. He was a counsel in the famous case of Marbury v. Madison, which set the precedent in U.S. Supreme Court annals for being the first use by the Supreme Court of its veto power over Congress and its right of Judicial review.

Uncle Edmund Jennings Lee (1771–1843) was the mayor of Alexandria; he was such an austere and ardent churchman that he was known to have reprimanded the clergy at Episcopal conventions. He was a strict observer of the Sabbath, and when the horses and carts from his farm were delayed on Saturday, he would keep them where they were until Monday, at extra expense, rather than permit them to be on the road on Saturday. Uncle Edmund even refused to attend a reunion dinner of old classmates at the College of New Jersey (later renamed Princeton University) because he never permitted himself to dine out on the Sabbath!

Uncle Theodoric Lee (1766–1849), on the other hand, espoused no causes. He was a quiet and peaceful man who brought talk of crops to the family conclaves. His family of four children seemed small among the prolific families of nine, eight, and six children. One of these four cousins was especially close to young Richard: John Lee was the same age and would later become his brother-in-law.

Aunt Anne and Uncle William Byrd Page brought nine offspring to the family gatherings, one of whom would marry Roger Jones, a distant cousin, who would be Richard’s future Adjutant General. (Many of Richard’s official Army reports would contain postscripts for his cousin, Mary Anne.) Another aunt and uncle, Mary Lee and Philip Richard Fendall, lived in Alexandria with an unusually small family of two children. Aunt Lucy Lee remained unmarried, with forty-seven nieces and nephews to console her loneliness.

Especially loved were the eldest uncle, General Light Horse Harry Lee and his wife, Anne, who were Richard’s godparents.13 Richard hero-worshipped his fascinating uncle. Many evenings the children sat enthralled as Light Horse Harry, quick and articulate, told them again how he had surprised the British post at Paulus Hook in 1779, and had captured 160 of the enemy, almost without a loss. At other times, he told them anecdotes of his long, close friendship with General Washington, whose spirit seemed to pervade Sully; everyone had anecdotes to tell about this great friend of the family. Richard’s father had been a guest at Mount Vernon six times, and his uncles and cousins had made innumerable visits, some even doing their courting there. Richard’s mother cherished a locket containing a lock of George Washington’s hair, which was given to her by Martha Washington.14

James Madison was another presidential friend, to whom young Richard wrote in 1816, “I remain with that unchanged esteem which was first imbibed from my father in my early youth, and since confirmed thro all vicissitudes by experience.”15 Richard’s father had been introduced to James Madison by his brother, Henry Lee, when all three were members of the House of Delegates in 1784. (Henry Lee and James Madison had been fellow students at the College of New Jersey.) Madison had invited Richard Bland Lee, Sr. to go on a “projected peregrination thro the eastern states” in 1791, but Richard’s father deeply regretted having “to relinquish a journey so useful and a companion so delectable.”16 (On the “peregrination” Jefferson and Madison organized the Republican Party in New York and other northeastern states.)17

The Madison-Lee friendship ripened apace when the two Virginia Congressmen married Philadelphia classmates within a few months of each other. Elizabeth Collins had gone to school in Philadelphia with Mrs. Madison when she was Dolley Payne and had been a bridesmaid at Dolleyfs marriage to her first husband, John Todd. The two women would remain close friends for more than seventy years, Elizabeth present at Dolley’s deathbed in 1849.18 When Madison retired from the presidency in 1817, he and Dolley gave their portraits to the Lees.19

The Lees were conservative: young Richard was told that from the beginning the Federalist Party had supported a strong central government and laws to promote commerce, industry, agriculture, science, and education. The Federalist Party represented the conservative class, the wealthy, and the educated. Jefferson and the Republican Party, on the other hand, favored the small farmers, the common people, and seemed to be against the rich and the aristocrats, although they were themselves from that class. Jefferson contended that the states’ rightful powers should be protected and that the Federal Government had too much power.

Jefferson urged Congress to appropriate funds for the construction of roads into the Weest, and eventually the Cumberland Road, the national road, began to crawl toward Missouri. Richard’s father also realized the importance of transportation and served as a director of the Little River Turnpike Company which started construction in 1802, west from Alexndria, passing within a mile of Sully.

In 1803 President Jefferson purchased the Louisiana Territory from Napoleon for $#36;15,000,000. The next year, Jefferson sent Lewis and Clark on their fabulous journey to the Northwest, while Zebulon Pike explored the headwaters of the Missouri and traveled west from St. Louis to Pike’s Peak in the Rockies and south to the Rio Grande.