Lieutenant Colonel Henry Lee

Henry Lee was born in 1756 at Leesylvania, Virginia, into the Virginia planter gentry, and he was educated at the College of New Jersey, from which he graduated in 1773. He initially planned to study law in England, but the onset of war redirected him into military service. He joined the 1st Continental Dragoons in 1776 and demonstrated from the start an exceptional aptitude for cavalry operations — swift, independent, and aggressive in a way that won him Washington's personal admiration. By 1778 he commanded what became known as Lee's Legion, a mixed force of cavalry and light infantry that functioned as an independent raiding and reconnaissance force.

During the southern campaign of 1780-1781, Lee's Legion operated across the Carolinas in close coordination with Nathanael Greene's main army. In the period around Hobkirk's Hill, Lee's operations against British outposts and supply lines around Camden were part of the same strategic logic as Francis Marion's lowcountry raids: to make every British garrison in the interior a target requiring protection while Greene maneuvered the main British force. Lee struck Fort Granby, Fort Motte, and Fort Grierson in this period, capturing or destroying positions that supported British occupation of the interior. The cumulative pressure exerted by Lee, Marion, Pickens, and Thomas Sumter on British logistics made Lord Rawdon's position at Camden strategically untenable even as the British won individual engagements like Hobkirk's Hill. Lee's cavalry also played a critical role at Guilford Courthouse, Eutaw Springs, and other major engagements of the southern campaign.

After the war, Lee entered Virginia politics and served as governor. He delivered the eulogy for George Washington that produced the phrase "first in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen." His later life was marked by financial ruin and physical decline; he died in 1818 on Cumberland Island, Georgia, at the home of Nathanael Greene's daughter. His son Robert E. Lee would become far more famous, but Henry Lee's own military record in the Revolution ranks him among the finest American cavalry commanders of the war.