Chapter 23

Under Louis Philippe he made large contributions to French jurisprudence, editing theJournal du palais, 1791-1837(27 vols., 1837), and1837-1847(17 vols.), with a commentaryRépertoire général de la jurisprudence française(8 vols., 1843-1848), the introduction to which was written by himself. His later writings were political in character. SeeLedru-Rollin, ses discours et ses écrits politiques(2 vols., Paris, 1879), edited by his widow.

1Arago, Garnier-Pagès, Marie, Lamartine, and Ledru-Rollin.

LEDYARD, JOHN(1751-1789), American traveller, was born in Groton, Connecticut, U.S.A. After vainly trying law and theology, Ledyard adopted a seaman’s life, and, coming to London, was engaged as corporal of marines by Captain Cook for his third voyage (1776). On his return (1778) Ledyard had to give up to the Admiralty his copious journals, but afterwards published, from memory, a meagre narrative of his experiences—herein giving the only account of Cook’s death by an eye-witness (Hartford, U.S.A., 1783). He continued in the British service till 1782, when he escaped, off Long Island. In 1784 he revisited Europe, to organize an expedition to the American North-West. Having failed in his attempts, he decided to reach his goal by travelling across Europe and Asia. Baffled in his hopes of crossing the Baltic on the ice (Stockholm to Abo), he walked right round from Stockholm to St Petersburg, where he arrived barefoot and penniless (March 1787). Here he made friends with Pallas and others, and accompanied Dr Brown, a Scotch physician in the Russian service, to Siberia. Ledyard left Dr Brown at Barnaul, went on to Tomsk and Irkutsk, visited Lake Baikal, and descended the Lena to Yakutsk (18th of September 1787). With Captain Joseph Billings, whom he had known on Cook’s “Resolution,” he returned to Irkutsk, where he was arrested, deported to the Polish frontier, and banished from Russia for ever. Reaching London, he was engaged by Sir Joseph Banks and the African Association to explore overland routes from Alexandria to the Niger, but in Cairo he succumbed to a dose of vitriol (17th of January 1789). Though a born explorer, little resulted from his immense but ill-directed activities.

SeeMemoirs of the Life and Travels of John Ledyard, by Jared Sparks (1828).

LEE, ANN(1736-1784), English religious visionary, was born in Manchester, where she was first a factory hand and afterwards a cook. She is remembered by her connexion with the sect known as Shakers (q.v.). She died at Watervliet, near Albany, New York.

LEE, ARTHUR(1740-1792), American diplomatist, brother of Richard Henry Lee, was born at Stratford, Westmoreland county, Virginia, on the 20th of December 1740. He was educated at Eton, studied medicine at Edinburgh, practised as a physician in Williamsburg, Virginia, read law at the Temple, London, in 1766-1770, and practised law in London in 1770-1776. He was an intimate of John Wilkes, whom he aided in one of his London campaigns. In 1770-1775 he served as London agent for Massachusetts, second to Benjamin Franklin, whom he succeeded in 1775. At that time he had shown great ability as a pamphleteer, having published in LondonThe Monitor(1768), seven essays previously printed in Virginia;The Political Detection: or the Treachery and Tyranny of Administration, both at Home and Abroad(1770), signed “Junius Americanus”; andAn Appeal to the Justice and Interests of the People of Great Britain in the Present Disputes with America(1774), signed “An Old Member of Parliament.” In December 1775 the Committee of Secret Correspondence of Congress chose him its European agent principally for the purpose of ascertaining the views of France, Spain, and other European countries regarding the war between the colonies and Great Britain. In October 1776 he was appointed, upon the refusal of Jefferson, on the commission with Franklin and Silas Deane to negotiate a treaty of alliance, amity and commerce with France, and also to negotiate with other European governments. His letters to Congress, in which he expressed his suspicion of Deane’s business integrity and criticized his accounts, resulted in Deane’s recall; and other letters impaired the confidence of Congress in Franklin, of whom he was especially jealous. Early in 1777 he went to Spain as American commissioner, but received no official recognition, was not permitted to proceed farther than Burgos, and accomplished nothing; until the appointment of Jay, however, he continued to act as commissioner to Spain, held various conferences with the Spanish minister in Paris, and in January 1778 secured a promise of a loan of 3,000,000 livres, only a small part of which (some 170,000 livres) was paid. In June 1777 he went to Berlin, where, as in Spain, he was not officially recognized. Although he had little to do with the negotiations, he signed with Franklin and Deane in February 1778 the treaties between the United States and France. Having become unpopular at the courts of France and Spain, Lee was recalled in 1779, and returned to the United States in September 1780. He was a member of the Virginia House of Delegates in 1781 and a delegate to the Continental Congress in 1782-1785. With Oliver Wolcott and Richard Butler he negotiated a treaty with the Six Nations, signed at Fort Stanwix on the 22nd of October 1784, and with George Clark and Richard Butler a treaty with the Wyandot, Delaware, Chippewa and Ottawa Indians, signed at Ft. McIntosh on the 21st of January 1785. He was a member of the treasury board in 1784-1789. He strongly opposed the constitution, and after its adoption retired to his estate at Urbana, Virginia, where he died on the 12th of December 1792.

See R. H. Lee,Life of Arthur Lee(2 vols., Boston, 1829), and C. H. Lee,A Vindication of Arthur Lee(Richmond, Virginia, 1894), both partisan. Much of Lee’s correspondence is to be found in Wharton’sRevolutionary Diplomatic Correspondence(Washington, 1889). Eight volumes of Lee’s MSS. in the Harvard University Library are described and listed inLibrary of Harvard University, Bibliographical Contributions, No. 8 (Cambridge, 1882).

LEE, FITZHUGH(1835-1905), American cavalry general, was born at Clermont, in Fairfax county, Virginia, on the 19th of November 1835. He was the grandson of “Light Horse Harry” Lee, and the nephew of Robert E. Lee. His father, Sydney Smith Lee, was a fleet captain under Commodore Perry in Japanese waters and rose to the rank of commodore; hismother was a daughter of George Mason. Graduating from West Point in 1856, he was appointed to the 2nd Cavalry, which was commanded by Colonel Albert Sidney Johnston, and in which his uncle, Robert E. Lee, was lieutenant-colonel. As a cavalry subaltern he distinguished himself by his gallant conduct in actions with the Comanches in Texas, and was severely wounded in 1859. In May 1860 he was appointed instructor of cavalry at West Point, but resigned on the secession of Virginia. Lee was at once employed in the organization of the forces of the South, and served at first as a staff officer to General R. S. Ewell, and afterwards, from September 1861, as lieutenant-colonel, and from April 1862 as colonel of the First Virginia Cavalry in the Army of Northern Virginia. He became brigadier-general on General J. E. B. Stuart’s recommendation on the 25th of July 1862, and served under that general throughout the Virginian campaigns of 1862 and 1863, becoming major-general on the 3rd of September 1863. He conducted the cavalry action of Beverly Ford (17th March 1863) with skill and success. In the Wilderness and Petersburg campaigns he was constantly employed as a divisional commander under Stuart, and, after Stuart’s death, under General Wade Hampton. He took part in Early’s campaign against Sheridan in the Shenandoah Valley, and at Winchester (19th Sept. 1864) three horses were shot under him and he was severely wounded. On General Hampton’s being sent to assist General Joseph E. Johnston in North Carolina, the command of the whole of General Lee’s cavalry devolved upon Fitzhugh Lee early in 1865, but the surrender of Appomattox followed quickly upon the opening of the campaign. Fitzhugh Lee himself led the last charge of the Confederates on the 9th of April that year at Farmville.

After the war he devoted himself to farming in Stafford county, Virginia, and was conspicuous in his efforts to reconcile the Southern people to the issue of the war, which he regarded as a final settlement of the questions at issue. In 1875 he attended the Bunker Hill centenary at Boston, Mass., and delivered a remarkable address. In 1885 he was a member of the board of visitors of West Point, and from 1886 to 1890 was governor of Virginia. In April 1896 he was appointed by President Cleveland consul-general at Havana, with duties of a diplomatic and military character added to the usual consular business. In this post (in which he was retained by President McKinley) he was from the first called upon to deal with a situation of great difficulty, which culminated with the destruction of the “Maine” (seeSpanish-American War). Upon the declaration of war between Spain and the United States he re-entered the army. He was one of the three ex-Confederate general officers who were made major-generals of United States Volunteers. Fitzhugh Lee commanded the VII. army corps, but took no part in the actual operations in Cuba. He was military governor of Havana and Pinar del Rio in 1899, subsequently commanded the department of the Missouri, and retired as a brigadier-general U.S. Army in 1901. He died in Washington on the 28th of April 1905. He wroteRobert E. Lee(1894) in the “Great Commanders” series, andCuba’s Struggle Against Spain(1899).

LEE, GEORGE ALEXANDER(1802-1851), English musician, was born in London, the son of Henry Lee, a pugilist and innkeeper. He became “tiger” to Lord Barrymore, and his singing led to his being educated for the musical profession. After appearing as a tenor at the theatres in Dublin and London, he joined in producing opera at the Tottenham Street theatre in 1829, and afterwards was connected with musical productions at Drury Lane and Covent Garden. He married Mrs Waylett, a popular singer. Lee composed music for a number of plays, and also many songs, including the popular “Come where the Aspens quiver,” and for a short time had a music-selling business in the Quadrant. He died on the 8th of October 1851.

LEE, HENRY(1756-1818), American general, called “Light Horse Harry,” was born near Dumfries, Virginia, on the 29th of January 1756. His father was first cousin to Richard Henry Lee. With a view to a legal career he graduated (1773) at Princeton, but soon afterwards, on the outbreak of the War of Independence, he became an officer in the patriot forces. He served with great distinction under Washington, and in 1778 was promoted major and given the command of a small irregular corps, with which he won a great reputation as a leader of light troops. His services on the outpost line of the army earned for him the soubriquet of “Light Horse Harry.” His greatest exploit was the brilliant surprise of Paulus Hook, N.J., on the 19th of August 1779; for this feat he received a gold medal, a reward given to no other officer below general’s rank in the whole war. He was promoted lieutenant-colonel 1780, and sent with a picked corps of dragoons to the southern theatre of war. Here he rendered invaluable services in victory and defeat, notably at Guilford Court House, Camden and Eutaw Springs. He was present at Cornwallis’s surrender at Yorktown, and afterwards left the army owing to ill-health. From 1786 to 1788 he was a delegate to the Confederation Congress, and in the last-named year in the Virginia convention he favoured the adoption of the Federal constitution. From 1789 to 1791 he served in the General Assembly, and from 1791 to 1794 was governor of Virginia. In 1794 Washington sent him to help in the suppression of the “Whisky Insurrection” in western Pennsylvania. A new county of Virginia was named after him during his governorship. He was a major-general in 1798-1800. From 1799 to 1801 he served in Congress. He delivered the address on the death of Washington which contained the famous phrase, “first in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen.” Soon after the War of 1812 broke out, Lee, while helping to resist the attack of a mob on his friend, A. C. Hanson, editor of the BaltimoreFederal Republican, which had opposed the war, received grave injuries, from which he never recovered. He died at the house of General Nathanael Greene on Cumberland Island, Georgia, on the 25th of March 1818.

Lee wrote valuableMemoirs of the War in the Southern Department(1812; 3rd ed., with memoir by Robert E. Lee, 1869).

LEE, JAMES PRINCE(1804-1869), English divine, was born in London on the 28th of July 1804, and was educated at St Paul’s school and at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he displayed exceptional ability as a classical scholar. After taking orders in 1830 he served under Thomas Arnold at Rugby school, and in 1838 was appointed head-master of King Edward’s school, Birmingham, where he had among his pupils E. W. Benson, J. B. Lightfoot and B. F. Westcott. In 1848 Lord John Russell nominated him as first bishop of the newly-constituted see of Manchester. His pedagogic manner bore somewhat irksomely on his clergy. He is best remembered for his splendid work in church extension; during his twenty-one years’ tenure of the see he consecrated 130 churches. He took a foremost part in founding the Manchester free library, and bequeathed his own valuable collection of books to Owens College. He died on the 24th of December 1869.

A memorial sermon was preached by Archbishop E. W. Benson, and was published with biographical details by J. F. Wickenden and others.

LEE, NATHANIEL(c.1653-1692), English dramatist, son of Dr Richard Lee, a Presbyterian divine, was born probably in 1653. His father was rector of Hatfield, and held many preferments under the Commonwealth. He was chaplain to General Monk, afterwards duke of Albemarle, and after the Restoration he conformed to the Church of England, abjuring his former opinions, especially his approval of Charles I.’s execution. Nathaniel Lee was educated at Westminster school, and at Trinity College, Cambridge, taking his B.A. degree in 1668. Coming to London under the patronage, it is said, of the duke of Buckingham, he tried to earn his living as an actor, but though he was an admirable reader, his acute stage fright made acting impossible. His earliest play,Nero, Emperor of Rome, was acted in 1675 at Drury Lane. Two tragedies written in rhymed heroic couplets, in imitation of Dryden, followed in 1676—Sophonisba, or Hannibal’s Overthrow and Gloriana, or the Court of Augustus Caesar. Both are extravagant in design and treatment. Lee made his reputation in 1677 with a blank verse tragedy,The Rival Queens, or the Death of Alexander the Great. The play, which treats of the jealousy of Alexander’s first wife, Roxana, for his second wife, Statira, was, in spite of muchbombast, a favourite on the English stage down to the days of Edmund Kean.Mithridates, King of Pontus(acted 1678),Theodosius, or the Force of Love(acted 1680),Caesar Borgia(acted 1680)—an imitation of the worst blood and thunder Elizabethan tragedies—Lucius Junius Brutus, Father of His Country(acted 1681), andConstantine the Great(acted 1684) followed.The Princess of Cleve(1681) is a gross adaptation of Madame de La Fayette’s exquisite novel of that name.The Massacre of Paris(published 1690) was written about this time. Lee had given offence at court by hisLucius Junius Brutus, which had been suppressed after its third representation for some lines on Tarquin’s character that were taken to be a reflection on Charles II. He therefore joined with Dryden, who had already admitted him as a collaborator in an adaptation ofOedipus, inThe Duke of Guise(1683), a play which directly advocated the Tory point of view. In it part of theMassacre of Pariswas incorporated. Lee was now thirty years of age, and had already achieved a considerable reputation. But he had lived in the dissipated society of the earl of Rochester and his associates, and imitated their excesses. As he grew more disreputable, his patrons neglected him, and in 1684 his mind was completely unhinged. He spent five years in Bethlehem Hospital, and recovered his health. He died in a drunken fit in 1692, and was buried in St Clement Danes, Strand, on the 6th of May.

Lee’sDramatic Workswere published in 1784. In spite of their extravagance, they contain many passages of great beauty.

LEE, RICHARD HENRY(1732-1794), American statesman and orator, was born at Stratford, in Westmoreland county, Virginia, on the 20th of January 1732, and was one of six distinguished sons of Thomas Lee (d. 1750), a descendant of an old Cavalier family, the first representative of which in America was Richard Lee, who was a member of the privy council, and early in the reign of Charles I. emigrated to Virginia. Richard Henry Lee received an academic education in England, then spent a little time in travel, returned to Virginia in 1752, having come into possession of a fine property left him by his father, and for several years applied himself to varied studies. When twenty-five he was appointed justice of the peace of Westmoreland county, and in the same year was chosen a member of the Virginia House of Burgesses, in which he served from 1758 to 1775. He kept a diffident silence during two sessions, his first speech being in strong opposition to slavery, which he proposed to discourage and eventually to abolish, by imposing a heavy tax on all further importations. He early allied himself with the Patriot or Whig element in Virginia, and in the years immediately preceding the War of Independence was conspicuous as an opponent of the arbitrary measures of the British ministry. In 1768, in a letter to John Dickinson of Pennsylvania, he suggested a private correspondence among the friends of liberty in the different colonies, and in 1773 he became a member of the Virginia Committee of Correspondence.

Lee was one of the delegates from Virginia to the first Continental Congress at Philadelphia in 1774, and prepared the address to the people of British America, and the second address to the people of Great Britain, which are among the most effective papers of the time. In accordance with instructions given by the Virginia House of Burgesses, Lee introduced in Congress, on the 7th of June 1776, the following famous resolutions: (1) “that these united colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent states, that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British crown, and that all political connexion between them and the state of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved”; (2) “that it is expedient to take the most effectual measures for forming foreign alliances”; and (3) “that a plan of confederation be prepared and transmitted to the respective colonies for their consideration and approbation.” After debating the first of these resolutions for three days, Congress resolved that the further consideration of it should be postponed until the 1st of July, but that a committee should be appointed to prepare a declaration of independence. The illness of Lee’s wife prevented him from being a member of that committee, but his first resolution was adopted on the 2nd of July, and the Declaration of Independence, prepared principally by Thomas Jefferson, was adopted two days later. Lee was in Congress from 1774 to 1780, and was especially prominent in connexion with foreign affairs. He was a member of the Virginia House of Delegates in 1777, 1780-1784 and 1786-1787; was in Congress again from 1784 to 1787, being president in 1784-1786; and was one of the first United States senators chosen from Virginia after the adoption of the Federal constitution. Though strongly opposed to the adoption of that constitution, owing to what he regarded as its dangerous infringements upon the independent power of the states, he accepted the place of senator in hope of bringing about amendments, and proposed the Tenth Amendment in substantially the form in which it was adopted. He became a warm supporter of Washington’s administration, and his prejudices against the constitution were largely removed by its working in practice. He retired from public life in 1792, and died at Chantilly, in Westmoreland county, on the 19th of June 1794.

See theLife(Philadelphia, 1825), by his grandson, R. H. Lee; andLetters(New York, 1910), edited by J. C. Ballagh.

His brother,William Lee(1739-1795), was a diplomatist during the War of Independence. He accompanied his brother, Arthur Lee (q.v.), to England in 1766 to engage in mercantile pursuits, joined the Wilkes faction, and in 1775 was elected an alderman of London, then a life-position. In April 1777, however, he received notice of his appointment by the Committee of Secret Correspondence in America to act with Thomas Morris as commercial agent at Nantes. He went to Paris and became involved in his brother’s opposition to Franklin and Deane. In May 1777 Congress chose William Lee commissioner to the courts of Vienna and Berlin, but he gained recognition at neither. In September 1778, however, while at Aix-la-Chapelle, he negotiated a plan of a treaty with Jan de Neufville, who represented Van Berckel, pensionary of Amsterdam. It was a copy of this proposed treaty which, on falling into the hands of the British on the capture of Henry Laurens, the duly appointed minister to the Netherlands, led to Great Britain’s declaration of war against the Netherlands in December 1780. Lee was recalled from his mission to Vienna and Berlin in June 1779, without being required to return to America. He resigned his post as an alderman of London in January 1780, and returned to Virginia about 1784.

SeeLetters of William Lee, edited by W. C. Ford (Brooklyn, 1891).

Another brother,Francis Lightfoot Lee(1734-1797), was a member of the Virginia House of Burgesses in 1770-1775. In 1775-1779 he was a delegate to the Continental Congress, and as such signed the Declaration of Independence. He served on the committee which drafted the Articles of Confederation, and contended that there should be no treaty of peace with Great Britain which did not grant to the United States both the right to the Newfoundland fisheries and the free navigation of the Mississippi. After retiring from Congress he served in 1780-1782 in the Virginia Senate.

LEE, ROBERT EDWARD(1807-1870), American soldier, general in the Confederate States army, was the youngest son of major-general Henry Lee, called “Light Horse Harry.” He was born at Stratford, Westmoreland county, Virginia, on the 19th of January 1807, and entered West Point in 1825. Graduating four years later second in his class, he was given a commission in the U.S. Engineer Corps. In 1831 he married Mary, daughter of G. W. P. Custis, the adopted son of Washington and the grandson of Mrs Washington. In 1836 he became first lieutenant, and in 1838 captain. In this rank he took part in the Mexican War, repeatedly winning distinction for conduct and bravery. He received the brevets of major for Cerro Gordo, lieut.-colonel for Contreras-Churubusco and colonel for Chapultepec. After the war he was employed in engineer work at Washington and Baltimore, during which time, as before the war, he resided on the great Arlington estate, near Washington, which had come to him through his wife. In 1852 he was appointed superintendent of West Point, and during his three years here he carried out many important changes in the academy. Under himas cadets were his son G. W. Custis Lee, his nephew, Fitzhugh Lee and J. E. B. Stuart, all of whom became general officers in the Civil War. In 1855 he was appointed as lieut.-colonel to the 2nd Cavalry, commanded by Colonel Sidney Johnston, with whom he served against the Indians of the Texas border. In 1859, while at Arlington on leave, he was summoned to command the United States troops sent to deal with the John Brown raid on Harper’s Ferry. In March 1861 he was made colonel of the 1st U.S. Cavalry; but his career in the old army ended with the secession of Virginia in the following month. Lee was strongly averse to secession, but felt obliged to conform to the action of his own state. The Federal authorities offered Lee the command of the field army about to invade the South, which he refused. Resigning his commission, he made his way to Richmond and was at once made a major-general in the Virginian forces. A few weeks later he became a brigadier-general (then the highest rank) in the Confederate service.

The military operations with which the great Civil War opened in 1861 were directed by President Davis and General Lee. Lee was personally in charge of the unsuccessful West Virginian operations in the autumn, and, having been made a full general on the 31st of August, during the winter he devoted his experience as an engineer to the fortification and general defence of the Atlantic coast. Thence, when the well-drilled Army of the Potomac was about to descend upon Richmond, he was hurriedly recalled to Richmond. General Johnston was wounded at the battle of Fair Oaks (Seven Pines) on the 31st of May 1862, and General Robert E. Lee was assigned to the command of the famous Army of Northern Virginia which for the next three years “carried the rebellion on its bayonets.” Little can be said of Lee’s career as a commander-in-chief that is not an integral part of the history of the Civil War. His first success was the “Seven Days’ Battle” (q.v.) in which he stopped McClellan’s advance; this was quickly followed up by the crushing defeat of the Federal army under Pope, the invasion of Maryland and the sanguinary and indecisive battle of the Antietam (q.v.). The year ended with another great victory at Fredericksburg (q.v.). Chancellorsville (seeWilderness), won against odds of two to one, and the great three days’ battle of Gettysburg (q.v.), where for the first time fortune turned decisively against the Confederates, were the chief events of 1863. In the autumn Lee fought a war of manœuvre against General Meade. The tremendous struggle of 1864 between Lee and Grant included the battles of the Wilderness (q.v.), Spottsylvania, North Anna, Cold Harbor and the long siege of Petersburg (q.v.), in which, almost invariably, Lee was locally successful. But the steady pressure of his unrelenting opponent slowly wore down his strength. At last with not more than one man to oppose to Grant’s three he was compelled to break out of his Petersburg lines (April 1865). A series of heavy combats revealed his purpose, and Grant pursued the dwindling remnants of Lee’s army to the westward. Headed off by the Federal cavalry, and pressed closely in rear by Grant’s main body, General Lee had no alternative but to surrender. At Appomattox Court House, on the 9th of April, the career of the Army of Northern Virginia came to an end. Lee’s farewell order was issued on the following day, and within a few weeks the Confederacy was at an end. For a few months Lee lived quietly in Powhatan county, making his formal submission to the Federal authorities and urging on his own people acceptance of the new conditions. In August he was offered, and accepted, the presidency of Washington College, Lexington (now Washington and Lee University), a post which he occupied until his death on the 12th of October 1870. He was buried in the college grounds.

For the events of Lee’s military career briefly indicated in this notice the reader is referred to the articlesAmerican Civil War, &c. By his achievements he won a high place amongst the great generals of history. Though hampered by lack of materials and by political necessities, his strategy was daring always, and he never hesitated to take the gravest risks. On the field of battle he was as energetic in attack as he was constant in defence, and his personal influence over the men whom he led was extraordinary. No student of the American Civil War can fail to notice how the influence of Lee dominated the course of the struggle, and his surpassing ability was never more conspicuously shown than in the last hopeless stages of the contest. The personal history of Lee is lost in the history of the great crisis of America’s national life; friends and foes alike acknowledged the purity of his motives, the virtues of his private life, his earnest Christianity and the unrepining loyalty with which he accepted the ruin of his party.

See A. L. Long,Memoirs of Robert E. Lee(New York, 1886); Fitzhugh Lee,General Lee(New York, 1894, “Great Commanders” series); R. A. Brock,General Robert E. Lee(Washington, 1904); R. E. Lee,Recollections and Letters of General R. E. Lee(London, 1904); H. A. White,Lee(“Heroes of the Nations”) (1897); P. A. Bruce,Robert E. Lee(1907); T. N. Page,Lee(1909); W. H. Taylor,Four Years with General Lee; J. W. Jones,Personal Reminiscences of Robert E. Lee(1874).

LEE(orLegh)ROWLAND(d. 1543), English bishop, belonged to a Northumberland family and was educated at Cambridge. Having entered the Church he obtained several livings owing to the favour of Cardinal Wolsey; after Wolsey’s fall he rose high in the esteem of Henry VIII. and of Thomas Cromwell, serving both king and minister in the business of suppressing the monasteries, and he is said to have celebrated Henry’s secret marriage with Anne Boleyn in January 1533. Whether this be so or not, Lee took part in preparing for the divorce proceedings against Catherine of Aragon, and in January 1534 he was elected bishop of Coventry and Lichfield, or Chester as the see was often called, taking at his consecration the new oath to the king as head of the English Church and not seeking confirmation from the pope. As bishop he remained in Henry’s personal service, endeavouring to establish the legality of his marriage with Anne, until May 1534, when he was appointed lord president of the council in the marches of Wales. At this time the Welsh marches were in a very disorderly condition. Lee acted in a stern and energetic fashion, holding courts, sentencing many offenders to death and overcoming the hostility of the English border lords. After some years of hard and successful work in this capacity, “the last survivor of the old martial prelates, fitter for harness than for bishops’ robes, for a court of justice than a court of theology,” died at Shrewsbury in June 1543. Many letters from Lee to Cromwell are preserved in the Record Office, London; these throw much light on the bishop’s career and on the lawless condition of the Welsh marches in his time.

One of his contemporaries wasEdward Lee(c.1482-1544) archbishop of York, famous for his attack on Erasmus, who replied to him in hisEpistolae aliquot eruditorum virorum. Like Rowland, Edward was useful to Henry VIII. in the matter of the divorce of Catherine of Aragon, and was sent by the king on embassies to the emperor Charles V. and to Pope Clement VII. In 1531 he became archbishop of York, but he came under suspicion as one who disliked the king’s new position as head of the English Church. At Pontefract in 1536, during the Pilgrimage of Grace, the archbishop was compelled to join the rebels, but he did not sympathize with the rising and in 1539 he spoke in parliament in favour of the six articles of religion. Lee, who was the last archbishop of York to coin money, died on the 13th of September 1544.

LEE, SIDNEY(1859- ), English man of letters, was born in London on the 5th of December 1859. He was educated at the City of London school, and at Balliol College, Oxford, where he graduated in modern history in 1882. In the next year he became assistant-editor of theDictionary of National Biography. In 1890 he was made joint-editor, and on the retirement of Sir Leslie Stephen in 1891 succeeded him as editor. He was himself a voluminous contributor to the work, writing some 800 articles, mainly on Elizabethan authors or statesmen. While he was still at Balliol he wrote two articles on Shakespearian questions, which were printed in theGentleman’s Magazine, and in 1884 he published a book on Stratford-on-Avon. His article on Shakespeare in the fifty-first volume (1897) of theDictionary of National Biographyformed the basis of hisLife of William Shakespeare(1898), which reached its fifth edition in 1905. Mr Lee edited in 1902 the Oxford facsimile edition of the first folio ofShakespeare’s Comedies, Histories and Tragedies, followed in 1902 and 1904 by supplementary volumes giving details of extant copies, and in 1906 by a complete edition ofShakespeare’sWorks. Besides editions of English classics his works include aLife of Queen Victoria(1902),Great Englishmen of the Sixteenth Century(1904), based on his Lowell Institute lectures at Boston, Mass., in 1903, andShakespeare and the Modern Stage(1906).

LEE, SOPHIA(1750-1824), English novelist and dramatist, daughter of John Lee (d. 1781), actor and theatrical manager, was born in London. Her first piece,The Chapter of Accidents, a one-act-opera based on Diderot’sPère de famille, was produced by George Colman at the Haymarket Theatre on the 5th of August 1780. The proceeds were spent in establishing a school at Bath, where Miss Lee made a home for her sisters. Her subsequent productions includedThe Recess, or a Tale of other Times(1785), a historical romance; andAlmeyda, Queen of Grenada(1796), a tragedy in blank verse; she also contributed to her sister’sCanterbury Tales(1797). She died at her house near Clifton on the 13th of March 1824.

Her sister,Harriet Lee(1757-1851), published in 1786 a novel written in letters,The Errors of Innocence.Clara Lennoxfollowed in 1797. Her chief work is theCanterbury Tales(1797-1805), a series of twelve stories which became very popular. Lord Byron dramatized one of the tales, “Kruitzner,” asWerner, or the Inheritance. She died at Clifton on the 1st of August 1851.

LEE, STEPHEN DILL(1833-1908), Confederate general in the American Civil War, came of a family distinguished in the history of South Carolina, and was born at Charleston, S.C., on the 22nd of September 1833. Graduating from West Point in 1854, he served for seven years in the United States army and resigned in 1861 on the secession of South Carolina. He was aide de camp to General Beauregard in the attack on Fort Sumter, and captain commanding a light battery in General Johnston’s army later in the year 1861. Thereafter, by successive steps, each gained by distinguished conduct on the field of battle, he rose to the rank of brigadier-general in November 1862, being ordered to take command of defences at Vicksburg. He served at this place with great credit until its surrender to General Grant in July 1863, and on becoming a prisoner of war, he was immediately exchanged and promoted major-general. His regimental service had been chiefly with artillery, but he had generally worked with and at times commanded cavalry, and he was now assigned to command the troops of that arm in the south-western theatre of war. After harassing, as far as his limited numbers permitted, the advance of Sherman’s column on Meridian, he took General Polk’s place as commander of the department of Mississippi. In June 1864, on Hood’s promotion to command the Army of Tennessee, S. D. Lee was made a lieutenant-general and assigned to command Hood’s old corps in that army. He fought at Atlanta and Jonesboro and in the skirmishing and manœuvring along middle Tennessee which ended in the great crisis of Nashville and the “March to the Sea.” Lee’s corps accompanied Hood in the bold advance to Nashville, and fought in the battles of Franklin and Nashville, after which, in the rout of the Confederate army Lee kept his troops closed up and well in hand, and for three consecutive days formed the fighting rearguard of the otherwise disintegrated army. Lee was himself wounded, but did not give up the command until an organized rearguard took over the post of danger. On recovery he joined General J. E. Johnston in North Carolina, and he surrendered with Johnston in April 1865. After the war he settled in Mississippi, which was his wife’s state and during the greater part of the war his own territorial command, and devoted himself to planting. He was president of the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Mississippi from 1880 to 1899, took some part in state politics and was an active member—at the time of his death commander-in-chief—of the “United Confederate Veterans” society. He died at Vicksburg on the 28th of May 1908.

LEE,a township of Berkshire county, in western Massachusetts, U.S.A. Pop. (1900) 3596; (1905) 3972; (1910) 4106. The township is traversed by the New York, New Haven & Hartford railway, covers an area of 22½ sq. m., and includes the village of Lee, 10 m. S. of Pittsfield, East Lee, adjoining it on the S.E., and South Lee, about 3 m. to the S.W. Lee and South Lee are on, and East Lee is near, the Housatonic river. The eastern part of the township is generally hilly, reaching a maximum altitude of about 2200 ft., and there are two considerable bodies of water—Laurel Lake in the N.W. (partly in Lenox) and Goose Pond, in the S.E. (partly in Tyringham). The region is healthy as well as beautiful, and is much frequented as a summer resort. Memorial Hall was built in memory of the soldiers from Lee who died during the Civil War. The chief manufactures are paper and wire, and from the quarries near the village of Lee is obtained an excellent quality of marble; these quarries furnished the marble for the extension of the Capitol at Washington, for St Patrick’s cathedral in New York City and for the Lee High School and the Lee Public Library (1908). Lime is quarried in the township. Lee was formerly a paper-manufacturing place of great importance. The first paper mill in the township was built in South Lee in 1806, and for a time more paper was made in Lee than in any other place in the United States; the Housatonic Mill in Lee was probably the first (1867) in the United States to manufacture paper from wood pulp.

The first settlement within the present township of Lee was made in 1760. The township was formed from parts of Great Barrington and Washington, was incorporated in 1777 and was named in honour of General Charles Lee (1731-1782). In the autumn of 1786 there was an encounter near the village of East Lee between about 250 adherents of Daniel Shays (many of them from Lee township) and a body of state troops under General John Paterson, wherein the Shays contingent paraded a bogus cannon (made of a yarn beam) with such effect that the state troops fled.

See Amory Gale,History of the Town of Lee(Lee, 1854), andLee, The Centennial Celebration and Centennial History of the Town of Lee(Springfield, Mass., 1878), compiled by Charles M. Hyde and Alexander Hyde.

LEE.(1) (In O. Eng.hléo; cf. the pronunciationlew-wardof “leeward”; the word appears in several Teutonic languages; cf. Dutchlij, Dan.lae), properly a shelter or protection, chiefly used as a nautical term for that side of a ship, land, &c., which is farthest from the wind, hence a “lee shore,” land under the lee of a ship,i.e.one on which the wind blows directly and which is unsheltered. A ship is said to make “leeway” when she drifts laterally away from her course. (2) A word now always used in the plural “lees,” meaning dregs, sediment, particularly of wine. It comes through the O. Fr.liefrom a Gaulish Lat.lia, and is probably of Celtic origin.

LEECH, JOHN(1817-1864), English caricaturist, was born in London on the 29th of August 1817. His father, a native of Ireland, was the landlord of the London Coffee House on Ludgate Hill, “a man,” on the testimony of those who knew him, “of fine culture, a profound Shakespearian, and a thorough gentleman.” His mother was descended from the family of the famous Richard Bentley. It was from his father that Leech inherited his skill with the pencil, which he began to use at a very early age. When he was only three, he was discovered by Flaxman, who had called on his parents, seated on his mother’s knee, drawing with much gravity. The sculptor pronounced his sketch to be wonderful, adding, “Do not let him be cramped with lessons in drawing; let his genius follow its own bent; he will astonish the world”—an advice which was strictly followed. A mail-coach, done when he was six years old, is already full of surprising vigour and variety in its galloping horses. Leech was educated at Charterhouse, where Thackeray, his lifelong friend, was his schoolfellow, and at sixteen he began to study for the medical profession at St Bartholomew’s Hospital, where he won praise for the accuracy and beauty of his anatomical drawings. He was then placed under a Mr Whittle, an eccentric practitioner, the original of “Rawkins” in Albert Smith’sAdventures of Mr Ledbury, and afterwards under Dr John Cockle; but gradually the true bent of the youth’s mind asserted itself, and he drifted into the artistic profession. He was eighteen when his first designs were published, a quarto of four pages, entitledEtchings and Sketchings by A. Pen, Esq., comic characterstudies from the London streets. Then he drew some political lithographs, did rough sketches forBell’s Life, produced an exceedingly popular parody on Mulready’s postal envelope, and, on the death of Seymour, applied unsuccessfully to illustrate thePickwick Papers. In 1840 Leech began his contributions to the magazines with a series of etchings inBentley’s Miscellany, where Cruikshank had published his splendid plates toJack SheppardandOliver Twist, and was illustratingGuy Fawkesin sadly feebler fashion. In company with the elder master Leech designed for theIngoldsby LegendsandStanley Thorn, and till 1847 produced many independent series of etchings. These cannot be ranked with his best work; their technique is exceedingly imperfect; they are rudely bitten, with the light and shade out of relation; and we never feel that they express the artist’s individuality, theRichard Savageplates, for instance, being strongly reminiscent of Cruikshank, and “The Dance at Stamford Hall” of Hablot Browne. In 1845 Leech illustratedSt Giles and St Jamesin Douglas Jerrold’s newly startedShilling Magazine, with plates more vigorous and accomplished than those inBentley, but it is in subjects of a somewhat later date, and especially in those lightly etched and meant to be printed with colour, that we see the artist’s best powers with the needle and the acid. Among such of his designs are four charming plates to Dickens’sChristmas Carol(1844), the broadly humorous etchings in theComic History of England(1847-1848), and the still finer illustrations to theComic History of Rome(1852)—which last, particularly in its minor woodcuts, shows some exquisitely graceful touches, as witness the fair faces that rise from the surging water in “Cloelia and her Companions Escaping from the Etruscan Camp.” Among the other etchings which deserve very special reference are those inYoung Master Troublesome or Master Jacky’s Holidays, and the frontispiece toHints on Life, or How to Rise in Society(1845)—a series of minute subjects linked gracefully together by coils of smoke, illustrating the various ranks and conditions of men, one of them—the doctor by his patient’s bedside—almost equalling in vivacity and precision the best of Cruikshank’s similar scenes. Then in the ’fifties we have the numerous etchings of sporting scenes, contributed, together with woodcuts, to theHandley Crossnovels.

Turning to Leech’s lithographic work, we have, in 1841, thePortraits of the Children of the Mobility, an important series dealing with the humorous and pathetic aspects of London street Arabs, which were afterwards so often and so effectively to employ the artist’s pencil. Amid all the squalor which they depict, they are full of individual beauties in the delicate or touching expression of a face, in the graceful turn of a limb. The book is scarce in its original form, but in 1875 two reproductions of the outline sketches for the designs were published—a lithographic issue of the whole series, and a finer photographic transcript of six of the subjects, which is more valuable than even the finished illustrations of 1841, in which the added light and shade is frequently spotty and ineffective, and the lining itself has not the freedom which we find in some of Leech’s other lithographs, notably in theFly Leaves, published at thePunchoffice, and in the inimitable subject of the nuptial couch of the Caudles, which also appeared, in woodcut form, as a political cartoon, with Mrs Caudle, personated by Brougham, disturbing by untimely loquacity the slumbers of the lord chancellor, whose haggard cheek rests on the woolsack for pillow.

But it was in work for the wood-engravers that Leech was most prolific and individual. Among the earlier of such designs are the illustrations to theComic EnglishandLatin Grammars(1840), toWritten Caricatures(1841), to Hood’sComic Annual, (1842), and to Albert Smith’sWassail Bowl(1843), subjects mainly of a small vignette size, transcribed with the best skill of such woodcutters as Orrin Smith, and not, like the larger and laterPunchillustrations, cut at speed by several engravers working at once on the subdivided block. It was in 1841 that Leech’s connexion withPunchbegan, a connexion which subsisted till his death on the 29th of October 1864, and resulted in the production of the best-known and most admirable of his designs. His first contribution appeared in the issue of the 7th of August, a full-page illustration—entitled “Foreign Affairs”—of character studies from the neighbourhood of Leicester Square. His cartoons deal at first mainly with social subjects, and are rough and imperfect in execution, but gradually their method gains in power and their subjects become more distinctly political, and by 1849 the artist is strong enough to produce the splendidly humorous national personification which appears in “Disraeli Measuring the British Lion.” About 1845 we have the first of that long series of half-page and quarter-page pictures of life and manners, executed with a hand as gentle as it was skilful, containing, as Ruskin has said, “admittedly the finest definition and natural history of the classes of our society, the kindest and subtlest analysis of its foibles, the tenderest flattery of its pretty and well-bred ways,” which has yet appeared. In addition to his work for the weekly issue ofPunch, Leech contributed largely to thePunchalmanacks and pocket-books, toOnce a Weekfrom 1859 till 1862, to theIllustrated London News, where some of his largest and best sporting scenes appeared, and to innumerable novels and miscellaneous volumes besides, of which it is only necessary to specifyA Little Tour in Ireland(1859), which is noticeable as showing the artist’s treatment of pure landscape, though it also contains some of his daintiest figure-pieces, like that of the wind-blown girl, standing on the summit of a pedestal, with the swifts darting around her and the breadth of sea beyond.

In 1862 Leech appealed to the public with a very successful exhibition of some of the most remarkable of hisPunchdrawings. These were enlarged by a mechanical process, and coloured in oils by the artist himself, with the assistance and under the direction of his friend J. E. Millais.

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