Whilst the greatest effort has been made to ensure the quality of this text, due to the historical nature of this content, in some rare cases there may be minor issues with legibility. General Henry Lee was one of the most useful and conspicuous officers in the Revolutionary war. He was the intimate personal friend of Washington; and after the revolution he was equally conspicuous in political affairs, rising to the office of governor of the state of Virginia. Yet we are not aware that any extended biography of General Lee has been published since his decease. His well known work, Memoirs of the War in the Southern Department of the United States, in two octavo volumes published in 1812, furnishes details of a portion of his military life; and we have drawn freely from it in our account of his services in the South; but our other materials, for the present biography, had to be drawn from a variety of sources.