From Billie Lee to William: George Washington’s enslaved right hand man
Almost anywhere George Washington went during the Revolutionary War, there was a skilled, muscular, athletic horseman by his side: William Lee, a man Washington had purchased for 61 British pounds and 15 shillings in 1768. Nobody could say that Lee had the authority of an aide de camp or an adjutant; he couldn't give orders in Washington's absence. But if Washington had to ride into a fight between two regiments of his own soldiers -- Lee was riding into the thick of it with him. He is often referred to as "Billy Lee," but Washington stopped calling him that in 1771.
According to the George Washington Presidential Library at Mt. Vernon, for two decades Lee delivered messages, laid out Washington's clothes, tied silk ribbons around his hair, and accompanied him on fox hunts. George Washington Parke Custis, the president's grandson, recalled that Lee would "rush, at full speed, through brake or tangled wood, in a style at which modern huntsmen would stand aghast."
Re-Enactors at Mt. Vernon portraying George Washington and William Lee. Photo by Al Underwood, used with permission.
During the Revolutionary War, Lee was responsible for organizing Washington's papers, holding his spyglass, sticking close by him in all military operations, all tasks delegated to enlisted soldiers in a modern army. He became something of a celebrity. He was often armed with a pistol and a carbine. No less than any, and more than most, Lee rode at Washington's side through eight years of hard campaigning with stamina and courage, including the winter at Valley Forge. He was 30 years old when he witnessed the surrender of the British army at Yorktown, Virginia.
In The Indispensables, an account of the Marblehead regiment from Masschusetts, Patrick K. O'Donnell recounts that Daniel Morgan's riflemen from Virginia got into a soldier's fight in Harvard Yard with the Marbleheaders, starting with insults about each other's clothing, then escalating to snowballs, then a fist-fight. They were shocked when General Washington and William Lee rode into the mob to break it up. When Washington jumped off his horse to grab a couple of the men by the throat and break up the fight -- he tossed the reins of his horse to Lee.
Like many patriots, Washington's views on slavery changed a good deal during the revolution. Whether his relationship to Lee had an impact is unknown -- but Washington stopped buying or selling slaves, avoided separating families, and near death, urged his wife (who had a wealthier estate than his) to free the slaves she had brought to their marriage. (She did, but only in her will). Washington freed Lee in his will, "as a testimony of my sense of his attachment to me, and for his faithful services during the Revolutionary War," with an annual allowance of $30 for the rest of his life. There is more to post about Washington... but this is a post about William Lee.
In his later years, Lee was crippled by an accident and working as a shoemaker. But when anyone with a military title visited Mount Vernon, Lee would request "an interview at his quarters" and after shaking hands would relate "we of the army don't see one another often in these peaceful times... The new-time people don't know what we old soldiers did and suffered for the country in the old war." (Taken from Fritz Hirschfeld's George Washington and Slavery: A Documentary Portrayal.