[Footnote 2:  A new edition of this work, preceded by a life of the author, was published by General Robert E. Lee in 1869.]

After the war General Henry Lee served a term in Congress; was then elected Governor of Virginia; returned in 1799 to Congress; and, in his oration upon the death of Washington, employed the well-known phrase, “First in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen.”  He died in Georgia, in the year 1818, having made a journey thither for the benefit of his health.

General Henry Lee was married twice; first, as we have said, to his cousin Matilda, through whom he came into possession of the old family estate of Stratford; and a second time, June 18,1793, to Miss Anne Hill Carter, a daughter of Charles Carter, Esq., of “Shirley,” on James River.

The children of this second marriage were three sons and two daughters—­Charles Carter, Robert Edward, Smith, Ann, and Mildred.

[Illustration:  “STRATFORD HOUSE.”  The Birthplace of Gen. Lee.]

IV.

STRATFORD.

Robert Edward Lee was born at Stratford, in Westmoreland County, Virginia, on the 19th of January, 1807.[1]

[Footnote 1:  The date of General Lee’s birth has been often given incorrectly.  The authority for that here adopted is the entry in the family Bible, in the handwriting of his mother.]

Before passing to Lee’s public career, and the narrative of the stormy scenes of his after-life, let us pause a moment and bestow a glance upon this ancient mansion, which is still standing—­a silent and melancholy relic of the past—­in the remote “Northern Neck.”  As the birthplace of a great man, it would demand attention; but it has other claims still, as a venerable memorial of the past and its eminent personages, one of the few remaining monuments of a state of society that has disappeared or is disappearing.

The original Stratford House is supposed, as we have said, to have been built by Richard Lee, the first of the family in the New World.  Whoever may have been its founder, it was destroyed in the time of Thomas Lee, an eminent representative of the name, early in the eighteenth century.  Thomas Lee was a member of the King’s Council, a gentleman of great popularity; and, when it was known that his house had been burned, contributions were everywhere made to rebuild it.  The Governor, the merchants of the colony, and even Queen Anne in person, united in this subscription; the house speedily rose again, at a cost of about eighty thousand dollars; and this is the edifice still standing in Westmoreland.  The sum expended in its construction must not be estimated in the light of to-day.  At that time the greater part of the heavy work in house-building was performed by servants of the manor; it is fair, indeed, to say that the larger part of the work thus cost nothing in money; and thus the eighty thousand dollars represented only the English brick, the carvings, furniture, and decorations.