"Light-Horse Harry blazes across the pages of Ryan Cole's narrative like a meteor—and his final crash is as destructive. Cole tells his story with care, sympathy, and where necessary, sternness. This book is a great, and sometimes harrowing read." —Richard Brookhiser, senior editor at National Review and author of Founding Father: Rediscovering George Washington Who was "Light-Horse Harry" Lee? Gallant Revolutionary War hero. Quintessential Virginia cavalryman. George Washington’s trusted subordinate and immortal eulogist. Robert E. Lee’s beloved father. Founding father who shepherded the Constitution through the Virginia Ratifying Convention. But Light-Horse Harry Lee was also a con man. A beachcomber. Imprisoned for debt. Caught up in sordid squabbles over squalid land deals. Maimed for life by an angry political mob. Light-Horse Harry Lee’s life was tragic, glorious, and dramatic, but perhaps because of its sad, ignominious conclusion historians have rarely given him his due—until now. Now historian Ryan Cole presents this soldier and statesman of the founding generation with all the vim and vigor that typified Lee himself. Scouring hundreds of contemporary documents and reading his way into Lee’s life, political philosophy, and character, Cole gives us the most intimate picture to date of this greatly awed but hugely talented man whose influence has reverberated from the founding of the United States to the present day.

From the American Battlefield Trust, an unparalleled collection of their popular battle maps of the Revolutionary War. “Wow! I just love those maps that you guys send to me.” It is a phrase that the staff of the American Battlefield Trust hears on a weekly basis and the expression refers to one of the cornerstone initiatives of the organization, mapping the battlefields of the Revolutionary War, War of 1812, and the American Civil War. The American Battlefield Trust is the premier battlefield preservation organization in the United States. Over the last thirty years the American Battlefield Trust and its members have preserved more than 54,000 acres of battlefield land across 145 battlefields, in twenty-four states—at sites such as Lexington & Concord, Brandywine, Yorktown, Shiloh, and Gettysburg. Other than physically walking across the hallowed battle grounds that the American Battlefield Trust has saved, the best way to illustrate the importance of the properties that we have preserved is through our battle maps. Through the decades, the American Battlefield Trust has created hundreds of maps detailing the action at major battles. Now, for the first time in book form, we have collected the maps of some of the most iconic battles of the Revolutionary War. In Vol. 3 of our Battle Maps of the American Battlefield Trust series, you can follow the course of the war from Lexington & Concord to the British surrender at Yorktown. Study the major actions of the Revolutionary War from start to finish utilizing this unparalleled collection of maps.

In Light-Horse Harry Lee and the Legacy of the American Revolution, Charles Royster takes an ingenious, creative approach in his consideration of the life of one of the American Revolution’s heroes. Having fought valiantly to bring about a victory for the colonies, Henry (“Light-Horse Harry”) Lee (1756–1818) envisioned the new country as a virtuous and prosperous classical republic and eventually aligned himself with the Federalist party. He served as governor of Virginia and as a congressman, but he grew increasingly isolated, disillusioned, and bitter as the nation moved in a direction more in line with the Jeffersonian democratic principles. After going bankrupt and then suffering an attack by an angry mob, Lee exiled himself to the West Indies to escape his debts and save his family’s honor (including that of his son, the future General Robert E. Lee) and returned to the United States only several weeks before his death. Royster argues that Lee’s tragic life was different only in degree from those of many other patriots of the Revolution who viewed the peacetime fruits of their efforts with disappointment. How Lee, and others like him, shaped the American Revolution and were shaped by it is the theme of this provocative character study.

In Light Horse Harry Lee, Charles Royster tells the story of a man whose career embodies the visionary promises that inspired the American Revolution, as well as the inability of the revolutionary generation to put all its ideals into practice. The man is Henry Lee—soldier (nicknamed “Light-Horse Harry Lee”), statesmen, landowner, historian of the young republic, member of one of the oldest and most eminent families of Virginia—who throughout his life endeavored to realize his dream of a free and prosperous America. Brilliantly examining Lee’s ambitions and achievements, Mr. Royster makes us see how, both during the war and afterward, Lee continually risked himself in the service of his vision and how again and again he failed to win the victories he sought. He shows us Lee as a young officer in the Revolution, fighting valorously and skillfully, earning renown as a patriot and a military genius—but leaving the Continental Army before the war’s end, sickened by the violence of battle and disheartened by his helplessness to mitigate it. After the war, we see Lee determined to play a central role in the new nation’s peaceful growth—serving in Congress and as governor of Virginia, promoting expansion and development through his own private business ventures. And we watch as Lee’s desperate pursuit of wealth and order for America ends tragically: in his political defeat, bankruptcy, and exile from the land he fought to free. Tracing Lee’s struggles and reverses in his efforts to implement the promises of the Revolution—in his defense of the union, his opposition to Jeffersonian Republicans, his investments in land, his repeated warnings against war—Mr. Royster shows how, in extreme form, Lee exemplified in his strivings the public aspirations of America’s most politically creative era, as well as his generations collective failure to attain its vision of national grandeur and individual happiness. And it is this failure and the resultant disappointment, Mr. Royster argues, that in large part opened the way to disagreements over the nature of the Union, culminating, finally, in the Civil War—in which the South was led by Light-Horse Harry Lee’s son, Robert E. Lee.

Charles Royster examines Henry Lee's life and the visions of a prosperous and free America he fought to realise.

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A WALL STREET JOURNAL BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR • From the award-winning historian and best-selling author of Gettysburg comes the definitive biography of Robert E. Lee. An intimate look at the Confederate general in all his complexity—his hypocrisy and courage, his inner turmoil and outward calm, his disloyalty and his honor. "An important contribution to reconciling the myths with the facts." —New York Times Book Review Robert E. Lee is one of the most confounding figures in American history. Lee betrayed his nation in order to defend his home state and uphold the slave system he claimed to oppose. He was a traitor to the country he swore to serve as an Army officer, and yet he was admired even by his enemies for his composure and leadership. He considered slavery immoral, but benefited from inherited slaves and fought to defend the institution. And behind his genteel demeanor and perfectionism lurked the insecurities of a man haunted by the legacy of a father who stained the family name by declaring bankruptcy and who disappeared when Robert was just six years old. In Robert E. Lee, the award-winning historian Allen Guelzo has written the definitive biography of the general, following him from his refined upbringing in Virginia high society, to his long career in the U.S. Army, his agonized decision to side with Virginia when it seceded from the Union, and his leadership during the Civil War. Above all, Guelzo captures Robert E. Lee in all his complexity--his hypocrisy and courage, his outward calm and inner turmoil, his honor and his disloyalty.