Speaker 1: School of Humans. I really don't know what was up
Speaker 1: with the kids of the revolutionary heroes, you know, the revolution,
Speaker 1: the American one specifically, this is American Fela. We're talking
Speaker 1: about America. But like the kids of the people who
Speaker 1: served in the war, like the sons of the founding fathers, etc.
Speaker 1: They were kind of like Braddy and a little entitled
Speaker 1: and also more than one of them, because you've heard
Speaker 1: these stories already on the podcast, more than one of
Speaker 1: them at some point fuck their wives sisters. Like why
Speaker 1: did that keep happening? I don't know. I feel like
Speaker 1: at the time it was like, you know, if you
Speaker 1: did that, that was technically considered incest. Also, it's just
Speaker 1: not a nice thing to know, like just don't have
Speaker 1: sex with your wife's sister. I feel like that is
Speaker 1: like one of the main rules of you know, being
Speaker 1: married and also sisterhood. I just don't understand it. But
Speaker 1: this week on American Filth, you're going to be hearing
Speaker 1: the other story. This time it is about Henry Lee
Speaker 1: the Fourth, who is the older half brother of none
Speaker 1: other than Robert E. Lee himself and the doozy he
Speaker 1: got himself into for being a big pile of trash filth.
Speaker 1: One might say, cue the theme song, this is American filth,
Speaker 1: and I'm Gabby Watts. Every week I tell you a
Speaker 1: filthy story from American history. This week's episode Robert E.
Speaker 1: Lee's cheating and technically incestuous half brother. So let's set
Speaker 1: the scene, why don't we. Henry Lee the fourth he
Speaker 1: was born in seventeen eighty seven in Virginia, specifically Stratford, Virginia,
Speaker 1: and there is where he lived with his mother and father,
Speaker 1: and the Stratford Hall Plantation. Wow, they had many enslaved people.
Speaker 1: And here's the thing. His father, Henry Lee the third,
Speaker 1: he had been a revolutionary war hero, one of those
Speaker 1: people I was talking about in the intro of this
Speaker 1: podcast the problem with old pop pop. Henry Lee the
Speaker 1: third is daddy had a bit of a gambling problem
Speaker 1: and a bit of a spending problem, and he would
Speaker 1: spend two years of his life in a debtor's prison. Whoopsies.
Speaker 1: I think that's what's gonna happen nowadays, now that sports
Speaker 1: gambling is legally again, soon many of our fathers will
Speaker 1: be in debtors prison. But alas also Henry Lee the fourth,
Speaker 1: the son, his mother died at a very young age.
Speaker 1: And so his father remarried another lady, and that's the
Speaker 1: lady who is the mother of Roberty Lee. Okay, so
Speaker 1: robert Y Lee is about twenty years younger than Henry Lee.
Speaker 1: But Henry Lee at the time, he had a lot
Speaker 1: of promise, He had a lot of potential. People are like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, you're gonna be the next big guy
Speaker 1: in America. Like, even though your debt has all these
Speaker 1: gambling problems, all these debt problems, he was a war hero,
Speaker 1: and you get that war hero blood in you. Also,
Speaker 1: you share his name, Henry Lee. You're gonna be awesome. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: sometimes you can just be a wealthy white man in
Speaker 1: this country and people are like, you're gonna be amazing,
Speaker 1: But actually, you have no skills, you're nothing like your father.
Speaker 1: And also you're gonna ruin everything because you suck. So
Speaker 1: let's hear a little bit about what he's actually like.
Speaker 1: So first let's start with his physical appearance. Okay, one
Speaker 1: person described him as quote rather meaty, yummy, meaty. But
Speaker 1: you know what type of meaty did they mean? Did
Speaker 1: they mean more like a pork chop or kind of
Speaker 1: more like a salami. People also said he had a
Speaker 1: very fleshy face. I don't know, meaty fleshy. These aren't
Speaker 1: very nice descriptors, but maybe it's because his mom and
Speaker 1: dad were cousins. Classic the old meaty incest gene. Though
Speaker 1: back then, remember marrying your cousin was an incest. What
Speaker 1: was incest is fucking your wife's sister. But we'll get
Speaker 1: to that. Speaking of fucking people's sisters, another thing about
Speaker 1: Henry Lee the Fourth is he was a bit of
Speaker 1: a womanizer. Specifically, he would go after his friend's sisters.
Speaker 1: Isn't that rude? Like he'd be hanging out with his friends,
Speaker 1: he'd be like, so, it's your sister up to and
Speaker 1: they'd be like, Henry Lee the Fourth, I'm not telling
Speaker 1: you what's up with my sister because you're gonna be
Speaker 1: a big fuck boy to her. This happened a lot
Speaker 1: of times. He would like seduce women his friend's sisters
Speaker 1: and then just leave them immediately, like this one lady.
Speaker 1: She wrote a letter and said that Henry Lee the
Speaker 1: Fourth part took from her. Don't you guys hate it
Speaker 1: when a man just partakes from you and then just
Speaker 1: leaves you. On Red That's basically what happened to her.
Speaker 1: They were gonna meet up, he sent her a letter,
Speaker 1: but then he never showed up. Isn't that annoying? She's
Speaker 1: just waiting for him, pining for him, looking at his
Speaker 1: love note, and then he's just like, just gidding, girl.
Speaker 1: I was just putting feelers out there. I was just
Speaker 1: seeing who was available, and I'm actually not gonna partake
Speaker 1: from you ever. The freak again, What a shitty guy. Also,
Speaker 1: some of Henry Lee's friends didn't even seem to like
Speaker 1: him that much, like apparently he was very sarcastic quote
Speaker 1: filled with mirth. I hate that. Not too much mirth
Speaker 1: around me. No, thank you. As you guys know, this
Speaker 1: is a very serious podcast where no mirth is involved.
Speaker 1: In terms of his actual biography of things that he
Speaker 1: was doing at the time. He started getting into politics
Speaker 1: in eighteen ten when he was elected to the Virginia
Speaker 1: House of Delegates, and then right after that there was
Speaker 1: a War of eighteen twelve and he served. He became
Speaker 1: a major in the infantry, and then after the war
Speaker 1: he was like, I'm trying to follow my daddy's footsteps. Well,
Speaker 1: had the part when dear Papa went to the debtors prison,
Speaker 1: but he tried to win his father's congressional seat in
Speaker 1: the US Congress, but alas he lost. So what did
Speaker 1: Henry Lee the fourth do? Well? He turned to home restoration. See,
Speaker 1: after his father had been in the debtors' prison, he
Speaker 1: had relocated his family from the Strafford Hall plantation to
Speaker 1: another place in Alexandria that was cheaper. But now that
Speaker 1: Henry Lee the fourth was in charge, he was like,
Speaker 1: I'm going to go back to that house and I'm
Speaker 1: gonna make it buttafall. I mean, we can all appreciate
Speaker 1: a straight man getting into interior design. So let's see
Speaker 1: how he does. Another important thing for Henry Lee the
Speaker 1: fourth to do was to wed. And to wed, well,
Speaker 1: you know, he's the son of a revolutionary war hero,
Speaker 1: he's a gentleman of Virginia. He's got a plantation. So
Speaker 1: who did he marry? This woman named Anne McCarty. Anne
Speaker 1: had many great qualities. Most importantly, she was very rich
Speaker 1: and seventeen. Henry Lee was thirty at the time, AND's
Speaker 1: sister was named Elizabeth and was two years younger than her.
Speaker 1: They had both lost their father when they were very young,
Speaker 1: and their mother married again, but then their mother died
Speaker 1: in childbirth out five years later, so the girls were
Speaker 1: raised by their stepfather. But the thing is their mom
Speaker 1: was super rich, and when she died, the girls got
Speaker 1: her money and they became some of the richest ladies
Speaker 1: in Westmoreland County. Conveniently, she was also very attractive. So
Speaker 1: Henry Lee the fourth was like, she's my mate, let's
Speaker 1: get together. And Anne, perhaps she liked his meaty and
Speaker 1: fleshy appearance, or maybe she was just seventeen and was like, well,
Speaker 1: the Lee's their very established family in Virginia. I guess
Speaker 1: this would be a financially and socially responsible choice to
Speaker 1: wed this guy. I hate how his face is so
Speaker 1: filled with flesh. So Anne McCarty, she moved to the
Speaker 1: Stratford Hall plantation and now, unfortunately I have to tell
Speaker 1: you something very sad that happened. So a very unfortunate
Speaker 1: feature of the Stratford plantation was there was a set
Speaker 1: of stairs that went from the main drive up into
Speaker 1: the second floor of the house where there was an entryway.
Speaker 1: These were outdoor stairs, and this is very sad. When
Speaker 1: Henry Lee was a little, tiny baby boy, his older
Speaker 1: brother who was four years old at the time, fell
Speaker 1: down those stairs and died. And despite the fact that
Speaker 1: he was trying to be an interior designed king, Henry
Speaker 1: Lee the fourth did not think to get rid of
Speaker 1: these treacherous stairs during his renovations. Well, Henry Lee the
Speaker 1: fourth and his wife, Ann McCarty, they had a little
Speaker 1: beautiful baby girl, and when she was two years old,
Speaker 1: she was outside playing around, she went up those stairs
Speaker 1: and she also fell down the stairs and died. These
Speaker 1: are some terrible stairs, and Henry and the entire Lee
Speaker 1: family were very upset. Obviously, Anne didn't know how to cope.
Speaker 1: She turned to Laudanum, remember the opiate of choice at
Speaker 1: the time. She was very distraught. Henry Lee also didn't
Speaker 1: know what to do, so Elizabeth, Anne's younger sister, who
Speaker 1: was sixteen years old at the time, came to stay
Speaker 1: at the house to help her sister through her grief.
Speaker 1: When Elizabeth arrived, Henry was made her guardian. Not only
Speaker 1: was he in charge of her welfare in general, he
Speaker 1: also became in charge of her money and property. And obviously, yes,
Speaker 1: Henry was grieving the loss of his daughter, but also
Speaker 1: remember he was a dumb piece of shit who liked
Speaker 1: to go after people's sisters, and this time his wife's
Speaker 1: sister was there. He was sad and a bitch. Elizabeth
Speaker 1: looked very similar to Anne, which I don't like that
Speaker 1: biographers kept mentioning that detail like who cares? So that
Speaker 1: doesn't make it any better. The only difference was that
Speaker 1: Anne had long black hair and Elizabeth had these rich
Speaker 1: mahogany curls. And she was younger by two years, you know,
Speaker 1: fresh sixteen, and one biographer said that the two of
Speaker 1: them were thrown together and quote a state of unguarded intimacy.
Speaker 1: And what that means really is that Henry Lee took
Speaker 1: advantage of Elizabeth and at some point they had sexual intercourse.
Speaker 1: Don't you love that power dynamic? A sixteen year old
Speaker 1: within a thirty two year old man who's technically your guardian,
Speaker 1: who's grieving, you're in his house. Terrible. And while Virginia's
Speaker 1: society liked to gossip and gossip they did, and there
Speaker 1: was a vicious rumor that was going around that a
Speaker 1: dead baby was found in an outhouse. Maybe it had
Speaker 1: been still born, maybe it had been killed, maybe there
Speaker 1: is no baby at all. And this was all made up.
Speaker 1: But many people believe that this was the baby that
Speaker 1: came from the union between Henry Lee the fourth and
Speaker 1: his wife's sister. What a claim be right back after
Speaker 1: these soothing advertisements. And you gotta love gossip and how
Speaker 1: gossip gets around, and the gossip about the Stratford Hall
Speaker 1: plantation was certainly juicy. Somebody claimed that they had found
Speaker 1: a dead baby in an outhouse, or they had heard
Speaker 1: that somebody had found a dead baby in an outhouse,
Speaker 1: and they're like, was that the baby of Henry Lee
Speaker 1: the fourth and Elizabeth McCarty, Henry Lee's wife's sister. Mm
Speaker 1: mm mmmm mm. The rumors were running them muck. And
Speaker 1: then it only got worse because people were realizing not
Speaker 1: only had Henry Lee taken advantage of this girl sexually,
Speaker 1: he also had taken her money. That's right, the man
Speaker 1: who'd been appointed her guardian of her welfare and her
Speaker 1: belongings and her monies, he had actually taken those monies
Speaker 1: and put them into the Stratford plantation. Because remember he's
Speaker 1: into interior design. Now he'll do whatever it takes to
Speaker 1: make this plantation really sing again. I love when a
Speaker 1: man becomes so obsessed with a project that it becomes
Speaker 1: everyone else's problem too, and don't accuse me of man
Speaker 1: hating it's women's history. Months shut up. Obviously, Elizabeth was
Speaker 1: really upset. She left Stratford and went to stay with
Speaker 1: her grandmother. She wrote to one of her friends that
Speaker 1: she was almost quote overpowered by a sense of desolation
Speaker 1: and desertion, left friendless and alone. She ended up cutting
Speaker 1: off all her hair, her beautiful Mahogany girls because she
Speaker 1: blamed them for the reason that Henry Lee was attracted
Speaker 1: to her and why all this happened. For the rest
Speaker 1: of her life, she kept her hair short. Anne, Henry
Speaker 1: Lee's wife and Elizabeth's sister, was so distraught that she
Speaker 1: was using even more laudanum, and she went down to
Speaker 1: Tennessee to a rehab facility for whatever they had for
Speaker 1: rehab back in those days. This was pre sanatorium. It
Speaker 1: was probably just like a church where you had like
Speaker 1: a lady say that you're a bad person for using laudanum.
Speaker 1: But anyway, she escaped the house as well. Obviously that
Speaker 1: makes sense. Your husband cheated on you, took advantage of
Speaker 1: your sister. Also, your daughter died. You're upset, get it. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: Henry Lee was not dealing with this very diplomatically. A
Speaker 1: lot of his friends were trying to stand by him,
Speaker 1: being like, yeah, he made one mistake, which was taking
Speaker 1: advantage of his ward and having sex with her and
Speaker 1: then also taking all of her money. One tiny it'd
Speaker 1: be mistake. We should forgive him. But society was like, no,
Speaker 1: he's a little bitch. We don't like him. And Henry
Speaker 1: Lee he was not being demure, he was not being mindful. No,
Speaker 1: when people were trying to insult him, he was like,
Speaker 1: I'm going to argue with you. Meanwhile, people were like, hey,
Speaker 1: you actually not only did you do a morally bad thing,
Speaker 1: you also technically did an illegal thing. You did incest.
Speaker 1: But then Henry was like, shut up, I don't care.
Speaker 1: By the way, Thomas Jefferson did stuff like that all
Speaker 1: the time, and you guys like him, so shut the
Speaker 1: fuck up about me doing stuff like that. Thomas Jefferson
Speaker 1: did it, I can do it too. And this was
Speaker 1: a actually a pretty big moment for Henry Lee because
Speaker 1: the Lee family notoriously hated Thomas Jefferson. Henry Lee's father,
Speaker 1: Henry Lee the Third, who at this point was deceased
Speaker 1: rip he hated everything about Thomas Jefferson. He was like,
Speaker 1: he did not behave himself well during the revolution. I
Speaker 1: should know. I'm a revolutionary war hero. So the fact
Speaker 1: that Henry Lee the fourth was comparing himself to Thomas Jefferson,
Speaker 1: he was really trying to make a point with that
Speaker 1: because he hates that guy. He's like, I will deign
Speaker 1: to compare myself to Thomas Jefferson because you can't have
Speaker 1: a different standard for me than you had for him,
Speaker 1: because he was the fricking president. Also, remember, my father's
Speaker 1: a war hero. It's always a good sign when people
Speaker 1: are like, do you know who my father is. At
Speaker 1: this point, Henry Lee the fourth had been given a nickname.
Speaker 1: His father, Henry Lee third, had been called light horse
Speaker 1: Harry because he was so swift at horseback riding. His
Speaker 1: horse was so fast it was as if he was
Speaker 1: not even upon the horse. But Henry Lee the fourth,
Speaker 1: after all this mess, people were calling him black horse Harry.
Speaker 1: That's no good. A black horse often symbolizes an omen
Speaker 1: like a famine. Biblically, at least, it's not a great
Speaker 1: thing to be called. And despite all of Henry Lee's
Speaker 1: protesting against everyone, he did eventually get sued by Elizabeth
Speaker 1: McCarty herself, with the help from her stepfather. They're like, hey,
Speaker 1: you need to give us back all the money that
Speaker 1: you took from Elizabeth's inheritance that you used to restore
Speaker 1: your freakin' house. And so looks like, shit, you dumb bitch,
Speaker 1: so give it back to us. But see, Henry, he
Speaker 1: had already used up all that money, and also he
Speaker 1: had some gambling debts taken after his father. Isn't that cute.
Speaker 1: So unfortunately for him, despite all of his efforts with
Speaker 1: this freaking house, he ended up losing it. He had
Speaker 1: to sell it off to a friend, which I'm sure
Speaker 1: was very humiliating because that plantation had been in their
Speaker 1: family for six generations. Wow, he really fricked that up,
Speaker 1: didn't he. So after he lost his big old mansion,
Speaker 1: Henry Lee was in a bit of a crisis. He
Speaker 1: needed to make money. He needs to get a job.
Speaker 1: Isn't that humiliating being a man who has to have
Speaker 1: a job. So he's like, I'll do the most stable
Speaker 1: thing I can think of. I'll become a writer. Yes,
Speaker 1: a writer, that's the easy career you could go with.
Speaker 1: Back in the day. I suppose he fled down to Tennessee,
Speaker 1: where his wife was and attempted to reconcile with her.
Speaker 1: She still hated his guts and didn't really want to
Speaker 1: be with him. But the couple became acquainted with none
Speaker 1: other than Andrew Jackson, and Henry Lee, being a squirrely,
Speaker 1: meaty faced boy, was like, hey, Jackson, let me write
Speaker 1: stuff for you. And so Henry Lee started writing these
Speaker 1: articles talking about how great Andrew Jackson was. And then
Speaker 1: when Andrew Jackson won the presidency in eighteen twenty eight,
Speaker 1: Henry Lee became one of his speech writers. At this point,
Speaker 1: Henry Lee probably thought he was on the up and up.
Speaker 1: He was like, yeah, I was involved in this scandal. Sure,
Speaker 1: I had sex with my wife's sister, stole her money,
Speaker 1: lost my house, blah blah blah, But look I'm Andrew
Speaker 1: Jackson's boy now. Andrew Jason liked him so much. They
Speaker 1: was like, hey, Henry, how would you like to be
Speaker 1: basically the ambassador to Algeria? That would be a nice life.
Speaker 1: You don't even really have to do that much. This
Speaker 1: is just kind of like a vacation position where like
Speaker 1: I give you money to hang out in Algeria. How
Speaker 1: do you like the sound of that? And Henry Lee
Speaker 1: was like, that would be so dope. I would love
Speaker 1: to do that. The problem was was that when he
Speaker 1: was getting approved by the Senate, it actually caused a
Speaker 1: fight to erupt. People hated Henry Lee the fourth so
Speaker 1: much that they were like, why would we make him
Speaker 1: the ambassador to Algeria? We don't want him to represent
Speaker 1: the United States abroad. He sucks, like Andrew Jackson, do
Speaker 1: you even know what he did? He did a lot
Speaker 1: of messed up shit. And Andrew Jackson was probably like,
Speaker 1: but that's my boy, and doing messed up shit my
Speaker 1: whole thing. But the Senate was like, fuck you guys,
Speaker 1: and they didn't approve him. This was all happening in
Speaker 1: February eighteen thirty, and by the next month, basically everybody
Speaker 1: in the country knew Henry Lee's business, that he was
Speaker 1: a horrible person. And Henry Lee he was probably really upset.
Speaker 1: He was like, ah, I was about to have the
Speaker 1: best time in Algeria, not really having to do anything.
Speaker 1: It was gonna be great. Now what am I gonna
Speaker 1: do with my life? One thing he did is he
Speaker 1: wrote a book. He got access to some of the
Speaker 1: writings of Thomas Jefferson, and he wrote this book called
Speaker 1: Observations on the Writings of Thomas Jefferson, with particular reference
Speaker 1: to the attack They contain on the memory of the
Speaker 1: late General Henry Lee. That's right. He was, like, I'm
Speaker 1: going to dedicate my time in the family tradition. I'm
Speaker 1: talking about how Thomas Jefferson is a little bitch boy
Speaker 1: who we all hate, and also how Thomas Jefferson spoke
Speaker 1: badly of my dad. I mean, if you don't have
Speaker 1: anything else, I guess you might as well defend your father,
Speaker 1: the Revolutionary War hero. He also wrote a book about Napoleon,
Speaker 1: and at this point he was living in France, and
Speaker 1: that's where he lived until the end of his life,
Speaker 1: when he died of influenza in eighteen thirty seven. At
Speaker 1: this point, Henry Lee had reconciled with his wife and
Speaker 1: she lived with him in Paris until she died in
Speaker 1: eighteen forty. Though, honestly, how do you ever actually forgive
Speaker 1: somebody for doing all of that? Women really just be
Speaker 1: settling and it's upsetting. It's like, yeah, sure, are you
Speaker 1: Like she had on me with my sister and then
Speaker 1: spend all of my sister's money and also all of
Speaker 1: my money on his stupid house. But you know what,
Speaker 1: it's what I deserve. I think this is what people
Speaker 1: mean when they say the bar is in Hell Women's
Speaker 1: History Month. As for Elizabeth, she did end up marrying,
Speaker 1: and in eighteen twenty eight the owner of Stratford Hall
Speaker 1: Plantation passed away and that person didn't have anyone to
Speaker 1: pass it on to, so the plantation was for sale
Speaker 1: and Elizabeth and her new husband they're the ones who
Speaker 1: bought the house. Wow, take that, Henry Lee. Elizabeth's husband
Speaker 1: died young, and she lived in the house until her
Speaker 1: death in eighteen seventy nine. She didn't have any children
Speaker 1: of her own, but she left it to her nieces
Speaker 1: and nephews, and a few generations later, her descendants sold
Speaker 1: the house to a foundation who wanted to make it
Speaker 1: a museum. Isn't that some sweet sweet justice? Don't We
Speaker 1: love to see it? On every episode of American filth,
Speaker 1: we learn a lesson, and I think today it's not
Speaker 1: so much a lesson but sort of more a hope
Speaker 1: that sometimes men who take advantage of you sexually and
Speaker 1: then also spend all of your money, bad things can
Speaker 1: happen to them. I'm not saying karma exists, Okay, I'm
Speaker 1: just saying that there is a chance that maybe they'll
Speaker 1: be publicly disgraced and then try to be friends with
Speaker 1: Andrew Jackson and then get dismissed by the entire Senate.
Speaker 1: You know, that could happen. But also I think maybe
Speaker 1: the lesson in this episode is mostly for the Fellas,
Speaker 1: which is just don't have sex with your wife's sister, Like,
Speaker 1: don't How hard is that for people to understand? Clearly,
Speaker 1: in the post Revolutionary War period, these dudes could not
Speaker 1: get that through their stupid, big, thick, meaty skulls. So
Speaker 1: get it through yours stupid heads. Cue the credits. American
Speaker 1: Field is a production of School of Humans and iHeart Podcast.
Speaker 1: This episode was hosted, written, and produced by me Gabby Watts.
Speaker 1: Our theme song is by Jesse Niswanger. Our excuted producers
Speaker 1: are Virginia Prescott, Elsie Crowley, and Brandon Barr And. You
Speaker 1: can follow along with the show at American Field Pod
Speaker 1: on Instagram, or you can stalk me in Brooklyn, New
Speaker 1: York whatever makes you feel most comfortable. Also make sure
Speaker 1: to leave a review leave. Some stars recommend the show
Speaker 1: to a friend, a family, an enemy, just really anybody,
Speaker 1: And I hope you guys have a wonderful freaking week.
Speaker 1: Talk to you guys next time. Peace and blessings. Also,
Speaker 1: fuck you if you've ever fucked your wife's sister. Bye.
Speaker 1: School of Humans.