His father jumped bail and abandoned his debts and family
The Lee family was one of Virginia’s oldest. It was a Lee – Richard Henry of Stratford Hall, their ancestral home – who rose in the Second Continental Congress to propose the motion that began the debates over Independence in 1776. Robert’s father was Henry “Light Horse Harry” Lee, who served as one of George Washington’s cavalry commanders during the Revolutionary War.
Lee’s daring and skill conducting raids against the British provided badly needed medicines and supplies to the Continental Army, and Washington became a lifelong patron of his fellow Virginian.
It was Harry Lee who famously said of Washington that he was “…first in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen.” Regardless, before the war was over Henry Lee began to feel that his efforts for the cause were insufficiently rewarded and he resigned his commission.
After serving as a Congressman and as Governor of Virginia Harry adopted several get rich quick schemes involving land speculation and became heavily in debt. When bankruptcy failed to clear his debts and the threat of debtor’s prison loomed, Henry ignored a personal appearance bond, the bulk of which had been posted by his brother, and fled to the West Indies, abandoning his family including the young Robert. He was abetted in his escape by then Secretary of State James Monroe.
Light Horse Harry never returned to his family, although he did return to America in 1818, dying in Georgia without ever again seeing his family. Robert E. Lee was but eleven years old at the time of his father’s death and seldom spoke of him for the rest of his life. Lee visited his father’s Georgia grave during his military years, but it was his only visit and a brief one. Near the end of his life, Robert E. Lee edited his father’s military memoirs, providing a biographical essay, but he did not defend nor discuss his abandonment of family or debts.