Billy Lee, the slave who was Washington’s manservant for the entirety of the war, was left behind when he could no longer keep up. After he was crippled due to injuries sustained in service to Washington, Lee was demoted to shoemaker. The year before his first accident, he’d convinced Washington to bring Margaret “Peggy” Lee to Mount Vernon. They had met during the war, and while Washington clearly didn’t care for her, he nonetheless wrote to Clement Biddle in an attempt to bring her to Virginia.
