Henley was born in
Charlestown, Massachusetts, the eldest child of Samuel and Elizabeth Cheever Henley. On January 8, 1776, he set fire to Charlestown which was occupied by the British. In that same year, he served a brigade-major under General
William Heath, and briefly as an adjutant general under General
Joseph Spencer. On January 1, 1777, he was made lieutenant colonel of the Fifth Massachusetts Regiment. He was in command at
Cambridge, Massachusetts, when the troops that had been captured at Saratoga were brought there. Henley stabbed an insolent but unarmed British prisoner. Court-martial proceedings were held at Cambridge from January 20, 1778, to February 25, 1778, but he was acquitted. British
General Burgoyne challenged him to a
duel, which was to take place in
Bermuda. He accepted the challenge, but the duel never took place. General Washington selected him in November 1778 to be his
spymaster, and charged him with compiling information to give him a snapshot of
British capabilities. He largely succeeded in that task. Henley retired from the Army the following year. In 1793, Colonel Henley was appointed by President Washington as the Agent of the Department of War for the Southwest Territory, in
Knoxville, Tennessee. In this capacity, he was Superintendent of Indian Affairs, as well as quartermaster and paymaster for locally stationed troops and militia. He was known to be a hothead, but was also a strong law-and-order man. Tennessee's Constitutional Convention was held in his office at the corner of what is now
Gay Street and Church Avenue in Downtown Knoxville in 1796. He died in
Washington, D.C., in 1823, while a clerk in the War Department. ==Legacy==