Lee, Charles

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Lee, Charles

LEE, CHARLES. (1731–1782). Continental general, soldier of fortune. England-Virginia. He was educated at schools in England and Switzerland, entering his father's regiment as an ensign in 1746 while still enrolled as a student. About 1748 he joined the Forty-fourth Foot, where he was able to purchase a lieutenant's commission in May 1751. He was on Braddock's expedition (1755) and then went to the Mohawk Valley where he purchased a captain's commission (1756). Adopted by the Mohawks and given the name of Ounewaterika (Boiling Water), he "married" the daughter of a Seneca chief; Lee's Indian wife bore him two children. During Abercromby's attack on Ticonderoga (7 July 1758) he was badly wounded, but he rejoined his regiment for the capture of Niagara and Montreal. He spent the winter of 1760–1761 in England. On 10 August 1761 he was appointed major of the 103rd Regiment and the next year served with real distinction under Burgoyne in Portugal, advancing to major and serving with the local rank of lieutenant colonel. He was retired on half pay in November 1763 when his regiment was disbanded. In 1765 Lee became a soldier of fortune in the Polish army, where he came to be on intimate terms with King Stanislaus Poniatowski. He was promoted to major general in 1767. The next two years he spent in England, where he devoted his time to horses and criticism of the government. He returned to Poland in 1769, fought against the Turks, and was invalided home the next year.

POSSIBILITIES IN AMERICA

In 1773 he went to America, where he immediately aligned himself with the revolutionary element. Scenting great possibilities for personal advancement, he urged Patriot leaders to raise an army, and in May 1774 he started buying an estate in Berkeley County, Virginia (later West Virginia), "with the specific motive of recommending himself, as a landowner, to the Continental Congress" (Van Doren, p. 30). Lee already had speculated in land, holding patents to twenty thousand acres in both New York and East Florida and ten thousand more on Prince Edward Island.

The half-pay British lieutenant colonel (promoted in 1772) not only had military experience but was a good pamphleteer and an articulate speaker. Many influential Americans came to look on him as a valuable acquisition, and when Congress appointed him major general on 17 June 1775, he was subordinate only to Washington and Artemas Ward. Since acceptance of this commission would lead to confiscation of his English estates and because he had not yet paid for his property in Virginia, Lee waited until Congress promised compensation for his property losses before he wrote British authorities about discontinuing his half pay.

SERVICE IN NORTH AND SOUTH

After serving in the Boston siege, where "his dirty habits and obscenity gave offense" but where he was "endured for what he was supposed to know," Lee was detached in January 1776 and directed to raise volunteers in Connecticut for the defense of New York City (Freeman, vol. 3, p. 373b). He reached the city on 4 February, having been delayed while laid up with the gout. On the 17th he was ordered by Congress to succeed Philip Schuyler in the northern department, but on 1 March a counterorder sent him to command the southern department.

On 7 October 1776 Lee was back in Philadelphia. He had received the thanks of Congress on 20 July for his service at Charleston, and on his return to the city Congress advanced him thirty thousand dollars to pay for his Virginia property. He reached Washington's army in time for the Battle of White Plains in New York on 28 October and was left at Peekskill with some of the best American troops when the main army went south for the New Jersey campaign. When Washington called for him to rejoin the main army on the retreat to the Delaware, Lee reacted in such a way as to raise suspicion that he hoped for Washington's defeat so that he could be appointed to succeed him. On 24 November 1776, Lee wrote a letter to Washington's secretary, Joseph Reed, sharply criticizing Washington as indecisive, which Washington innocently opened by mistake. Although Washington's reaction insofar as Reed was concerned was one of personal hurt rather than official outrage, he realized he would have to be on guard against the "fickle" Englishman. On 9 December, Lee wrote William Heath that in his opinion, Washington really did not need his support on the Delaware and went on to say: "I am in the hopes here [at Morristown] to reconquer (if I may so express myself) the Jerseys." He had just penned and dispatched to Gates the famous letter that said, "entre nous a certain great man is damnably deficient" when he was captured at Basking Ridge on 13 December 1776.

PRISON AND COURT-MARTIAL

Germain ordered Lee returned to England for trial as a deserter, but Howe—who thought Lee had resigned his half pay before joining the enemy—did not comply. As a prisoner in New York, Lee conducted himself in such a way as to be accused of treason. What he really hoped to accomplish, however, was a peaceful settlement of the war; he was no Benedict Arnold. On 29 March 1777 he submitted his plan for ending the rebellion by an offensive that would "unhinge the organization of the American resistance" by gaining control of the middle colonies—Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Virginia (Anderson, pp. 221-222). The British apparently paid little attention to the strategic advice of this former officer.

Exchanged in April 1778, Lee complained to Congress about the promotion of others while he was a prisoner, and on 20 May he was greeted at Valley Forge by officers still unaware of his double-dealing. In the Monmouth campaign of June 1778 he had his first test as a field commander, and in the opinion of most observers he failed it miserably. Washington sternly reprimanded him on the battlefield but otherwise was willing to let the matter rest; Lee himself, however, his "vanity grievously wounded" and his abilities and even courage questioned, angrily defended his own part and "inveighed against Washington's tactics" (ibid., pp. 228-229). Casting prudence to the wind, he wrote an impertinent letter to Washington demanding a court of inquiry at the same time that Generals Anthony Wayne and Charles Scott reported that Lee's actions on the field had been highly improper. Thus, the resulting Lee court-martial was brought on not by his performance in the battle but by his conduct afterward.

The charges of "disobediance of orders," "misbehaviour before the enemy … by making an unnecessary, disorderly, and shameful retreat," and "disrespect to the commander in chief" astonished and outraged Lee, and despite a valiant effort to defend himself, he was found guilty and sentenced to be suspended from army command for one year (ibid., pp. 228-239). During his trial he cast aspersions that nearly led to a duel with Wilhelm Steuben. After his "Vindication" appeared in the Pennsylvania Packet of 3 December 1778, he was called out and slightly wounded by Colonel John Laurens; the wound was enough to keep him from accepting a challenge from Wayne. By July 1779 he was back at his estate in the Shenandoah, where he "bred horses, enjoyed the company of his dogs, and attempted farming" (Fisher, vol. 2, p. 194). When his year of suspension from command expired, Lee heard a rumor that Congress intended to dismiss him. Although it is doubtful that such an action was under serious contemplation, the letter he addressed to the delegates on this matter was so offensive that on 10 January 1780 Congress did in fact dismiss him from the service. Two days later he left his home and moved to Philadelphia, where he died in 1782.

A MAN OF CONTRADICTIONS

"An enigma Lee was—and still is," wrote Douglas S. Freeman in 1951, the same year John R. Alden published General Charles Lee: Traitor or Patriot?, a study that completely revised the image of this strange but able and much-maligned man. Although Alden wrote that Lee's "personality remains partly cloaked in mystery," he reveals much about his subject. Lee was a man of contrasts, Alden wrote. For example, he was capable of "fervent friendships, and vast hatreds"; "neither ascetic nor saintly"; "vain and ambitious" but conscious of his shortcomings; "enamored of money, but careless about it." As an intellectual he anticipated Tom Paine but fell short of Edmund Burke, yet he "displayed frequent flashes of brilliance" (pp. 305-306).