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THE 
 
 TREASON OF CHARLES LEE. 
 
" If I had ever assumed the character of a military genius, and 
 the officer of experience ; if, under these false colors, I had so- 
 licited the command I was honored with ; or if, after my appoint- 
 ment, I had driven on, under the sole guidance of my own judg- 
 ment, and self-will ; and misfortunes, the result of obstinacy and 
 misconduct, not of necessity, had followed, I should have thought 
 myself a proper subject for the lash, not only of his, but of the 
 pen of every other writer, and a fit object of public resentment. 
 . . . An effrontery, which few men do, and; for the honor of 
 human nature, none ought to possess." 
 
 Washington to President Eeed, July 29iA, IVYO. 
 
 . " Servetur ad imum, 
 Qualis ab incepto processerit, et sibi- constet." 
 
 Horace, Ad, Fisones ; 126. 
 
MAJ. GEN. CHARLES LEt. 
 
 lT:,.,t,-»l..'Jtffta>. 
 
 BirwmHK; Gi''i?U'Eir&'M foco. 
 
"Mr. Lee's Plan — March 29, 1777." 
 
 THE 
 
 TREASON OF CHARLES LEE 
 
 MAJOR GENERAL 
 
 SECOND m COMMAND IN THE AMEEICAN AEMT 
 OF THE REVOLUTION. 
 
 BY 
 
 GEOEGE H. MOOEE 
 
 LIBRARIAN OP THE NEW-TORK HISTORICAL SOCIETY. 
 
 [BEAD BEFOEE THE SOCIETY, ON TUESDAY EVENING, JUNE 22, ]8o8.] 
 
 The evil that men do lives after them." 
 
 NEW-TOEK: 
 CHARLES SORIBNEE, 124 GRAND STREET. 
 
 M.TIC0O.I.X. 
 
 s 
 
 E5 
 
Y 
 
 A,33"f^a 
 
 Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1858, by 
 
 GEOEGE HENEY MOOEE, 
 
 in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern District 
 
 of New-York. 
 
 JOnN F. TROW, 
 Printer, Stereotyper, and Electrotyper, 
 377 Broadway. 
 
^ 
 
 TO THE 
 
 HON". LUTHEE BEADISH, LL.D. 
 
 PRESIDENT OF THE NETV-TOEK HISTORICAL SOCIETY 
 
 WITH A GEATEFUL 
 
 ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF THAT PEESONAL FEIENDSHIP 
 
 WHICH HAS BEEN 
 
 THE ENCOUEAGEMENT AND EEWAED OF MY 
 
 LONG SEEYICE IN THE SOCIETY 
 
 OVEE WHICH 
 
 HE PEESIDES WITH EQUAL DIGNITY AND ABILITY 
 
 THIS ESSAY 
 
 IS EESPECTFULLY DEDICATED 
 
 BY 
 
 GEORGE HENKY MOOKE. 
 January, 1860. 
 
PREFACE 
 
 This Essay, wHcli presents to the world, for 
 tlie first time, the positive proofs of the treason 
 of General Lee, is intended simply to indicate their 
 relation to the history of the American Revolution. 
 They seem to me too important to be withheld 
 during the time necessary for the preparation of 
 the work, of which my announcement accompanies 
 this volume — and for which I am led to expect 
 from various private sources ia England, as well as 
 this country, additional materials of great impor- 
 tance. 
 
 I have given fac-similes of the original Plan 
 of Treason, and, for the purpose of comparison, of 
 the letter to General Gates, written by General 
 Lee just before his capture. The first is the docu- 
 ment which suggested this essay. Its authenticity 
 is unquestionable, and will bear the most thorough 
 
nil PREFACE. 
 
 investigation. When it ivas first 'brouglit to me, 
 Avith. other documents from the same sources in 
 England, I was not allowed to examine it any 
 further than was necessary to satisfy myself of its 
 genuineness by those tests with which all scholars 
 are familiar — a restriction to which I submitted 
 upon the undoubted assurance that the same con- 
 ditions had been and would be imposed upon every 
 one to whom it had been or would be shown. 
 As this restriction was intended to assure the pecu- 
 niary value of the manuscripts, which were offered 
 for sale, I have no reason to doubt that it was in- 
 variably imposed, so that when I purchased them, 
 a few days afterwards, I found myself in sole pos- 
 session of papers of the most startling character — 
 a key to some of the strangest secrets of the Revo- 
 lution. 
 
 The portrait opposite the title-page is reduced 
 from the folio print published in London during 
 the war, and was engraved to accompany the 
 illustrated edition of Irving's Life of Washington. 
 I am indebted to the liberal courtesy of Mr. George 
 P. Putnam for permission to use the plate. 
 
 The other engraving was taken from a carica- 
 ture drawing, by Barham Eushbrooke, Esq., of West 
 
PREFACE. IX 
 
 Stowe, near Bury, in England. He was commonly 
 called Counsellor Rushhroolce, from Ms having been 
 bred to the law. He was considered as a man of 
 great taste in painting, and all the liberal arts. 
 His grandson married one of the daughters of Sir 
 Charles Davers, Avho was one of General Lee's most 
 intimate friends. 
 
 General Lee's likeness was taken on his return 
 from Poland, in his uniform as aid-de-camp to Stan- 
 islaus, King of Poland. It appears to have been 
 carefully preserved by the Davers family, and was 
 engraved in 1813, to accompany a work published 
 by Dr. Thomas Girdlestone, to prove that Lee was 
 the author of Junius. That gentleman, to whose 
 work I am indebted for these facts, says of it: 
 " Though designed as a caricature, it was allowed^ 
 hy all wlio hneiu General Lee, to he tlie only success- 
 ful delineation, either of his countenance or person^'' 
 It is the only one of the so-called portraits, which 
 I have met with, bearing any evidence of authen- 
 ticity, or answering to the personal descriptions 
 given by his cotemporary friends and biographers. 
 Sir Henry Bunbury says : " In person he was tall 
 and extremely thin ; his face ugly, with an aquiline 
 nose of enormous proportion." Dr. Girdlestone 
 
X PEEFACE. 
 
 says : " General Lee was a remarkably thin man, 
 and is said to have had the smallest hand and slen- 
 derest fingers that could be seen." Mr. Lang- 
 worthy says : " The General, in his person, was of a 
 genteel make, and rather above the middle size; his 
 remarkable aquiline nose rendered his face some- 
 what disagreeable." Another description is that 
 " he was of more than ordinary stature, lean but 
 well proportioned. His features were"^ disagreea- 
 ble." 
 
 The Life of General Lee has been written by 
 Mr. Edward Langworthy, in the memoirs published 
 in 1792 and 1*797 in England, and thrice reprinted 
 in America ; by Sir Henry Bunbury, whose father 
 was a first cousin of Lee, in 1838 ; and by Mr. 
 Sparks in 1846, for his series of American Biog- 
 raphies. To these are to be added numerous 
 anonymous sketches, scattered through the journals 
 and periodicals of the last century, and notices 
 more or less brief, in various biographical works. 
 I have sought for and examined all that are acces- 
 sible to me. To all I wish to render due acknowl- 
 edgment, and especially to Mr. Spabks, whose 
 steps must be followed with grateful reverence 
 by every student of American History, and with 
 
PEEFACE. XI 
 
 no little caution by any who may presume even 
 in the Hght of new discoveries, to differ with him 
 on any important poiat. 
 
 Me. Banceoft, to whom I made known the ear- 
 liest results of my studies, recognizing at once the 
 important bearing which they have on the subject 
 of his own grand work, permitted me to make sev- 
 eral extracts from his collection of MSS., illustrat- 
 ing and conflrming the positions which I had 
 taken; and encouraged me in my labors by his 
 liberal approbation. 
 
 I have also to acknowledge my obligations to 
 Professor George "W. Greene, Mr. John Jay, Mr. 
 John Carter Brown, of Providence, to whose Hber- 
 ality and the kindness of my friend the Hon. John 
 Eussell Bartlett, I am indebted for access to the 
 treasures in his library, one of the richest in the 
 world in American History ; Mr. N. F. Cabell, of 
 Warminster, Nelson County, Va. ; Mr. William 
 Hunter, of the State Department at Washington ; 
 Mr. Townsend Ward, and Mr. Ferdinand J. Dreer, 
 of Philadelphia. 
 
 But my chiefest acknowledgment is really due 
 and most heartily rendered to Petee Foecb, my 
 father's, and my own venerated friend, whose great 
 
Xll PEEFACE. 
 
 work, the American Archives, is the monument of 
 his abihty, judgment, industry, and fidelity. It is 
 the thesaurus maxirmis^ the chief treasure-house of 
 American History. Its completeness, and richness 
 of illustration, for the period it embraces, is such 
 as to enhance the regret, which is shared by all 
 scholars, that its progress has been so long and so 
 seriously interrupted. 
 
THE TREASON OF CHARLES LEE. 
 
 Me. Peesidewt: 
 
 The paper wMch I have the honor to submit 
 to the Society this evening, is sketched from ma- 
 terials reserved for a more elaborate examination 
 of the principal topic, than the limits of a single 
 paper would permit. I have availed myself of the 
 invitation, to make known to the pubhc the exist- 
 ence of documents hitherto unknown in our history, 
 and of great importance to that portion of it, which 
 records the struggles through which the Eepublic 
 came into existence. In the hour to which I am 
 limited, I shall ask your attention to some sketches 
 of the life and character of Charles Lee, in order to 
 a proper appreciation of his place in the history of 
 the American Revolution. 
 
 Chaeles Lee was the youngest son of Colonel 
 John Lee, of Dernhall, in Cheshire, England ; his 
 mother was Isabella, the second daughter of Sir 
 Henry Bunbury, Bart., of Stanney, in the same 
 county. The Lees of Dernhall were an ancient 
 
2 TEEASOK OF CHAELES LEE. 
 
 family, of which the Earls of Lichfield were a 
 younger branch ; but the chief line which removed 
 from Lee to Dernhall in the time of Charles I., be- 
 came extinct in the male line at the decease of the 
 subject of this paper. John Lee, some time a Cap- 
 tain of Dragoons, afterwards Lieutenant-Colonel of 
 General Barrell's Eegiment, 4th Foot Guards, was 
 made Colonel of the 44th, (or East Essex Eegi- 
 ment,) a Eegiment on the Irish Establishment, 
 March 11, 1743. He continued in the service until 
 his death, which occurred on the 5th August, lYSO. 
 His widow (baptized at Chester Cathedral, October 
 2, 1702) was still living in December, 1764. Of 
 their four children, the daughter, Sidney Lee, and 
 the youngest son, Charles, were at that time the 
 only survivors; Thomas and Henry having died, 
 and without leaving children. Miss Sidney Lee 
 survived all her brothers, and died unmarried, 16th 
 January, 1788. Madame D'Arblay, who met her at 
 Bath, speaks of her, as " a very agreeable woman." 
 She was an accomplished and liberal woman, and 
 treated the Americans, who were captured and 
 imprisoned by the British in England, with great 
 humanity. The principal part of the estate which 
 General Lee possessed at the time of his death, he 
 bequeathed to her, and she remitted four thousand 
 five hundred pounds sterling to America, in order 
 to discharge her brother's debts, lest his legatees in 
 this country should be deprived of what he had be- 
 queathed to them. 
 
TEEASON OF CHAELES LEE. 3 
 
 Chaeles Lee was born in 1731, and is said to 
 have received a commission in the army at eleven 
 years of age. The army was not at that time, with 
 respect to the appointment and promotion of sub- 
 alterns, under the wise regulations which afterwards 
 prevailed: not only privates, but officers were on 
 the Army List, whom their own Colonels knew only 
 to exist because their names were on the roll ; and 
 instances are said to have been known, in which one- 
 third of the subalterns of a regiment were in the 
 nursery ! 
 
 The Duchess of Marlborough, in one of her 
 letters to the Earl of Stair, December 3, 1737, has 
 preserved a curious instance of this abuse. She 
 says that " Lord Hervey's wife's father, Mr. Lepel, 
 made her a cornet in his regiment as soon as she 
 was born, which is no more wrong to the design of 
 an army than if she had been a son : and she was 
 paid many years after she was a maid of honour. 
 . . . . My Lord Sunderland got her a pension 
 of the late King, [George I., j it being too ridiculous 
 to continue her any longer an officer in the army." 
 When such things were tolerated within the pur- 
 lieus of the Court, it would be strange if the Irish 
 establishment were not full of similar examples. 
 L"eland was always the theatre of the most flagrant 
 abuses. Besides, in those days, and indeed many 
 years later, it was one of the usual courses of mili- 
 tary education, to remove a boy immediately from 
 the preparatory school into the regiment, and to 
 
4 TREASON OF CHAELES LEE. 
 
 give Mm no other training than what the regiment, 
 with perhaps the occasional tuition of a friendly 
 superior, might afford — the main business being to 
 learn the practical art and exercise of war. 
 
 There is no improbability, therefore, that his 
 father, soon after he received his own commission 
 as Colonel, may have placed young Lee in the regi- 
 ment, and before he had completed his twelfth 
 year. 
 
 He is said to have considered himself as born in 
 the army ; and it is natural to suppose that his edu- 
 cation was designed with reference to that profes- 
 sion to which his own temper, not less than the in- 
 clination of his parents, must have directed him. 
 Little is known, however, of his early training. The 
 free grammar school of Bury St. Edmund's, and an 
 academy in Switzerland, share its honors with the 
 regiment. 
 
 It is stated, that to respectable attainments in 
 the Greek and Latin classics, he afterwards added 
 a thorough famiharity with the French, and a com- 
 petent skUl in the Spanish, German, and Italian 
 languages. The latter he may have acquired in the 
 course of those long wanderings in search of knowl- 
 edge or pleasure, to which his restless disposition 
 urged him— for nature had made him an enthusiast, 
 and whatever was the object of his pursuit, he fol- 
 lowed it with an extreme ardor. Possessiag talents 
 above the common order, he turned his advantages 
 (such as they were) to good account; although the 
 
TREASON OF CHARLES LEE. 5 
 
 practical lesson of Ms life seems clearly to indicate 
 little strictness and method, in that domestic disci- 
 pline which would have been far more valuable to 
 him than any of his acquisitions. 
 
 The study of his profession enlisted all his en- 
 ergy. As he approached and entered upon its 
 active duties, he applied himself with characteristic 
 zeal, and his writings, not less than his career, leave 
 us in no doubt that he acquired a very general, if 
 not thorough knowledge of what was then known 
 in England as the science of war. 
 
 On the 2d May, 1751, a few months after his 
 father's death, he received a Lieutenant's commis- 
 sion in the same regiment, which was continued 
 on the Irish establishment after it was ordered to 
 America in 1754. 
 
 Hitherto his opportunities of becoming familiar 
 with the school of the soldier, must have been very 
 insufficient. The English service, (especially on gar- 
 rison duty in Ireland,) in times of peace, afforded 
 him no practical lessons ; for mounting guard once 
 or twice a week, or the preparation for the review 
 of a single regiment, could hardly be esteemed as 
 such : and it was long after the time of Avhich I am 
 speaking, that the Duke of Wellington — who ac- 
 quired his own military education on the Continent 
 — is reported to have said that if ten thousand men 
 were placed in Hyde Park, there was not an officer 
 in the service who -could get them out ! 
 
 But a better field of practice was now opening 
 
6 TREASON OP CHARLES LEE 
 
 before Lee. His active military career began, as it 
 ended, in America ; and his first experience in arms 
 presents singular points of resemblance as well as 
 contrast with his last service in the field. In fact, ' 
 nearly all the real service he ever saw was in Amer- 
 ica. It began in the valley of the Monongahela, and 
 it closed on the Heights of Monmouth. Washing- 
 ton saw the beginning and the end, and the same 
 eyes that had anxiously watched as he followed 
 and protected the flight of the young subaltern in 
 1755, flashed withering scorn and indignation upon 
 the traitor-general who meditated his disgrace in 
 1778. 
 
 When Braddock was gent out to repel the 
 encroachments of France, and restore the English 
 power upon the American Continent, the regiment 
 in which Lee was still a Lieutenant, was one of the 
 " two European Regiments," which were the stamina 
 of the expedition. The events which followed are 
 too familiar to need any recital here, terminating 
 as they did in " a scene of carnage which has been 
 truly described as unexampled in the annals of 
 modern warfare." It was, in truth, " the most ex- 
 traordinary victory ever obtained, and the farthest 
 flight ever made," and, as Mr. Irving has justly re- 
 marked, " struck a fatal blow to the deference for 
 British prowess, which once amounted almost to 
 bigotry, throughout the provinces." Franklin says 
 in his autobiography, "This whole transaction gave 
 us Americans the first suspicion, that our exalted 
 
TEEASON OF CHAELES LEE. 7 
 
 ideas of the prowess of Britisli regular troops had 
 not been well founded." 
 
 In that ignominious and terrible defeat, Lee 
 had the good fortune to escape without notice. I 
 am not aware that the fact of his being present has 
 been stated by any of his biographers, or the histo- 
 rians who have portrayed those tragic scenes with 
 such graphic power. But I am able to say, as the 
 result of a very careful and laborious examination 
 of all the materials at hand for a decision, that he 
 was on duty with his regiment at that time. Few 
 of the officers escaped unhurt, and the number of 
 those who came out with untarnished reputations 
 was still less. Lee himself afterwards found occa- 
 sion to allude to the fact that " none of the regu- 
 lars chose to remember their early defeats and 
 disgraces, particularly those upon the Ohio, in all 
 which the provincials never led the flight, but were 
 the last to leave the field ; " and he does not seem 
 to have broken through that prudent reserve in his 
 own behalf. The silence of his biographers, espe- 
 cially of his kinsman. Sir Henry Bunbury, is very 
 remarkable, but would be much more so, if the 
 most diligent search had been rewarded with the 
 discovery of any thing honorable or even creditable 
 to their hero. 
 
 The shattered remains of Braddock's broken 
 army under Colonel Dunbar, reached Philadelphia 
 early in September. On the first of October, they 
 marched for New York, and on the 8th and 9th, 
 
8 TREASON OF CHAELES LEE. 
 
 they passed tlie metropolis in thirty-three transport 
 sloops from Amboy, on their way to winter quar- 
 ters at Albany and Schenectady. 
 
 Lieutenant Lee was present at Fort Johnson, 
 in some of the conferences between Sir William 
 Johnson and the Indians of the Six Nations with 
 their allies and dependants, which took place dur- 
 ing the winter of 1755-56. Upon these occasions 
 and subsequently, when stationed in that part of 
 the country, he had much intercourse with the 
 Mohawks, and was captivated by their manners, 
 their "hospitable, civil, and friendly" deportment, 
 the personal beauty of many of them, their graceful 
 carriage, and by what he calls their good breeding, 
 or " constant desire to do every thing that will please 
 you, and strict carefulness not to say or do any thing 
 that may offend you." 
 
 His admiration was reciprocated, and he was re- 
 ceived with great favor, by adoption, into the tribe 
 of the Bear. With curious felicity, they bestowed 
 on him the name of Ounewaterika, which, in the 
 Indian dialect, is said to signify " boiling water," or 
 " the spirit that never sleeps." 
 
 He soon after purchased a company in his reg- 
 iment, for which he paid nine hundred pounds. 
 His commission as a captain in the 44th Kegiment 
 was dated 11th June, 1756. 
 
 Great preparations had been made for the cam- 
 paign of that year, but the time wore quietly away. 
 The only considerable movement of the "44th Regi- 
 
teeaso:n' of chaeles lee. 9 
 
 ment "n^as in a tardy and abortive attempt to rein- 
 force the garrison at Oswego, -n-hicli surrendered to 
 the French, 14th August, 1756. The loss of this 
 important post excited a general alarm throughout 
 the colonies; and the sj)eaker of the Xew York 
 Assembly, writing to the agent of that province, on 
 the 13th of October, added to a gloomy picture of 
 the state of affairs: "As for our forces on the 
 northern frontier, both regulars and provincials, I 
 expect to hear of no action by them, unless the 
 enemy force them to it." 
 
 In the disposition of the forces for the ensuing 
 winter (1756-57), the 44th and 48th regiments 
 were to garrison the forts between Albany and 
 Crown Point. 
 
 In 1757, these regiments formed a part of the 
 forces designed for the conquest of Louisbourg, the 
 Dunkirk of America, which had, in the previous 
 war, been captured from the French, chiefly through 
 the zeal and enterprise of New England ; even then 
 arousing at home those jealous fears which had long 
 predicted the independence of the colonies. Its 
 restitution was, in reality, the purchase of a general 
 peace in Europe by the treaty of Aix-la-ChapeUe, 
 which restored this conquest to France ; and it was 
 now the object of the ministry to recover it. A 
 vast armament was assembled at Halifax, under the 
 command of Earl Loudoun, arousing the most san- 
 guine expectations of success ; but nothing was done 
 to realize them. The campaign ended like the pre- 
 
10 TEEASON" OF CHARLES LEE. 
 
 vious one, and tte commander-in-cliief was censured 
 by his whole army. Among other employments 
 of the idle time at Halifax, the troops had been 
 engaged in making a garden to furnish vegetables 
 as a precaution against the scurvy, and as a pro- 
 vision for the sick and wounded, who might be 
 sent thither for their recovery, in case the intended 
 attack against Louisbourg should take place. This 
 provident foresight was a topic of merciless ridi- 
 cule, and gave point to the satire of Lee which first 
 brought him to notice in cotemporary history. 
 
 Smith, the historian of New York, recording 
 the events of the winter of l'757-'58, says : "While 
 we were in suspense respecting the plan expected 
 for the operations of the ensuing year, the militaiy 
 officers indulged great heats concerning the inac- 
 tivity of the last campaign. Lord Charles Hay led 
 a party at Halifax in severe reflections on the Earl 
 of Loudoun. Their animosities spread to New 
 York; and among the discontented, no man in- 
 dulged in greater liberties than Mr. Lee, then a 
 subaltern, who did not restrain himseK in the open 
 coifee-house, from calling it the Cabbage Planting 
 Expedition; drawing into question not only the 
 Earl's military skill, but his courage and integrity." 
 
 It is worth noticing here, that the earliest pub- 
 lished letter written by Lee, of which I have any 
 knowledge, fully justifies the statements (with 
 which it was furnished to the publisher by his rela- 
 tive, Sir Charles Bunbury), that he "began very 
 
TREASON OF CHAELES LEE. 11 
 
 early to abuse his superiors, and was not very nice 
 in the terms he made use of ; " and that he had " a 
 turn for satire and a levelling disposition." He re- 
 tained this character to the end of his career ; and 
 no officer, under whose immediate command he 
 ever served, escaped his censure. 
 
 The second notice of Lee, by a younger cotem- 
 porary, presents his actions in no very favorable 
 light, but can hardly be omitted. 
 
 In the latter part of June, 1758, his regiment 
 proceeded to the north, in the army under General 
 Abercrombie. As the trooj)s were marched in de- 
 tachments past the "Flats," above Albany, the 
 ancient rural home of the Schuylers, each detach- 
 ment was quartered for a night on the common, or 
 in the offices. One of the first of these was com- 
 manded by Lee, afterwards of "frantic celebrity." 
 He had neglected to bring the customary warrants 
 for impressing horses and oxen, and procuring a 
 supply of various necessaries, to be paid for by the 
 agents of government on showing the usual docu- 
 ments ; nevertheless he seized every thing he want- 
 ed, where he could most readily find it ; as if he 
 were in a conquered country : and not content with 
 this violence, poured forth a volley of execrations 
 on all who presumed to question his right of ap- 
 propriating for his troops, every thing that could 
 be serviceable to them; even Madame Schuyler, 
 accustomed to universal respect, and to be con- 
 sidered as the friend and benefactress of the army, 
 
12 TEEASON OF CHAELES LEE. 
 
 was not spared; and the aids whicli she never 
 failed to bestow on those whom she saw about to 
 expose their hves for the general defence, were 
 rudely demanded or violently seized. Lee marched 
 on after having done all the mischief in his power, 
 followed the next day by an officer and gentleman 
 of a very different character, the lamented Lord 
 Howe. 
 
 At the assault of Ticonderoga, Lee is said to 
 have distinguished himself, and received a severe 
 wound from a musket shot, which passed through 
 his body and broke two of his ribs. He was con- 
 veyed, with other wounded officers, to Albany, and 
 this brings the sequel of his acquaintance with the 
 Schuylers. "Madame Schuyler had fitted up a 
 temporary hospital on hearing the news of the de- 
 feat. Among the patients was Lee, the same inso- 
 lent and rapacious Lee, who had insulted this gen- 
 eral benefactress, and deprived her of one of her 
 greatest pleasures, that of giving a share of every 
 thing she had, to advance the service. She treated 
 him with compassion, without adverting by the 
 least hint, to the past. . . . Even Lee felt and 
 acknowledged the resistless force of such generous 
 humanity. He swore, in his vehement manner, 
 that he was sure there would be a place reserved 
 for Madame in heaven, though no other woman 
 should be there ; and that he should wish for noth- 
 ing better than to share her final destiny." 
 
 He remained at Albany until he recovered, 
 
TEEASOX OF CHARLES LEE. 13 
 
 when he joined his regiment in winter quarters at 
 Newtown, Long Island; where, during the winter, 
 he narrowly escaped assassination at the hands of a 
 "little cowardly surgeon," as he called him, whom 
 he had severely whipped for an alleged libel. I 
 suppose his assailant to have been the surgeon of 
 his own regiment. 
 
 During the next campaign, he accompanied the 
 successful expedition against the French garrison at 
 Xiagara, which cut off the communication between 
 Canada and Louisiana, and gave the Enghsh entire 
 control of the upper lakes. He was subsequently 
 despatched with a small party (another officer and 
 fourteen men) to follow the route of the French 
 who had escaped ; the first party of English troops 
 that ever crossed Lake Erie. He went to Presq' 
 Isle, and by way of A^enango, down the western 
 branch of the Ohio to Fort Duquesne. From this 
 place, at that time in possession of the English, he 
 made a march of seven hundred miles, to join Gen- 
 eral Amherst at Crown Point; another march to 
 Oswego, and afterwards went to Philadelphia, 
 Avhere he remained through the winter, on the re- 
 cruiting service. 
 
 In the campaign of It'M), which completed the 
 British conquest of Canada, his regiment was with 
 the forces led by Amherst from Lake Ontario 
 down the St. Lawrence to Montreal ; and soon after 
 the reduction of ^Montreal, he returned to England. 
 His friends there had encouraged him to return. 
 
14 TREASON OF CHARLES LEE. 
 
 witL. strong expectations of promotion, and the 
 opportunity of service on the continent. 
 
 His uncle, Sir WUliam Bunbury, writing from 
 London, November 28tli, 1759, said: "But sure 
 you are not to stay on that continent for ever ; we 
 wish you to come again amongst your friends, and 
 probably some change might be procured, as well 
 as advance on this side of the water, if you desired 
 it. Lord Granby commands in Germany at pres- 
 ent, and is likely to be at the head of the army 
 on this side of the water too, if Ligonier drops; 
 and it is supposed he cannot last a great whUe lon- 
 ger. The taking of Munster, which we had advice 
 of the other day, will be of great importance to 
 our allied army, and secure them good winter quar- 
 ters. A great many matches are talked of here in 
 town, so that if you do not come soon, all our fine 
 young ladies will be disposed of." His promotion 
 soon followed : but it does not appear that Lee was 
 permitted to enjoy either the winter quarters pro- 
 vided at Munster, or the felicity suggested in the 
 society of any of " the fine young ladies." 
 
 Of -his early services in America, it is not too 
 much to say, that his success was such as to justify 
 his choice of a profession, and satisfy the expecta- 
 tions of his friends. But even at this period his hot 
 and imperious temper was provoking serious diffi- 
 culties, which a very little prudence would have 
 avoided. His love of power, and his thirst of am- 
 bition, ill suited with the subordinate offices of a 
 
TEEASON OP CHARLES LEE. 15 
 
 subaltern. He was born not only to command, but 
 like Cfesar, not to brook contradiction from an 
 equal, mucli less to receive commands from a supe- 
 rior. His restless disposition made even tbe ser- 
 vice to Mm, a field for opposition : in every com- 
 manding officer be ssi-w an usurper or a tyrant, and 
 he hated no enemies more cordially than order and 
 obedience. These reflections are forced upon us 
 even in the scanty details of his early history, and 
 give us one clue to that knowledge of his character 
 which is necessary to enable us to account for the 
 actions of his life. 
 
 On the 10th of August, 1761, he was promoted 
 to a majority in the 103d regiment of foot, or the 
 Volunteer Hunters. This regiment was disbanded 
 in 1*763, and Lee continued a major on half-pay 
 until the 25th of May, 1772, when he was made a 
 Lieutenant-Colonel, still on half-pay. 
 
 This was the highest rank he ever attained in 
 the British service. And when, in 1769, he re- 
 ceived the appointment of Major-General, from 
 the King of Poland, he did not consider it incom- 
 patible with his higher rank, to retain his majority 
 and receive the half-pay annexed to it, doubtless 
 because it was "too considerable a sum to throw 
 wantonly away." 
 
 In 1762, when the English auxiliary force was 
 sent to assist Portugal in repelling the invasion of 
 the Spaniards, Lee accompanied Brigadier-General 
 Burgoyne, with the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel in 
 
16 TEEASOET OP CHAELES LEE. 
 
 the service of tlie King of Portugal. The com- 
 bined armies were put under the command of the 
 Count de la Lippe Buckbourg, an active and intel- 
 ligent German officer, who had commanded the 
 artillery of the British army in Westphaha, a man 
 undoubtedly among the first of his time in military 
 fame. He was placed at the head of about six 
 thousand British troops, and a Portuguese army, 
 the greater part of which was httle better than 
 nominal, to defend an extensive frontier against 
 the whole force of Spain, and a large body of the 
 veteran troops of France. Burgoyne was intrusted 
 with the defence of the most important pass upon 
 the Tagus. The result of the campaign was to check 
 the progress of the Spaniards, who retired within 
 their own borders. Lee acquitted himself honora- 
 bly, and in one affair especially, gained high praise. 
 The command of a detachment destined to surprise 
 the Spanish camp near the old Moorish Castle of 
 Villa Velha on the south bank of the Tagus, was 
 confided to him, and the service was performed in 
 the most brilliant manner. He crossed the Tagus 
 in the darkness of night ; gained the rear of the 
 Spaniards without discovery, and entered their quar- 
 ters without being perceived, till his own bayonets 
 told the secret. They were routed at once, with 
 terrible slaughter ; and having destroyed their mag- 
 azines, and spiked or taken their guns, Lee and his 
 men returned to the other side of the Tagus, loaded 
 with booty and surrounded by helpless prisoners. 
 
TEEASON OF CHARLES LEE. 17 
 
 This spirited achievement took place on the 6th of 
 October, 1762. Lord Loudoun described it to the 
 ministry as " a very gallant action," and the Count 
 de la Lippe said, in a letter to the Earl of Egremont 
 — applauding the conduct of " the gallant Lieuten- 
 ant Colonel Lee " and the British troops — " so bril- 
 liant a stroke speaks for itself." Thus recommended 
 to the special favor of government by the Court of 
 Lisbon and the Count de la Lippe, Lee returned to 
 England. 
 
 But here his promotion in the British army 
 halted. Notwithstanding the " brilliant prospects " 
 which his intimacy with " men of high rank and 
 influence in London," and the apparent "friendship 
 of one of the cabinet ministers," seemed to promise, 
 he still continued, and for many years afterwards, a 
 Major on half-pay. His biographers have attribu- 
 ted his want of success to the part which he took 
 in the discussion of some of the ministerial plans re- 
 lating to American affairs, and date the beginning 
 of his services to America from this period. I doubt 
 the correctness of this view of the case, for I have 
 found no sufficient evidence to sustain it ; and " it can 
 scarcely be denied that he had a higher opinion of 
 his claims than his services, and his just pretensions 
 on this ground alone would naturally warrant." 
 
 His unpopularity may be said to have gi'own 
 out of the severity of his strictures upon persons in 
 authority, in the exercise of his illiberal freedom of 
 speech, rather than his liberal sentiments. The 
 
18 TREASON OF CHAELES LEE. 
 
 enmities wMcli lie drew upon himself from certain 
 powerful quarters (to wliicli he afterwards referred 
 in his letter to the King of Poland) were the fruit 
 of that furious temper, which might have been ex- 
 pected to do great injury to any cause in which he 
 engaged, and to none more than that in which he 
 was most interested — ^his own advancement. Always 
 forward, arrogant, and mutinous, strong in his own 
 opinion, with the government he served he took all 
 the liberties of an insolent servant who believes 
 himself to be necessary ; compelling them, even if 
 they could not deny his talent, to judge him ill 
 qualified by such a character to govern those under 
 him, or to obey those above him. Eager, fickle, 
 and violent in spirit, his instability and lack of 
 judgment, together with his wanton and unhappy 
 wit, made him quite as formidable to his friends 
 as to his enemies. 
 
 Failing to obtain that recognition of his claims 
 which he sought and expected, and seeing "no 
 chance of being provided for at home," he deter- 
 mined to go into the Polish service, to which he had 
 such recommendations that he thought he could not 
 fail. The idea that he was actuated by any other 
 motives than the desire to provide for himself and 
 to see service, is simply absurd. He embarked in 
 this cause as a soldier of fortune, and " without any 
 definite purpose as to the side he should take. 
 Action, the glory of arms, high rank in his profes- 
 sion, were the images that floated in his imagination 
 

 r7lA.J0K GKN. CHARLES CEE. 
 
TREASON OF CHARLES LEE. 19 
 
 and directed his course." This was at the time 
 when the dissensions in Poland had arisen to such 
 a height, as to make it probable that a struggle for 
 her ancient independence was to be undertaken by 
 that unhappy nation. 
 
 In Poland, he received an appointment as 
 aid-de-camp to the king; who, Lee states, "had it 
 not in his power to pro\'ide for me in the army." 
 This appointment was one of honor, rather than 
 employment ; and Lee, weary of inactivity, readily 
 accepted an invitation to accompany the king's am- 
 bassador to Constantinople. This expedition came 
 near proving fatal to him, for he narrowly escaped 
 starvation and freezing on the summits of the moun- 
 tains of Bulgaria. He reached Constantinople, 
 however, where he remained about four months, 
 escaping there also from the ruins of his dwelling, 
 which was destroyed by an earthquake. 
 
 In December, 1766, he was again m England, 
 renewing his attempts to obtain promotion in the 
 British army. He presented to the king, with his 
 own hands, an urgent letter of recommendation from 
 Poniatowski, Stanislaus Augustus, the last King of 
 Poland; reminding him, at the same time, of the 
 promise he had made in his favor to Lord Thanet 
 three years before. All was in vain ; his attend- 
 ance at court produced nothing but disappointment, 
 and he abandoned his pursuit of promotion in the 
 English service, with a bitter resentment against 
 kiag and court, which rankled ever afterwards in 
 
20 TEEASON OF CHAELES LEE. 
 
 his "breast. In iTeS-'O, he hurried again to Poland, 
 designing to engage in the service of the Russians 
 against the Turks. The King of Poland in the 
 summer of 1769, made him a Major-General. He 
 is said to have " served through one campaign." He 
 was with the Russian army a few days on the 
 Turkish frontier, and in this so-called service, as in 
 that of England, his opinions of the skill and genius 
 of the generals in command were exceedingly scorn- 
 ful and contemptuous. He left the army and cross- 
 ed the Carpathian Mountains, on his route to try 
 the waters of Buda. In Hungary, he was attacked 
 with a fever which threatened his life. He recov- 
 ered, however, and went to Vienna, where he passed 
 the winter of 1769-70. He suffered much from bad 
 health during these years of wandering, especially 
 with rheumatism and gout, which were his very 
 frequent companions. He passed the summer of 
 1770, in Italy, where he became involved in a duel 
 with a foreign officer, whom he killed, though he 
 was wounded himself, losing two of his fingers in 
 the affair. His first biographer remarks that " his 
 warmth of temper drew him into many rencounters 
 of this kind : in all which he acquitted himself with 
 singular courage, sprightliness of imagination, and 
 great presence of mind." 
 
 It is difficult to follow him in his rovings over 
 Europe at this period, which have been compared 
 in speed and irregularity to a meteor ; but there is 
 one point, which can hardly be passed over without 
 
TEEASOJSr OF CHARLES LEE. 21 
 
 remark — the claim made for him as the author of the 
 Letters of Junius. His vanity led him to acknowl- 
 edge them as his own in 1YY3, but the evidence on 
 the subject is conclusive that he could not have been 
 the author of those letters. 
 
 In the summer of 1773, he quitted England for- 
 ever. Disappointed in his hopes of advancement 
 by the administration, which he hated, and lam- 
 pooned publicly and privately, his sympathies had 
 fallen naturally into that opposition, which, though 
 " feeble and fluctuating in numbers," " uttered the 
 language of the British constitution, and the senti- 
 ment of the British people, when it spoke for free- 
 dom." 
 
 He had already fixed his hopes on America, and 
 in his schemes and visions of the future, had iden- 
 tified his own prospects to some extent with her 
 chances of emerging from ministerial oppression. 
 Some private interests, too, called him here. But 
 America, though the chief, was not the only coun- 
 try, which presented to his troubled spirit the view 
 of a climate and soil more friendly to the spirit of 
 liberty than the land of his nativity. In his own 
 language, while she was " stretching forth her capa- 
 cious arms, Switzerland, and some of the Italian 
 States had room also " to admit the " generous few " 
 among whom he ranked himself. His enthusiasm 
 fluctuated with his anger and disappointment ; and 
 candor will seek in vain to find in the fretful waves 
 and noisy torrents of his passion, that strong and 
 3 
 
22 TREASON OF CHABLES LEE. 
 
 constant under-current of patriotic principle, wMcli 
 flows steadily on to the end of its course. Certainly 
 Ms patriotism was not free from the taint of disap- 
 pointed ambition ; its loudest tones followed his un- 
 successful attempts to obtain promotion, and were 
 accompanied with the most virulent abuse of the 
 king and court. 
 
 He arrived at New York, in the ship London, 
 Captain James Chambers, after a passage of eight 
 weeks, on Friday night, 8th October, 1*773. He 
 remained in New York, suffering from an attack 
 of gout for a part of the time, until the 29th of 
 November, when he is noticed in the following 
 terms, in Ellington's Gazette, as having "set out for 
 the Southern Colonies — a native of Great Britain, 
 and Major-General in the service of his Polish 
 Majesty — a sincere friend to liberty in general, and 
 an able advocate for the freedom and rights of the 
 Colonies in particular." 
 
 He soon ran through the colonies of Pennsyl- 
 vania, Maryland, and Virginia, attracting in all quar- 
 ters marked attention, and assiduously cultivating 
 the acquaintance of all the prominent men among 
 the Whigs. He then returned to visit the Eastern 
 Colonies, in the summer of 1774. 
 
 To his old friend and fellow-soldier Gates, after- 
 wards " the hero of Saratoga," he wrote from " Wil- 
 liamsburg, May ye 6th" [1774], on his way north- 
 ward — " My plan is at present for Boston, and in 
 the autumn to fall down the Ohio to the Mississippi, 
 
TEEASON OF CHARLES LEE. 23 
 
 if we are not prevented by a war, wHch I think 
 probable enough. What think you of our blessed 
 ministry ? Do they not improve in absurdity and 
 wickedness ? Seriously, Gates, I think it incumbent 
 on every man of liberality, or even common hon- 
 esty, to contribute his mite to the cause of mankind 
 and of liberty, which is now attacked in her last 
 and only asylum. She is drove from the other 
 Hemisphere ; for in England she has been for some 
 time only a name ; for my own part, I am deter- 
 mined (at least I think I am) not to be slack in 
 whatever mode my service is required." 
 
 The enthusiasm which he found pervading the 
 Colonies, would have fired the zeal of a much less 
 excitable man than Lee. It was the inspiration of 
 the best passages of his career. He saw the earnest 
 determination of the Colonists to sacrifice all for 
 freedom, and recognized that justice ia their cause, 
 which made their firmness, virtue. 
 ■ In 1'774, he wrote the Strictures on a Friendly 
 Address to all Reasonable Americans, iu reply to 
 Dr. Myles Cooper, one of the best of his writings, 
 which was reprinted many times, and widely circu- 
 lated. At this time, his pen and tongue were con- 
 stantly active in the cause of the Colonies, which 
 he supported with great ardor. His services iu 
 this way, were undoubtedly important — probably 
 much more so than any others of his hfe. 
 
 He returned to Philadelphia and was present at 
 the first session of the Contiuental Congress ; in 
 
24 TREASON OF CHAELES LEE. 
 
 constant and familiar intercourse witii the delegates 
 from all sections of the country. He again visited 
 Virginia and Maryland, and, in the latter colony, 
 wag present at their convention to deliberate on 
 public affairs. 
 
 In a letter to his friend. Sir Charles Davers, 
 written from Philadelphia, September 28th, 17*74, 
 he says : " I have now lately run through the colo- 
 nies from Virginia to Boston, and can assure you, 
 by all that is solemn and sacred, that there is not 
 a man on the whole continent (placemen and some 
 high churchmen excepted), who is not determined 
 to sacrifice his property, his life, his wife, family, 
 children, in the cause of Boston, which he justly 
 considers as his own. Inclosed, I send you the re- 
 solutions of one of their counties, which the dele- 
 gates of all America are sworn to abide by. They 
 are in earnest, and wUl abide by them so strictly 
 that I am persuaded that the parent country must 
 shake from the foundation. . . . They certainly 
 are to be justified by every law, human and divine. 
 You will ask, where will they find generals ? But 
 I ask. What generals have their tyrants ? In fact, 
 the match in this respect, will be pretty equal." 
 
 It required no prophet to see, in the immediate 
 future of America, the necessity of j)roviding for 
 military defence, the organization of a Continental 
 Army, and the appointment of general officers to 
 exercise the command under the authority of the 
 Continental Congress. In this crisis, Lee " assumed 
 
TREASON or CHAELES LEE. 25 
 
 the character of a military genius, and the officer 
 of experience," and "under these false colors solicit- 
 ed the command." He had been in the British 
 army thirty-two years — eight years an Ensign, five 
 years a Lieutenant, five years a Captain, eleven years 
 a Major, and three years a Lieutenant-Colonel; the 
 last twelve years on half-pay. In all this, he had 
 never obtained the command of a regiment ! 
 
 In America, he seems to have invaded mens' 
 good opinions with singular audacity and success, 
 and obtained for himself from the start a degree 
 of popularity and confidence almost without paral- 
 lel. Certainly, at that time, every thing which he 
 claimed for himself was fully and freely accorded ; 
 and there is no reason to doubt that he expected 
 he should soon become the first in military rank on 
 this continent. In lY'TS, he purchased an estate in 
 Berkeley county, Virginia, near that of his friend 
 Gates ; thus apparently uniting with the people of 
 America, and identifying himself with their cause 
 and feelings. This step removed what he consid- 
 ered the most serious obstacle in his way to the 
 chief command, as he himself had written to Edmund 
 Burke, from Annapolis, December 16th, 1774: "Nor 
 do I think the Americans would or ought to confide 
 in a man, let his qualifications be ever so great, who 
 has no property among them." The preliminaries 
 to the purchase were not completed in the latter 
 part of May, 1775, when, to a brief note to a friend 
 concerning them, he added, "it would be foolish 
 
26 TREASON OF CHAELES LEE. 
 
 to write to-day — the Congress will settle all by 
 Tuesday, then a letter maybe worth receiving." 
 The second Continental Congress had met at Phil- 
 adelphia on the 10th of May, 1775, and Lee was 
 present anxiously awaiting their action. 
 
 Upon the organization of the Continental Army, 
 Lee was appointed second Major-General; Washing- 
 ton being made Commander-ia-chief, and General 
 Ward, who was then in command of the New Eng- 
 land Army near Boston, first Major-General. 
 
 A cotemporary writer in Maryland says: "The 
 exaltation of [Washington] to the supreme com- 
 mand is considered as a severe stroke to the ambi- 
 tion of General Lee, who, relying on a supposed 
 opinion of his superior abilities and experience, ex- 
 pected to have been unanimously chosen to this 
 elevated station. I am persuaded, that General 
 Washington would rejoice in an opportunity of re- 
 turning into the private walks of life ; but it is too 
 evident that General Lee is governed by a vindic- 
 tive spirit, the result of disappoiutment in military 
 advancement, while in the ser\'ice of Great Britain. 
 Perhaps this additional mortification may moderate 
 his zeal in the cause he has recently espoused." The 
 unanimity with which the nomination of Washing- 
 ton was confirmed, checked every expression of dis- 
 content, although Lee was not the only candidate 
 for the honor. John Adams records some very cu- 
 rious manifestations of feeling on this subject, but 
 none so grateful to the historian as the character- 
 
TREASON OF CHAELES LEE. 27 
 
 istic dignity and modesty of Washington. A Bigh 
 estimate was placed upon the experience and abili- 
 ties of Lee. Elbridge Gerry, writing from Massa- 
 chusetts to the representatives of that colony on 
 the 4th of June, l'J^5, says: "We want a regular 
 general to assist us in discipliaing the army . . . 
 and, although the pride of our people would pre- 
 vent their submitting to be led by any general not 
 an American, yet I cannot but think that General 
 Lee might be so established as to render great ser- 
 vice by his presence and councils with om* officers." 
 In these opinions, he was seconded by General 
 James Warren. Lee succeeded in concealing his 
 disappointment, and even acquiesced, though with 
 a very bad grace, in being placed below General 
 Ward, whom he describes as " a fat old gentleman, 
 who had been a popular church-warden, but had no 
 acquaintance whatever with military affairs." He 
 had been nominated as second officer, and strenu- 
 ously urged by many, particularly Mr. Mifflin, who 
 said that " General Lee would serve cheerfully under 
 Washington; but, considering his rank, character, 
 and experience, could not be expected to serve under 
 any other ; that Lee must be aut secundus ant 
 nulIusP ]§ut this undoubtedly authorized state- 
 ment of his claims and expectations was unavailing. 
 John Adams, " though he had as high an opinion 
 of General Lee's learning, general information, and 
 especially of his science and experience in war," 
 frankly said that he " could not advise General 
 
28 TEEASON OF CHAELES LEE. 
 
 Ward to humiliate himself and his country so far 
 as to serve under him." 
 
 Adams also bears witness to " the earnest de- 
 sire of General "Washington to have the assistance 
 of Lee and Gates, the extreme attachment of many 
 of our best friends in the southern colonies to them, 
 the reputation they would give our arms in Europe, 
 and especially with the ministerial generals and 
 army in Boston, as well as the real American merit 
 of them both ; " all which overcame his anxiety for 
 the natural prejudices and virtuous attachment of 
 his countrymen to their own officers and secured his 
 vote. Samuel Adams spoke of Washington, Lee, 
 and Major Mifflin, as "a triumvirate which will 
 please the circle of our friends." 
 
 Washington himself, who placed the most mod- 
 est estimate upon his own abilities and military ex- 
 perience, and could declare with the utmost sin- 
 cerity that he did not think himself equal to the 
 command he was honored with — an honor he neither 
 sought after nor desired — ^magnanimously acknowl- 
 edged Lee's claim to the first place in military 
 knowledge and experience. 
 
 An acknowledgment far too generous ! It 
 was not his due, nor can it fail hereafter to be re- 
 garded as a remarkable phenomenon m our revo- 
 lutionary history, that so unprincipled an adven- 
 turer succeeded in occupying even a secondary 
 position ; strange that he retained it so long as he 
 did, and strangest of all that, to this day, his mem- 
 
TREASON OF CHARLES LEE. 29 
 
 ory lias filled no insignificant place in the grateful 
 thoughts of America. 
 
 But "Washington, though by no means blind to 
 Lee's defects in character and temper, could hardly 
 resist so fierce a blaze of popularity, or what was 
 afterwards so justly characterized by Hamilton as 
 "a certain pre-conceived and preposterous notion 
 of his being a very great man," which always " ope- 
 rated in his favor." 
 
 At this time, too, there was a very natural feel- 
 iug of doubt as to the abUity of any proviacial offi- 
 cers to assume the leadership and direction of the 
 military forces which were to be arrayed against 
 the tried and veteran soldiers of Europe. Confi- 
 dence was not great enough in the schools and train- 
 ing of the Indian and French wars, when compared 
 with the fields of battle and the liaes of contraval- 
 lation in which the great commanders of Europe 
 had learned their art, and although those wars had 
 developed elements of power which were destined 
 to exert a lasting influence upon the military his- 
 tory of America and the world, still America could 
 not yet shake off that feeling of dependence which 
 demanded encouragement and sympathy from Euro- 
 pean skill and training. 
 
 Braddock's defeat, in 1755, on the fatal field of 
 the Monongahela, had illustrated the comparative 
 value of. the disciplined regular of Europe and the 
 rifleman of America ; and even while Congress was 
 deliberatiug, on the very day on which Lee was 
 
30 TREASON OP CHARLES LEE. 
 
 appointed, Bunker Hill was repeating the lesson, 
 learned by heart long before the close of the war — 
 a lesson, which neither Howe nor Clinton ever for- 
 got in their subsequent career in America. Nor 
 was it long before America learned that among her 
 own true and faithful children, born on the soil, she 
 had many better and braver soldiers than the man 
 in whom she thus " placed so large a share of the 
 most ill-judged confidence." 
 
 In "soliciting the command he was honored 
 with " in the American service, he seems to have 
 used sufficient caution and reserve to enable him to 
 make terms with his employers. Upon accepting 
 the commission tendered him by Congress, he re- 
 signed that which he had still held in the British 
 service, in a letter to Lord Barrington, dated June 
 22d, lY'TS, renouncing his half-pay, at the same time 
 repudiating the opinion, that an officer on half-pay 
 is to be considered in the service, as erroneous and 
 absurd. 
 
 His biographers have given him the credit which 
 he claimed for himself in this connection, fSr making 
 great personal and pecuniary sacrifices — ^thus prov- 
 ing the integrity of his principles, and the sincerity 
 of his professions. His fortune was ample ; his in- 
 come was nearly £1000 a year, besides having large 
 grants of land in the colonies. He afterwards found 
 occasion frequently to enumerate these sacrifices, 
 and said, " such were the fortune and income which 
 I staked on the die of American liberty, and I 
 
TBEASON OF CHAELES LEE. 31 
 
 played a losing game ; for I miglit lose all, and had 
 no prospect or ^'ish to better it." 
 
 This was not tlie light m which those who knew 
 him best regarded the matter. Kalph Izard to Ar- 
 thur Lee, August 21, 1775, says, after expTessing his 
 satisfaction with General Lee's letter to Burgoyne : 
 "Lee has acquired considerable property; and I 
 have been assured, by people who know well, that 
 he would never run the risk of losing it, by enter- 
 ing iato the service of America. The part he has 
 acted, after taking such a considerable time to think 
 of it, is a proof that he does not think there is much 
 danger of that." He adds : " I wish to know whether 
 he ia appointed second or third in command, or 
 whether the Congress have taken any measures to 
 prevent his ever becoming, by the death of superior 
 officers, commander-in-chief Have these officers 
 taken an oath to obey the orders of Congress ? 
 This I take for granted, as it seems absolutely ne- 
 cessary." 
 
 The journals of Congress are conclusive, and 
 no ingenuity can soften his direct stipulations for 
 indemnification, into an acceptance of voluntary 
 pledges from Congress. How strong the contrast, 
 at every point of his American career, with that of 
 his great chief— the leader of our armies ! But to 
 the record. 
 
 General Lee was appointed on the 17th June, 
 1775. On the following Monday, the 19th, a com- 
 mittee, consisting of Mr. Henry, Mr. Lynch, and Mr. 
 
32 TKEASOW OF CHARLES LEE. 
 
 John Adams, waited upon Mm, by order of Con- 
 gress, to inform Mm of liis appointment, and request 
 Ms answer wlietlier lie wouM accept tlie command. 
 
 "The Committee returned and reported, that 
 they had waited on General Lee, and informed Mm 
 of Ms appointment, and that he gave for answer : 
 'That he had the highest sense of the honor con- 
 ferred upon him by the Congress ; that no effort in 
 his power shall be wanting to serve the American 
 cause ; but before he entered upon the service, he 
 desired a conference with a committee, to consist 
 of one delegate from each of the associated Colonies, 
 to whom he desired to explain some particulars re- 
 specting his private fortune.' 
 
 " Whereupon, Mr. Sullivan, Mr. Samuel Adams, 
 Mr. Hopkins, Mr. Dyer, Mr. PhiHp Livingston, Mr. 
 "William Livingston, Mr. Koss, Mr. Rodney, Mr. 
 Johnston, Mr. Henry, Mr. Caswell, and Mr. Lynch, 
 were appointed as a Committee to confer with Gen- 
 eral Lee. 
 
 "The Committee returned, and reported, that 
 they had conferred with General Lee, who had 
 communicated to them an estimate of the estate 
 he risked by this service. 
 
 "Whereupon, Resolved^ That these Colonies 
 will indenmify General Lee for any loss of property 
 which he might sustain by entering into their 
 service; and that the same be done by this or 
 any future Congress, as soon as such loss is ascer- 
 tained." 
 
TEEASOJT OP CHAELES LEE. 33 
 
 If any doubt should rest upon tlie matter with, 
 this evidence, it must be forever dispelled by that 
 which follows, showing how the transaction was 
 completed. 
 
 Immediately after the repulse of the British be- 
 fore Charleston, two days after the date of Lee's 
 despatch announcing it to Congress, the President 
 of South Carolina wrote a letter, from which the 
 following extracts are copied : 
 
 J. ETJTLEDGE TO SAM. ADAMS AND STEPH. HOPKINS. 
 
 " Charleston, S. C, July 4, 1776. 
 
 . . . "I trouble you with a few lines re- 
 specting the General [Lee].' He thinks his situa- 
 tion rather awkward. 
 
 " You know the Congress engaged to indemnify 
 him against any loss he might sustain, by entering 
 into our service, and that immediately upon such 
 loss being ascertained. He has purchased an estate 
 in Virginia for about 5 or £6000, of that colony ; 
 and, having borrowed the money to pay for it, of 
 Mr. Morris, the estate is under mortgage to him. 
 The General drew bills for £3000 sterling, on his 
 agent in England ; they are returned protested, 
 and he has no doubt that his property in England 
 is confiscated. So he does not know that he has 
 any estate at all ; nor has he any security, but the 
 mere word of honor of a body, which is not per- 
 manent, but frequently changeable, and composed 
 even already, of many other members than those 
 
34 TEEASOK OF CHAELES LEE. 
 
 who made this promise. He wishes to be sure 
 of something, and asked my opinion as a friend, 
 whether there would be any impropriety in his 
 applying to Congress on this head. He is desirous 
 for the present, that the Congress should discharge 
 the incumbrance on this estate, so that it may be 
 clear, and advance a sum towards improving it. 
 
 "I think the request exceedingly reasonable, 
 and told him my opinion that the Congress really 
 should do this, without his application, and that I 
 would write to some gentlemen of the Congress on 
 this head. I wish, therefore, that you, as well as 
 others, gentlemen of my particular acquaintance (to 
 whom I now write) would urge this matter to Con- 
 gress. 
 
 " I really think the continent so much obliged 
 to this gentleman, that they should gratify him in 
 every reasonable requisition. This colony, I am 
 sure, is particularly indebted to him, for he has 
 been indefatigable, ever since his arrival here, and 
 you know he is an enthusiast in our cause. 
 
 "I conceive no injury can possibly arise to the 
 continent, by complying with what he wishes for. 
 Should his English property remain untouched, he 
 can readily I'efund. Should it be taken, the pay- 
 ment of this money and more, is a mere matter of 
 justice. But, on the other hand, should there be 
 delay and indifference on the part of Congress, it 
 may produce disgust, or some other ill-consequence. 
 This is my own fear. I have no authority for it, 
 
TREASON OP CHAELES LEE. 35 
 
 from any thing wMcli has fallen from the General. 
 I therefore must repeat my request, and make it a 
 very earnest one, that you will obtain some speedy 
 resolution respecting this matter, such as I have 
 above hinted, which may afford him satisfaction, 
 and do him honor. I am, gentlemen, &c." 
 
 President Rutledge also wrote to Duane, Liv- 
 ingston, and Jay of New York, m'ging their co-ope- 
 ration ; and Mr. Jay in a letter to Edward Rut- 
 ledge recognizes the propriety, policy, and justice 
 of the measure ; adding, " I am, for my own part, 
 clear for it, and wish with all my heart that it may 
 take place." 
 
 On the 'Tth of October, IVYG, General Lee in- 
 formed Congress of his arrival in Philadelphia, in 
 obedience to a resolution directing him, in case the 
 British troops left the Southern Colonies, to repair" 
 to Philadelphia, and there wait the orders of Con- 
 gress. Being ordered to attend in Congress, he gave 
 an account of the state of affairs in the Southern 
 Department. On the same day the Committee ap- 
 pointed to take into consideration the application 
 from the President of South Carolina, in behalf of 
 General Lee, reported : 
 
 "That this Congress having a just opinion of the 
 abilities of General Lee, applied to him to accept a 
 command in their service, which he readily agreed 
 to, provided the Congress would indemnify him 
 against any loss which he might sustain in conse- 
 
36 TREASON OF OHAKLES LEE. 
 
 quence thereof, lie having at that time a considera- 
 ble sum of money due to him by persons in the 
 kingdom of Great Britain, which he was resolved 
 to draw from thence as soon as possible. That the 
 Congress unanimously concurred in his proposal; 
 that he accordingly entered into their service ; that 
 he has since drawn bills upon his agent in England, 
 which bills have been returned protested. That 
 General Lee having purchased an estate in Vir- 
 ginia, the purchase-money for which has been long 
 due, is likely to sustain, by means of the protested 
 bUls, many injuries, unless this house prevent the 
 same by an advance of 30,000 dollars ; whereupon 
 
 " Hesol/oed^ That the sum of thirty thousand 
 dollars be advanced to General Lee, upon his giv- 
 ing bond to the treasurer to account for the same, 
 and taking such steps in conjunction with Eobert 
 Morris, Esq., on behalf of the Congress, as wiU se- 
 cure the most effectual transfer of his estate in Eng- 
 land, to reimburse the Congress for the advance 
 now made him." 
 
 Immediately after his appointment. General 
 Lee accompanied Washington to Cambridge, re- 
 ceiving everywhere in his journey through the 
 country, marks of respect and high appreciation, 
 hardly less than those bestowed upon Washington, 
 
 [I omit here, the sketch of his services in Ehode 
 Island, New York, and the South, simply remark- 
 ing as I pass, that his good fortune in gaining credit 
 for military skill did not desert him.] 
 
TREASON OF CHAELES LEE. 37 
 
 General Ward's resignation, after the evacuation 
 of Boston, made Lee second in command, standing 
 next in rank to WasMngton. By the reputation of 
 his imputed successes in the Southern Department, 
 he was marvellously elated, growing more and 
 more disposed to regard himself as one whose ad- 
 vice ought to be followed and submitted to in 
 all things. Prosperity and glory brought out his 
 vices in full strength; and he seems to have de- 
 termined to exalt himself at all hazards. 
 
 There was something in the enthusiasm of his ad- 
 mirers in Congress to account for the freedom with 
 which he criticized every movement — censuring 
 Congress themselves for their blunders and want of 
 spirit ; and he unquestionably looked forward to an 
 influence in their councils which should principally 
 direct the future operations of the war. 
 
 Upon his arrival from the south at Philadelphia, 
 he had been directed by resolution of Congress, 
 October 7th, to repau- to the camp at Harlem, with 
 leave if he thought proper, to visit the posts in 
 New Jersey. 
 
 At about the same time John Jay wrote from 
 Fishkill to Edward Eutledge: "If General Lee 
 should be at Philadelphia, pray hasten his depar- 
 ture — he is much wanted at New York ; " whence 
 Colonel Malcom had written to John McKesson a 
 month before, " General Lee is hourly expected, as 
 if from heaven, with a legion of flaming swords- 
 men." 
 
 4 
 
88 TREASON OF CHARLES LEE. 
 
 He arrived at New York, October 14tli, whence 
 he wrote this charactei'istic letter to Gates : 
 
 GENERAL LEE TO GENERAL GATES. 
 
 " FoKT Constitution, October y° 14th. 
 
 "My de. Gates: 
 
 " I write this scroll in a hurry — Colonel Wood 
 win describe the position of our Army, which in 
 my own breast I do not approve — inter nos the 
 Congress seem to stumble every step — I do not 
 mean one or two of the Cattle, but the whole Stable 
 — I have been very free in delivering my opinion 
 to 'em — in my opinion General Washington is much 
 to blame in not menacing 'em with resignation un- 
 less they refrain from unhinging the army by their 
 absurd interference — Keep us Tionderoga; much 
 depends upon it — ^We ought to have an army on 
 the Delaware — I have roar'd it in the ears of Con- 
 gress, but carent aurihus. 
 
 " Adieu, my Dr. Friend ; if we do meet again, 
 why we shall smile. Yours, C. Lee." 
 
 Here again the prevailing opiaion of his mili- 
 tary ability accorded to him great credit, which 
 he was never backward in continuing to claim, for 
 the movements by which Howe was prevented from 
 cutting off the communications of the American 
 Army with the countiy, and thus bringing them 
 between the British army and fleet. But the truth 
 is that more than a month before the arrival of 
 
TEEASON OF CHARLES LEE. 39 
 
 Lee, it was agreed in a council of general officers, held 
 at General McDougall's quarters, 12tli September, 
 1776, that the principal part of the army should 
 march into the country, so as to keep in advance of 
 the British columns, and that eight thousand men 
 only should remain for the defence of the Heights — 
 Mount Washington and its dependencies. It was 
 of this council that General McDougall afterwards 
 said (7th January, 1782,) in respect to the retreat 
 from New York, that " none were opposed to it, 
 but a fool^ a hnaA)e^ and an obstinate^ lionest manT 
 Even when Howe's intentions became more obvious 
 by the accumulation of his numbers at Throg's 
 Neck, the council of the 16th October, at which 
 Lee was present, decided, with but one dissenting 
 voice, to carry out the plan of the 12th of Septem- 
 ber, the only change being to reduce the force left 
 to defend Fort "Washington, which it was agreed, 
 without any recorded dissenting voice, should be 
 retained as long as possible. If Lee was the author 
 of that change, perhaps it may still further diminish 
 his credit for military skill, when the history of the 
 capture of Fort "Washington shall be rewritten. 
 
 Four days before, he wrote to Congress from 
 Amboy, expressing his confidence that the attack 
 of General Washington's lines was a measure too 
 absurd for a man of Mr. Howe's genius ; that they 
 would put New York city in a respectable state of 
 defence, and direct their operations towards Phila- 
 delphia, either by the Delaware or through the 
 
40 TREASON OF CHAELES LEE. 
 
 Jerseys. His plan for this exigency was an army 
 of ten thousand men to be assembled and stationed 
 somewhere about Trenton. It is not unreasonable 
 to suppose that Lee would have been gratified with 
 such a command. 
 
 When the army marched from the heights of 
 Harlem, Lee's division was stationed near King's 
 Bridge, to protect the rear, and he found ample oc- 
 cupation during the tedious transportation of the 
 baggage and artillery, which occupied several days. 
 Fortunately the British made no serious attempt to 
 disturb his progress ; and he at length brought up 
 his division, joining the main army at White Plains, 
 where he is said to have condemned the position of 
 the Continental Army as most execrable. The 
 post, however, seemed to be too strongly taken for 
 Howe to attempt it; and he retired towards King's 
 Bridge. 
 
 As soon as it became certain that his next move- 
 ment would be to the Jerseys, and so to threaten 
 Philadelphia, Washington crossed the Hudson, and 
 threw himself in front of the enemy, leaving Gen- 
 eral Lee in the position which he then occupied, 
 with a force of seven thousand men, while Heath 
 was ordered to the defence of the Highlands, with 
 three thousand men. 
 
 At that time, commenced that famous retreat 
 through the Jerseys, so thrilling in its interest to 
 every American heart. And from the day on which 
 Lee was left in a separate command, he seems to 
 
TREASON OP CHAELES LEE. 41 
 
 have "been governed by one purpose and animated 
 by one spirit — a spirit of anything but patriotism — 
 a purpose to gratify his own personal ambition, at 
 any cost. I have spoken of his friends in Congress. 
 That there was a party in Congress, during the 
 whole subsequent period of the war, bitterly hos- 
 tile to "Washington, is the only theory which can 
 explain the most serious difficulties which he had to 
 encounter. The unavoidable misfortunes and un- 
 fortunate issue of the campaign, though originating 
 in causes entirely beyond his control, stimulated 
 the spirit of hostility to the Commander-in-Chief, 
 which not long afterwards assumed a most formida- 
 ble aspect, not only in Congress, but in the army. 
 For my present purpose, however, it is unnecessary 
 to do more than allude to these intrigues, as Lee's 
 power to do mischief in this connection was nearly 
 at an end. 
 
 Fort "Washington fell on the 16th November, 
 and as Fort Lee was only of importance in conjunc- 
 tion with it, that too was speedily abandoned. On 
 the 20th, Lee wrote to a prominent member of 
 Congress (a letter I believe never before made 
 public). 
 
 CHARLES LEE TO BENJAMIN EUSH. 
 
 " Camp, NoTember 20th, 1776. 
 
 " My deae Kush : 
 
 " The affair of Fort Washington cannot surprise 
 you at Philadelphia more than it amazed and stun- 
 
42 TREASON OP CHABLES LEE. 
 
 ned me. I must entreat that you will keep what 
 I say to yourself; but I foresaw, predicted, all that 
 has happened ; and urged the necessity of abandon- 
 ing it ; for could we have kept it, it was of little or 
 no use. Let these few lines be thrown into the 
 fire, and in your conversations only acquit me of 
 any share of the misfortune— for my last words to 
 the General were — draw off the garrison, or they 
 will be lost. You say I ought to desire the Gen- 
 eral to press the Congress for the necessary articles. 
 I have done it a thousand times, and the men are 
 now starving for the want of blankets. I confess 
 your apathy amazes me. You make me mad — ^You 
 have numbers — your soldiers do not want courage — 
 but such a total want of sense pervades all your 
 counsels that Heaven alone can save you. Inclosed 
 are some hints. I could say many things — let me 
 talk vainly — ^had I the powers I could do you much 
 good — ^might I but dictate one week — ^but I am 
 sure you will never give any man the necessary 
 power — did none of the Congress ever read the 
 Koman History? Adieu, my dear Rush, 
 " Yours most sincerely, 
 
 "Chaeles Lee. 
 
 " 1st. You must have an army — ^this army can- 
 not be had on the terms proposed — ^give 'em the full 
 bounty and list 'em only for a year and a half — in 
 short you have so bungled your affairs that you 
 must come into any terms. 
 
TREASON OF CHARLES LEE. 43 
 
 " 2d. Put some military man at the head of the 
 Board of War. 
 
 " 3d. Strip even youi'selves of blankets." 
 
 We can hardly misunderstand his allusion to 
 the political expedient to which the Roman senate 
 resorted, in order to repress disorders among the 
 people, and to unite the forces of the commonwealth 
 against its enemies. By it, they placed themselves 
 and the state, for a limited time, under the power 
 of a single person, who, with the title of Dictator, or 
 Master of the People, should at his pleasure, dispose 
 of the state and of all its resources ; thus intrusting 
 all power to a single man, on the sole secmity of 
 his personal character, arbitrary and irresponsible, 
 and limited only in the time of its exercise. 
 
 The crisis indeed demanded a Dictator ; but it 
 was a happy day for humanity which saw a Washing- 
 ton invested with such powers as these. How dif- 
 ferent the fate of America in other hands ! Well 
 might the Committee of Congress say, in communi- 
 cating to him their resolutions : " Happy it is for 
 this country, that the general of their forces can 
 safely be intrusted with the most unlimited power, 
 and neither personal security, liberty, nor property, 
 be in the least degree endangered thereby." 
 
 The hint to " put some mihtary man at the head 
 of the Board of War," was acted upon in the fol- 
 lowing year, when the board was new modelled and 
 General Gates appointed to preside. 
 
44 TEEASOIS^ OF CHAEIES LEE. 
 
 Lee was now at the height of his popularity and 
 influence ; the star of his destiny was at its zenith. 
 Many seem to . have believed that there was " no 
 officer in the army of equal experience and merit," 
 and it was said that he was " the idol of the officers, 
 and possessed still more the confidence of the sol- 
 diery." 
 
 How entirely the popular judgment was carried 
 away in the exaggerated estimate which had been 
 formed of Lee's military capacity, is illustrated by 
 the fact that even in the military family of Wash- 
 ington, was one, who, although his personal rela- 
 tions were of the most intimate, responsible, and 
 confidential nature, was swept away with the current. 
 The following letter is already famous in the history 
 of that period. The copy I use, has been corrected 
 by a careful comparison with one "signed by Reed, 
 and endorsed in his own hand" — in the autograph 
 collection of Mr. Tefft, of Savannah, Georgia. 
 
 jqgEPH REED TO CHARLES LEE. 
 
 " Hackensaok, November 21st, 1776. 
 
 "Deae Geneeal: 
 
 " The letter you will receive with this, contains 
 my sentiments with respect to your present station; 
 but besides this, I have some additional reasons for 
 most earnestly wishing to have you where the pria- 
 cipal scene of action is laid. I do not mean to flat- 
 ter or praise you at the expense of any other ; but, 
 I confess, I do think that it is entirely owing to 
 
TBEASON OF CHARLES LEE. 45 
 
 you, that this army and the liberties of America, 
 so far as they are dependent on it, are not totally 
 cut off. You have decision, a quality often want- 
 ing in minds otherwise valuable; and I ascribe 
 to this our escape from York-Island, from King's 
 Bridge, and the Plains ; and I have no doubt, had 
 you been here, the garrison of Mount Washington 
 would now have composed a part of this army: 
 under these circumstances, I confess I ardently wish 
 to see you removed from a place where I think 
 there will be little call for your judgment and expe- 
 rience, to the place where they are like to be so 
 necessary. Nor am I singular in this my opinion ; 
 every gentleman of the family, the officers, and sol- 
 diers, generally, have a confidence in you : the enemy 
 constantly inquire where you are, and seem to me 
 to be less confident when you are present. 
 
 " Colonel Cadwallader, through a special indul- 
 gence, on account of some civilities shewn by his 
 family to General Prescott, has been liberated from 
 New- York without any parole. He informs, that 
 the enemy have a southern expedition in view ; that 
 they hold us very cheap in consequence of the late 
 affair at Mount Washington, where both the place 
 of defence and execution were contemptible. If a 
 real defence of the lines was intended, the number 
 was far too few ; if the Fort only, the garrison was 
 too numerous by half. General Washington's own 
 judgment, seconded by representations from us, 
 would have saved the men and their arms; but. 
 
46 TREASON OF CHARLES LEE. 
 
 unluckily, General Greene's judgment was contrary. 
 This kept tlie General's mind in a state of suspense 
 till tlie stroke was struck. Oh, General ! an inde- 
 cisive mind is one of the greatest misfortunes that 
 can befall an army : how often have I lamented it 
 this campaign! 
 
 " All circumstances considered, we are in a very 
 awful and alarming state, one that requires the ut- 
 most wisdom and firmness of mind. 
 
 " As soon as the season will admit, I think your- 
 self and some others should go to Congress, and 
 form the plan of the new army ; point out their 
 defects to them, and, if possible, prevail on them to 
 bind their whole attention to this great object — 
 even to the exclusion of every other. If they will 
 not, or cannot, do this, I fear all our exertions will 
 be vain in this part of the world. Foreign assist- 
 ance is soliciting, but we cannot expect they will 
 fight the whole battle — but artillery and artillerists 
 must be had, if possible. 
 
 " I intended to have said more, but the express 
 is waiting, and I must conclude with my clear and 
 explicit opinion, that your presence is of the last 
 importance. 
 
 " I am, with much affection and regard, 
 " Your most affectionate, 
 
 "Humble Servant, 
 
 "J. Reed. 
 
 " Major Gen. Lee, 
 
 "White Plains." 
 
TEEASON OF CHAELES LEE. 47 
 
 Washington's instructions to Lee were, that if 
 the enemy should remove the whole, or the greatest 
 part of their force, to the west of Hudson's river, 
 he should follow, with all possible despatch, leaving 
 the militia and invalids to cover the frontiers of 
 Connecticut, etc. These instructions were very soon 
 made positive and peremptory orders, in view of 
 the necessities of the retreating army. On the 20th 
 of November, Washington thought it advisable that 
 he should move — on the 21st he advised Lee "that 
 the publick interest requires " it. Lee on the same 
 day, writes to the President of the Council of Mas- 
 sachusetts, that "before the unfortunate affair of 
 Fort Washington, he was of opinion that the two 
 armies — that on the east and that on the west side 
 of North river — must rest each on its own bottom ; 
 that the idea of detaching . . . from one side 
 to the other was chimerical ; but to harbor such a 
 thought in our present circumstances is absolute 
 insanity." He further advises the President that 
 " we must depend upon ourselves." On the same 
 day, he received from Reed a "short billet, which 
 he did not well understand." The following extract 
 from General Heath's published journal, furnishes 
 the explanation: 
 
 '•'■November 20ih. Just at evening, an express 
 which General Heath had sent down to General 
 Washington, before he had any knowledge of what 
 had happened, returned with a most alarming ac- 
 count of what he had seen with his own eyes, viz.. 
 
48 TEEASON OF CHARLES LEE. 
 
 that the Americans were rapidly retreating, and 
 the Britisli as rapidly pursuing. The Adjutant- 
 General [Eeed] wished to write to General Lee, 
 but he had neither pen, ink, nor paper with him. 
 The Light-Horseman had a rough piece of wrap- 
 ping-paper in his pocket, and the Adjutant-General 
 had an old pencil. Bringing these two together, 
 he wrote to Gen. Lee : ' Dear General, we are fly- 
 ing before the British. I pray — ' and the pencil 
 broke. He then told the Light-Horseman to carry 
 the paper to General Lee, and tell him that he was 
 verbally ordered to add, after I pray — ' you push 
 and join us.' The Light-Horseman, when he ar- 
 rived at Gen. Heath's, was both fatigued and wet. 
 He requested that one of his brother horsemen 
 might proceed to Gen. Lee ; but he was told that 
 no other could discharge the duty enjoined on him 
 by the Adjutant-General, and that Gen. Lee might 
 wish to make many inquiries of him. He was 
 therefore refreshed and pushed on." 
 
 General Lee, instead of moving his division, 
 or any part of it, wrote back to General Heath that 
 he had just received a recommendation, not a pos- 
 itive order, from General Washington, to move the 
 corps under his command to the other side of the 
 river. After giving some presumptive reasons for 
 General Washington's recommendation, which he 
 finds it impossible to comply with, to "any pur- 
 pose," he desires and requests General Heath to 
 order two thousand of his corps, under a Brigadier- 
 
TREASON OP CHAELES LEE. 49 
 
 General, to cross tlie river, and wait "Washington's 
 further orders — promising to replace that number 
 of troops, from his own command, as soon as " a ne- 
 cessary job " was finished — ^which he believed would 
 " be finished to-morrow." 
 
 General Heath referred to his instructions, which 
 he found did not admit of any construction in ac- 
 cordance with Lee's request, which he therefore did 
 not comply with. 
 
 Lee contiaued his attempts to interfere with 
 Heath's command ; and, on the 23d November, an- 
 nounced his intention to tate two thousand from 
 that division into the Jerseys. Afterwards, upon 
 Heath's refusal to do so, he undertook to order the 
 detachment himself, but finally desisted, upon more 
 mature reflection. 
 
 On the 2 2d, he again addressed President Bow- 
 doin, and here he takes a bolder tone : 
 
 GEN. LEE TO THE PRESmENT OF MASS. COUNCIL. 
 
 " Camp near Phillipsboueg, 22d November, 1776. 
 
 "Sie: 
 
 "Indecision bids fair for tumbling down the 
 goodly fabrick of American freedom, and "n[ith it, 
 the rights of mankind. 'Twas indecision of Con- 
 gress prevented our having a noble army, and on 
 an excellent footing. 'Twas indecision in our mili- 
 tary councils which cost us the garrison of Fort 
 Washiagton, the consequence of which must be 
 fatal, unless remedied in time by a contrary spirit. 
 
50 TEEASOKT OF CHABLES LEE. 
 
 Enclosed I send you an extract of a letter from the 
 General, on wMch you will make your comments ; 
 and I have no doubt, but that you will concur with 
 me in the necessity of raising immediately an army 
 to save us from perdition. Affairs appear in so im- 
 portant a crisis, that I think even the resolves of 
 the Congress must no longer too nicely weigh with 
 us. We must save the community in spite of the 
 ordinances of the Legislature. There are times when 
 we must commit treason against the laws of the 
 State for the salvation of the State. The present 
 crisis demands this brave, virtuous kind of treason. 
 For my own part (and I flatter myself my way of 
 thinking is congenial with that of Mr. Bowdoin's) 
 I will stake my head and reputation on the pro- 
 priety of the measure ..." 
 
 On the 24th, "Washington from Newark, cor- 
 rects Lee's mistake, in supposing that he wanted 
 any portion of Heath's command. " It is your 
 division I want to have over." At this time, he 
 writes so fully and explicitly, as to remove the pos- 
 sibility of any misapprehension. He also cautions 
 him about his route, and desires frequent expresses 
 to advise of his approaches. On the same day, Lee 
 at last acknowledges receipt of orders, and promises 
 to endeavor to put them in execution : while at the 
 same time he writes to Eeed, in answer to his 
 "most obliging, flattering" letter of the 21st; la- 
 ments with him "that fatal indecision," which is 
 
TREASON OF CHAELES LEE. 51 
 
 worse than stupidity or cowardice; half excuses, 
 half justifies his delay; intimates an enterprise 
 which he has on hand, and which he waits for — 
 when, he concludes, " I shall then fly to you ; for, 
 to confess a truth, I really think our Chief will do 
 better with me than without me." 
 
 On the 26th, he still lingers, responding very 
 tartly to General Heath, who had told him that he 
 " considered it to be his daty to obey his instruc- 
 tions, especially those which are positive and poign- 
 ant" — that "the Commander-in-chief is now sepa- 
 i-ated from us ; I of course command on this side 
 the water ; for the future I will and must be 
 obeyed." 
 
 On the 2'7th, Washington tells Lee, that his 
 previous letters had been so full and explicit, he 
 thought it unnecessary to say more, and confessed 
 his expectation that Lee would have been sooner 
 in motion. Lee replies on the 30th, assuring Wash- 
 ington that he had done all in his power — that he 
 will pass the river in two days more, when he will 
 be glad to have instructions ; but says also, " I could 
 wish you would bind me as little as possible, not 
 from any opinion, I do assure you, of my own parts, 
 but from a persuasion that detached generals can- 
 not have too great latitude, unless they are very 
 incompetent indeed." He added in a postscript 
 " that he was a good deal distressed by the strict- 
 ness of General Heath's instructions." 
 
 Washington from Brunswick, Dec. 1st, entreats 
 
52 TEEASON OF CHARLES LEE. 
 
 Lee to hasten his march, or it may be too late to 
 answer any valuable pm-pose. On the 3d, he re- 
 peats his anxiety; whUe Congress, on the 2d, had 
 resolved that the committee for establishing ex- 
 presses be directed to send Colonel Stewart, or any 
 other officer, express to General Lee, to know where 
 and in what situation he and the army with him 
 were. 
 
 Lee, finally quitting Westchester with great re- 
 luctance, began to pass the river on the 2d Decem- 
 ber. He writes from Haverstraw on the 4th, ac- 
 knowledging the receipt of Washington's pressing 
 letter ; and concludes, " It is paltry to think of our 
 personal affairs when the whole is at stake ; but I en- 
 treat you to order some of your suite to take out of 
 the way of danger my favourite mare, which is at 
 Hunt Wilson's, three miles the other side of Prince- 
 ton ! " 
 
 We next hear of him at Eingwood Iron Works, 
 where, having lost three of his best camp horses, he 
 sends back an express to Heath to advertise them, 
 offering a reward for their recovery. 
 
 From Pompton, on the Hh, he writes again to 
 Governor Cooke of Rhode Island, to whom he gives 
 the benefit of his views on the qualifications of 
 general officers :—" Theory joined to practice, or a 
 heaven-born genius, can alone constitute a general. 
 As to the latter, God Almighty indulges the mod- 
 ern world very rarely with the spectacle ; and I do 
 not know, from what I have seen, that he has been 
 
TEEASOlSr OF CHABLES LEE. 53 
 
 more profuse of this ethereal spirit to the Ameri- 
 cans than, to other nations." 
 
 General Washington had, in the meantime, at- 
 tempted to return to Princeton from Trenton, but 
 was obhged to recede, and was now on the other 
 side of the Delaware, still without any certain intel- 
 ligence of General Lee, and utterly unable to ac- 
 count for the slowness of his march. 
 
 From Morristown, on the 8th of December, Lee 
 writes to Congress and to "Washington, stating his 
 force at four thousand ; and that if he was not as- 
 sured that Washington was considerably reinforced 
 and very strong, he would immediately join him ! 
 As it was, he intended to take post at Chatham, 
 and so hang on the enemy's rear. 
 
 Well might General Greene think at this junc- 
 ture, that General Lee must be confined within the 
 lines of some general plan, or else his operations 
 would be independent of those of the Commander- 
 in-Chief ! 
 
 On the 9th, he is at Chatham, " in hopes," as he 
 writes to Heath, " to re-conquer the Jerseys, which 
 were really in the hands of the enemy, before my 
 arrival." At this time, too, he continues his letters 
 to the New England Governors, and impresses upon 
 them that unless they renew their exertions with re- 
 doubled vigor, all is lost ; suggesting also, the pro- 
 priety of a convention of the New England States, 
 to consult on the great affairs of their safety, and of 
 counteracting the enemy in their future operations. 
 5 
 
54 TREASON OF CHAELES LEE. 
 
 On the loth and 11th, Washington renewed 
 his entreaties, reminding Lee of the fatal conse- 
 quences that must attend the loss of Philadelphia, 
 and that the force with him was weak and entirely 
 incompetent to save that city. These letters did 
 not reach Lee, but were received hy his successor 
 in the command. His disgraceful neglect of duty 
 and disobedience of orders, were at last to have an 
 end ; and in the series of Providential interpositions, 
 which we cannot fail to recognize with devout grat- 
 itude, for the preservation of American liberty, 
 none is more striking than that which terminated 
 at this time the power of Lee to do mischief to the 
 cause. 
 
 Lee's last communication to "Washington was 
 dated at Morristown, December 11th, and is in his 
 hand-writing, although he speaks of himself in the 
 third person. The original is endorsed: "From 
 General Lee," and was read in Congress on the 10th 
 February following : 
 
 GENEKAL LEE TO GENERAL WASHINGTON. 
 
 "MoKEiSTOWN, December y* 11th, 1776. 
 
 " We have three thousand men here at present ; 
 but they are so ill-shod that we have been obliged 
 to halt these two days for want of shoes. Seven 
 regiments of Gates's corps are on their march, but 
 where they actually are, is not certain. General 
 Lee has sent two officers this day ; one to inform 
 him where the Delaware can be crossed above 
 
TEEASOK OP CHAELES LEE. 55 
 
 Trenton; the other to examine the road towards 
 Burlington, as General Lee thinks he can, without 
 great risk, cross the great Brunswick post road, and 
 by a forced night's march, make his way to the 
 ferry below Burlington. Boats should be sent up 
 from Philadelphia to receive him. But this scheme 
 he only proposes, if the head of the enemy's column 
 actually pass the river. The militia in this part of 
 the Province seem sanguine. If they could be sure 
 of an army remaining amongst 'em, I believe they 
 would raise a very considerable number." 
 
 This letter shows no intention to comply with 
 the orders of Washington. He could have reached 
 the Delaware by a forced march in a few hours, by 
 the way of Vealtown, Germantown, Potterstown, 
 Pitstown, and Alexandria, near which latter place 
 he had been instructed to cross, and suitable pre- 
 parations had been made to enable him to do so, 
 by order of Washington. Under all the disadvan- 
 tages of their condition, which were very great, the 
 troops actually crossed, after being relieved of his 
 command, at Easton, further up the river, on the 
 16th of December, and joined Washington on the 
 20th. Sullivan had changed the route to avoid a 
 considerable body of the enemy, who were pushing 
 forward on his left to intercept him, before he 
 reached the river. He had received Washington's 
 earnest letters of the 10th and 11th, addressed to 
 Lee, and pressed on to join the main army as soon 
 
56 TREASON OF CHAELES LEE. 
 
 as possible. Having encamped at Germantown, on 
 tlie night of the 13th, he marched the next day at 
 11 o'clock, and, diverging at Pitstown, reached 
 Bethlehem township that night. On the 15th, he 
 marched at daybreak and all day, reaching Phillips- 
 burg, at 10 o'clock at night. Some of the troops 
 crossed the Delaware to Easton the same night, but 
 they were not all safe with their baggage beyond 
 the river until the next day. 
 
 It appears to have been Lee's purpose to seize 
 a favorable opportunity, when the British army 
 had extended their line towards the Delaware by 
 Brunswick and Princeton, to make an independent 
 demonstration in their rear, and cut their line of 
 communication. It was obvious that the British 
 chain was too extensive, and invited such a move- 
 ment. There could be no doubt of the advantages 
 to accrue in the event of its success ; and the pres- 
 ence of so considerable a force in his rear was a 
 source of no little anxiety to General Howe, espe- 
 cially as the volunteers in the country were very ac- 
 tive and enterprising. About one thousand militia 
 were at this time collected under the command of 
 Colonel Jacob Ford, jun., at Springfield, seven miles 
 west of Elizabethtown, to watch the motions of the 
 enemy, their own subsequent motions to be directed 
 according to circumstances. Lee's force was also 
 continually increasing ; three regiments from Ticon- 
 deroga, which he had intercepted with orders to 
 join him, were daily expected ; and he promised the 
 
TBEASON" OF CHARLES LEE. 57 
 
 principal men tliat a detacliment should remain for 
 the protection of the State. 
 
 He lingered ahout Morristown several days, and 
 ordered Sullivan to march for Germantown, early in 
 the morning of the 12th of December. These were 
 the last orders received by Sullivan from Lee. The 
 troops encamped in the woods near Vealtown, a 
 village in Bernard township, on the night of the 
 12th, and renewed their march on the morning of 
 the 13th, towards Germantown. 
 
 Lee himself was at Baskingridge on the morning 
 of the 12th, from which place he wrote to the Rev. 
 James Caldwell, an active and influential patriot, 
 at or near Chatham, with whom and Colonel Ford, 
 at or near Springfield, he seems to have kept up at 
 this time a very constant communication. Cald- 
 well's reply shows his zeal to gratify Lee's anxiety 
 to be constantly advised of the motions of the enemy, 
 and assured him that their army had very generally 
 marched forward ; indeed, all except guards of the 
 different posts. He also states that it was consid- 
 ered advisable to move the militia back to Chatham, 
 as for various reasons assigned, it was thought they 
 could better serve the cause by lying at that place 
 " till the expected army approaches for their sup- 
 port." 
 
 The tenor of Lee's entire correspondence indi- 
 cates his purpose to act separately, not only with 
 his own troops, but with those coming from the 
 Northern army, although Washington had given 
 
58 TEEASON OF CHABLES LEE. 
 
 him no sucli instructions ; but on the contrary, ex- 
 pected those troops to marcli foi-ward and join him 
 as soon as possible. In this connection, Mr. Cald- 
 well's " expected army " is significant. 
 
 Whether any other motives than those con- 
 nected with his wish to obtain the intelhgence just 
 mentioned influenced his movements, I am unable 
 to state. General Greene, in a letter written after 
 receiving news of his capture, spoke of his " strange 
 infatuation," and General Sullivan of the " fatality " 
 by which he was induced to expose himself; but it 
 is certain that neither entertained for a moment the 
 suspicion that he designedly threw himself into the 
 hands of the enemy, and such a design is incredible 
 in view of all the circumstances of the case. 
 
 Still there may have been other motives of 
 convenience or personal gratification, but certainly 
 none could be less creditable than his insatiable 
 ambition and ungovernable selfehness. His con- 
 duct did not admit of excuse, much less of justifica- 
 tion ; and it is unnecessary to speculate upon the 
 probable consequences, had he been successful. 
 "Under the sole guidance of his own judgment and 
 self-will, he was presumptuously driving on, and the 
 misfortunes which followed were the result of his 
 own obstinacy and misconduct, not of necessity." 
 
 About noon, on Friday, the 13th of December, 
 I'llQ, General Lee, with several aids, and a small 
 guard, were at White's tavern, near Baskingridge, 
 seven miles from Morristown — twenty-one miles 
 
TEEASON OF CHAELES LEE. 59 
 
 from the nearest post of the enemy, and four miles 
 from the encampment, which his division had left 
 in the morning. 
 
 The British had, at this time, pushed forward 
 to the Delaware, with the hope of getting to Phila- 
 delphia. Their first division reached Trenton soon 
 after the rear-guard of the American main army 
 had crossed. Their rear division, which was com- 
 manded by Lord Cornwallis, halted at Maidenhead, 
 six miles from Trenton, and at one o'clock on the 
 morning of the 9th December, marched to Corriel's 
 Ferry, thirteen miles higher up the Delaware, ex- 
 pecting to find boats there and in the neighbor- 
 hood, sufficient to pass the river ; but in this they 
 were disappointed, as the Americans had taken the 
 precaution to destroy or secure on the south side, 
 all the boats which could possibly be employed for 
 that purpose. 
 
 The passage of the Delaware being thus ren- 
 dered impracticable. Lord Cornwallis returned and 
 took post at Pennington, where his division re- 
 mained till the 14th of December, the first still 
 continuing at Trenton, when " the weather having 
 become too severe to keep the field, and the winter 
 cantonments having been arranged, the troops 
 marched from both places to their respective sta- 
 tions." I cannot help remarking, as I quote this 
 complacent statement of General Howe, how soon 
 Washington at Trenton and Princeton was to dis- 
 turb his "arrangements," point out "the necessity 
 
60 TEEASOW OF CIIAKLES LEE. 
 
 of an alteration in the cantonments," and compel 
 him to " find it impossible to hold posts of seventy 
 or eighty miles in extent with only ten thousand 
 men." 
 
 During Lord Cornwallis's stay at Pennington, a 
 patrol of thirty dragoons from the Sixteenth Regi- 
 ment (Burgoyne's Regiment of Queen's Light Dra- 
 goons), was sent out to gain further intelligence of 
 Lee's division, whose progress they watched with 
 great jealousy. Lieutenant-Colonel Harcourt (after- 
 wards Earl Harcourt, F. M.), who is said to have 
 expressed hopes before he left England, that he 
 should take Lee, desired and obtained the direction 
 of this detachment. Banastre Tarleton, afterwards 
 so well known in the southern campaigns, at that 
 time a cornet in the King's Dragoon Guards, and a 
 volunteer with the forces in America, had the di- 
 rection of the advanced guard of the j)arty. 
 
 While scouring the country, they obtained in- 
 telligence of Lee's position, succeeded in surprising 
 the guard, and surrounded the house before he was 
 aware of his danger. Major William Bradford, one 
 of his aids, who was present and escaped, stated 
 that the party were conducted by a tory who was 
 with General Lee the evening before, complaining 
 of the loss of a horse taken by the army. He 
 found where the General was to lodge and break- 
 fast, and that he was to be at White's tavern about 
 noon. He left them, rode eighteen miles in the 
 night to Brunswick, and returned with the party 
 
TEEASOW OF CHARLES LEE. 61 
 
 of Light Horse. Most of the American accounts of 
 the aifair agree in cliarging the tories with having 
 betrayed him. On the other hand, the Enghsh 
 accounts state that Harcourt's party fell in with a 
 messenger, bearing a letter from Lee, who was in- 
 duced by threats or promises to return as their 
 guide. One states that "the wafer of the letter 
 was still wet, which showed the writer was not far 
 off." The accounts are not inconsistent — informa- 
 tion may have been given by the tories, and as the 
 Light Horse approached they may have seized the 
 messenger, who had recently left the General. 
 
 Harcourt's disposition was made with great skill, 
 and executed " with infinite address and gallantry." 
 As he came in sight of the house, he detached Tar- 
 leton, who dashed forward with six men to secure 
 the doors, followed by the remainder of the party 
 at a distance of about one hundred paces. Harcourt 
 immediately summoned the house, with threats to 
 set fire to it, and put every man in it to the sword, 
 if the General did not surrender. 
 
 The surprise was so complete that great con- 
 sternation prevailed among the General's party. 
 The Light Horse, however, were fired upon from 
 the house, and two or three were killed (one of 
 whom was a cornet), and others wounded. There 
 were several French officers with Lee, and one of 
 them took aim at Colonel Harcourt with his fusil, 
 which the Colonel observing, bent his head, and 
 the shot took away the ribbon of his hair. He 
 
62 TEEASON OF CHAELES LEE. 
 
 was immediately disposed of by the dragoons, and 
 the fire from the house was very smartly returned. 
 The General's guard had been carelessly disposed 
 at an out-building, and the sentry at the door of 
 the house, when he saw the dragoons coming, at 
 first mistook them for his own people, but soon per- 
 ceived his mistake by their swords, which were 
 different from those used by the Americans. The 
 guard rallied as the alarm was given, and attempted 
 to join in the defence, but they were immediately 
 overpowered with merciless severity. 
 
 Some of them were wounded, two were killed 
 while attempting to escape, and the remainder pro- 
 bably owed their safety to Harcourt's haste and 
 anxiety to make sure of his prize. 
 
 The only person who seems to have retained his 
 presence of mind and behaved with suitable courage 
 on the occasion, was M. Jean Louis de Virnejoux, a 
 French gentleman, who had been appointed to the 
 rank and pay of Captain by brevet, and commis- 
 sioned accordingly on the 19th September, 1116. 
 He had already in his few weeks of service, won 
 the best opinions of his qualities as a gentleman and 
 soldier ; and, on this occasion, he acted with the 
 greatest bravery and resolution in defending the 
 General. Had his advice been taken, or all who 
 were there evinced the same spirit, probably Lee 
 would have escaped. It is a real pleasure to speak 
 of such a man, and to brighten this page with the 
 record of his ■virtues. 
 
TREASON OF CHAELES LEE. 63 
 
 The resistance, however, was short. Harcourt 
 again summoned the house, renewing his threats 
 with a solemn oath. Finding concealment impos- 
 sible, and further resistance useless, Lee made his 
 appearance at the door, and in the most submissive 
 manner, surrendered his sword to Colonel Harcourt, 
 begging him to spare his life. Several of the English 
 accounts state that he fell upon his knees to Har- 
 court, and all agree that he behaved in a most cow- 
 ardly manner, apparently frantic with terror and 
 disappointment. One writer says, after describing 
 his humiliation to Harcourt, " suddenly recovering 
 his panic, he flew into a violent rant of his having 
 for a moment obtained the supreme command- 
 giving many signs of wildness and of a mind not 
 perfectly right." 
 
 Captain Thomas Harris, afterwards Lord Harris, 
 states, in his journal, that " Lee behaved as cow- 
 ardly in this transaction as he had dishonorably 
 in every other. After firing one or two shots from 
 the house, he came out and entreated our troops to 
 spare his life." Harris continues, " Had he behaved 
 with proper spirit, I should have pitied him, and 
 wished that his energies had been exerted in a bet- 
 ter cause. I could hardly refrain from tears when 
 I first saw him, and thought of the miserable fate 
 in which his obstinacy has involved him. He says 
 he has been mistaken in three things : 
 
 " 1st. That the New England men would fight. 
 
 " 2d. That America was unanimous, and 
 
64 TREASON OF CHAELES LEE. 
 
 " 3d. That site could afford two men for our 
 
 one." 
 
 He was somewhat rouglily handled on being 
 seized, and his captors, if they did not treat him 
 with great indignity, certainly displayed very little 
 regard for his comfort or appearance. He had pre- 
 sented himself without his hat or outside coat, and 
 although he earnestly requested permission to get 
 them, was very peremptorily refused. 
 
 He was mounted on the guide's horse, tied on 
 both legs and arms, and with one of his aids who 
 was mounted behind a dragoon, was hurried away 
 at a furious speed towards Brunswick, where upon 
 his arrival, " about three hours afterwards, the can- 
 non in the British camp played furiously, rejoicing 
 on the occasion ; " which was also signalized with 
 much less dignified demonstrations of dehght by the 
 soldiery. He entertained some hope of a rescue at 
 first, and told Harcourt he was "not sure of his 
 prey ; " but as his expectation diminished, and finally 
 all hope of it vanished, he became sullen and very 
 much dispirited. He said to his captors — admitting 
 the weakness of the American army, and his own 
 confidence in British strength and zeal, when rous- 
 ed, — " The game is nearly at an end." 
 
 Afterwards, on being brought in at Brunswick, 
 he is said to have claimed the benefit of Howe's 
 proclamation, and demanded to be received under 
 it ; but, on being refused, as being found in arms 
 and not entitled to it, and told that he would be 
 
TREASON OF CHARLES LEE. 65 
 
 tried as a deserter, lie flew into the most unbounded 
 rage, and exclaimed against tlie repeated acts of 
 false faith and treachery which had reduced him 
 to his present situation. He also desired an inter- 
 vicAv with General Howe, which was not granted at 
 that time ; and I have reason to believe that Gen- 
 eral Howe refused to see him for a long time 
 after his capture. This must have been a severe 
 trial to Lee, for he had before publicly professed 
 "the highest love and reverence " for General Howe, 
 stating that he had " courted his acquaintance 
 and friendship, not only as a pleasure, but as an 
 ornament," and "flattered himself that he had ob- 
 tained it." 
 
 Soon after his capture, he addressed the follow- 
 ing letter to his old friend and associate. Captain 
 Primrose Kennedy, of the 44th Regiment : 
 
 general lee to captain kennedy 
 
 "Sib: 
 
 "The fortune of war, the activity of Colonel 
 Harcourt, and the rascality of my own troops, have 
 made me your prisoner. I submit to my fate, and 
 I hope that whatever may be my destiny, I shall 
 meet it with becoming fortitude ; but I have the 
 consolation of thinking, amidst all my distresses, 
 that I was engaged in the noblest cause that ever 
 interested mankind. It would seem that Provi- 
 dence had determined that not one freeman should 
 
66 TEEASON OF CHAELES LEE. 
 
 be left upon earth ; and the success of your arms 
 more than foretell one universal system of slavery. 
 Imagine not, however, that I lament my fortune, or 
 mean to deprecate the malice of my enemies ; if any 
 sorrow can at present affect me, it is that of a great 
 continent apparently destined for empire, frustrated 
 in the honest ambition of being free, and enslaved 
 by men, whom unfortunately I call my country- 
 men. 
 
 "To Colonel Harcourt's activity every com- 
 mendation is due ; had I commanded such men, I 
 had this day been free ; but my Ul-fortune has pre- 
 vailed, and you behold me no longer hostile to 
 England, but contemptible and a prisoner ! 
 
 " I have not time to add more, but let me assure 
 you, that no vicissitudes have been able to alter 
 my sentiments ; and that as I have long supported 
 those sentiments in all difficulties and dangers, I 
 will never depart from them but with life. 
 
 "C. Lee." 
 
 The aid, who was taken with Lee, was M. de 
 Gaiault. This gentleman, a Lieutenant-Colonel in 
 the French service, had recently arrived at Boston 
 with powder and arms, in the Hancock and Adams, 
 Captain Smith, from Nantes. On his way to ten- 
 der his services to General "Washington, he had 
 joined General Lee, who made him his aid-de-camp, 
 only two days before he was taken. When he 
 heard the firing of the Light Dragoons, he ran out 
 
TEEASON OF CHAELES LEE. 67 
 
 hastily, and was immediately made prisoner. He 
 shared their rude treatment with Lee, in respect to 
 Avhich he afterwards presented a remonstrance to 
 G-eneral Howe. At Brunswick, M. Gaiault was for- 
 tunate enough to meet an old acquaintance, a British 
 officer, who provided him with quarters where he 
 was taken good care of, and supplied him with ne- 
 cessaries. He was also under much less restraint 
 than his fellow-prisoner. 
 
 The intelligence of Lee's capture reached his 
 troops as they were on the march. The statement 
 of a private soldier in one of the Rhode Island 
 Regiments, preserves for us the account of an eye- 
 witness. He saw Major Bradford, who had escaped, 
 as he rode up to the line. General Sullivan met 
 him and received the news, which immediately 
 spread through the whole division. They halted 
 some time in the road, and SuUivan "rode through 
 the line giving orders, to show that they still had 
 a commander left, and did not appear to regret the 
 loss of Lee." The writer adds, " I confess it was 
 not a subject of any grief to me, as I had known 
 him before he was appointed in our army, and 
 thought we could manufactui'e as good generals out 
 of Am.erican stuff as he was." The prevailing im- 
 pression, however, must have been one of discour- 
 agement ; and others mention the " dejected spuits " 
 with which they renewed their march and pursued 
 their route to the Delaware. 
 
 Sullivan attempted to regain him, but the ra- 
 
68 TEEASOSr OF CHARLES LEE. 
 
 pidity of Harcourt's movement was such as to make 
 all attempts fruitless. One party pursued the dra- 
 goons for several miles, but ''were too late," and 
 rejoined the army in the evening at Germantown. 
 
 One additional memorial of that eventful period 
 remains to be noticed. The last letter of General 
 Lee before his capture, was addressed to his friend 
 Gates, who had been ordered to hasten on from 
 the northern army, with all the disposable troops, 
 and join Washington beyond the Delaware. He 
 had left the Hudson at Esopus (Kingston), and 
 thence proceeded through the then uncultivated 
 country of the Minisink, nearly on the route of the 
 present Delaware and Hudson Canal, inclining to 
 the left to Sussex Court House, about thirty miles 
 northwest of Morristown, in the hope of falling in 
 with and joining the division of General Lee. 
 
 The letter is -significant enough, and is an ap- 
 propriate finale to Major General Charles Lee's 
 military service in the Jerseys in 1*7 7 6. I hold the 
 original letter in my hand, from which I will read. 
 [_See Fac-simile No. I.] 
 
 GENERAL LEE TO GENERAL GATES. 
 
 " Basking Kidcse, Deo'r y Ifth, iTTe. 
 
 "My Dr Gates: 
 
 "The ingenious manoeuvre of Fort Washington 
 hasunhing'd the goodly fabrick We had been build- 
 ing — there never was so damn'd a stroke — entre 
 nous, a certain great man is most damnably deficient 
 
TEEASON OF CHARLES LEE. 69 
 
 — He has thrown me into a situation where I have 
 my choice of difficulties — if I stay in this Province 
 I risk myself and Army and if I do not stay the 
 Province is lost for ever — I have neither guides 
 Cavalry Medicines Money Shoes or Stockings — I 
 must act with the greatest circumspection — ^Tories 
 are in my front rear and on my flanks — the Mass 
 of the People is strangely contaminated — ^in short 
 unless something which I do not expect turns up 
 We are lost — our Counsels have been weak to the 
 last degree — as to what relates to yourself if you 
 think you can be in time to aid the General I wou'd 
 have you by all means go You will at least save 
 your army — it is said that the Whigs are deter- 
 min'd to set fire to Philadelphia if They strike 
 this decisive stroke the day will be our own — but 
 unless it is done all chance of Liberty in any part 
 of the Globe is forever vanish'd — Adieu, my Dr 
 Friend — God bless you. 
 
 "Charles Lee." 
 
 Upon Lee's capture, great exultation was man- 
 ifested by the British. They boasted of having 
 taken the American Palladium — that the Ameri- 
 cans could not stand long, as Lee was their chief man. 
 The historian Gibbon, who had taken his seat in 
 Parliament at the beginning of the contest between 
 Great Britain and America; and supported with 
 many a sincere and silent vote, the measures of the 
 administration ; preserves the gossip of the day in 
 6 
 
70 TEEASOK OF CHAELES LEE. 
 
 London in one of Ms letters: "Lee is certainly 
 taken . . . "We are not clear whether he behaved 
 with courage or pusillanimity when he surrendered 
 himself; but Colonel Keene told me to-day that he 
 had seen a letter from Lee since his confinement. 
 He imputes his being taken to the alertness of Har- 
 court and cowardice of his own guard ; hopes he 
 shall meet his fate with fortitude, etc." Gibbon 
 adds : " It is said he was to succeed Washington ; " 
 and also, referring to the news from Trenton, " We 
 know nothing certain of the Hessians, but there has 
 been a blow." 
 
 Among the Americans, his loss was greatly and 
 sincerely deplored — although the circumstances at- 
 tending his capture were almost equally regretted. 
 The most generous spirit was manifested in Wash- 
 ington's private as well as public correspondence — 
 full of regret for the loss which the service had sus- 
 tained, and sympathy for Lee's personal sufferings — 
 although he was obliged to regard the misfortune 
 as the more vexatious, as it was by the captive 
 General's own folly and imprudence, and without 
 a view to effect any good, that he was taken pris- 
 oner. 
 
 He was still detained at Brunswick, a close 
 prisoner under a strong guard, when Washington 
 turned upon his pursuers, and at Trenton and 
 Princeton justified the expectation of the Pennsyl- 
 vania Council of Safety, who, in condoling with 
 him on the loss of Lee, expressed their hope that it 
 
TEEASON OF CHAELES LEE. 71 
 
 might be in his power to close the campaign with 
 honor to himself, and leave General Howe in a 
 situation which should afford him little reason to 
 boast. 
 
 These movements threw the enemy into great 
 consternation at Brunswick, where were the British 
 stores and baggage, and for a time an ominous anx- 
 iety prevailed in the lines. One of the "English 
 officers who was present, says : " The captive Gen- 
 eral Lee was not without his terrors on this extra- 
 ordinary and sudden turn of fortune. General 
 Matthews not knowing well how to dispose of him 
 in this intricacy of situation, he followed the wagons, 
 and was marched, guarded, through the line, then 
 under arms, in silent and momentary expectation 
 of the enemy — a perfect stranger to every thing 
 that had happened, or to what end he was destined ; 
 he could only judge from the hurry and apparent 
 confusion that something uncommon must have oc- 
 casioned it; for every circumstance at that junc- 
 ture seemed so big with event, that no person dared 
 speak to him as he passed by, or take upon them 
 to explain what he eagerly wished to discover. His 
 looks presented a picture of dread and horror; 
 strongly expressive of his persuasion that his fate 
 had overtaken him, at a time when he apprehended 
 no immediate danger — he was soon relieved from 
 his distress." 
 
 He was brought to New York from Brunswick, 
 on Monday the 13th of January, 1111, still very 
 
-72 
 
 TEEASOK OF CHAELES LEE. 
 
 strictly guarded. Rooms were fitted up for his re- 
 ception in the City Hall, where he was treated 
 with consideration and humanity. He was allowed 
 to converse freely with the officers in whose custody 
 he was placed, except "on the subject of the dis- 
 pute with the colonies." The two officers on guard 
 always dined with him, and he had leave to invite 
 any other person he pleased. He was from the first 
 regarded in the light of a traitor to his Mng, ameiia- 
 ble to British military law as a deserter ; and" he 
 unquestionably owed his life to the firmness of 
 Washington and the Congress. Exaggerated ac- 
 counts of the severity of his confinement produced 
 remonstrance and threats of retaliation, and Howe's 
 reply to the remonstrance being unsatisfactory, 
 Congress directed some harsh measures with refer- 
 ence to five Hessian field officers and Lieutenant- 
 Colonel Campbell, then prisoners, who were made 
 special hostages for Lee's safety; but these were 
 mitigated by the earnest interference of Washing- 
 ton. Still the exchange of prisoners was inter- 
 rupted, until the demand should be complied with 
 that General Lee be recognized as a prisoner of 
 war. 
 
 General Howe was much embarrassed in respect 
 to the law of the case, and wrote home for instruc- 
 tions. With characteristic professional caution, be- 
 ing " afraid of falling into a law scrape," he desired 
 to have the opinion of the law officers of the Crown, 
 in case he should be instructed to bring his prisoner 
 
TEEASON OF CHAKLES LEE. 73 
 
 to trial. There had been, some recent decisions in 
 England, wMcli had an. awkward look, in. respect to 
 damages, in case Lee should escape conviction and 
 bring an action for false imprisonment. The case 
 of certain Bengal officers was referred to, and Lee's 
 was still stronger. Being only on half-pay when 
 he wrote his letter of resignation to Lord Barring- 
 ton, he Avould undoubtedly plead : first, that a half- 
 pay officer was not amenable to military law, and 
 secondly, if he was, he had a right to resign. The 
 reply of Lord George Germaine was — ^''As you 
 have difficulties about bringing General Lee to trial 
 in America, it is His Majesty's pleasure that you 
 send him to Great Britain by the first ship of war." 
 One of the London newspapers of the time states, 
 that he was actually " placed on board a vessel at 
 New York three several times in order to be 
 brought to England ; and the ship was absolutely 
 on sail when Washington's letter to General Howe 
 arrived at New York, the consequence of which 
 was that the ship was stopped and the General re- 
 landed." 
 
 Sir William Howe being unable to make any 
 impression upon Washington, and being apprehen- 
 sive that a close confinement of the Hessian officers 
 would l^e the consequence of sending Lee to Great 
 Britain, and that this would occasion much discon- 
 tent among the foreign troops, retained Lee for 
 further instructions. In a subsequent letter from 
 the minister, he informs General Howe, that his 
 
74 TEEASOK OF CHAKLES LEE. 
 
 "motives for postponing General Lee's departure 
 for Great Britain are approved by the king." 
 
 Congress had approved the course pursued by 
 Washington, but expressed a new and " determined 
 resolution to carry into execution the law of retal- 
 iation; that if any persons belonging to, or em- 
 ployed in, the service of the United States or any 
 of them who now are, or hereafter may be, prison- 
 ers to Lord or General Howe, or any other com- 
 mander of his Britannic Majesty's forces by sea or 
 land, shall be sent to the realm of Great Britain, 
 or any part of the dominion of the said king, to be 
 there confined in common gaols of Great Britain, or 
 any other place or places of confinement in: pur- 
 suance of any act ox acts of the British Parliament, 
 or any other pretence whatever ; it is the resolution 
 of this Congress, to treat the prisoners now in our 
 power, and such as hereafter may fall into our 
 hands, in a manner as nearly similar as our circum- 
 stances will admit." 
 
 On the same day on which this resolution was 
 adopted by Congress, June 10th, 1777, General 
 Washington had very frankly, but firmly, indicated 
 the same policy, in a letter to General Howe, in 
 which he said, distinctly referring to the case of 
 General Lee, " I think it necessary to add, that 
 your conduct towards prisoners will govern mine." 
 
 Satisfied that no arguments would induce " Mr. 
 Washington " to recede from his determination, and 
 that it was " necessary to put an end to a fruitless ne- 
 
TREASON OF CHAELES LEE. 7^) 
 
 gotiation," the king at last reluctantly consented to 
 instruct Howe, " that Lee, having been struck off 
 the half-pay list, shall, though deserving the most 
 exemplary punishment, be deemed a prisoner of 
 war, and he may be exchanged as such when you 
 may think proper." 
 
 This despatch was received by General Howe, 
 on the 12th of December, 1777. General Lee had 
 been kept a close prisoner during the whole year 
 that had elapsed since his capture. During most of 
 the time, he remained in the City Hall ; but while 
 General Howe was pursuing his brief campaign in 
 New Jersey, and secretly maturing the plan for the 
 southern expedition, he was removed, June 7th, 
 1777, for a time on board the Centurion man-of- 
 war, where he was permitted to walk the quarter- 
 deck. 
 
 Two days afterwards, he wrote a letter to Gen- 
 eral Washington on the subject of Lord Drum- 
 mond's parole. This individual, whose attempts at 
 negotiation form a curious, though unimportant 
 episode, in the history of the war, had given his 
 parole of honor, that he would hold no correspond- 
 ence directly or indirectly with those who were in 
 arms against the colonies, nor go into any port or 
 harbor occupied by the enemy, nor on board their 
 ships. He had most flagrantly and openly violated 
 his parole, and the most favorable construction of 
 his intentions could only show " that an overween- 
 ing vanity had betrayed him into a criminal breach 
 
76 TEEASON OF CHAELES LEE. 
 
 of honor." General Washington had occasion to 
 administer to him a well-merited reproof " in terms 
 that could not be flattering " to his Lordship, who 
 attempted to vindicate himself, but without success. 
 "The facts in the case were too obvious and indis- 
 putable to be extenuated by any testimony he pro- 
 duced, or by the mere assertion of honorable mo- 
 tives." 
 
 General Lee, however, professed to have really 
 thought Lord Drmnmond an injured man, and of- 
 fered himself as a volunteer instrument to obtain 
 some reparation from General Washington. Noth- 
 ing could be more characteristic than his letter, 
 which follows : 
 
 GENEKAL LEE TO GENERAL WASHINGTON. 
 
 " Centdeion, June 9th, I'l'll. 
 
 " My Deak Sir : 
 
 " Multiplicity of business, the miscarriage of 
 letters or some accident has prevented you from 
 doing what really is in my opinion an act of jus- 
 tice — I mean clearing up to the world the charge 
 brought against Lord Drummond for a breach of 
 Parole ; after having read all the Papers relative 
 to this subject, his letters to you, yours to him, 
 Capt. Vanderput's, and the Parole, I declare sol- 
 emnly that it does not appear to me that there is 
 any one thing in his Lordship's conduct which mer- 
 ited even the shadow of censure. The intention of 
 the Parole in restraining him from going on board 
 
TREASON OP CHAKLES LEE. 77 
 
 any of tte King's ships was certainly to prevent in- 
 telligence being given of the state of the Continent. 
 As this was manifestly the intention I could almost 
 say that if even he had gone on board the Asia 
 voluntarily altho' the terms of the Parole would 
 not have been literally adhered to, the spirit would 
 not have been violated, as it cannot possibly be 
 supposed that he could give any intelligence which 
 would have been new to Capt. Vanderput, to and 
 from whose ship people were passing and repassing 
 every day — but Capt. Vanderput's evidence puts 
 it beyond all doubt that his Lordship did not go 
 voluntarily but was compelled on board. 
 
 " A public charge from persons we esteem sinks 
 deep in the mind of a man of sentiment and feeling. 
 I really believe Lord Drummond to be such, and 
 have reason to think that he has an esteem for you, 
 at least from all I can learn he has ever spoken of 
 you in the handsomest terms. Now, as it appears 
 to me that there can be no doubt from the concur- 
 rence of every testimony of his having adhered as 
 scrupulously as possible to the spirit of the Parole, 
 as the affair is of so delicate a nature, as I am ac- 
 quainted with your way of thinking, I repeat that 
 I must ascribe it rather to a miscarriage of his let- 
 ters than to any other cause that you have not done 
 him that justice which, had you received them, I 
 am persuaded you must have thought his due. 
 I can perceive he is very much hurt at the charge, 
 and his sensibility, I confess, increases the good 
 
78 TREASON OF CHAELES LEE. 
 
 opinion I before had of him — Not only therefore 
 justice to him hut let me add, my Dear General, a 
 regard for you obliges me to wish that this affair 
 may be cleared up in some manner satisfactory to 
 the party I think injured ; it is a duty which I 
 know if omitted cannot fail of giving much uneasi- 
 ness hereafter to a man of your rectitude and hu- 
 manity. 
 
 " I must observe in addition that I cannot imag- 
 ine his Lordship's return after an absence of three 
 months could administer any reasons for suspicion, 
 for he must either have reniained in the West In- 
 dies or have returned to some port in North Amer- 
 ica, as he was prevented by the spirit of the Parole 
 fi"om going to England, — indeed the terms of the 
 Parole implied an obligation to return to New 
 York. His long absence hkewise from the Conti- 
 nent rendered it impossible for him to furnish any 
 intelligence of the situation of affairs. Should it be 
 asked, why a man in my present situation should 
 interest myself so warmly in this business with 
 which I myself had no concern? I must answer 
 that not only my love of justice, my duty as a 
 Gentleman, and my regard for you enjoin the task, 
 but that I really feel myself personally obliged to 
 Lord Drummond, for since my confinement he has 
 shown a most generous, humane and disinterested 
 attention to me. In the course of conversation this 
 business was accidentally brought on the carpet. 
 As I was a stranger to the circumstances, I was 
 
TEEASOJSr OF CHARLES LEE. 79 
 
 anxious to be made acquainted with. them. He sub- 
 mitted tbe papers to my perusal — I really tbougbt 
 Mm injured ; assured him that it must have pro- 
 ceeded from mistake or the miscarriage of his let- 
 ters, and offered myself as a volunteer instrument 
 to obtain some reparation. Let me hear from you. 
 My Dear General, as soon as possible, and on this 
 subject. 
 
 " God preserve and bless you and send you every 
 possible felicity is the prayer of one who is most 
 truly and affectionately yours, 
 
 " Chaeles Lee." 
 
 " As I would not unnecessarily swell the packet 
 I have been contented with sending the letters to 
 and from Capt. Vanderput — which I think sufficient 
 — This I do on the supposition that those sent have 
 miscarried.'" 
 
 Mr. Sparks has given us the substance of "Wash- 
 ington's answer. " With his usual fii'mness, he re- 
 plied, that he had thoroughly investigated the sub- 
 ject at the time ; that he had no disposition to in- 
 jure Lord Drummond ; that the impression left on 
 his mind was deep and decided ; and that no cir- 
 cumstances had since come to light, which tended 
 to alter his opinion." 
 
 General Howe received the king's consent in 
 Philadelphia, but transmitted orders to New Yoi'k 
 immediately to terminate Lee's long confinement. 
 He was released on the 25th December, on parole, 
 
80 TEEASOK OF CHARLES LEE. 
 
 to the full liberty of the city and its limits. From 
 this time his condition was much more agreeable. 
 Sir Henry Clinton and General Robertson placed 
 horses at his command, and he took up his quarters 
 with two of his oldest and warmest friends in the 
 British service. In short, his situation was " ren- 
 dered as easy, comfortable, and pleasant as possible, 
 for a man who is in any sort a prisoner." In Feb- 
 ruary, I'TYS, he won a prize of five hundred dollars, 
 in the Alms House Lottery. 
 
 The embarrassment with respect to the ex- 
 changes of prisoners still continued, and his cap- 
 tivity was prolonged several months. It was not 
 until late in the month of March that he was trans- 
 ferred to Philadelphia, with the prospect of a speedy 
 exchange. He arrived in that city on the 25th of 
 March. His parole was enlarged on the 5th April, 
 when he availed himself of the privilege to visit 
 the American camp and the Congress. On the 9th 
 April, he arrived at Yorktown, in Pennsylvania, 
 where Congress was then sitting. At this time, he 
 had the opportunity of witnessing the denouement 
 of the intrigues, which, after his own capture re- 
 moved him from the scene, had elevated his old 
 associate Gates into a rival of Washington ! But 
 the lesson was lost upon him. "While he was at 
 Yorktown, his exchange for Major General Pres- 
 cott was finally arranged, 21st April, but he did 
 not rejoin the army at Valley Forge until a month 
 later— May 20th, 1778. The history of that 
 
TREASON OF CHARLES LEE. 81 
 
 montli belongs to another part of this review of 
 his career. 
 
 I have said that the accounts of his harsh treat- 
 ment were exaggerated. For this there is sufficient 
 authority besides his own statement in a letter to 
 Robert Morris, that " the General [Howe] has in- 
 deed treated me in aU respects with kindness, gen- 
 erosity, and tenderness." 
 
 The English had a much less favorable opinion 
 of Lee's abilities than he had secured in America. 
 When it was reported in Europe several months 
 before, that he had been captured, one of the 
 wisest servants of the Crown, Sir Joseph Yorke, 
 then minister at the Hague, wrote to Mr. Eden — 
 that if he had not a thorough conviction in his 
 own mind that the "unfortunate affair" in America 
 would be brought to a happy issue in the course of 
 the summer, he " should really have been concerned 
 for the taking of Lee, convinced, from what I have 
 seen and know of him, that he was the worst pres- 
 ent which could be made to any army." And 
 again, after he was taken: "I was one of those 
 who expressed a sincere concern at the taking of 
 Lee, in which nothing gave me pleasure but the 
 masterly partisan stroke of Colonel Harcourt : it is 
 impossible but Lee must puzzle every thing he 
 meddles in, and he was the worst present the 
 Americans could receive; my opinion has been 
 verified much sooner than I wished, as the only 
 stroke like officers which they have struck, hap- 
 
82 TREASOK OF CHAELES LEE. 
 
 pened after Ms being made prisoner." The capture 
 of the Hessians and the masterly manoeuvres against 
 the British, had enabled them to " find that he was 
 not the only efficient officer in the American ser- 
 vice." 
 
 The times, when Lee was taken, were gloomy 
 enough for the Americans. They were indeed, as 
 Thomas Paine then wrote in his stirring appeal to 
 the patriots of "76, " the times that tried men's souls. 
 The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot would 
 indeed, in such a crisis, shrink from the service of 
 his country ; while he that stood firm then, deserved 
 the love and thanks of man and woman ! " In the 
 English camp, it was thought that Howe's successes 
 had intimidated the leaders of the rebellion, and 
 were about to induce a general submission — ^that 
 further opposition was despaired of by all America, 
 except a few desperate men in Washington's army, 
 and that army reduced to less than thirty-five hun- 
 dred men. The campaign projected by the British, 
 too, for 17*77, was portentous of evil to the United 
 States, and expected in Eui'ope to be decisive, 
 where the friends of the Court were rejoicing upon 
 the promising aspect of affairs in America ; and the 
 whole tone and spirit of the royalists in New York, 
 was confident in the extreme. 
 
 The scattered notices which may be gleaned 
 in the correspondence written from New York, 
 at this time, are too vague and general, as well as 
 uncertain, to furnish much light as to Lee's occupa- 
 
TEEASOK OF CHARLES LEE. 83 
 
 tions ; but I find one account wliicli is particularly 
 interesting. It states " that he has employed his 
 leisure hours mostly in writing ; and some were of 
 opinion that he was employed in a plan of recon- 
 ciliation, as he used often to say, that if the Ameri- 
 cans had followed his advice, matters could never 
 have gone to such a length. His tone is changed, 
 and as he was always remarkable for his freedom 
 of speech, he makes no scruple of condemning the 
 Americans in very plain terms, for continuing the 
 contest." 
 
 His tone was indeed changed : 
 
 " .... Quantum mutatus ab illo 
 Hectore ! " 
 
 It was at this time that he abandoned the cause 
 to which he had so solemnly devoted himself. He 
 was wanting in the hour of trial ! At the touch of 
 misfortune, like the angel's spear, the disguises of 
 cowardice and treachery fell away, and the pages 
 upon which he recorded his own condemnation, 
 vindicate his claim to a high place upon that list of 
 traitors, of whom— to the sorrow and shame of hu- 
 manity be it spoken — Judas was not the first, nor 
 Benedict Arnold the last ! While the Continental 
 Congress were denouncing their most solemn ven- 
 geance in retaliation for any injury which he might 
 receive at the hands of his captors — while Wash- 
 ington, forgetting the iasults and injuries which 
 had led to his misfortunes, was straining every 
 
84 TEEASON OF CHARLES LEE. 
 
 nerve in his behalf, and urging his requests upon 
 Congress with constant zeal and sympathy — He 
 
 WAS PLANWIWa EOB THE ENEMIES OP AmEEICA, THE 
 ETJI]^ OF THE CAUSE ! 
 
 I hold the document in my hand — in Lee's 
 own autograph — ^unmistakaMe and real. It is in- 
 dorsed in the handwriting of Henry Strachey, who 
 was then Secretary to the Koyal Commissioners, 
 Lord and Sir William Howe: 
 
 " MR. LEE'S PLAN—^mh March, 1111 r 
 
 [See Fac-simile No. H.] 
 
 " As on the one hand it appea/rs to me that hy the 
 continuance of the War America has no chance of 
 obtaining the ends She proposes to herself ; that altho 
 hy struggling S/ie mag put the Mother Country to 
 very serious expencehoth in hlood and Money, yet She 
 must in the end, after great desolation havoch and 
 slaughter, he redudd to suhmit to terms much harder 
 than might probably be granted at present — and as 
 on the other hand Great Britain thd ultimately vic- 
 torious, must suffer very heavily even in ihepyrocess 
 of her victories, evry life lost and evry guinea spent 
 being in fact worse than thrown away : it is only 
 waiting her own property, shedding Iter own blood 
 and destroying her own stregnthj and as I am not 
 only perswaded from tlie high opinion I have of tlie 
 humanity and good sense of Lord and General Hoioe 
 
TREASON OF CHARLES LEE. 85 
 
 tliat the terms of accommodation toill he as moderate 
 as their powers will admit ^ hut that their powers are 
 more ample than their Sioccessors (slioud any acci- 
 dent Itappeii) wou^d he vested witli^ I tliinh myself 
 oiot only justifiable hut hound in conscience to furnish 
 all the lights^ I can^ to enahle ''em to hring matters to 
 a conclusion in tlie most compendious onanner and 
 consecjuently the least expensive to hoth Parties — I 
 do this with the more readiness as I hn/no tlie most 
 generous use will he made of it in all respjects — their 
 humanity will incline ''em to have consideration for 
 Individuals tvho have acted from Principle and their 
 good sense ^vill tell ''em tliat the more moderate are 
 the general conditions ; the more solid and permanent 
 luill he the union., for if the conditions tvere extremely 
 repugnant to the genercd way of thinhing, it wou\l 
 he only tlie mere patchtoorTc of a day luhich tl/efrst 
 hreath of unnd will discompose and the first symp- 
 toms of a rupAure hetwixt the Bourhon Powers and 
 Great Britain absolutely overturn — hut Ireally have 
 no apprehensions of this l:ind whilst Lord and Gen- 
 eral Howe have the direction of affairs., and flatter 
 myself tlicd under their auspices an accommodation 
 may he hidlt on so solid a foundation as not to he 
 shalcen hy any such incident — in this persuasion and 
 on these principjles I shall most sincerely and zeal- 
 ously contribute cdl in my power to so desirable an 
 end., and if no untoward accidents fall out which no 
 human foresight can guard against I will answer 
 with my life for the success. 
 
86 TEEASON OF CHAELES LEE. 
 
 ^'' From my present situation and ignorance of 
 certain facts^ I am sensible that I hazard proposing 
 things which cannot tvithout difficulties he compl/ifd 
 imth; I cam, onl/y act from surmise^ therefore hope al- 
 lowances wUl he made for my circumstances. I will 
 suppose then that (exclusive of the Troops requisite 
 for the security of Rhode Island and JST. YorTi) 
 General Howe's Army (comp>rehending every species., 
 British^ Hessians and Provincials') amounts to 
 twenty thoushand men capahle to tdke the field and 
 act offensively ; hy which I mean to move to any 
 part of the Continent whei^e occasion requires — I 
 ■u)ill suppose that the GeneraVs design with this force 
 is to clear the Jersefs and talce possession of Phila- 
 delphia — hut in my opinion the taking possession of 
 Philadelphia will not have any decisive consequences 
 — the Congress and People adhering to the Congress 
 home al/i-eady made up their vnindsfm^ the event ; al- 
 ready They have turned their eyes to other places 
 tvliere Tliey can fix their seat of residence., carry on 
 in some measure tlieir Government ; in short expect- 
 ing this event They ha/tie devis'd measures for pro- 
 tracting the War in hopes of some fa/vourahle turn 
 of affairs in Europe — tlie taking possession there- 
 fore of Philadelphia or cmy one or two Towns more., 
 which the General may ha/ve in vieio., will not he de- 
 cisive — to hring inatters to a conclusion., it is neces- 
 sary to unhinge or dissolve., if I may so express my- 
 self., the whole system or machine of resistance., or in 
 other terms., Congress Government — this system or 
 
TREASON OF CHAKLES UEE. 87 
 
 machine^ as affairs now stand, depends entirely on 
 the circumstances and disposition of the People of 
 Maryla/nd Virginia and Pensijlvania — if tlie 
 Province of Maryland or the greater part of it is 
 reduced m- sulmits, and the People of Virginia are 
 prevented or intimidated from marching aid to the 
 Pensylvania Army the whole machine is dissolved 
 and a period put to the War, to accomplish whicJi, 
 is, the object of the scheme which I noiv take the lib- 
 erty of offering to the consideration of his Loi^dship 
 and' the General, and if it is adopAed in full I am so 
 confident of the success that I xooidd stcd^e my life 
 on the issue — Ihave at the same time the comfort to 
 reflect, that in pointing end m.easnres which Ihnoiv 
 to he the most effect ucdj I point out those which will 
 he attended with, no bloodshed or desolation to the Col- 
 on ies. As the difficidty of pxissing and of re-passing 
 the North River andtlie apjprehensions f rom Genercd 
 GurltoiUs Army ivill I am confident heep tlie Neio 
 JEnglanders at home, or at least confine ''em to the 
 East side the Piver ; and as their Provinces are at 
 present neither tlie seat of Government stregnth nor 
 Politichs I cannot see that any off'ensive opercdions 
 against these Provinces woxCd answer any sort of 
 Purpose — to secure N. Yorh and Phode Island 
 against their attacks ivill be sufficient. On the sup- 
 2)Osition then, that Genercd Howe's Army {including 
 every species of Troops) amounts to twenty or even 
 eighteen thoushand men at liberty to move to any 
 part of the Continent; as fourteen thoushcmd will he 
 
88 TEEASON OF CHARLES LEE. 
 
 more than sufficient to dear the Jersey's and take 
 possession of Philadelphia^ I woiHd propose that 
 four thoushand men ie immediately emtharlid in 
 transports^ one half of which should proceed up the 
 Patomac and take post at Alexandria^ the other half 
 up Chesepeak Pay and possess themselves of Anna- 
 polis. They %oill most probably meet with no opposi- 
 tion in taking possession of these Posts, and when 
 possessed they are so very strong hy nature that a few 
 hours work and some trifling artillery will secure 
 them against the attacks of a much greater force than 
 can possibly he brought doion against thein — their 
 communication with the shipping will he constant 
 and sure— for at Alexandria Vessels of a very con- 
 siderable burthen (of five or six hundred Tons for 
 instance^) can lie in close to the shore, and at Anoia- 
 polis within musket shot — all the necessaries and o-e- 
 freshments for an Army are near at hand, and in 
 the greatest abundance — Kent Island will supply 
 that of Annapolis and every part on both ba/nks of 
 the Patomnc that of Alexandria. These Posts m,ay 
 with ease support each other, as it is but two easy 
 days march from one to the other, and if occasion 
 requires by a single days march. They may join ^ 
 and conju/nctly carry on their operations wherever it 
 shall be thought eligible to direct ''em ; whether to take 
 possession of Baltimore or post themselves on some 
 spot on the Westward bank of the Susquehanna 
 which is a point of the utmost importance — but here 
 I must beg leame to observe that there is a measure 
 
TREASON OF CHAKLES LEE. 89 
 
 loTiich if the General assents to and adopts will he 
 attended with momentous and the most happy con- 
 sequences — I mean that from these Posts proclama- 
 tions of pardon should he issued to all those who come 
 in at a given day, and I will answer for it ivith my 
 life — that all the Inhahitants of that great tract 
 southward of the Patapsico and lying hetwixt the 
 Patomac and Ohesepeak Pay and tlwse on the east- 
 ern Shore of Maryland will immediately lay down 
 their arms — hut this is not all, I am much mistaken 
 if those potent and popidous German districts, Fred- 
 eric County in Maryland and Yorh in Pensylr 
 vania do not follow their example — These Germans 
 are extremely numerous, and to a Man have hitlierto 
 heen the most staunch Assertors of the American 
 cause ' hut at the same time are so remarhahly tena- 
 cious of their property and apprehensive of the least 
 injvry heing done to their fine farms that I have no 
 doid)t when They see a prohahility of their Country 
 hecoming the seat of War They will give up all op- 
 position hut if contrary to my expectations a force 
 should he assemhied at Alexandria sufficient to pre- 
 vent the Corps detacKd thither from tahing possession 
 immediately of the ptlace, it will make no disadvan- 
 tageous alteration, hut rather the reverse — a variety 
 of sp)ots near Alexandria on either hanh of the Par 
 tomac may he chosen for Posts equxdly well ccdcidat- 
 ed for all the great purposes I have mention'' d — mz 
 ■ — for the reduction or compulsion to suhmission of 
 the whole Province of Maryland for the preventing 
 
90 TEEASON OF CHAELES LEE. 
 
 or intimidating Virginia fi^om sending aids to Pen- 
 sylvania—for in fact if any force is assemUedat Al- 
 exandria sufficient to ojypose the Troops sent against 
 it^ getting possession of it^ it must he at the expence 
 of the mm'e Northern Army^ as they must he com- 
 posed of those Troops which were otherioise destined 
 for Pensylvania — to say all in a %vord^ it will %m- 
 liinge and dissolve the whole system of defence. I 
 am so confident of the event that I will venture to 
 assert with the pencdty of iny life if the plan is fully 
 adopted., and no accidents (siich as a rupture hetioixt 
 the Powers of Europe) intervenes that in less than 
 two months from the date of the 'proclaination not a 
 sparh of this desolating war remains unextinguished 
 in any part of the Continent. 
 
 " ^ On the Road from Annapolis to Queen Ann 
 tliere is one considercdjle River to he pass'd., hut as 
 tJie ships hoats can easily he hrought round from the 
 Ray to the visual place of passage or Ferry., this is 
 no impediment if the Two Oorps chuse to unite They 
 may hy a single days march either at Queen Anns 
 or Malhrough.^'' 
 
 Such was the scheme of treason which Charles 
 Lee, Major General, second in command in the 
 American army of the Revolution, took " the lib- 
 erty of offering to the consideration of his Lordship 
 and the General," His Majesty's Commissioners, 
 Lord and Sir "William Howe ! Its form and char- 
 
TREASON OP CHARLES LEE. 91 
 
 acter do not admit the supposition that lie had 
 been tampered with, solicited, or approached in any 
 way on the subject. It must have been the volun- 
 tary offering of cowardice, eager to purchase safety 
 by treachery, and thus to open the way back to 
 allegiance and protection ! He had e^ddently re- 
 garded himself as " the Palladium," and with his 
 own capture had lost all hope for the success of the 
 Americans. So he threw himself upon the gener- 
 osity of the Howes, and tried to make a virtue of 
 his own selfishness ; betraying his associates, while 
 with a characteristic appeal for sympathy, he 
 thought their "humanity" would incline Lord and 
 General Howe " to have consideration for individ- 
 uals who have acted from principle." 
 
 Although we are left mainly to conjecture the 
 circumstances under which this plan was submitted 
 to the Howes, it is proper to make such inferences 
 as are warranted by their subsequent conduct of 
 the war. 
 
 From the beginning of the winter of IIIQ-'II, 
 General Howe had been sending to the ministry his 
 plans for the next campaign. His primary object, 
 repeatedly urged, was the junction of the two ar- 
 mies up and down the Hudson Kiver. His own 
 movement northward, accompanied with an irrup- 
 tion into New England, it was said, would " strike 
 at the I'oot of the rebellion, and put those Inde- 
 pendent Hypocrites between two fires " — and " open 
 the door wide for the Canada army." The princi- 
 
92 TREASON OF CHARLES LEE. 
 
 pal features of these plans had received the appro- 
 bation of the king, who, with the ministry. Parlia- 
 ment, and the nation, undoubtedly expected, by 
 the possession of the Lakes and the North River, to 
 complete the separation of the northern and south- 
 ern colonies, and conquer America in detail. 
 
 But in his secret letter of the 2d of April, the 
 General totally relinquished the idea of any offen- 
 sive operation, except that to the southward, and a 
 diversion occasionally upon the Hudson River. He 
 informed the Secretary of State that the principal 
 part of the plans formerly proposed could no lon- 
 ger be thought of; that the Jerseys must be aban- 
 doned, and Pennsylvania invaded only by sea. At 
 the same time he transmitted to the ministry, a 
 copy, in advance, of his confidential letter of the 5th 
 April, to Sir Guy Carleton, then commanding in 
 Canada, in which he said that little assistance was 
 to be expected from him to facilitate the approach 
 of the northern army — as "the operations already 
 determined upon," would not admit of his detach- 
 ing a corps to act up the Hudson River, in the be- 
 ginning of the campaign. In the same letter, he in- 
 formed General Carleton that he had intrusted to 
 a special messenger " information of too delicate a 
 nature to commit to paper, and of the utmost ini- 
 portance in favor of the northern army advancing 
 to Albany." The new expedition which he had 
 planned, was a " great secret " in New York, even 
 after the embarkation of a portion of the troops. 
 
TREASON OP CHARLES LEE. 93 
 
 When it came out, it is said that Sir Henry Clinton 
 refused to believe it possible that Howe intended 
 carrying the army to the southward. In the man- 
 uscript notes upon Stedman's history attributed to 
 him, is the following : " I owe it to truth to say 
 there was not I believe a man in the army except 
 Lord Cornwallis and General Grant, who did not 
 reprobate the movement to the southward, and see 
 the necessity of a co-operation with General Bur- 
 goyne." 
 
 A cotemporary writer says : " It is impossible 
 for the mind of man to conceive the gloom and re- 
 sentment of the army, on the retreat from the Jer- 
 seys, and the shipping them to the southward ; noth- 
 ing but being present and seeing the countenances 
 of the soldiers, could give an impression adequate 
 to the scene ; or paint the astonishment and despair 
 that reigned in New York, Avhen it was found that 
 the North River was deserted, and Burgoyne's ar- 
 my abandoned . . . The ruinous and dreadful 
 consequences were instantly foreseen and foretold ; 
 and despondence or execration filled every mouth. 
 Had there been no Canada army to desert or to 
 sacrifice, the voyage to the southward could only 
 originate from the most profound ignorance or im- 
 becility." 
 
 The evidence in the House of Commons, in the 
 subsequent Parliamentary examinations, indicates 
 that Howe did not consult many officers, and that 
 almost all opinions were against the movement as 
 
94 TREASON OF CHAKLES. LEE. 
 
 soon as it was known. Lord George Germaine, on 
 the 8th June, I'T'TO, defending the ministry, said : 
 " that he did not understand the ohject of the 
 southern expedition by the Capes of Virginia," and 
 in general, the " absurd voyage to Chesapeake" was 
 afterwards condemned, as a pernicious measure, 
 j^roducing fatal effects — the loss of Burgoyne's army, 
 the French alliance, and so indirectly, most of the 
 subsequent advantages of the Americans. 
 
 The influence of Lee's plan is easily recognized 
 in the movements of the Howes, which were then 
 so unintelligible to both armies. Their natural dis- 
 trust of him must have had great weight in their 
 determination, and may have prevented them from 
 adopting it in full. They never satisfactorily ex- 
 plained their motives, though seriously challenged 
 in the subsequent debates in Parliament. They 
 might well be reluctant to admit that they had fol- 
 lowed the suggestions of one who was personally so 
 obnoxious to the king and ministry. Their failures 
 certainly would not increase their readiness to al- 
 lude to what had proved so fatal a gift. So they 
 seem to have preserved the secret of the expedition. 
 " A mystery " in Parliament then — ^it has continued 
 to remain so to this day. 
 
 But however all this may be — whether or not, 
 future investigations and discoveries shall prove 
 that the plan did mainly influence the Howes in 
 their determination — you will not hesitate in agree- 
 ing with me that the failure was no fault of its an- 
 
TEEASON OP CHAELES LEE. 95 
 
 thor. It is conceived in as wicked a spirit of trea- 
 son as ever existed. To the extent of Ms knowl- 
 edge of the tten circumstances of botli armies, it is 
 perfectly adapted for entire success, and tkat it did 
 not ruin the cause, we may thank that God who 
 ruleth in the affairs of men. 
 
 There are many interesting points in which this 
 " Plan " of treason, touches the subsequent career 
 of its author, both in the American service and af- 
 ter his disgrace. I shall at present allude to but 
 one of them, at the risk of leaving you in doubt 
 which was the greater — ^his hypocrisy or his im- 
 pudence. 
 
 Just before the evacuation of Philadelphia, 
 Washington became convinced that the enemy in- 
 tended to march through the Jerseys. Lee, only 
 three days before they actually crossed the river, 
 wrote to the Commander-in-chief as follows : 
 
 " My opinion is that if they are in a capacity to 
 act offensively, they will, either immediately from 
 Philadelphia, or, by a feint in descending the river 
 as far as New Castle, and then turning to the right, 
 march directly and rapidly towards Lancaster, by 
 which means they will draw us out of our present 
 position, and oblige us to fight on terms perhaps 
 very disadvantageous ; or that they will leave Lan- 
 caster and this army wide on the right, endeavour 
 to tale post on the Jnicer ])arts of tlie Susquehanna^ 
 and hy securing a communication ^vitli their ships 
 sent round into the hay for tli is purpose ^ be furnished 
 
96 TREASON OF CHARLES LEE. 
 
 with the means of encouraging and feeding the In- 
 dian war, hroke out on the western frontier. This 
 last plan I mention as a possibility, but as less prob- 
 able than the former. 
 
 " If they are not in a capacity to act offensively, 
 but are stiU determiued to keep footing on the con- 
 tinent, there are strong reasons to tJiink, that they 
 will not shut themselves up in towns ^ hut take pos- 
 session of some tract of country^ which will afford 
 them dhow room and sustenance, and which is so 
 situated as to he the most effectually protected hy 
 their command of the waters ; and I have particu- 
 lar REASONS to think that they have cast their eyes 
 for tliis purpose on the lower counties of Delaaoare, 
 and some of the Maryland counties on the Eastern 
 sliore. If they are resolved on this Plan, it cer- 
 tainly will he very difficult to prevent them, or re- 
 move them afterwards, as tlieir shipping will give 
 them such mighty advantages. Whether they do 
 or do not adopt any of these plans, there can no in- 
 convenience arise from considering the subject, nor 
 from devising means of defeating their purposes, 
 on the supposition that they will. 
 
 "In short, I think it would be proper to put 
 these queries to ourselves. Should they march di- 
 rectly towards Lancaster and the Susquehanna, or 
 indirectly from New Castle, what are we to do ? 
 Should they, though it is less probable, leave this 
 army and even Lancaster, wide on the right, and 
 endeavour to establish themselves on the lower 
 
TEEASON OF CHARLES LEE. 97 
 
 parts of the Susquehanna, what are we to do i 
 And, should they act only on the defensive, and 
 attempt to secure to themselves some such tract 
 of country as I have mentioned, what measures are 
 we to pursue ? These are matters I really think 
 worthy of consideration." 
 
 Washington's reply of the same date, 15th June, 
 1778, contains the following passages : 
 
 " I have received your letter of this date, and 
 thank you, as I shall any officer, over whom I have 
 the honor to be placed, for his opinion and advice 
 on matters of importance — especially when they 
 proceed from the fountain of candor, and not from 
 a captious spirit, or an itch for criticism . . . and 
 here let me again assure you, that I shall be always 
 happy in a free communication of your sentiments 
 upon any important subject relative to the service, 
 and only beg that they may come directly to myself. 
 The custom, which many officers have, of speaking 
 freely of things, and reprobating measures, which 
 upon investigation, may be found to be unavoidable, 
 is never productive of good, but often, of very mis- 
 chievous consequences." 
 
 Lee seems to have had from the beginning of 
 his service in the Continental army, a passion for a 
 negotiation with the British Generals. Soon after 
 he arrived before Boston, in 1775, his correspond- 
 ence with his old friend Burgoyne, led to a pro- 
 posal for a meeting which might " induce such ex- 
 planations as might tend, ia their consequences, to 
 
98 TREASON OF CHAELES LEE. 
 
 peace." He submitted the proposal to the Massa- 
 chusetts Provincial Congress, whose reply, while it 
 renewed the expression of their confidence in his 
 wisdom, discretion, and integrity, hinted so strongly 
 at the probable distrust and jealousy, which might 
 arise, that the project was abandoned. His first 
 letter to Burgoyne was written from Philadelphia, 
 just before his appointment to the army, and before 
 he sent it, "he had the precaution to read it to 
 several members of the Continental Congress." 
 Even then he was guilty of a duplicity which falls 
 little short of treachery. He held a language official 
 and a language confidential, writing a private letter 
 to Burgoyne (which has never yet seen the light) 
 expressly referred to in the following letter from 
 the British Secretary for Foreign Affairs to the 
 French Minister. Is it unreasonable to suppose 
 that Lee's confidences may have disclosed those 
 early intimations so guardedly given of the secret 
 aid of France, which occasioned the first step to- 
 wards a foreign alliance by the appointment of the 
 secret Committee of Foreign Affairs in I'T'TS ? 
 
 LORD EOCHFORD TO COUNT DE GUINES. 
 
 "September 8th, 1115. 
 
 "Milord Rochford presente ses comphmens a 
 son Excellence Monsieur le Compte de Gruines, et a 
 I'honneur de lui remettre les lettres imprimees de 
 M. le General Burgoyne et M. Lee, et le prier de 
 vouloir bien les lui renvoyer a son loisir. Milord 
 
TEEASOlSr OF CHAELES LEE. 99 
 
 a I'lionneur de conflrmer a son excellence ce qu 'il lui 
 assura Her an matin touchant ce qui a ete confie en 
 ecrit an General Burgoyne par ]\I. Lee sur son hon- 
 neur. Ces assurances se trouvent dans une lettre 
 particuliere et confidentielle de ]\I. Lee, laquelle n' 
 est pas imprimee, et on ne sera pas facte d' etre en 
 etat de le contredire anthentiquement." 
 
 Lee's last published letter to his old companion 
 in arms was dated December 1, II'IS. On the 
 4th, he wrote from the Camp on Prospect Hill, to 
 his friend Rush : 
 
 " I have written a parting letter to Burgoyne, 
 which in my opinion is the best of my performan- 
 ces. I believe it does not tally with your j)olitical 
 creed in some parts — but I am convinced tlmt you 
 Tmvenot virtue enough for indqwrnlence ; nor ih I 
 tliinh it ccdcuJated for your 7iaj)j:>ine-S'S,' besides Iliave 
 some remaining ijrejudices as an Englishman — but 
 you will judge Avhether they are honest and liberal 
 — if they shock you, be gentle ui your censures." 
 
 Again, on his way through New Jersey to join 
 Washington at Harlem, in 1776, he suggested to 
 Congress a conference with Lord Howe, by some 
 gentlemen in the simple character of indLviduals 
 who are supposed to have influence, and in whom 
 they could confide, to demand what terms he had 
 to offer. This was just one month after the Staten 
 Island conference, of the character and results of 
 which he could hardly have been ignorant. 
 
100 TEEASOBT OF CHARLES LEE. 
 
 With Sir Henry Clinton, too, at Charleston, he 
 was exchanging compliments, in IIIQ, and in 1778, 
 just before the evacuation of Pliiladelfliia^ and the 
 British retreat across New Jersey^ he was in cor- 
 respondence with that officer — a correspondence 
 which, as well as later performances of a similar 
 character, will be more fully noticed hereafter, in 
 connection with the Battle of Monmouth, and his 
 subsequent career. Much of the evidence of his 
 unworthiness, in my possession, is so connected with 
 his conduct on that occasion, and the discussions 
 which followed, as to make that the proper place 
 to present it. At present, I must content myself 
 with the direct proof of the principal fact, with 
 such brief illustration as the occasion wiU allow. 
 
 Lord and General Howe, in the month of Feb- 
 ruary, 1777, are said to have attempted to open a 
 negotiation with the Congress through General Lee. 
 I am unable to resist the conclusion, that this cor- 
 respondence, as it agrees in point of time, formed a 
 part of Lee's attempt to be of service to the Crown, 
 by betraying the cause of America. The rumors 
 which prevailed in England and among the Loyal- 
 ists in America, as well as the British army, indicate 
 a strong expectation that Lee's application to Con- 
 gress was about to result in important changes in 
 affairs. He was supposed to be high in favor, and 
 the style of his first letters indicates great confidence 
 in himself. This confidence was not without foun- 
 dation, as we have seen, although his capture had 
 
TREASON OF CHAELES LEE. 101 
 
 shaken the opinions of some, and led others to can- 
 vass his merits more carefully than ever before. 
 Some questioned the justice of Congress in their 
 anxiety to protect and prefer him in the exchange 
 of prisoners, while others censured him bitterly and 
 insinuated that he was treacherous. 
 
 On the 9th of February, he wrote to Washing- 
 ton, inclosing a letter to Congress, which the Howes 
 had permitted him to send. He says : " As Lord 
 and General Howe have given me permission to 
 send the enclosed to the Congress, and as the con- 
 tents are of the last importance to me, and perhaps 
 not less so to the community, I most earnestly en- 
 treat, my dear General, that you will despatch it 
 immediately, and order the express to be as expe- 
 ditious as possible." In the letter to Congress, 
 which was inclosed. General Lee requested that 
 they would permit two or three gentlemen to repair 
 to New York, to whom he might communicate what 
 deeply interested himself, and in his opinion the 
 community. He says : " The most salutary effects 
 may and I am convinced will result from it ; and as 
 Lord and General Howe will grant a safe conduct 
 to the gentlemen deputed, it can possibly have no 
 ill consequences." He expressed his wish that some 
 of the gentlemen composing the Committee at Phil- 
 adelphia might be nominated. Robert Morris, 
 George Clymer, and George Walton, were the mem- 
 bers of this Committee. Congress having adjourned 
 from Philadelphia to Baltimore on the 12th of 
 
102 TREASON OP CHAKLES LEE. 
 
 December, 1776, assembled in the latter city on the 
 20th ; and, on the next day, these gentlemen were 
 appomted to execute such Continental business 
 as might be proper and necessary to be done at 
 Philadelphia. General Lee also wrote with very 
 great earnestness to the Virginia Lees in Congress, 
 and to Robert Morris and Benjamin Rush, soliciting 
 their influence to accomphsh his object. He gave 
 no hint of the nature of the proposed communica- 
 tion, and it is obvious that none of his correspond- 
 ents were acquainted with any of his ulterior pur- 
 poses. Washington himself could see no possible 
 evil that could result from granting General Lee's 
 request ; and as he thought some good might, 
 wished with all his heart that Congress had grati- 
 fied him. In this view of the case, Morris concur- 
 red, while Richard Llenry Lee finally coincided 
 with the majority in Congress, although his per- 
 sonal feelings towards General Lee were such, as to 
 cause a great struggle in the determination. On 
 the 21st of February, Congress directed General 
 Washington to acquaint Lee that they judged it 
 altogether improper to send any of their body to 
 communicate with him, and that they could not per- 
 ceive how a compliance with his request would 
 tend to his advantage or the interest of the public. 
 On the 26th of February, Lee was still impatiently 
 expecting the gentlemen from Congress. He had 
 urged the necessity of the greatest "possible ex- 
 pedition, as expedition in the present crisis of afikirs 
 
TEEASOW OF CHAELES LEE. 103 
 
 is of very material consequence ; " and " to save time 
 in the present situation of affairs is a matter of the 
 most material consideration." 
 
 About the middle of March, Major Morris was 
 permitted to visit General Lee, who availed himself 
 of the opjjortunity, when Morris returned, to trans- 
 mit to the President of Congress the following 
 pressing letter, reiterating his former request. It 
 is evident that he was not aware of the action Con- 
 gress had already taken upon his application. 
 
 CHAELES LEE TO JOHN HANCOCK. 
 
 " New York, March y" 19th, 1111. 
 
 "Sie: 
 
 "In the letter which sometime ago I did myself 
 the honor of addressing to the Congress, altho' my 
 own interests were deeply concerned, they were not 
 simply so : I conceived those of America in general 
 to be equally at stake. I am confident that had not 
 some difficulties, which a man in my situation must 
 be unacquainted with, prevented it, you would have 
 comply'd with my request or favour'd me with the 
 reasons of my disappointment. I most earnestly con- 
 jure you therefore. Sir, that as Lord and General 
 Howe will grant 'em safe passports, two or three 
 gentlemen may be deputed to converse with me on 
 subjects of so great importance not only to myself 
 but the community I so sincerely love — ^to prevent 
 delay I have commissioned Mr. Morris to deliver 
 this letter and flatter myself that I shall not be 
 
104 TREASON OP CHAELES LEE. 
 
 thouglit indecently pressing, when I request that 
 the gentlemen may without loss of time be deputed, 
 or that the inexpediency of the measure may be 
 signifled to me by letter. 
 
 " I am. Sir, with the greatest respect, 
 " Your most obedient, humble servant, 
 
 "Chaeles Lee." 
 
 This letter was received in Philadelphia on the 
 28th, and read in Congress on the 29th March, 
 whereupon after due consideration they adopted 
 the following resolution : 
 
 '■'■ Resolved^ That Congress still judge it im- 
 proper to send any of their members to confer 
 with General Lee, upon the subjects mentioned in 
 his letter." 
 
 Those who are curious in dates will not fail to 
 observe that this final action of Congress took place 
 on the same day on which his treason was consum- 
 mated. The reasons which prevailed in Congress 
 against the measure were not fully known to him, 
 but Kobert Morris, in his letter of March 6th, 1777, 
 to General Washington, hinted what he supposed 
 to be " one of the most forcible arguments " used 
 against it. He says : " I have not heard that it 
 was used, but it occurred to me on reading General 
 Lee's letters ; I mean the effect it might have at 
 the Court of France, should they hear, as they un- 
 doubtedly would, that members of Congress visited 
 General Lee by permission of the British Commis- 
 
TEEASON OF CHAELES lEE. 105 
 
 sioners. The meeting vi-ith. Lord Howe at Staten 
 Island last summer injured Mi". Deane's negotiations 
 much, and retarded supplies intended for us." Mr. 
 Sparks states that he has seen a sketch of the de- 
 bate of Congress on this subject, in which " the 
 same argument was used to prove that the step was 
 impolitic ; and it was moreover said to be degrad- 
 ing, as Lord and General Howe could have no pow- 
 ers to treat of conciliation, except what they had 
 derived from Parliament, which were known to ex- 
 tend only to receiving submissions and granting 
 pardons. To send a committee to meet them under 
 such circumstances, or to listen to their proposals 
 through General Lee, was deemed inconsistent with 
 the dignity of Congress." 
 
 The proposition was denounced in the patriot 
 publications of the day, as one of the repeated, 
 insidious, and delusive attempts of the enemies of 
 America to seduce the people from their virtuous 
 efforts, by holding out false ideas of peace and re- 
 conciliation. The same view was taken in a letter 
 written by William Gordon, the historian, on the 
 3d of April, ITT 7. He says: "... What has 
 Lee been after of late? Suftering himself to be 
 made a paw of by the Howes ! If they have any 
 proposals to make, fit for men of honor to ofPer, let 
 them do it directly — ^they know how to send to the 
 Congress." 
 
 A tory pamphlet published in 1*780, referring 
 to this affair, stated that "General Lee, while a 
 
106 TKEASON or CHAELES LEE. 
 
 prisoner at New York, wrote two letters to inti- 
 mate the willingness of Lord and General Howe to 
 suspend the war, and enter upon a treaty for a per- 
 manent peace ; lie was then high, in the confidence 
 of the Congress, and requested to be appointed one 
 of their Commissioners on this important service." 
 
 The correspondence which I have examined, in- 
 dicates a general feeling among the officers of the 
 army in favor of the application. The following 
 extracts present the best cotemporary view of the 
 whole subject, showing how sincere was the interest 
 felt in Lee's personal welfare, and at the same time 
 most conclusively, that no suspicion was entertained 
 of his treachery. 
 
 GENERAL GREENE TO JOHN ADAMS. 
 
 " Baskinridge, March 3, 1111. 
 
 ^' . . . I beg leave to make some enquiry 
 into the policy of some late resolutions of Congress 
 that respect General Lee. Why is he denied his 
 request of having some persons appointed to confer 
 with him ? Can any injury arise ? Will it reflect 
 any dishonor upon your body to gratify the request 
 of one of your Generals ? Suppose any misfortune 
 should attend him immediately, will not all his 
 friends say, he was made a sacrifice of? That you 
 had it in your power to save him, but refused your 
 aid ? He says in his letter, he has something of the 
 last importance to propose with respect to himself, 
 and adds, perhaps not less so to the public. You 
 
TEEASOW OF CHAELES LEE. 107 
 
 cannot suppose tliat the General would hold out a 
 proposition to bring us into disgrace or servitude ? 
 If he would, it is certainly our interest to know it 
 seasonably, that we may not make a sacrifice for a 
 man that is undeserving of it. If he would not, 'tis 
 certainly a piece of justice due to his merit to give 
 him a hearing. To hear what he has to propose 
 cannot injure us, for we shall be at liberty to im- 
 prove or reject his proposition. 
 
 " But let us consider it in another point of view. 
 Will not our enemies, the disaffected, improve this 
 report to our prejudice ? They will naturally say 
 that General Howe had a mind to offer some terms 
 of peace, and that you refused to lend an ear or give 
 him a hearing, and that you were obstinately bent 
 on pursuing the war, evidently to the ruin of the 
 people. Had you not consented to hear General 
 and Lord Howe last spring, the public never would 
 have been satisfied but there might have been an 
 accommodation upon safe and honorable conditions. 
 For my own part, I could wish you to give General 
 Lee a hearing." 
 
 JOHN ADAMS TO GENERAL GREENE. 
 
 [Baltimore, March — , llll.} 
 
 "... You ask why General Lee is denied 
 his request. You ask. Can any injury arise ? Will 
 it reflect any dishonor upon Congress ? I do not 
 know that it would reflect any dishonor, nor was it 
 refused upon that principle. But Congress was of 
 
108 TEEASON or CHAELES LEE. 
 
 opinion that great injuries would arise. It would 
 take up too much, time to recapitulate all the argu- 
 ments which were used upon the occasion of his 
 letter. But Congress was never more unanimous 
 than upon that question. Nobody, I believe, would 
 have objected against a conference concerning his 
 private affairs, or his particular case. But it was 
 inconceivable that a conference should be necessary 
 upon such subjects. Any thing relative to these 
 might have been conveyed by letter. But it ap- 
 pears to be an artful stratagem of the two grateful 
 brothers to hold up to the public yiew the phantom 
 of a negotiation, in order to give spirits and courage 
 to the tories, to distract and divide the whigs at a 
 critical moment, when the utmost exertions are ne- 
 cessary to draw together an army. They meant, 
 further, to amuse opposition in England, and to 
 amuse foreign nations by this manoeuvre, as well 
 as the whigs in America, and I confess it is not 
 without indignation that I see such a man as Lee 
 suffer himself to be duped by their policy, so far as 
 to become the instrument of it, as Sullivan was 
 upon a former occasion . . . 
 
 "But further. We see what use government 
 and the two houses make of the former conference 
 with Lord Howe. What a storm in England they 
 are endeavoring to raise against us from that cir- 
 cumstance. 
 
 " But another thing. We have undoubted in- 
 telligence from Europe that the ambassadors and 
 
TEEASON OF CHARLES LEE. 109 
 
 other instruments of the British ministry at foreign 
 courts made the worst use of the former conference. 
 That conference did us a great and essential injury 
 at the French court, you may depend upon it. 
 Lord Howe knows it, and wishes to repeat it. 
 
 " Congress is under no concern about any use 
 that the disaffected can make of this refusal. They 
 would have made the worst use of a conference. 
 As to any terms of peace, look into the speech to 
 both Houses, the answers of both Houses. Look 
 into the proclamations. It is needless to enumer- 
 ate particulars which prove that the Howes have 
 no power but to murder or disgrace us." 
 
 Washington had deferred the communication of 
 the first resolution of Congress, doubtless expecting 
 that they would alter their determination. He 
 finally wrote to Lee from Morristown, on the 1st 
 of April, announcing the result of his appHcations. 
 The following letter is Lee's res23onse to their re- 
 fusal : written precisely one week after his Plan 
 had been submitted to the Howes : 
 
 GENERAL LEE TO GENERAL WASHINGTON. 
 
 " New York, 5th April, 1111. 
 
 " My Dear Sir : 
 
 " It is a most unfortunate circumstance for my- 
 self, and I think not less so for the public, that the 
 Congress have not thought proper to comply with 
 my request. It could not possibly have been at- 
 tended with any ill consequences, and might with 
 
110 TREASON OF CHARLES LEE. 
 
 good ones. At least it was an indulgence, which. I 
 thought my situation entitled me to. But I am 
 unfortunate in everything, and this stroke is the 
 severest I have yet experienced. God send you a 
 different fate. Adieu, my dear General. 
 
 " Yours most truly and affectionately, 
 
 " Charles Lee." 
 
 This letter needs little comment in this connec- 
 tion. It has been hitherto, the occasion of not a 
 little sympathy for its author. Taken as an evi- 
 dence of " the severe humiliation his haughty spirit 
 had experienced" in his capture, this "brief sad 
 note," as it has been characterized, in which " his 
 pungent and caustic humor is at an end," has been 
 contrasted with " the humorous, satirical, self-confi- 
 dent tone of his former letters." There is really no 
 word for it but hypocrisy — I doubt if its parallel 
 can be found in history. 
 
 The only subsequent allusion to this subject 
 which I have met with in his correspondence, is in 
 a letter to Robert Morris, dated at New York, on 
 the 19tli May, 111^, in which he says : " It would 
 for several reasons have been highly improper, to 
 have opened the business by letter, which, if I have 
 the pleasure of seeing you, you will be convinced 
 of" 
 
 What he expected to accomplish by his inter- 
 view with the members of Congress is matter of 
 conjecture — except as we may infer it from his co- 
 
TREASON OF CHAELES LEE. Ill 
 
 temporary scheme of treason, and the earnestness 
 with which he urged his personal friends and mem- 
 bers of the Committee at Philadelphia to visit him 
 nnder the safe conduct of the Howes. It is hardly 
 too much to suspect, in view of the base treachery 
 of his Plan, that if any thing was to be accomplished 
 by the most unworthy means and appliances, he, at 
 any rate, would not shrink from the attempt. From 
 the beginning of the contest, it was a principal ob- 
 ject with the British emissaries (whether Generals 
 or Commissioners, or both,) to weaken the power 
 and counteract the views of the American leaders, 
 by breaking and dividing, the Congress among 
 themselves. To complete their design, they were 
 ready to invoke not only fire and sword, but intim- 
 idation, falsehood, and corruption ! 
 
 This policy culminated in the grand Commis- 
 sion of 17.Y8 — which produced nothing but disap- 
 pointment and chagrin in England, with an end to 
 all negotiation. In the Parliamentary discussions 
 which followed the intelligence of Burgoyne's de- 
 feat and capture and preceded the appointment of 
 that commission, there is a significant passage which 
 I will quote here, as it serves to show the character 
 of Lee's communications to his relatives in. England. 
 
 On the 4th December, 1777, Sir Charles Bun- 
 bury said that " he would not take upon him to say 
 what America would do now; but he could assure 
 the House from the authority of a dear, but unfor- 
 tunate relation of his, the unhappy General Lee, 
 
112 TEEASON OF CHAELES LEE. 
 
 that the Americans would, at the beginning of the 
 dispute, have been perfectly satisfied to submit in 
 every respect to Great Britain, provided they should 
 be at liberty to raise, by what means they thought 
 proper, any sum which the Parliament of England 
 should demand of them. He could not tell whether 
 they would make such an offer now : but he would 
 put them to the test, and by offering them peace, 
 employ the only possible means to subdue them ; 
 and that was by dividing them . . . "' 
 
 Here, I must for the present occasion, leave the 
 subject. The Battle of Monmouth, Lee's trial,- and 
 his subsequent career, must be omitted. I will de- 
 tain you but for a moment, at its close. 
 
 He died in Philadelphia, before the end of the 
 war, at ten o'clock in the evening of Wednesday, 
 the 2d of October, 1*782, after an illness of five 
 days. His last words, uttered in the delirium of 
 fever, declared the wandering fancies of his mind 
 to be with the army, and in the heady currents of 
 the fight — " Stand by me, my brave grenadiers ! " 
 His remains were conducted, on Friday morning, 
 with military honors, from the City-Tavern, at- 
 tended by a large concourse of gentlemen of dis- 
 tinction, and deposited in Christ Church Yard. 
 
 Among those who paid their passing tribute of 
 respect to his memory, there were doubtless not a 
 few moved by a generous pity for the misfortunes, 
 as they seemed, which enveloped his later years. 
 
TREASON OF CHAELES LEE. 113 
 
 Their sympatliy lie had rejected while alive, and 
 that could hardly follow him to his grave. But 
 they forgot the wilful and wayward conduct, which 
 had alienated all who were truly the friends of 
 American Liberty ; they remembered only the stir- 
 ring tones of that patriotism, as they thought, which 
 roused them to arms and urged them to independ- 
 ence. To them it might be as the same tale, and 
 told as sternly, as any of the old familiar lessons of 
 human disappointment. For, from that point of 
 view, neither Troy, nor Carthage, nor any of the 
 old ruined castles of Europe, nor the most tragic 
 story, was ever more full of broken hopes and shat- 
 tered schemes. 
 
 But this is changed. If the truth of history 
 means any thing — 
 
 " Only the actions of the just, 
 Smell sweet, and blossom in the dust." 
 
 Tacitus has told us that " it is the chief part of 
 the historian's duty to re-judge the conduct of men; 
 that generous actions may be snatched from obliv- 
 ion, and that the author of pernicious counsels, and 
 the perpetrator of evil deeds, may see beforehand, 
 the infamy that awaits them at the tribunal of pos- 
 terity." So, too, to translate the language of him, 
 who told the story of our Independence in the 
 mother-tongue of Dante : " Make yourselves infa- 
 mous by your deeds, and history shall make you 
 infamous by her words ! " There are, it is true. 
 
114 TREASON OF CHAELES LEE. 
 
 human failures, wMcIl prudence or policy might 
 conceal, which kindness and courtesy might modify; 
 which '' courage overshadows with his shield, which 
 imagination covers with her wings, and charity dims 
 with her tears." But Truth " forgives no insult and 
 endures no stain ; " and history demands moral sym- 
 pathies of the highest and noblest kind. " Every 
 truly great and original action has a prospective 
 greatness, not alone from the power of the man who 
 achieves it, but from the various aspects and high 
 thoughts which the same action will continue to 
 j)resent and call up in the minds of others, to the 
 end, it may be, of all time." So, too, with that 
 which is bad — like the poetical vision of the Angel 
 of Sin — -it assumes vast proportions, and stands in 
 the pathway of Time — 
 
 " A monumental, melanclioly gloom 
 Seen down all ages." 
 
 It is impossible to avoid the constantly recur- 
 ring contrast of Lee's career, with that of his great 
 Chief How we love to turn and linger in contem- 
 plation of the character of Washington, which we 
 always recognize with a sense of affectionate admi- 
 ration, not unmingled with an awe Hke that felt as 
 in the presence of some great Spiritual Power. He 
 who " in weariness and painfulness, in watchings 
 often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold 
 and nakedness, in perils among false brethren," still 
 bent all the force of his understanding, and direct- 
 
TREASON OF CHAELES LEE. 115 
 
 eel all Ms ttouglits and actions, to the good of his 
 country. " In Mm were united the purity of the 
 most disinterested patriotism, and all the energy 
 of the most stirring ambition; the utmost reluc- 
 tance to engage in the contest, with the firmest will 
 never to abandon it when begun." Of him, it might 
 be said with greater truth than it was said of the 
 famous Spanish Cardinal : " He was like a city 
 on the margin of deej) waters, where no receding 
 tide reveals any thing that is mean, squalid, or 
 unbecoming.'' So 
 
 " Let his great example stand 
 Colossal, seen of every land, 
 And keep the Soldier firm, the Statesman pure ; 
 Till in all lands, and through all human story, 
 The path of duty be the "way to globy.' 
 
 New-York, June 22rf, 1858. 
 
It is proposed to publish 
 
 Memoirs of the Life and Treason of Charles Lee, Major General, 
 second in command in the American Army of the Eevolution, together 
 with his Political and Military Writings and Correspondence with many 
 Distinguished Characters, both in Europe and America. Edited by 
 Georoe H. Moore, Librarian of the New-York Historical Society. 
 
 The work will comprise all the materials in Langworthy's Memoirs, 
 of which two editions have been published in England and three in Ameri- 
 ca, and the entire proceedings of the Court Martial on Lee, in I'llS, all 
 which are long since out of print aiid now rare, besides numerous original 
 letters and documents, never before collected or published. It will be il- 
 lustrated with several engravings on steel, maps, and plans, together with 
 fac-similes of some of the most important documents.