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belief; and fate allotted him exactly the biographer whom he deserved. The narrative compiled by the editor of his papers and correspondence is inaccurate, insincere, and vague to nebulosity. There is a strange contrast beween the reputation which enveloped Charles Lee during what may be called the mythical and legendary period of his history, and the figure that he presented after his actions began to be watched, and his words noted, by the hard-headed observers who surrounded him in America.

From the earliest days of the Stamp Act Lee declared himself against George Grenville's policy. In 1767 he wrote from Warsaw to a nobleman of his acquaintance, condemning what he described as the abomination of disfranchising three millions of people of all the rights of men, for the gratification of the revenge "of a blundering knavish Secretary of State, and a scoundrel Attorney General." 2 When war was imminent, Lee had an opinion on the merits of the controversy which, for him, was genuine and long-lived; and he likewise was a disappointed man, with a grievance against his own Government. A pertinacious, and anything but a fastidious, place-hunter, he had of late years got nothing except a grant of twenty thousand acres in Florida; to which shadowy benefit he would have vastly preferred a patent place bringing in a hundred solid guineas at the end of every quarter. He had purchased, on borrowed money, a small landed property in the colony of Virginia; but he was not a colonist; nor was he any relation, (as every American takes care to assure himself,) of Light Horse Harry Lee, the right arm of General Greene in the Carolinas, or of that magnificent soldier who, forty years ago, led the Confederate

1 Memoirs of the Life of the late Charles Lee, Esquire, LieutenantColonel of the Forty-fourth Regiment, Colonel in the Portuguese service, Major-General and Aide-de-Camp to the King of Poland, and Second in Command in the Service of the United States of America during the Revolution. Dublin; 1792.

2 General Lee to Lord Thanet; May 4, 1767.

army in the War of the Secession to many victories, and some glorious defeats.

When in 1775 Charles Lee declared himself for the Revolution, it was a strong step for a British officer to take; and he did not under-estimate the value of the support which he bestowed upon the party of his adoption. Lee never concealed his belief that he brought a large contribution of social prestige, and military talent, to the assistance of people who were lamentably devoid of both. He set a very high price on his personal sacrifices and his professional accomplishments. While better men, in that season of public distress and denudation, were spending largely of their own, and accepting nothing from the Federal Treasury, Lee exacted thirty thousand dollars as compensation for the loss of his estate in England, (which was no rich or unencumbered possession,) and for the surrender of the half-pay which he drew as a commissioned officer in the Royal army. He expected that, so soon as he declared himself an adherent of the Revolution, he would be hailed as Commander-inChief by acclamation; but the gratitude of Congress, although excessive, stopped short of fatuity. Lee was included in the earliest list of Major Generals; a compliment which he accepted with the studied indifference of one who five years previously had received that title from the hands of a European monarch.

Lee's disdain of American soldiership was as unbounded as his appreciation of his own genius and capacity. He had composed a treatise on a theme which always has had a peculiar attraction for bad generals with facile pens, the nature and importance of the military coup d'ail. That was a gift of which, when subjected to a singularly decisive test at the battle of Monmouth Court House, he proved to be as utterly destitute as any theorist that ever wore a sword; but he none the less sneered at his colleagues behind their backs, and lectured them to their faces, about the arts of strategy and fortification, with a profuse assortment of technical verbiage, and in a tone of insufferable superiority. Every month that

passed, his arrogance and pedantry grew more and more distasteful to men who were making themselves into good officers by applying to the business of war the sound sense, and honest purpose, which had already brought them prosperity in the civil affairs of life. It was not to be expected that a merchant or a farmer, who had reluctantly put on a uniform because his country was in danger, should relish being informed that one of his comrades, whose antecedents had been exactly the same as his, was an ignorant bumpkin "who did not know a sandbag from a chevaux-de-frise;" and such criticism would be even less acceptable when it related to his own deficiencies, and was addressed directly to himself. Lee had been in chief command at Charleston when Sir Peter Parker was so roughly handled in June 1776. The repulse of the British squadron was mainly due to Colonel Moultrie, who knew the land and water of old; who was acquainted with the character and capabilities of the local troops; and who, a Carolinian himself, extracted from a Carolinian garrison the best fighting which they had to give. It was Moultrie who assisted in building, and displayed rare skill and resolution in defending, that fort on Sullivan's Island which still bears his name. Lee's part in the affair was to mar, and meddle, and scold; until his gallant and blunt subordinate contrived to make him understand that a competent and zealous officer, when the enemy is within gun-shot, does not relish being catechised like a cadet in a military academy who has fallen behindhand in his course of studies.1

1 "Does your engineer understand what is the necessary degree of talus for the traverse in the fort? If I recommend the construction of an advanced flèche on the right flank, will he comprehend it? For heaven's sake, Sir, as you are in an important post, exert yourself. When you issue orders, suffer them not to be trifled with. I expect that you enforce the execution of whatever is necessary for the honor and safety of your garrison." After pages of this ludicrously misplaced objurgation, Lee suddenly remembered that there were limits to the docility of a Southern gentleman, and apologised to Moultrie for his prolixity and didactic manner. would have done better to tear up his letter; but he was of those who cannot endure to waste a literary composition.

He

Lee did not confine his strictures to American generals. At a moment when, overtaken by the consequences of his faults, he had ample food for reflection on his own account, he found leisure to compile an elaborate essay on the imperfections of Sir William Howe.1 As an executive soldier, (he said,) Howe was all fire and activity, brave and cool as Julius Cæsar. But he was seldom left to himself. Never had poor mortal, thrust into high station, been surrounded by such fools and scoundrels. "M'Kensey, Balfour, Galloway, were his counsellors; they urged him to all acts of harshness. They were his scribes. All the damned stuff which was issued to the astonished world was theirs. I believe he scarcely ever read the letters he signed." That, at all events, was a charge to which Lee himself was not amenable; for he and his personal staff were a happy family together. Although very few military people were exactly to his fancy, he never was dissatisfied with his aides-decamp; and they, on their side, had easy times under a chief who, (if literary style is any guide,) must undoubtedly have penned or drafted every line of his own correspondence. For Lee's official despatches, and his private letters, are all in the same characteristic, and, (most fortunately,) inimitable manner. His accents, always strident, touched their shrillest note wherever he saw reason to apprehend that Congress would recognise the deserts of another as above his own. "Great God!

1 Lee's Character of General Howe, written in June 1778. The author was then under arrest, and awaiting a Court-martial.

2 Lee gave General Gates a glowing account of the behaviour of his own Staff during the bombardment of Charleston. "Old Jenifer and little Nourse strutted like crows in a gutter. The fire was, I assure you, very hot. This affair is only the prelude to a more serious one, the event of which the great God of battles only knows. I mean the great and universal God; not the partial God of the Jews."

Lee's religious views kept turning up in very odd places. "I desire most earnestly," (so ran a provision in his Will,) "that I may not be buried in any church or church-yard, or within a mile of any Presbyterian or Anabaptist meeting-house; for, since I have resided in this country, I have kept so much bad company when living, that I do not chuse to continue it when dead."

Is it come to this? Have I not once already waived my military claims in deference to the whim and partiality of some of your members? Did I not consent to serve under an old churchwarden, of whom you had conceived a most extravagant and ridiculous opinion? Your eyes were at length opened, and Deacon Ward returned to his proper occupation; and would you now a second time load me with a similar disgrace?"

That passage was a fair specimen of the intemperance and impertinence with which Charles Lee discussed questions of military promotion. He did not regard the native American officers as his equals. He scoffed and railed at the sober and religious among their number; he was seldom a guest at the rather coarse and boisterous festivities in which others of them were well satisfied to indulge; and he was accused of not being ready to show, under his own roof or tent, sufficiently frequent examples of a more refined hospitality. With some jus

tice, but extraordinary indiscretion, he protested against the tendency of Americans to bedeck themselves with titles of office. He bade his companions remark how much more true dignity there was in the simplicity of address which prevailed among the ancient Romans; how majestically Decimus Brutus imperator, and Caius, Marcellus consul, sounded as compared to His Excellency Major-General Noodle.2 Lee himself pointedly affected the English mode of dispensing with the desig

1 Captain Graydon, the author of the Pennsylvanian Memoirs, was present at a barbecue; an entertainment which consisted in a hog roasted whole, with Madeira wine in proportion. Most principal officers of the army were there; but not Washington, nor any of his staff. "Neither," (wrote Graydon,) "was General Lee of the company. He had been invited; but had drily replied, that he did not like barbecues.' In fact, they are seldom a very Attic entertainment. The party was joyous, and pretty full of liquor; and I had the chagrin to observe that the drummer and fifer who made music for them, and were deserters from the enemy, were sneering at some of the gentlemen, who did not entirely preserve the dignity of their station, and were by much too liberal in the reciprocal use of the term 'General.'"

2 Charles Lee to his Excellency Patrick Henry, jun., Governor of Vir. ginia; July 29, 1776.

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