WEBVTT NOTE 6. Charles Lee: Champion of Liberty and Guerrilla War 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:08.000 Volume 4, Chapter 6, Charles Lee, Champion of Liberty and Guerrilla War 2 00:00:08.000 --> 00:00:15.000 If the choice of Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Army had been made on the basis of ability, 3 00:00:15.000 --> 00:00:24.000 genius, military experience, erudition, ardor for the cause of liberty, or for a combination of these qualities, 4 00:00:24.000 --> 00:00:38.000 This crucial appointment would not have gone to Washington, but to one Charles Lee. But political considerations ruled, and Lee, a native of Britain, had no political base. 5 00:00:38.000 --> 00:00:48.000 Mere merit was submerged, though some delegates did favor Lee for the job. George Washington and Charles Lee. 6 00:00:48.000 --> 00:00:56.000 No greater contrast could be found in their confrontation, and no more fateful choice of appointment could have been made. 7 00:00:56.000 --> 00:01:03.000 A decision which would bear heavily on the future course of the history of the United States. 8 00:01:03.000 --> 00:01:11.520 Washington, a half-educated, blunt, practical man, a highly conservative landed oligarch 9 00:01:11.520 --> 00:01:18.280 of Virginia, orthodox in his military and political views, a loser in his few previous 10 00:01:18.280 --> 00:01:26.120 battles, longed to become the head of a regular state army on the conventional European model. 11 00:01:26.120 --> 00:01:35.320 Lee, a brilliant, articulate, learned, déclassé, English intellectual, an ardent, witty, pungent 12 00:01:35.320 --> 00:01:41.320 individualist, personally and politically dedicated to liberty and deeply influenced 13 00:01:41.320 --> 00:01:47.200 by libertarian thought, an authentic military genius, had seen a great deal of fighting 14 00:01:47.200 --> 00:01:54.580 on the European model and saw its deficiencies for the American scene. It was almost inevitable 15 00:01:54.580 --> 00:02:00.980 that two such deeply contrasting figures, Lee was chosen by Congress as third in command 16 00:02:00.980 --> 00:02:09.500 of the army after Washington and Ward, would come to an irreparable clash. That clash came 17 00:02:09.500 --> 00:02:15.300 to pass, and since the seemingly inescapable verdict of history was to give the victory 18 00:02:15.300 --> 00:02:21.900 to Washington, Lee sank into disgrace and oblivion, from which historians are only now 19 00:02:21.900 --> 00:02:51.900 The Major Event in the Emerging Historical Rehabilitation of Lee is the work of John R. Alden, Charles Lee, Traitor or Patriot, the first sympathetic biography of Lee since the mid-19th century. The Alden volume is indispensable. A growing appreciation of the value of guerrilla warfare has greatly aided in this reevaluation of Lee. 20 00:02:51.900 --> 00:02:58.900 Lee was that exceedingly rare combination, a brilliant soldier and a gifted intellectual. 21 00:02:59.540 --> 00:03:06.300 He was also the only general on the American side, with the exception of his old English-born 22 00:03:06.300 --> 00:03:13.300 friend Horatio Gates, to have had substantial military experience. Affluent linguist and 23 00:03:13.340 --> 00:03:19.180 learned in political and military theory as well as in classical and English literature, 24 00:03:19.180 --> 00:03:25.880 Lee had been influenced by the strongly pro-whig history of England, written by a French Huguenot, 25 00:03:25.880 --> 00:03:32.180 Paul de Rapin, and later by the writings of Rousseau. After serving as an officer in the 26 00:03:32.180 --> 00:03:39.240 French and Indian War, where he picked up the apt sobriquet, boiling water, Lee performed 27 00:03:39.240 --> 00:03:44.840 with brilliance in the British expedition against the Spaniards in Portugal. Despite 28 00:03:44.840 --> 00:03:50.280 Despite his distinction, Lee was retired from the British Army after the Seven Years' War 29 00:03:50.280 --> 00:03:57.280 because of his outspoken criticism of British political and military leaders, and his increasingly 30 00:03:57.280 --> 00:04:01.680 radical Whig views had lost him favor with the Crown. 31 00:04:01.680 --> 00:04:06.920 In England, Lee was received with warmth in important Whig circles and became a friend 32 00:04:06.920 --> 00:04:12.900 of the Liberal Lords Thanet and Pembroke, of Charles York, and especially of the ardent 33 00:04:12.900 --> 00:04:19.900 liberal Colonel Isaac Barre. Thwarted in his military career at home, Lee became personal 34 00:04:20.540 --> 00:04:27.540 aide de camp to the rather liberal King Stanislaus of Poland. His letters from Poland reflected 35 00:04:27.540 --> 00:04:34.540 increasingly radical and libertarian views, denouncing the aggrandizement of George III, 36 00:04:34.980 --> 00:04:41.620 Granville and the Tories, toying with the idea of a republic and praising natural rights 37 00:04:41.620 --> 00:04:45.120 and the American Resistance Against the Stamp Act. 38 00:04:45.120 --> 00:04:51.360 He wrote, May God prosper the Americans in their resolution, that there may be one asylum 39 00:04:51.360 --> 00:04:58.080 at least on the earth for men who prefer their natural rights to the fantastical prerogatives 40 00:04:58.080 --> 00:05:04.120 of a foolish, perverted head because it wears a crown. 41 00:05:04.120 --> 00:05:10.200 Lee returned to England the following year, but his increasing radicalism again kept him 42 00:05:10.200 --> 00:05:17.200 came from military preferment. Befriended by General Sir Henry Conway, he became an ardent 43 00:05:17.200 --> 00:05:26.200 supporter of the Rockingham Whigs and of radical leader John Wilkes. By 1768, he was contemplating 44 00:05:26.200 --> 00:05:33.280 running for Commons to effect a glorious revolution in Britain. He was also increasingly attracted 45 00:05:33.280 --> 00:05:40.280 to the American Cause and habitually referred to America as that last asylum of freedom. 46 00:05:40.840 --> 00:05:47.440 At this time, Lee, Horatio Gates and other pro-American British officers began to gather 47 00:05:47.440 --> 00:05:54.440 periodically for an exchange of views. In 1769, Lee was made an honorary major general 48 00:05:56.240 --> 00:06:01.680 in the Army of the Pro-Russian King of Poland. The same year, he joined the Russian Army 49 00:06:01.680 --> 00:06:08.600 against Turkey, and had the opportunity to observe guerrilla warfare by Turks and Polish 50 00:06:08.600 --> 00:06:15.600 rebel forces. Ill and failing to be granted a command, Lee traveled widely through Central 51 00:06:15.980 --> 00:06:22.640 and Southern Europe, visiting such luminaries as Emperor Joseph II of Austria, and growing 52 00:06:22.640 --> 00:06:29.160 ever more bitter in his correspondence against the Tory policies at home. He blasted the 53 00:06:29.160 --> 00:06:35.320 The Prime Minister, the Duke of Grafton, as a man without conscience or honor, and wrote 54 00:06:35.320 --> 00:06:41.920 that, if the axe is not applied to his neck, it is laid to the root of our liberties, national 55 00:06:41.920 --> 00:06:47.000 honor and inheritance, there is no medium. 56 00:06:47.000 --> 00:06:52.040 More and more he spoke of being free in exile rather than submitting to the domination of 57 00:06:52.040 --> 00:06:54.560 George III. 58 00:06:54.560 --> 00:07:00.420 Excuseing his lack of urbanity on the subject, for the weak cause he ardently wished for 59 00:07:00.420 --> 00:07:07.200 triumph over tyranny, corruption, Grafton, North and the Devil, my puny dagger shall 60 00:07:07.200 --> 00:07:14.080 contribute its might of annoyance to the breast of despotism and wickedness. And he passionately 61 00:07:14.080 --> 00:07:21.320 conjured up the spirits of Cato, Brutus, Hampton and Sydney for the cause of liberty. George 62 00:07:21.320 --> 00:07:28.900 King George III was a reptile and a despicable, stupid dolt, while lords and commons were 63 00:07:28.900 --> 00:07:31.360 dens of thieves. 64 00:07:31.360 --> 00:07:39.200 Returning to England in the spring of 1771, Lee published in the press, though more circumspectly, 65 00:07:39.200 --> 00:07:46.380 a criticism of King George III, and also composed a lengthy, though unfortunately unpublished 66 00:07:46.380 --> 00:07:54.300 and Vanished, Critique of David Hume's History of England. He was irked at Hume's Tory apologetics 67 00:07:54.300 --> 00:08:00.660 for the Stuart Kings, and he projected a satirical whitewashing history of the emperors Claudius 68 00:08:00.660 --> 00:08:08.260 and Nero, which he bitingly dedicated to David Hume. In the introduction to this critique, 69 00:08:08.260 --> 00:08:15.420 which has survived, Lee again attacked the Tory policies of George III, the use of pecuniary 70 00:08:15.420 --> 00:08:22.420 and the large standing army as instruments of oppression. Disapproving of capital punishment 71 00:08:23.860 --> 00:08:29.620 in general, he wished to preserve it for kings and their families since the eradication of 72 00:08:29.620 --> 00:08:35.500 a royal house was surely preferable to the loss of a people's freedom. It is little 73 00:08:35.500 --> 00:08:40.620 wonder that the manuscript could not find an English publisher. In these final years 74 00:08:40.620 --> 00:08:47.620 Finally, Charles Lee, a Major General in the Polish Army and a Lieutenant Colonel in the British, consummated the exile for which he had long been heading. Eager to help the burgeoning American cause, he arrived at New York in the fall of 1936. 75 00:09:10.620 --> 00:09:19.340 Paul of 1773, where both he and the Americans were ripe for a revolutionary situation. For 76 00:09:19.340 --> 00:09:24.840 over a year he traveled extensively throughout the colonies, making friends with all the 77 00:09:24.840 --> 00:09:30.780 revolutionary leaders who were fascinated by his personality and by his military knowledge 78 00:09:30.780 --> 00:09:37.320 and ardor for liberty. In America he was no longer a maverick but a leader in the American 79 00:09:37.320 --> 00:09:40.320 and Struggles with the British Government. 80 00:09:40.320 --> 00:09:46.200 It was no coincidence that those particularly attracted to Lee were the radicals George 81 00:09:46.200 --> 00:09:53.120 Mason and Thomas Jefferson in Virginia, Alexander McDougall in New York, and Sam Adams and his 82 00:09:53.120 --> 00:09:55.800 followers in Massachusetts. 83 00:09:55.800 --> 00:10:02.680 He became an especially close friend of Virginia's Richard Henry Lee, no relation, who truly 84 00:10:02.680 --> 00:10:08.200 Charlie wrote of him, a most true and worthy friend to the rights of human nature in general 85 00:10:08.200 --> 00:10:16.040 and a warm-spirited foe to American oppression. Charles Lee lost no time in lauding Boston's 86 00:10:16.040 --> 00:10:22.880 resistance to the Tea Act and in urging energetic boycotts in reaction to the Coercive Acts 87 00:10:22.880 --> 00:10:30.680 of 1774. The crisis brought on by the Coercive Acts was obviously tailor-made for Lee's 88 00:10:30.680 --> 00:11:00.680 He urged a boycott and attacked moderation as submission to Britain. America was the last asylum of liberty and therefore its defense of liberty was also a defense for the people of Britain and for the rest of the world. This was published in the Philadelphia Press and a similar hand bill was published in the New York Times. 89 00:11:00.680 --> 00:11:06.000 published in New York and widely reprinted in the New England papers. 90 00:11:06.000 --> 00:11:12.600 By this time, Lee's old friend and fellow radical, Horatio Gates, also forcibly retired 91 00:11:12.600 --> 00:11:18.560 from British Army service after the Seven Years War, had also emigrated to America and 92 00:11:18.560 --> 00:11:22.980 retired to a plantation in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley. 93 00:11:22.980 --> 00:11:28.020 Both men were clearly ready to take up arms for the American cause. 94 00:11:28.020 --> 00:11:34.020 Lee wrote to Gates that it was incumbent on every man to contribute his might to the cause 95 00:11:34.020 --> 00:11:41.780 of mankind and of liberty, which is now attacked in her last and only asylum. 96 00:11:41.780 --> 00:11:49.420 And Gates, known as early as 1770 as a red-hot Republican, replied that he was ready to risk 97 00:11:49.420 --> 00:11:54.180 my life to preserve the liberty of the Western world. 98 00:11:54.180 --> 00:12:01.740 When the First Continental Congress met at Philadelphia in September 1774, Lee was there, 99 00:12:01.740 --> 00:12:07.540 charming nearly everyone and, remarkably, writing the appeal which Congress sent to 100 00:12:07.540 --> 00:12:14.020 the Canadians for support in America's struggle. He also began in secret to draw up a plan 101 00:12:14.020 --> 00:12:20.020 for the Organization of American Battalions, a plan completed by the following February 102 00:12:20.020 --> 00:12:23.500 and which impressed many American leaders. 103 00:12:23.500 --> 00:12:29.500 Visiting Maryland in the fall of 1774, he induced the Maryland Provincial Congress to 104 00:12:29.500 --> 00:12:36.500 adopt his plan for organizing its battalions and even stayed to drill some of the troops. 105 00:12:37.100 --> 00:12:43.160 His plan of Lees impressed Washington, who persuaded Fairfax County to urge a similar 106 00:12:43.160 --> 00:12:49.940 plan for Virginia militia and prevailed upon Patrick Henry to get the plan adopted by Virginia 107 00:12:49.940 --> 00:12:57.980 Lee published several essays on behalf of American freedom that winter, one of which 108 00:12:57.980 --> 00:13:05.940 pointed to King George's tyranny being exercised in Ireland and Menorca and warned of its advent 109 00:13:05.940 --> 00:13:13.380 in America. In an uncompleted essay, he praised the Republican governments of Europe, citing 110 00:13:13.380 --> 00:13:20.380 Leigh's most significant work, however, was one that called forth his military, as well as his ideological abilities. 111 00:13:20.380 --> 00:13:28.380 The Tory Reverend Dr. Miles Cooper, Anglican President of King's College in New York City, had greatly disheartened the Americans with his pamphlet, 112 00:13:28.380 --> 00:13:32.380 Friendly at Dr. Leigh's house. 113 00:13:32.380 --> 00:13:45.380 The Tory Reverend Dr. Miles Cooper, Anglican President of King's College in New York City, had greatly disheartened the Americans with his pamphlet, Friendly Address to All Reasonable Americans. 114 00:13:45.380 --> 00:13:58.380 Cooper had counseled that resistance was useless against the mighty and thoroughly disciplined British regulars, who would be aided by large numbers of American Tories and German mercenaries. 115 00:13:58.380 --> 00:14:07.380 How could the undisciplined and untrained Americans even dream of opposing the British victors of the French and Indian War? 116 00:14:07.380 --> 00:14:12.380 No one was more qualified to rebut Cooper's charge than Lee. 117 00:14:12.380 --> 00:14:22.380 He had seen the highly disciplined Prussian battalions, the envied model of all the regular armies of the day, at first hand, 118 00:14:22.380 --> 00:14:27.380 and was creative and individualistic enough to be unimpressed. 119 00:14:27.380 --> 00:14:40.380 Lee leapt into the fray, publishing his strictures upon a friendly address to all reasonable Americans in Philadelphia in November 1774. 120 00:14:40.380 --> 00:14:52.380 He pointedly deprecated the British regulars. Their showy and much admired massed formation, parade ground tactics were of no military importance, 121 00:14:52.380 --> 00:15:09.380 And the British only won the French and Indian War after discarding this pattern. Moreover, he argued, the highly touted victories of Frederick the Great were largely won by the Prussian militia rather than by the formally trained regulars. 122 00:15:09.380 --> 00:15:15.740 The Americans had numbers, zeal, and knowledge of the terrain on their side, and did not 123 00:15:15.740 --> 00:15:21.140 the amateur militias of the parliamentary armies defeat the professionals of Charles 124 00:15:21.140 --> 00:15:24.380 I during the English Civil War? 125 00:15:24.380 --> 00:15:31.380 Lee's pamphlet proved to be by far his most popular work, as the radical Salem Essex Gazette 126 00:15:31.380 --> 00:15:32.620 declared. 127 00:15:32.620 --> 00:15:38.680 It removed the terror the people had had of the British troops and gave them the heart 128 00:15:38.680 --> 00:15:40.420 to Resist. 129 00:15:40.420 --> 00:15:49.420 Strictures was reprinted five times during the winter of 1774-75 in Boston, New York, 130 00:15:49.420 --> 00:15:55.180 New London and Newport, and was also republished in American newspapers. 131 00:15:55.180 --> 00:16:00.720 Alden has concluded that the strictures was probably one of the most influential pieces 132 00:16:00.720 --> 00:16:06.060 of propaganda in the Revolutionary period. 133 00:16:06.060 --> 00:16:12.320 After selecting Washington over Lee and Ward as commander-in-chief, the Second Continental 134 00:16:12.320 --> 00:16:18.220 Congress had to select the other generals of the Continental Army. The next step was 135 00:16:18.220 --> 00:16:24.180 to choose the major general who would be second in command, and the battle was rather naturally 136 00:16:24.180 --> 00:16:31.180 between Lee and Ward. Thomas Mifflin of Pennsylvania enthusiastically backed Lee, but he was bitterly 137 00:16:31.180 --> 00:16:40.180 But he was bitterly opposed by Thomas Johnson of Maryland and by almost all the highly conservative New York delegation. 138 00:16:40.180 --> 00:16:48.180 As New England's candidate, however, Ward was the inevitable choice for first major general. 139 00:16:48.180 --> 00:16:57.180 After Ward was chosen, the New England radicals, especially Sam Adams, fought ardently for Lee as second major general. 140 00:16:57.180 --> 00:17:03.800 Though Hancock and the more conservative delegates from Massachusetts opposed Lee, the backing 141 00:17:03.800 --> 00:17:10.380 of Washington, who had been impressed by Lee's military genius, carried the day. 142 00:17:10.380 --> 00:17:13.960 All in all, Congress selected four major generals. 143 00:17:13.960 --> 00:17:20.220 The others were Philip Shuler of New York's landed gentry and the veteran Israel Putnam 144 00:17:20.220 --> 00:17:26.380 of Connecticut, and eight brigadier generals, seven of whom were New Englanders. 145 00:17:26.380 --> 00:17:31.500 The preponderance of New England officers was natural, since the bulk of the troops 146 00:17:31.500 --> 00:17:34.820 then in the field came from that region. 147 00:17:34.820 --> 00:17:40.940 Chosen adjutant general with the rank of brigadier was Horatio Gates.