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Charles Lee (general)

Charles Lee (28 February 1732 [O.S. 26 January 1731] – 2 October 1782) was a British-born American military officer who served as a general of the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War. He also served earlier in the British Army during the Seven Years War. He sold his commission after the Seven Years War and served for a time in the Polish army of King Stanislaus II Augustus.

Charles Lee

28 February 1732 [O.S. 26 January 1731]
Darnhall, Cheshire, Great Britain

2 October 1782(1782-10-02) (aged 50)
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S.

Christ Church, Philadelphia

 Great Britain
Poland-Lithuania
 United States

British Army
Polish-Lithuanian Army
Continental Army

1747–1763, 1765-176?, 1769-177?, 1775–1780

Great Britain: Lieutenant colonel
Poland-Lithuania: Major general
United States: Major general

44th Foot, 103rd Foot

Southern Department of the Continental Army

Lee moved to North America in 1773 and bought an estate in western Virginia. When the fighting broke out in the American Revolutionary War in 1775, he volunteered to serve with rebel forces. Lee's ambitions to become Commander in Chief of the Continental Army were thwarted by the appointment of George Washington to that post.


In 1776, forces under his command repulsed a British attempt to capture Charleston, which boosted his standing with the army and Congress. Later that year, he was captured by British cavalry under Banastre Tarleton; he was held by the British as a prisoner until exchanged in 1778. During the Battle of Monmouth later that year, Lee led an assault on the British that miscarried. He was subsequently court-martialed and his military service brought to an end. He died in Philadelphia in 1782.

Return to England and North America[edit]

Returning to England again, he found that he was sympathetic to the North American colonists in their quarrel with Great Britain.[1][3][4] He moved to the colonies in 1773 and in 1775 purchased an estate worth £3,000 in Berkeley County, near the home of his friend Horatio Gates, with whom he had served in the French and Indian War and who had moved back to the colony in 1772.[17] This area is now part of West Virginia.[1][3][4] He spent ten months travelling through the colonies and acquainting himself with patriots.[1][3][4]

Legacy[edit]

Lee's last home, Prato Rio, still exists, and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. A historical marker indicates General Lee's service. Much of the adjoining property, which has many natural springs, has been federally owned since 1931, and is currently operated by the U.S. Geological Survey as the Leetown Science Center (formerly the National Fish Hatchery and Research Station), as well as the federal agency's eastern regional office.[79]


Fort Lee, New Jersey, on the west side of the Hudson River (across the water from Fort Washington, New York), was named for him during his life. Lee, Massachusetts; Lee, New Hampshire; and Leetown, West Virginia[80] were also named for him.


Lee's place in history was further tarnished in the 1850s when George H. Moore, the librarian at the New-York Historical Society, discovered a manuscript dated 29 March 1777, written by Lee while he was a British prisoner of war. It was addressed to the "Royal Commissioners", i.e., Richard Howe, later 1st Earl Howe, and Richard's brother, Sir William Howe, later 5th Viscount Howe, respectively the British naval and army commanders in North America at the time, and detailed a plan by which the British might defeat the rebellion. Moore's discovery, presented in a paper titled "The Treason of Charles Lee" in 1858, influenced perceptions of Lee for decades.[81] Lee's infamy became orthodoxy in such 19th-century works as Washington Irving's Life of George Washington (1855–1859), George Washington Parke Custis's Recollections and Private Memoirs of Washington (1861) and George Bancroft's History of the United States of America, from the Discovery of the American Continent (1854–1878).[82] Although most modern scholars reject the idea that Lee was guilty of treason, it is given credence in some accounts, examples being Willard Sterne Randall's account of the Battle of Monmouth in George Washington: A Life (1997), and Dominick Mazzagetti's Charles Lee: Self Before Country (2013).[83][84][85]

Lee is featured as the secondary antagonist in the video game , serving as second-in-command of the Colonial Templar Order under Grand Master Haytham Kenway and the archenemy of protagonist Connor Kenway, who ultimately kills him in an inn in 1782. He is voiced by Neil Napier.[86][87]

Assassin's Creed III

Lee and his arrest following the retreat during the is depicted in the animated television series Liberty's Kids.[88]

Battle of Monmouth

Lee is a character in the first two seasons of the 2014 television series Turn: Washington's Spies, in which he is blackmailed into becoming a British intelligence operative by Major John André.[89] He is portrayed by Brian T. Finney.[90]

AMC

Lee is a character in 's novel Written in My Own Heart's Blood, part of the Outlander series.

Diana Gabaldon

Lee, portrayed in the original Broadway cast by , is a minor character in the 2015 Broadway musical Hamilton, appearing in the songs "Stay Alive," and "Ten Duel Commandments"[91][92] in which his duel with soldier John Laurens marks a turning point in the plot.

Jon Rua

Allen, Thomas B. (2010). Tories: Fighting for the King in America's First Civil War. . p. 496.

HarperCollins

Axelrod, Alan. "The Real History of the American Revolution" Sterling Publishing, 2007.

Bilby, Joseph G.; Jenkins, Katherine Bilby (2010). Monmouth Court House: The Battle That Made the American Army. Yardley, Pennsylvania: Westholme Publishing.  978-1-59416-108-7.

ISBN

(2010). Washington, A Life (E-Book). London, United Kingdom: Allen Lane. ISBN 978-0-141-96610-6.

Chernow, Ron

(2009). The Ascent of George Washington: The Hidden Political Genius of an American Icon. New York, New York: Bloomsbury Press. ISBN 978-1-59691-465-0.

Ferling, John E.

Karels, Carol (2007). "A Disobedient Servant". The Revolutionary War in Bergen County: The Times that Tried Men's Souls. The History Press. pp. 105–111.

Lender, Mark Edward; Stone, Garry Wheeler (2016). Fatal Sunday: George Washington, the Monmouth Campaign, and the Politics of Battle. Norman, Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma Press.  978-0-8061-5335-3.

ISBN

Mazzagetti, Dominick (2013). . Rutgers University Press. ISBN 978-0-8135-6238-4.

Charles Lee: Self Before Country

McBurney, Christian M. (2013). Kidnapping the enemy. The Special Operations to Capture Generals Charles Lee & Richard Prescott. Westholme Publishing. p. 234.  978-1594161834.

ISBN

(2005). 1776. Simon and Schuster. ISBN 9780743287708. — 1776 (book)

McCullough, David

Nelson, Paul David (2000). "Lee, Charles (1732–1782)". . Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/anb/9780198606697.article.0100506. ISBN 978-0-19-860669-7.

American National Biography

Papas, Phillip (2014). . NYU Press. ISBN 978-1-4798-5121-8.

Renegade Revolutionary: The Life of General Charles Lee

Purcell, L. Edward. Who Was Who in the American Revolution. New York: Facts on File, 1993.  0-8160-2107-4.

ISBN

(1997). George Washington: A Life. New York, New York: Henry Holt and Company. ISBN 978-0-8050-2779-2.

Randall, Willard Sterne

Shy, John (1973). . In Kurtz, Stephen G.; Hutson, James H. (eds.). Essays on the American Revolution. Chapel Hill, North Carolina: University of North Carolina Press. pp. 121–156. ISBN 978-0-8078-1204-4.

"The American Revolution: The Military Conflict Considered as a Revolutionary War"

Thayer, Theodore (1976). The Making of a Scapegoat: Washington and Lee at Monmouth. Kennikat Press.  0-8046-9139-8.

ISBN

Washington's Retreat through Jersey – Capture of General Lee

at Find a Grave

Charles Lee

MEMOIRS OF THE LIFE OF THE LATE CHARLES LEE. London 1792