Renegade Revolutionary

The Life of General Charles Lee

Phillip Papas

• Editorial: NYU Press
• Año: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781479811793
• Categoría: History
• Categoría: World History

Honorable Mention for the 2015 Book Award from the American Revolution Round Table of Richmond

Honorable Mention for the 2015 Fraunces Tavern Museum Book Award

InNovember 1774, a pamphlet to the “People of America” was published inPhiladelphia and London. It forcefully articulated American rights andliberties and argued that the Americans needed to declare their independencefrom Britain. The author of this pamphlet was Charles Lee, a former Britisharmy officer turned revolutionary, who was one of the earliest advocates forAmerican independence. Lee fought on and off the battlefield for expandeddemocracy, freedom of conscience, individual liberties, human rights, and forthe formal education of women.

Renegade Revolutionary: The Life ofGeneral Charles Lee is a vivid new portrait of one of the most complex and controversial of theAmerican revolutionaries. Lee’s erratic behavior and comportment, his captureand more than one year imprisonment by the British, and his court martial afterthe battle of Monmouth in 1778 have dominated his place in the historiographyof the American Revolution. This book retells the story of a man who had beendismissed by contemporaries and by history. Few American revolutionaries sharedhis radical political outlook, his cross-cultural experiences, hiscosmopolitanism, and his confidence that the American Revolution could be wonprimarily by the militia (or irregulars) rather than a centralized regulararmy. By studying Lee’s life, his political and military ideas, and his styleof leadership, we gain new insights into the way the American revolutionariesfought and won their independence from Britain.

PART I
The World of Charles Lee, 1731–1764

1
Colonel Lee’s Son

ON A COLD, BLUSTERY DECEMBER DAY IN 1731, COLONEL JOHN LEE and his wife Isabella welcomed their last child into the world. The Lees must have viewed the birth of their son Charles with an equal measure of joy and trepidation, for death had visited their home all too frequently. Five of the six children who came before Charles had died; only this boy and his older sister Sidney would survive to adulthood.¹

The two young Lees entered a world of status and privilege. Since the thirteenth century, Lees had been living in Cheshire, enjoying the comfortable life of gentry. Their distant relationship to the Lees who held the earldom of Litchfield added luster to their name. Isabella Bunbury Lee boasted an even more distinguished lineage. While the Lees were respected locally, the Bunburys had a national profile. Isabella’s father, Sir Henry, had served as a Member of Parliament (MP) for Cheshire. Her older brother, Sir William, had attended Cambridge and Oxford, where he studied for the ministry. Isabella’s nephew, Sir Thomas Charles Bunbury, was an MP for Suffolk and the first husband of Lady Sarah Lennox, the great-granddaughter of King Charles II (r. 1660–1685), while her brother-in-law, General Robert Armiger, served as aide-de-camp to King George II (r. 1727–1760).²

Like many of his male relatives, Charles’s father, John, entered military service, beginning his career as a captain of dragoons (or cavalry). By 1742, he had risen to the rank of colonel of the 55th Regiment of Foot; sold his vast estate in Darnhall, Cheshire; and moved his family to the county seat of Chester, a provincial town of 8,000 residents on the River Dee sixteen miles south of Liverpool. Chester’s location on the main route into northern Wales and the western route to northern England and Scotland made the town a key transportation and commercial hub; vessels laden with goods from Ireland, northern Wales, and points beyond filled its wharves. Although shipping was Chester’s major economic activity, local commerce was also brisk. The town’s markets regularly filled with local farmers bringing their wool and dairy products to be sold and purchasing manufactured goods with their profits. Prosperous merchants and gentry opened businesses in Chester’s popular market area, where unique rows of two-story timbered shops lined the cobblestone and dirt streets. Charles Lee’s earliest years were spent in this bustling commercial town instead of in the quieter setting of the countryside.³

Lee left no descriptions of his childhood and he wrote very little about his parents, especially his mother, whom he found to be very difficult. Charles’s relationship with his mother was filled with tension; it was so cold that many acquaintances wondered whether there was any love between them.⁴ Although Lee found his mother difficult, he was very much like her. From Isabella’s family he inherited his temperamental nature and chronic poor health. His temperament manifested itself in moodiness, a violent temper, periods of melancholia, excessive conversation and profanity, and a voracious appetite for food, drink, and sex, all of which are symptoms of what modern-day psychiatrists might diagnose as bipolar disorder, or manic depression. Charles frequently went for months in a state of lethargy with little or no appetite, and then his appetite, along with his strength and spirits, would return suddenly. Depression and other mental illnesses run in families. Lee’s manic episodes were similar to those experienced by Isabella and her brother Sir William. Charles often referenced the “rash humour which my mother gave me” and once confessed to Sidney, “After having entertain’d you on the distemper of my mind, let me say something of my bodily disposition. I think I gave you an Account some time ago of my complaints not totally unlike those of Uncle Bunbury [Sir William], a most canine, insatiable appetite attended with weakness and low spirits.”⁵ Such a family history suggests that Lee came by his manic depression through inheritance. His psychological condition was not of his own making, but in some ways it explains his intellectual voracity, his penchant for overindulgence, and his behavior, which many construed as eccentric.

Poor physical health was another trait Lee inherited from his Bunbury lineage, especially rheumatism. Although Lee’s rheumatism can be traced to his genes, the chronic attacks of gout he suffered were brought on by years of stress, the excessive consumption of wine and liquor, and a diet that was rich in proteins and fatty foods. Gout affected Lee’s stomach, limbs, and joints, causing him pain, weakness, fatigue, headaches, dizziness, and fainting spells. He often suffered for up to two weeks from an attack of rheumatism or gout or both. “A most dreadful visitation has fallen upon me, whether from exposing myself too much to cold or whether I had it in my blood I cannot say but I am actually incapacitated from moving my legs by the gout or rheumatism, or mixture of both,” Lee once complained.⁶

Lee was never afraid to experiment or to try the latest remedies in search of relief for his physical ailments.⁷ He visited experts and, like many members of eighteenth-century Europe’s elite who were hypochondriacs or who suffered from debilitating ailments, he took medicinal baths and placed his faith in spa cures. Lee drank mineral water as a tonic and bathed in warm springs as a restorative.⁸ Lee traveled throughout Britain and continental Europe seeking medical advice or simply seeking relaxation and the healing powers offered by spa resorts and baths. While Lee believed that bathing in warm springs helped cure illness, he also touted the therapeutic virtues of swimming as a source of preventative medicine. At a time when few Englishmen paid attention to physical exercise and athletics, Lee believed that swimming in salt water, or what he called “sea-bathing,” was beneficial to a person’s physical and mental health. In 1769, he informed Sidney that he planned to spend the winter in the Kingdom of Naples where he hoped that “bathing in the Sea in that warm climate will brace my body, which is really in a wretch’d state.”⁹ By 1771, Lee had traveled to Calabria on the southern tip of the Italian peninsula and to Sicily and Malta, partly out of curiosity about these Mediterranean locales and “partly to bath in the sea, as long as possible in the Winter, in order to recover the strength and spirits.”¹⁰ Lee was not alone in promoting the benefits of swimming. “Learn fairly to swim,” Benjamin Franklin advised a friend. “I wish all men were taught to do so in their youth; they would, on many occurrences, be the safer for having that skill, and on many more the happier, as freer from painful apprehensions of danger, to say nothing of the enjoyment in so delightful and wholesome an exercise.”¹¹

Lee’s quest for a cure for his physical ailments revealed his openness to new ideas, but it also led him to travel. While his poor physical health was a detriment he had to contend with all of his life, it had a positive impact in that it allowed Lee to see many parts of the world. Traveling fed his intellectual curiosity and helped expand the cosmopolitanism instilled in him by his father.

Lee gained an intellectual curiosity from his father. Colonel Lee nurtured his son’s inquisitive spirit by encouraging him to read and to think critically. He also instilled in Lee an admiration for Whig politics and a respect for human liberty and natural rights. Lee wrote, “I was bred up from my infancy with the highest regard for the rights and liberties of Mankind, my Father possess’d ‘em to the highest degree.”¹² Colonel Lee was also the rare eighteenth-century father who nurtured his daughter’s intelligence. He encouraged Sidney to read at an early age. In an era when few women had a formal education, Sidney was well read in a variety of subjects, including history, philosophy, literature, and geography, and was an active member of Britain’s “bluestocking” intellectual circles.¹³

Four years older than Charles, Sidney had great influence over her younger brother. She was a mother figure to him, and he adored her accordingly. “You will perhaps find me not a less affectionate Brother,” Charles told her. “There can be no brother more Sincerely affectionate then myself.”¹⁴ Sidney, who was described as “a very agreeable Woman,” never married.¹⁵ Instead, she became her brother’s one constant confidante. The two siblings remained extremely close throughout their lives. They shared their dreams and hardships and relied on each other for advice and emotional support.

While Colonel Lee encouraged Sidney’s informal learning, he made sure that Charles obtained a formal education. Colonel Lee knew that his son would potentially follow him into the military, but he wanted him to receive the education that was expected of a young man from his social class. To be the son of a gentleman was a distinct social advantage in eighteenth-century British society. Like most gentlemen, Lee received a classical education that prepared him for an advanced career. In addition to the basics of reading, writing, arithmetic, and measuring, he studied rhetoric, geometry, logic, philosophy, history, geography, and dancing and became proficient in ancient Greek and Latin grammar, which were essential for reading classical literature. But Colonel Lee also wanted Charles to have more than a basic classical education; he wanted him to experience all the world had to offer culturally and linguistically.

Many of Charles’s physical and emotional traits were shaped by his inheritance, but his education and his peers influenced his ideas. Lee’s formal education began with tutors. He later attended a grammar school near Chester and progressed to a private academy in Switzerland, where as a teen he demonstrated a love for history and literature and excelled in languages, becoming versed in French and in ancient Greek and Latin. His gift for languages led him to become proficient in many of them over his lifetime. In addition to his native English, Lee acquired a fondness for and competency in several European languages: French, Italian, Spanish, and German. He also became versed in the Native American language of Iroquoian.¹⁶ Lee’s time at the Swiss academy set the foundation for a sound liberal arts education and nurtured his inquisitiveness and the love of learning his father instilled in him.

In June 1746, Lee was enrolled in the King Edward VI Free Grammar School, which was located near Mildenhall, the home of his maternal uncle, the Rev. William Bunbury, in the town of Bury St. Edmunds in the county of Suffolk. The school was famous for preparing young men for studies at Cambridge. Its alumni included seventeenth-century dramatist and poet laureate Thomas Shadwell and the sons of the first governor of Massachusetts, John Winthrop.¹⁷ Among Lee’s schoolmates were several young men who would become lifelong friends, acquaintances, and ardent supporters, including William Butler, Charles Davers, and Thomas Charles Bunbury, his first cousin. These young men were members of Britain’s gentry and formed the major part of Lee’s network of social and political connections. Such networks were important for advancement in eighteenth-century British society.¹⁸

Lee and his schoolmates became fully absorbed in the style and wisdom of the ancients. “Let our masters teach nothing but the elements of grammar and instruction in Latin and Greek tongues,” read the Bury St. Edmunds curriculum. Students were taught to memorize and recite the classics, a skill required of candidates for college admission.¹⁹ The sons of Britain’s gentry were saturated with the virtues and ideals of ancient Greece and Rome. The texts by the great authors of antiquity inspired in Lee romantic notions of democracy, republicanism (or representative government), citizenship, morality, and classical ideals such as the Homeric arête—individual heroism, honor, courage, and excellence in a contest or battle—that remained with him his entire life. “It is natural to a young person whose chief companions are the Greek and Roman historians and Orators to be dazzled with the splendid picture,” he wrote, referring to the influence of the ancients on him and on other young men of the British gentry.²⁰ Lee particularly admired the Greek historian Plutarch, whose best-known work, Parallel Lives, written in the first century AD, compared the lives of forty-six famous ancient Greeks and Romans and provided a wealth of information about their civilizations. It was distinctly republican in spirit and emphasized the moral lessons that could be learned from history.²¹ “I have ever from the first time I read Plutarch been an Enthusiastick for liberty and … for liberty in a republican garb,” Lee declared.²²

Lee could not have come of age at a better time. The eighteenth century witnessed the emergence of a new publishing economy and a print culture boom that was profitable for printers, publishers, and booksellers in Britain and in continental Europe. The number of books and other printed materials soared, and new elaborate networks for their marketing and distribution gave readers access to an extensive range of publications on a variety of subjects. The new media of written communication empowered many Europeans and disseminated ideas, opinions, theory, and practical knowledge to more people than ever before in history, influencing public discourse.

Lee took advantage of this new publishing economy, spending large sums throughout his life filling his bookshelves. He always traveled with an extensive collection that included the classics, philosophy, law, the natural sciences, fiction, poetry, history, biographies, military strategy, and engineering. The new print culture expanded Charles’s intellectual horizons, helped foster his cosmopolitan sensibilities, kept him informed on the latest developments in the art of war, and swept him into the eighteenth- century Enlightenment, which emphasized secular, rationalist, liberal, and egalitarian ideals. From the E...