Charles Lee

Charles Lee expected to be given command of the Continental Army, served under Washington instead, and was court-martialled for retreating at Monmouth. He was a British officer who had fought in the Seven Years War in America, been wounded at Ticonderoga, married a Mohawk chief's daughter, and then served the Polish king as a major-general - a European career no American officer could match, which is why Congress made him second in seniority in 1775. He was contemptuous of Washington's abilities and said so in letters. Captured by a British patrol at a tavern in 1776 while separated from his troops, he spent sixteen months a prisoner and, it emerged much later, drew up a plan for the British to defeat the American forces; the document surfaced in 1857. Exchanged in 1778, he was given the advance at Monmouth, ordered a retreat that Washington reversed on the field in front of the troops, and demanded a court martial to clear himself. It convicted him on three counts and suspended him for a year; he then wrote an abusive letter to Congress and was dismissed. He died in a Philadelphia inn. He kept a pack of dogs that went everywhere with him, including to headquarters, and Abigail Adams recorded being made to shake a paw. He fought a duel with John Laurens in December 1778 over his remarks about Washington and was wounded in the side. His will asked that he not be buried in any church or churchyard, on the ground that he had kept bad company while alive and did not want it after death; he was buried in Christ Church, Philadelphia, anyway. The Lee Papers were published by the New-York Historical Society in the 1870s, and the 1857 discovery of his plan settled the argument about him.

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