Charles Lee (6 February 1732 [O.S. 26 January 1731] – 2 October 1782) was a British-born American army officer who served as a general in 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 Crown Army.
Lee moved to British 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.
Lee was born on 6 February 1732 [O.S. 26 January 1731] in Darnhall, Cheshire, England, Great Britain, the son of Major General John Lee and his wife Isabella Bunbury (daughter of Sir Henry Bunbury, 3rd Baronet). His mother's family were landed gentry with national stature—his maternal grandfather had been an MP for Cheshire, and a cousin, Sir Thomas Charles Bunbury, was an MP for Suffolk. Five of Lee's six older siblings had died – only his sister Sidney Lee, four years older, survived to adulthood. Sidney never married.
Like his mother, with whom he did not get along well, Lee would have a temperamental personality and poor physical health (suffering rheumatism and chronic attacks of gout), which caused him to travel often to medicinal spas. He received a private education from tutors, then was sent to a grammar school near Chester and a private academy in Switzerland before being sent to King Edward VI School, Bury St Edmunds, a free grammar school near the home of his uncle, Rev. William Bunbury. Lee became proficient in several languages, including Latin, Greek, and French. His father was colonel of the 55th Foot (later renumbered the 44th) when he purchased a commission on 9 April 1747, for Charles as an ensign in the same regiment.
As a consequence of inheriting money upon his mother's death, Lee became known for a peripatetic and extravagant lifestyle, which led to financial difficulties several times in his life, including after liquidating land grants in East Florida and Prince Edward Island in the late 1760s (which he received because of his service in the French and Indian War). By 1770, Lee had acquired the services of Giuseppe Minghini, who would remain his servant until the end of his life and received a bequest. Lee owned at least six slaves shortly before his death, and his will divided ownership of all his slaves (three mentioned by name) between Minghini and Elizabeth Dunne, Lee's housekeeper. After paying his debts and a number of specific bequests, some involving horses and others money (usually to purchase mourning rings,) Lee directed his executors (future congressman Alexander White and former Rev. Charles Mynn Thurston), to pay the remainder of his estate (worth about $700 according to the filed inventory) to his sister Sidney.
After completing his schooling, Lee reported for duty with his regiment in Ireland. Shortly after his father's death, on 2 May 1751, he received (or purchased) a lieutenant's commission in the 44th. He was sent with the regiment to North America in 1754 for service in the French and Indian War under Major General Edward Braddock, in what was a front for the Seven Years War between Britain and France. He was with Braddock at his defeat at the Battle of the Monongahela in 1755. During this time in America, Lee married the daughter of a Mohawk
chief. His wife (name unknown) gave birth to twins. Lee was known to the Mohawk, who were allies of the English, as Ounewaterika or "Boiling Water".
On 11 June 1756, Lee purchased a Captain's commission in the 44th for the sum of £900. The following year he took part in an expedition against the French fortress of Louisbourg, and on 1 July 1758, he was wounded in a failed assault on Fort Ticonderoga. He was sent to Long Island to recuperate. A surgeon whom he had earlier rebuked and thrashed attacked him. After recovering, Lee took part in the capture of Fort Niagara in 1759 and Montreal in 1760. This brought the war in the North American theater to an end by completing the Conquest of Canada.
Lee went back to Europe, transferred to the 103rd Regiment of Foot as a major, and served as a lieutenant colonel in the Portuguese army. He fought against the Spanish during their unsuccessful invasion of the Portugal, and distinguished himself under John Burgoyne at the Battle of Vila Velha.
Lee returned to England in 1763 following the Peace of Paris, which ended the Seven Years' War. His regiment was disbanded and he was retired on half pay as a major. On 26 May 1772, although still inactive, he was promoted to lieutenant colonel.
In 1765, Lee served as an aide-de-camp under Stanislaus II, King of Poland. After many adventures he came home to England. Unable to secure promotion in the British Army, in 1769 he returned to Poland and then saw action in the Russo-Turkish War. In a duel in Italy with an Italian officer he lost two fingers, but killed the same opponent in a second duel.
Return to England and North America
Returning to England again, he found that he was sympathetic to the North American colonists in their quarrel with Great Britain. He moved to the colonies in 1773 and in 1775 purchased an estate worth £3,000 in Berkeley County, Virginia (in today's West Virginia), 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. He spent ten months travelling through the colonies and acquainting himself with their people.
Although Lee was generally acknowledged at the Second Continental Congress to be the most capable candidate for the command of the Continental Army, the role was given to George Washington. Lee recognized the sense of giving the position to a native-born North American, but expected to be given the role of second-in-command. He was disappointed when that role went to Artemas Ward, whom Lee considered too inexperienced for the job. Lee was appointed major-general and third in line, but succeeded to second-in-command in 1776 when Ward resigned due to ill health.
Lee also received various other titles: in 1776, he was named commander of the so-called Canadian Department, although he never got to serve in this capacity. He was appointed as the first commander of the Southern Department. He served in this post for six months, until he was recalled to the main army. During his time in the South, the British sent an expedition under Henry Clinton to recover Charleston, South Carolina. Lee oversaw the fortification of the city. Fort Sullivan was built out of palmetto logs, later named for commander Col. William Moultrie. Lee ordered the army to evacuate the fort because as he said it would only last thirty minutes and all soldiers would be killed. Governor John Rutledge forbade Moultrie to evacuate and the fort held. The spongy palmetto logs absorbed the cannon fire from the British ships. The assault on Sullivan's Island was driven off, and Clinton abandoned his attempts to capture the city. Lee was acclaimed as the "hero of Charleston", although according to some American accounts the credit for the defense was not his.
The British capture of Fort Washington and its near 3,000-strong garrison on 16 November 1776, prompted Lee's first overt criticism of Washington. Believing the commander-in-chief's hesitation to evacuate the fort to be responsible for the loss, Lee wrote to Washington's aide-de-camp Joseph Reed lamenting Washington's indecision, a criticism Washington read when he opened the letter believing it to be official business. As Washington retreated across New Jersey after the defeat at New York, he urged Lee, whose troops were north of New York, to join him. Although Lee's orders were at first discretionary, and although there were good tactical reasons for delaying, his slow progress has been characterized as insubordinate. On 12 December 1776, Lee was captured by British troops at White's Tavern in Basking Ridge, New Jersey, while writing a letter to General Horatio Gates complaining about Washington's deficiency.