If Henry Lee would not join George Washington’s inner circle, the commander in chief would find other ways to help along his rise.
On April 3, 1778, he wrote to Henry Laurens, president of the Continental Congress since the previous fall, with a proposal. “Captain Lee of the light Dragoons and the Officers under his command,” Washington explained, “having uniformly distinguished themselves by a conduct of exemplary zeal, prudence and bravery, I took occasion on a late signal instance of it to express the high sense I entertained of their merit, and to assure him that it should not fail of being properly noticed.”1
Washington’s means of noticing their merits was this: Lee would be made a major and given command over two additional troops of horses, each consisting of fifty men and independent from the Continental Dragoons.2 These would be led by William Lindsay and Henry Peyton. Such a promotion, the commander in chief reasoned, “would be a mode of rewarding him very advantageous to the Service. Capt. Lee’s genius peculiarly adapts him to a command of this nature.”3 The Continental Congress, with Lee’s cousins Richard Henry and Francis Lightfoot looking on favorably, approved the request on April 7. The following day Laurens wrote to Lee with news of the advancement and his congratulations. The note reached Valley Forge on the twelfth and was delivered to Washington,4 who forwarded it to Lee with his instructions; “I shall be glad to see you as soon as possible, that we may fix upon the other Officers for your Corps, and devise ways and means of procuring the additional Men, Horses, Arms and accoutrements.”5 Another step closer to the renown he so desired, Lee began the formidable task of crafting the means to secure it.
Recruitment of men and procurement of supplies for the new independent “Partisan Corps” was underway with the arrival of spring. Members of Lee’s Fifth Troop were reassigned. Ferdinand O’Neal, whose heroics at Scott’s Farm had perturbed Banastre Tarleton, was made a cornet of one troop, and John Champe of Loudon County, Virginia, was made sergeant of another. New recruits were added. The commander in chief’s nephew George Augustine Washington joined the corps along with two brothers from Maryland, John and Michael Rudulph. Robert Forsyth, who had served in another of the Virginia dragoon regiments, became captain of a third troop created in May. The men would be clothed in new uniforms as well, featuring short green coats with crimson linings.6
On receiving the news of his promotion, Lee had written to Laurens with profuse thanks. A month later he approached the president of the Continental Congress with a plea. Given the scarcity of resources and the cost of horses, Lee insisted that his partisans must be permitted by Congress to impress horses from citizens along the Chesapeake. And despite strong opposition from the government of Maryland, Congress acquiesced. While suitable steeds for the new corps were rounded up, Lee, for the first time in nearly two years, returned to Leesylvania for a short furlough.7
But while Lee rested, the war reignited.
In the fall of 1777, William Howe, facing criticism in England and a war with no immediate conclusion in America, had tendered his resignation, blaming a lack of attention from the government and his superiors. In May 1778 after a grand farewell gala, the general was on his way back to Britain, and the reins of the Redcoat army were in the hands of his deputy, Henry Clinton.8
In June, after its leisurely winter in Philadelphia, the British army was once again on the march, headed northeast toward New York City with Washington’s newly rejuvenated army in hot pursuit. On June 28, on a smoldering day in Monmouth County in the heart of New Jersey, an advance force led by General Charles Lee attacked the British rear. But the Redcoats, led by Charles Cornwallis, swiveled around and repulsed the poorly executed American attack.9
General Lee and his men began a disorganized retreat which smashed into Washington and the advancing American army. In a rare loss of mastery over his fiery temper, Washington verbally eviscerated Lee. His fury released, the commander in chief steadied the retreating Americans and pushed the army forward, giving Cornwallis a furious fight and forcing the enemy back. The battle ended as night fell; by the next morning the British were once again headed north.10 The Battle of Monmouth was a tactical draw in which both sides claimed victory. For the Americans it demonstrated that Washington’s army was indeed capable of holding its own against its mighty British counterpart. The war, now four years old, would go on. But the battle drew the curtain on the military career of Charles Lee. The eccentric general was subsequently court-martialed and dismissed from service to the American cause.11
Nowhere to be found at Monmouth was the young Virginian who shared a surname with General Lee and had been so impressed by Englishmen during a dinner several years past. “I have been almost melancholy by my absence from the army. The name of Monmouth reproaches me to the soul,” Henry Lee plaintively wrote to Anthony Wayne on August 24.12
But Harry Lee’s sojourn back home had concluded by September, when he rejoined his partisans in New York. A new assignment awaited, this time under General Charles Scott, a veteran of the French and Indian War, who was commanding a beleaguered force between the American headquarters in White Plains and the British in New York. Lee and his men were set to a familiar task, gathering reconnaissance and stopping British and Hessian foraging in the thick woods separating the two armies. Troubles set in; Lee struggled to gather intelligence; thirty of his men, all part of the original 5th Troop, reached the end of their terms of service and left for home.13 They were replaced by new soldiers, largely from New Jersey. One of Lee’s lieutenants, Patrick Carnes, created a ruckus when he seized oats from New York’s militia. Lee refused to punish or reign him in, and New York governor George Clinton sent a scathing letter to Washington criticizing the major; a rare rebuke from the commander-in-chief followed.14
But Washington’s estimation of Lee did not suffer. With the main army wintering once again in Middlebrook, and Lee’s partisan corps in Burlington, the commander in chief invited Lee for dinner on December 14. The major, focused on the coming year, declined. Drilling his men superseded breaking bread with Washington. “Wishing to take the field in the spring with my corps in perfect order, I must procrastinate the honor of waiting on your Excellency at present, as I hasten to Winter-quarters to commence preparations,”15 Lee wrote in his polite refusal.
In the spring of 1779 Lee had the opportunity to show off the results of his winter work. Conrad Alexandre Gerard, France’s first minster to the United States, traveled to Trenton to review the American army. Joining Gerard in the audience were Martha Washington and Nathanael Greene’s wife, Catharine. The arrival of the army was announced with blasts from thirteen cannons across an open field; then, parading out in advance of the army appeared a mounted soldier and his men; “A very beautiful troop of light-horse, commanded by Major Lee, a Virginian, marched in front,” a spectator, James Thatcher, who was a surgeon with the Massachusetts 16th Regiment, jotted down in his diary. Behind Lee was the imposing figure of the commander in chief, accompanied by his aides.16
Lee’s men were ready to return to action. Later in the month a fourth troop, this one of dragoons from Delaware, joined their ranks—swelling the Partisan Corps into “Lee’s Legion.” The new additions were led by Allan McLane, whom Lee had encountered the previous year while searching for horses. Ten years his senior, and with a battlefield resume that stretched back to the opening of the war, McLane was neither impressed by nor fond of Lee; Lee had brought McLane’s troop into his Legion as infantry, something that was apparently not communicated to the captain, who bristled mightily at giving up his mounts.17
Their differences temporarily put aside, Lee relied on McLane to scout a fortification known as Stoney Point. Originally established by Americans on a 150-foot hill atop a spur extending from New York into the Hudson River, it had been taken by the British marching north in July, with no American opposition. There they had set to work building a new fort, protected by dozens of cannons.18
This gave Clinton control over the river and ended travel across the King’s Ferry, the southernmost point across the Hudson, where Washington moved supplies during the war.19 Determined to take Stoney Point back, the commander in chief assigned Anthony Wayne, in charge of a twelve-hundred-man brigade, to lead an attack. Lee was to gather intelligence in preparation of the maneuver.
During the scouting, in a fit of gory over-zealousness, three deserters—two Irish and one an American—were captured and executed; to set an example, the head of the last was severed. When told of this punishment, Washington gently reprimanded Lee, cautioning that it could “give disgust and may excite resentment.”20
In the early morning of July 16, with bayonets fixed, the Americans, moving in three columns, silently set out for the outpost and arrived that evening. In a stunning victory, the rebels stormed and took Stoney Point with minimal casualties.21 Lee and his men who were serving as the reserve, however, missed out on the action. And the glory.
Snatching the fort back from the British gave Americans a success they desperately needed in the summer of 1779. Congress quickly heaped praise upon Wayne. “Resolved, unanimously,” their commendation read, “That the thanks of Congress be presented to brigadier general Wayne for his brave, prudent, and soldierly conduct in the spirited and well conducted attack on Stony Point.”22
A gold medal was struck in Wayne’s likeness, and silver ones for two of his subordinates, Lieutenant Colonel Francois de Fleury and Major John Stewart. A stipend of $170,000 was designated for the regiment. All officers lower than lieutenant colonel were promoted one rank. Lee and his men, however, received no praise, despite their meticulous reconnaissance work, which had enabled Wayne’s triumph.
During the days that followed, Lee remained largely quiet. The episode generated disappointment. And jealousy. Wayne was a friend, but that mattered little when the major saw the praise he so desired fall to another.
But there was a silver lining. Lee still enjoyed the rare privilege of direct communication with Washington, meaning he was free to float ideas for other military endeavors, new paths to glory. Now, between filing his requests for additional clothing and men, Lee began to plot with an eye on another English outpost on the Hudson River.
Paulus Hook was a piece of land poking out into the confluence of the Hudson and Hackensack rivers. Shortly after the first shots of the Revolution were fired, Americans had hurriedly constructed a rudimentary wooden garrison there. But General Hugh Mercer was ordered by Washington to abandon the fort when the British under General William Howe swept through and claimed New York City. In September 1776, 250 Redcoats under Major William Sutherland had moved into the fort, giving them a strategic toehold in New Jersey.23
Most colonials, even a number of Lee’s own men, believed the fort impregnable. It was protected by water on three sides. And on the fourth side a muddy creek, two miles of salt marsh, and a flooded ditch stood between the fort and the mainland. The British had placed cannons atop the islet’s hills and razor-sharp stakes in front of the fort. Inside awaited six more guns. A loyalist force commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Abraham Van Buskirk came to reinforce Sutherland and his men in the summer of 1779.24 To top it all off, British frigates patrolled the nearby waters; a signal of two cannon shots and a hung lantern could summon them quickly.
Lee pitched the idea of an attack to Washington sometime in July; the original letter is lost, but on the twenty-eighth Washington’s aide-de-camp Richard Kidder Meade ordered Lee to ride from his base at Haverstraw in southern New York to West Point, where the general was headquartered. “By his Excy’s desire I wrote to you this morning requesting your attendance here on the very subject mentioned in your letter of this date,” wrote Meade. “He still requests you will come on, after making the necessary inquiry’s in order that the scheme you propose may be adopted.”25
Lee was greeted by an intrigued but cautious Washington, who ordered the major to go back and draw up a concrete plan of attack before he would give his approval. Lee returned to Haverstraw and began to plan in earnest. McLane and his rangers were ordered to gather reconnaissance for the mission. They spent days monitoring the comings and goings at Paulus Hook and assessing the terrain. Ultimately they concluded that an attack was impractical: the ground, much of it little more than marshes, was too difficult for either horse or infantry to cross.26
Undeterred, Lee drew up his plan: the patriots would march by foot to the fort by moonlight, construct a bridge and cross the Hackensack at Prior’s Mill, storm and then destroy the fort after capturing its stores, and then retreat on foot. When Lee’s scheme reached Washington on August 9, the general balked, sensing it was likely to fail and not worth the sacrifices involved. “In the present position of the enemy’s army, I should deem the operation too hazardous and not warranted by the magnitude of the object,” Washington explained in a letter to Lee. “We should lose more in the case of failure than we would gain in the case of success.”27
But, said Washington, if the major could revise his plan, using fewer than the five hundred men he had requested and approaching Paulus Hook by water rather than over the marshy ground, he would reconsider. “Turn your thoughts this way,” Washington urged Lee, “and give me your opinion as to the probability of success.”28 Lee countered with a compromise plan: the Americans would depart from the Hackensack mill town of New Bridge and march twenty miles south to Paulus Hook. Once the fort was breached, Lee and his men would retreat to Douw’s Ferry with their prisoners and bounty. There they would board waiting boats, watched by Captain Henry Peyton, and sail across the otherwise impassable Hackensack to safety.
Though Lee would lead the expedition, he would not have total administrative authority over its execution. Washington handed that power to Major General William Alexander, who commanded the Continental Army troops closest to Paulus Hook. Alexander and Washington had been friends since their joint service during the French and Indian War. Alexander, who called himself Lord Stirling in assertion of a dubious claim to a Scottish title of nobility, had shown his mettle during the Revolution, fighting off the British during the Battle of Long Island in 1776 and buying time for Washington’s army to escape New York. On August 12 Washington dispatched Lee to deliver a letter to Alexander with the details of the attack. “Success must depend on surprise,” Washington warned. The infantry for the expedition, the general stipulated, would come from Alexander’s divisions, though he was to “consult Major Lee fully and if, upon the whole, you deem the undertaking eligible you have my consent to carry it into execution.”29
McLane’s intelligence was promising: a deserter reported that a relatively meager force of four hundred waited beyond the fort’s walls—two hundred British regulars plus two hundred loyalist militia. A patriot spy, posing as a loyalist seeking news, then visited the fort and reported back to McLane no irregular activities. But at the same time two American letters, one detailing the arrangement with the boats at Douw’s Ferry and the other mentioning the recruitment of militia for the attack, were intercepted by a British spy, possibly imperiling the entire mission. Nevertheless, Lee decided that the attack would proceed, despite the risk.
At 4:00 p.m. on August 18, Lee gathered his men at Haverstraw and calmly read the orders for the attack. He was twenty-three years old, dressed in a green frilled jacket, white breeches, gleaming black boots, and a leather cap topped with a flamboyant plume of horsehair. He projected all the authority that his war experience and birthright commanded. And he was just hours away from carrying out his first major operation.
There were four hundred men assigned to the task, Lee’s Legion plus additional infantry drawn from Virginia, led by Major Jonathan Clark, and from Maryland, by Captain Levin Handy. The former was a seasoned patriot and soldier, six years Lee’s senior and the elder brother of George Rogers and William Clark, fellow soldiers fighting elsewhere in the Revolution and both destined to make their own mark. Many of the men under his and Handy’s command had little enthusiasm for a mission they deemed folly.
Before embarking, Lee gave an understated speech to rally the troops. “Major Lee is so assured of the gallantry of the officers and men under his command, that he feels exhortation useless; he therefore only requires the most profound secrecy. Success is not at the will of mortals; all they can do is to deserve it. Be this determination and this our conduct and we shall have cause to triumph, even in adversity.”30
An hour later the men were on the move. McLane’s infantry fanned out across the route to Paulus Hook, clearing the roads and keeping an eye out for boats arriving along the Hudson before reconnoitering with Lee at a wooded point called Three Pigeons.31 Clark, angered that Lee, a junior officer with less battlefield experience, was leading the expedition, asked when he had been granted his commission. Lee was irritated by the question, especially at a time when he was leading his men towards a major attack. He responded carelessly and untruthfully that he’d been awarded it in 1777—a date that made him Clark’s superior. For the time being, Clark let the issue go.32
Lee’s plan was to travel the twenty miles along New Bergan road from New Bridge village to Paulus Hook, arriving at the fort close to midnight. But his guides suggested a shortcut through a densely forested area that would give the men cover from British sentries. Once they had all filed into the woods, Lee’s men quickly lost their way in the wilderness.33 Their short march morphed into a three-hour ordeal. Soldiers in the rear of the procession were cut off from the rest of the body, reducing the number of men at Lee’s disposal for the final attack. Lee and his exhausted troops finally reached Paulus Hook near 3:00 a.m. With dawn approaching, they swiftly improvised a bridge across the Hackensack and scrambled across it to scout out activity in the fort and determine if the canal that fronted it was passable. It was, although the tide was rapidly rising. The British appeared to be sleeping in their barracks.34 The time for attack was at hand. Bayonets fixed, the American van rushed forward. At this moment—the most inopportune time—Lee learned that some enlisted Virginians had deserted just as the army reached the marshes. But he remained calm, concentrating on the push forward. His men slipped into the canal and waded forward for a two-mile trek, the swampy water rising to their breasts. They kept their muskets above their heads with cocks down and pans open to avoid accidental fire.35
A dozen or so British and German soldiers were in three strategically placed blockhouses defending the main bridge leading into the fort. Behind them lay a redoubt containing five more men as well as the fort’s artillery. When the Americans approached the blockhouses, a British sentry fired the battle’s first shot, waking his comrades, who rushed out to check the invaders. They were too late. Exploiting openings in the fort’s fortifications—there was a large undefended open space to the right of the center blockhouse—the first wave of Americans slipped in, bayonetting everyone in their path. They rapidly captured the redoubt and commandeered its artillery. In mere moments, without firing a single shot or losing one man, Lee had Paulus Hook and its occupants—British soldiers, American loyalists, and Prussian mercenaries—at his mercy.36
The original plan, as approved by Washington, had stipulated that Lee would gather up his prisoners, grab their stores, set the installation ablaze, and dash back to safety. With little time to deliberate, however, Lee decided to retreat at “the moment of victory,”37 without stealing the fort’s powder and ammunition or burning it down. In his official report he claimed that his men were unable to find the key to the fort’s magazine. But it is probable that they were blocked by a small group of Hessians who had avoided capture and continued to fire on the Americans from one of the blockhouses. Lee also may have scrapped razing the fort because a number of sick soldiers, women, and young children were still inside and he was unable to move all of them. Also figuring in his decision was the fact that dawn was fast approaching. The longer his men waited to withdraw, the more likely an attack from roused Redcoats across the river. The Americans were exhausted from their march, and much of their ammunition was damp and useless after the slog through the canal. Lee also worried that the boats might no longer be waiting at Douw’s Ferry for the journey across the Hackensack.
Clark’s men gathered up the 250 prisoners—most of the fort’s occupants had quickly surrendered—and began the withdrawal. Lee dispatched Captain Forsyth to Prior’s Mill to gather men to cover the movement.
Lee’s fears were realized. He learned from the officer assigned to coordinate the meeting with Peyton that the boats were no longer at Douw’s Ferry. Peyton, assuming that the operation had been cancelled when Lee’s men failed to arrive on schedule, had relocated the boats. Lee took his men back onto the Bergan Road in the direction of New Bridge. But they were worn out and hungry. They had marched over forty miles, and their progress now was slowed by the hundreds of prisoners.
And a surprise attack threatened as the light dawned: the prisoners told their captors that a party of British was off to their right. Lee quickly sent off a messenger to Alexander detailing the dire situation, then divided his forces and sent them on three separate routes back to New Bridge—the Marylanders headed off into the hills, Clark and his Virginians stayed along the Bergan Road, and the last group marched north along the Hudson.
Just as the men split up, there was good news. Alexander had dispatched reinforcements: fifty men from the Second Virginia Continental Regiment. Lee assigned part of this force to the troops trekking up the Hudson. The rest joined him, falling in behind Clark. Another round of reinforcements arrived shortly afterwards. But trouble was just up the road: British across the river had heard the shots at Paulus Hook and scrambled into boats to investigate.
Once those British troops reached New Jersey, they were joined by Buskirk’s loyalists, who had been off on a foraging run during the attack. The joint force caught up to the Americans along the Bergan Road at a point called Liberty Poll Tavern. Spilling out of the woods to Lee’s right, they opened fire. Lee’s men turned and faced the enemy, while a detachment dashed into an abandoned stone house. The British, fatigued from their rapid march, melted back into the woods. The Americans moved on and safely rendezvoused at New Bridge by 1:00 p.m. on August 19. The operation was complete. And, despite the difficulties, a success.38
Drained, Lee delayed sending his official report to Washington. He did, however, give the news of the raid’s outcome to Alexander, who conveyed the information to a greatly pleased Washington. In Lee’s description of the raid, he was effusive about the gallantry, honor, and patience of his men, even singling out Major Clark for special praise. Lee had much of which to be proud.
Without firing a shot—the bayonet their “sole dependence,” as Lee wrote—and despite an exhausting march through the woods and late arrival, his men had stormed and taken an important British post, one considered impregnable. They had also made it back safely despite fatigue, the burden of prisoners, the missing boats, and a British attack on the Bergan Road. The Americans had lost only two men. In contrast, most of the British had been killed or captured. In New York, British General Henry Clinton fumed. He would later downplay the affair in his memoirs as a trifling embarrassment, as did the British press, which characterized the attack as bumbling and inconsequential. But the fact that Sutherland, the commanding officer at Paulus Hook, was quickly court martialed betrayed the sharp sting of defeat.39
As Lee had hoped, the reaction across America was euphoric. “Major Lee has performed a most gallant affair,” General Nathanael Greene wrote to his wife, Catharine. “He has surprised and taken the far greater part of the Garrison at Paulus Hook.”40 Levin Handy described the successful attack as “the greatest enterprise in America.” Washington reported to the army that “the enterprise was executed with a distinguished degree of Address, Activity and Bravery and does great honor to Major Lee. . . .”41 He then forwarded Lee’s report to Congress, piling more praise on his protégé and describing the entire operation as “brilliant.” The British garrison’s flag, which Lee’s men had hauled down and pocketed, accompanied Washington’s packet to Philadelphia.42
As news of the success spread, Lee’s list of admirers grew. General Henry Knox noted the young cavalier’s genius. And the Marquis de Lafayette wrote to Lee confessing that “the more I have considered the situation at Paulus Hook, the more I have admired your enterprising spirit and all your conduct in that business.”43
Lee had every reason to believe glory was finally at hand. But when he strained hardest for fame, fortune seemed to frown.
The old resentments resurfaced. A number of the soldiers from the expedition were rankled that so junior an officer had led the expedition. They complained that entire portions of other commands had been detached and given to Lee for the operation without any involvement in its planning.
Lee’s brief exchange with Clark soon came back to haunt him: a small cabal of officers argued that he had lied to Clark about the date of his commission, had not in fact been the senior officer on the expedition, and should not have been placed in control of the forces. Letters of complaint were sent to Alexander and forwarded to Washington. Both men privately dismissed their claims. But in early September Lee was placed under arrest and court martialed.