Conceived in Liberty (213 page)

The radicals, however, were prepared to accept the Dickinson “Olive Branch Petition,” which they knew would be futile, provided that they won the crucial point—the second point in the Massachusetts petition—congressional assumption of responsibility for the revolutionary army in New England. The Congress took measured steps toward this goal during early June by voting to supply funds to furnish powder, first “for the Continental Army” and then frankly for “the American army before Boston.”

The final step, however, was whether the Congress would actually take over direction of the army at Cambridge, directing the troops and furnishing
them with both supplies and a commander-in-chief. Here the Massachusetts radicals were in a cruel dilemma; any army under the Continental Congress would mean, in contrast to a guerrilla army, the inevitable buildup of a central state apparatus, and of a highly expensive and burdensome state army, which would inevitably saddle all Americans with heavy taxes, inflation, and debt. The Massachusetts radicals can hardly be blamed for their decision to press for a statist continental army; the theory of revolutionary guerrilla warfare had yet to be fully developed, and Massachusetts was understandably desperate to weld the other reluctant colonies firmly to the revolutionary cause.

On June 14, Congress took the fateful step of voting to organize an army of 15,000 men, and specifically to raise six (a little later, ten) companies of expert backwoods riflemen from Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia to be sent to Boston. It was not lost upon the delegates that the crack-shooting frontier riflemen had been particularly effective in the victory at Concord. The crucial question now remaining was the identity of the commander-in-chief to be appointed by Congress.

On this vital issue, the Massachusetts radical leadership, traditionally united as one man, was grievously divided. Sam Adams, almost always instinctively libertarian, began with the most individualistic and democratic plan of all: appoint no commander-in-chief at all and permit the local militia soldiers themselves to elect all of their own officers, up to the rank of commander-in-chief. Whenever any plans for a continental army and commander were mentioned, Adams “was apt to murmur the word
Cromwell
and begin animadverting on the sacred, inalienable rights of the civilian.”
*
Thomas Cushing, Robert Treat Paine, and other New Englanders wanted a New England general, the obvious choice being Artemas Ward, already in command before Boston. Ward, however, was a bit old for the job. The issue, of course, was not simply local pride, but the crucial one of keeping control of the army in the hands of individualistic and democratic New Englanders rather than subject to the aristocratic colonies. At this crossroads, John Adams, Elbridge Gerry, and Joseph Warren bent so far backward to achieve continental unity that they gravely compromised and sacrificed libertarian principle, storing up untold trouble for individualism in the future. In short, they decided to support for commander-in-chief that conservative scion of the Virginia landed oligarchy, George Washington. In doing so, incidentally, John Adams (though not Warren or Gerry) began a slow but steady political drift rightward out of the libertarian-radical camp.

Sam Adams, too, began to display an unsureness, a lack of confidence
that would periodically display itself on national issues and would also lead him, at least temporarily, rightward. Something seemed to be going forever from that once uncannily sure and self-confident planner and organizer of the Revolution, and he allowed himself to be persuaded by his cousin John to second the nomination of George Washington.

From a short-range, opportunistic point of view, the nomination of Washington appeared to the radicals to have merit. Not militarily, to be sure, for he had had little military experience, and that was a series of decisive losses in the French and Indian War. The attraction of Washington was that he was virtually the only man who could gain the votes of most radicals and conservatives alike. On the one hand, socially and politically, Washington was a deep-dyed conservative and could be depended upon to support the oligarchy and classical military tactics. On the other hand, in the fight with Britain, he—along with most of the Virginians—was close to the radical camp and could be depended upon to be militant in warring against Great Britain.
*

Consequently, John Adams rose in Congress on June 14 to nominate Washington, and he was seconded by Sam Adams. In so doing, they permanently alienated the vain and flighty John Hancock, who fancied himself in the panoplied robes of commander-in-chief and expected his fellow Massachusetts delegates to nominate him. Already ensconced in the high-sounding but largely honorific post of president of the Continental Congress, his unfounded ambition was gravely wounded by their decision not to notify him in advance of what was being planned. The consequences of the Hancock-Adams split for future Massachusetts politics were enormous; for a start, from this point on Hancock hobnobbed with and was feted by the ultraconservatives of the Congress, men who were better able to satisfy his taste for finery than were the plain men of Massachusetts.

John Adams’ plan met considerable resistance on June 14, especially from those backing Ward and the other candidates; but by the next day, resistance had melted away and Washington was approved unanimously. With their main points carried, the radicals supported the Dickinson Olive Branch Petition to England, which was passed by the Congress on July 5.

*
Catherine Drinker Bowen,
John Adams and the American Revolution
(New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1950), p. 531.

*
Even such an admirer of Washington as Marcus Cunliffe admits that Washington’s best role during the war was political and consultative rather than military: “Like General Eisenhower, he was a coalition general for a large part of the war... major strategic plans usually lay outside his scope.... If his charismatic symbols were those of the flag, the sword, the beautifully caparisoned horse —, his day-to-day responsibilities were more appropriately symbolized by the chairman’s gavel... and the secretary’s quill. It was his task, and his talent, to preside, to inform, to adjudicate, to advise, to soothe, to persuade, to anticipate, to collaborate.” Marcus Cunliffe, “George Washington: George Washington’s Generalship,” in George Athan Billias, ed.,
George Washington’s Generals
(New York: William Morrow & Co., 1964), p. 16.

If the choice of commander-in-chief of the Continental Army had been made on the basis of ability, genius, military experience, erudition, ardor for the cause of liberty, or for a combination of these qualities, this crucial appointment would have gone not to Washington but to one Charles Lee. But political considerations ruled, and Lee, a native of Britain, had no political base. Mere merit was submerged, though some delegates did favor Lee for the job.

George Washington and Charles Lee: No greater contrast could be found in their confrontation, and no more fateful choice of appointment could have been made, a decision which would bear heavily on the future course of the history of the United States. Washington, a half-educated, blunt, practical man, a highly conservative landed oligarch of Virginia, orthodox in his military and political views, a loser in his few previous battles, longed to become the head of a regular state army on the conventional European model. Lee, a brilliant, articulate, learned,
déclassé,
English intellectual, an ardent, witty, pungent individualist, personally and politically dedicated to liberty and deeply influenced by libertarian thought, an authentic military genius, had seen a great deal of fighting on the European model and saw its deficiencies for the American scene. It was almost inevitable that two such deeply contrasting figures (Lee was chosen by Congress as third in command of the army, after Washington and Ward) would come to an irreparable clash. That clash came to pass, and since the seemingly inescapable verdict of history
was to give the victory to Washington, Lee sank into disgrace and oblivion from which historians are only now beginning to rescue him.
*

Lee was that exceedingly rare combination: a brilliant soldier and a gifted intellectual. He was also the only general on the American side (with the exception of his old English-born friend Horatio Gates) to have had substantial military experience. A fluent linguist and learned in political and military theory as well as in classical and English literature, Lee had been influenced by the strongly pro-Whig history of England written by a French Huguenot, Paul de Rapin, and later by the writings of Rousseau. After serving as an officer in the French and Indian War (where he picked up the apt sobriquet “Boiling Water”) Lee performed with brilliance in the British expedition against the Spaniards in Portugal. Despite his distinction, Lee was retired from the British army after the Seven-Years’ War because his outspoken criticism of British political and military leaders and his increasingly radical Whig views had lost him favor with the crown.

In England, Lee was received with warmth in important Whig circles and became a friend of the liberal lords Thanet and Pembroke, of Charles Yorke, and especially of the ardent liberal Col. Isaac Barré. Thwarted in his military career at home, Lee became personal aide-de-camp to the rather liberal King Stanislaus of Poland. His letters from Poland reflected increasingly radical and libertarian views, denouncing the aggrandizement of George III, Granville, and the Tories, toying with the idea of a republic, and praising natural rights and the American resistance against the Stamp Act. He wrote: “May God prosper the Americans in their resolution, that there may be one asylum at least on the earth for men, who prefer their natural rights to the fantastical prerogatives of a foolish perverted head because it wears a crown.”

Lee returned to England the following year, but his increasing radicalism again kept him from military preferment. Befriended by Gen. Sir Henry Conway, he became an ardent supporter of the Rockingham Whigs and of radical leader John Wilkes. By 1768 he was contemplating running for Commons, to effect a “glorious revolution” in Britain. He was also increasingly attracted to the American cause and habitually referred to
America as the last “asylum” of freedom. At this time, Lee, Horatio Gates, and other pro-American British officers began to gather periodically for an exchange of views.

In 1769 Lee was made an honorary major general in the army of the pro-Russian king of Poland. The same year, he joined the Russian army against Turkey and had the opportunity to observe guerrilla warfare by Turks and Polish rebel forces. Ill, and failing to be granted a command, Lee traveled widely through central and southern Europe, visiting such luminaries as Emperor Joseph II of Austria and growing ever more bitter in his correspondence against the Tory policies at home. He blasted the prime minister, the Duke of Grafton, as a man without conscience or honor and wrote that “if the axe is not applied to his neck, it is laid to the root of our liberties, national honor, and inheritance; there is no medium....” More and more he spoke of being free in exile rather than submitting to the domination of George III. Excusing his lack of urbanity on the subject, for the Whig cause he ardently wished for “triumph over tyranny, corruption, Grafton, North, and the Devil.... My puny dagger shall contribute its mite of annoyance to the breast of despotism and wickedness.” And he passionately conjured up “the spirits of Cato, Brutus, Hampden, and Sidney” for the cause of liberty. George III was “a reptile” and a “despicable... stupid... dolt,” while Lords and Commons were “dens of thieves.”

Returning to England in the spring of 1771, Lee published in the press, though more circumspectly, a criticism of King George III, and also composed a lengthy, though unfortunately unpublished and vanished, critique of David Hume’s
History of England.
He was irked at Hume’s Tory apologetics for the Stuart kings, and he projected a satirical whitewashing history of the emperors Claudius and Nero, which he bitingly dedicated to David Hume. In the introduction to this critique, which has survived, Lee again attacked the Tory policies of George III, the use of pecuniary influence by the crown, and the large standing army as instruments of oppression. Disapproving of capital punishment in general, he wished to preserve it for kings and their families, since the eradication of a royal house was surely preferable to the loss of a people’s freedom. It is little wonder that the manuscript could not find an English publisher. In these final years in England, Lee became friendly with the great painter and ardent Whig, Sir Joshua Reynolds, with Whig leader Edmund Burke, and also with the great radical republican historian, Mrs. Catherine Macauley.

Finally, Charles Lee, a major general in the Polish army and a lieutenant colonel in the British, consummated the exile for which he had long been heading. Eager to help the burgeoning American cause, he arrived at New York in the fall of 1773, where both he and the Americans were ripe for a revolutionary situation. For over a year, he travelled extensively
throughout the colonies, making friends with all the revolutionary leaders, who were fascinated by his personality and by his military knowlege and ardor for liberty. In America he was no longer a maverick, but a leader in the American struggles with the British government. It was no coincidence that those particularly attracted to Lee were the radicals George Mason and Thomas Jefferson in Virginia, Alexander McDougall in New York, and Sam Adams and his followers in Massachusetts. He became an especially close friend of Virginia’s Richard Henry Lee (no relation), who truly wrote of him: “A most true and worthy friend to the rights of human nature in general, and a warm spirited foe to American oppression.”

Charles Lee lost no time in lauding Boston’s resistance to the Tea Act and in urging energetic boycotts in reaction to the Coercive Acts of 1774. The crisis brought on by the Coercive Acts was obviously tailor-made for Lee’s revolutionary temper. Taking up the pen as “Anglus Americanus” on behalf of active resistance, he urged a boycott and attacked moderation as “Submission to Britain.” America was the “last asylum of liberty,” and therefore its defense of liberty was also a defense for the people of Britain and for the rest of the world. This was published in the Philadelphia press, and a similar handbill was published in New York and widely reprinted in the New England papers.