One acquaintance nicknamed him Naso, for the long beak that dominated his dark, pinched face. Mohawk warriors, with whom he lived during the French and Indian War, called him Ounewaterika, or “Boiling Water”—a name that only partially suggested his disposition. And during the first year of the Revolution certain members of the Continental Congress regarded him as the greatest general in the world—the officer who should have led the American army had he not been an Englishman. A man around whom controversy swarmed like angry hornets, Charles Lee was a Jekyll-Hyde personality, a stormy character eaten with pride and ambition, brilliant, courtly, scholarly and at the same time uncouth, slovenly, and contentious.

The family into which he was born in Chester, England, a few months before George Washington’s birthday in 1732, had been gentry since the thirteenth century, and Charles, the seventh child—tall, bony, thin and ugly as a scarecrow —was educated in a manner befitting a son of the Enlightenment. Commissioned in his father’s regiment at the age of fifteen, he came to America in 1755 to fight the French and Indians, where he acquired a reputation for a violent temper and brutally frank opinions. Back in Europe, he was active in literary, theatrical, and political circles, condemned the government loudly, fought in Portugal, became an aide to King Stanislas of Poland (who made him a major general), and was increasingly on the outs with the ministry of George in, whom he called a “despicable and tho stupid at the same time not innoxious dolt.” Finally, he had enough of the Old World and sailed to America in 1773, where he rapidly met most of the men who were to assume importance in the Revolution and became, by the time hostilities broke out, a leading contender for commander of the Continental Army. But Congress had to have a native-born American, and to Lee’s chagrin, George Washington of Virginia received the appointment. Lee was named a major general, and it required no imagination to see that he was a perfect original. An acquaintance, Jeremy Belknap, described him as “an odd genius; full of fire and passion, and but little good manners; a great sloven, wretchedly profane, and a great admirer of dogs, —of which he had two at dinner with him, one of them a native of Pomerania, which I should have taken for a bear had I seen him in the woods.” By the fall of 1776 Lee had won acclaim for the defense of Charleston, he was on close or intimate terms with the important members of Congress, and he was the army’s favorite officer. This—coupled with the fact that Washington had presided over an unbroken series of disasters beginning with the loss of Long Island—gave rise to rumors that Charles Lee would supersede the Virginian in command of the army. Lee’s insatiable ambition and colossal vanity made it certain that he would seek the opportunity to do so, and when Washington divided his army