Traitor or Patriot?

GENERAL CHARLES LEE (369 pp.)--John Richard Alden--Louisiana Sfafe Uni-verslfy Press ($4.75).

In the lean winter of 1775-76, when good generals were as scarce as good shoes in the Continental Army, John Adams, delegate to the Continental Congress, picked up his quill, penned an unusual tribute to one of them. "The Congress have seen such a necessity of an able commander in Canada, as to destine you for that most arduous service . . . We want you at N. York--we want you at Cambridge--we want you in Virginia--but

Canada seems of more importance . . ." The indispensable general was not George Washington, but a gouty, irascible soilder of fortune name Charles Lee*

Lee usually looked like an unmade bed and stalked about with a fond pack of dogs at his heels. He was Washington's second-in-command, but the commander in chief never warmed to his quirky personality. It was Washington who stormed up to Lee at the battle of Monmouth, accused him of making an unnecessary, disorderly, and shameful retreat./- and made the charge substantially stick in a court-martial. Thirty months after the Adams accolade, Lee was suspended from the army and later died in disgrace.

An Exotic Taste. Rummaging in history's attic, the University of Nebraska's John Alden has dusted off the controversial figure of Lee in the first full-scale biography in 90 years. Though overly clotted with petty details, Biographer Alden's book goes far toward clearing Lee's name of the suspicion of treachery, plants him securely--if with dubious distinction--among "the fathers of the American Republic."

Cheshire-born Charles Lee got his first taste of the New World in 1755 as a 23-year-old lieutenant in the French and Indian War. It captivated him: "[English] rivers and lakes (even the greatest) are to these, little rivulets and brooks." Its inhabitants were equally winning. Philadelphia ladies, he found, were "extremely pretty and most passionately fond of red coats, which is for us a most fortunate piece of absurdity."

Lee himself had more exotic tastes. He married the daughter of an Indian chief. Inducted into the Seneca tribe, he was dubbed "Ounewaterika," meaning "boiling water, or one whose spirits are never asleep."

Captain "Boiling Water" returned to England in 1760 (without his wife), hoping for rapid advancement. He got it, but not in the English army. Following the 18th Century wars as avidly as some men chase fires, he became a colonel in the Portuguese army, a major general in the Polish army, even offered his military services to Catherine the Great, but she passed him up.* A venomous antimonarchist at home, he railed against that "reptile" and "dolt," George III. In 1773 he left England for good.

A Wambling Stomach. Nearly a full year before the shot heard round the world, Lee was buzzing America's mission in the colonists' ears. "The generous and liberal of all nations turn their eyes to this continent as the last asylum of liberty . . ." Titles, he said, made him "spew," created a "wambling" in his stomach.

He drew up plans for model regiments, was one of the first to suggest draftees (not adopted). Champing at freedom's bit, he scolded, "For God's sake, why do you dawdle in the Congress so strangely? Why do you not at once declare yourself a separate independent state?" A dynamo of energy, he drilled troops, advised Washington, arranged sound defenses for New York and Charleston.

His fame curdled after a British raiding party captured him on an unlucky Friday, Dec. 13, 1776. The subsequent case against Lee was threefold: 1) that, while a British prisoner, he gave the British a plan to destroy the American Army;

2) that he also offered to work for a negotiated peace short of independence;

3) that, after resuming his command in an exchange of prisoners, he threw the first day's battle at Monmouth by unnecessary withdrawals.

Biographer Alden acquits him on all three counts. Lee's defense, which Alden accepts: 1) the plan to destroy the

American Army was a decoy; 2) he thought a negotiated peace would avert a prolonged blood bath and eventual American defeat; 3) the fact that enemy forces held better ground at Monmouth justified his withdrawal tactics.

By appeal to Congress, pamphlets and duels, Lee vainly sought to vindicate his honor after the court-martial. Unhinged by his wrongs, he told friends that Washington planned to have him assassinated. "Great God!" he wrote his sister in 1781, the year before he died, "what a dupe and a victim have I been to the talismanic name of liberty!" But his last delirious words were a fighter's still: "Stand by me, my brave grenadiers!"

*No kin to the Revolution's Henry ("Light-horse Harry") Lee, or his son Robert E. Lee. Thirty years later, Lafayette, who did not witness the episode himself, started the story that Washington called Lee a "damned poltroon" on this occasion. Most historians don't believe it. *But later drew on the tactical talents of another warrior of the Revolution, John Paul Jones. In the Russo-Turkish war of 1787-91, Jones was a rear admiral with Catherine's Black Sea fleet, fought in several engagements.

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