Page:Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography (1892, volume 3).djvu/694

658 Velha. On his return to England he busied himself with a scheme for founding two new colonies in America &mdash; one on the Ohio river below the Wabash, the other on the Illinois. Inducements were to be held out for emigrants from Switzerland and Germany as well as New England; but the ministry refused to sanction the scheme. About this time he wrote several pamphlets, reviewing the colonial policy of the government in language so arrogant and bitter as to make enemies of the ministry, while on the other hand his censorious and quarrelsome temper prevented his making many friends among the opposition party. In his endeavors after military promotion he was disappointed, and in 1764 he made his way to Poland, where he received an appointment on the staff of King Stanislaus Augustus. Two years afterward, in accompanying the Polish embassy to Turkey, he narrowly escaped freezing to death on the Balkan mountains, and again in Constantinople came near being buried in the ruins of his house, which was destroyed by an earthquake. In 1766 he returned to England and spent two years in a fruitless attempt to obtain promotion. His anger at the ministry was vented so freely that he soon acquired the reputation of a disappointed and vindictive place-hunter. In 1769 he returned to Poland, was appointed major-general in the Polish army, and served in a campaign against the Turks. On this, as on other occasions, he expressed the opinion that the commanders under whom he served were fools. After barely escaping with his life from a violent fever, he went to Vienna and spent the winter there. During the spring of 1770 he travelled in Italy, where he lost two fingers in a duel with an officer whom he killed. He then went by way of Minorca to Gibraltar, whence he returned in the autumn to England, where he wrote his ironical epistle to David Hume, and otlier papers. He spent the summer of 1772 in France and Switzerland, seeking relief from rheumatism. On 25 May of that year he was promoted lieutenant-colonel on half-pay, but was unable to obtain further recognition from the government.

It now seems to have occurred to him that the troubles in America might afford a promising career for a soldier of fortune. He arrived in New York, 10 Nov., 1773, in the midst of the agitation over the tea duties, and the next ten months were spent in a journey through the colonies as far as Virginia in one direction and Massachusetts in the other. In the course of this journey Lee made the acquaintance of nearly all the leaders of the Revolutionary party, and won high favor from the zeal with which he espoused their cause. At this time he rendered some real services with tongue and pen, while his self-seeking motives were hidden by the affected earnestness of his arguments in behalf of political liberty and the real sincerity of his invectives against the British government. The best of his writings at this time was the &ldquo;Strictures on a Friendly Address to all Reasonable Americans, in Reply to Dr. Myles Cooper&rdquo; (1774), in which the arguments of the Tory president of King's college were severely handled. This pamphlet was many times reprinted and exerted considerable influence. While the 1st Continental congress was in session at Philadelphia, Lee was present in that city and was ready with his advice and opinions. He set himself up for a military genius, and there was no campaign in modern European history which he could not expound and criticise with the air of a man who had exhausted the subject. The American leaders, ill acquainted with military science and flattered by the prospect of securing the

aid of a great European soldier, were naturally ready to take him at his own valuation; but he felt that one grave obstacle stood in the way of his appointment to the chief command. He wrote to Edmund Burke, 10 Dec., 1774, that he did not think the Americans &ldquo;would or ought to confide in a man, let his qualifications be ever so great, who has no property among them.&rdquo; To remove this objection he purchased, for about &pound;5,000 in Virginia currency (equal to about &pound;3,000 sterling), an estate in Berkeley county, in the Shenandoah valley, near that of his friend Horatio Gates. He did not complete this purchase till the last of May, 1775, while the 2d Continental congress was in session. A letter to a friend at this time indicates that he was awaiting the action of the congress, and did not finally commit himself to the purchase until virtually sure of a high military command. To pay for the estate he borrowed &pound;3,000 of Robert Morris, to whom he mortgaged the property as security, while he drew bills on his agent in England for the amount. On 17 June he received as high a command as congress thought it prudent to give him, that of second major-general in the Continental army. The reasons for making Washington commander-in-chief were generally convincing; and as the only Continental army existing was the force of 16,000 New England men with which Gen. Artemas Ward was besieging Boston, it was not deemed politic to place a second in command over Ward. Some of Lee's friends, and in particular Thomas Mifflin, afterward active in the Conway cabal, urged that he should at least have the first place after Washington; but John Adams declared that, while the New England army would cheerfully serve under Washington, it could not be expected to acquiesce in having another than its own general in the next place. Accordingly, Ward was appointed first of the major-generals and Lee second. The British adventurer, who had cherished hopes of receiving the chief command, was keenly disappointed. For the present he repressed his spleen against Washington, but made no secret of his contempt for Ward, whom he described as &ldquo;a fat old gentleman who had been a popular church-warden, but had no acquaintance whatever with military affairs.&rdquo; When Lee was informed of his appointment, 19 July, he begged leave, before accepting it, to confer with a committee of congress with regard to his private affairs. The committee being immediately appointed, he made it a condition of his entering the American service that he should be indemnified by congress for any pecuniary loss he might suffer by so doing, and that this reimbursement should be made as soon as the amount of such loss should be ascertained. Congress at once assented to this condition, and Lee accepted his appointment. Three days afterward he wrote a letter to the British secretary of war, Lord Barrington, resigning his commission as lieutenant-colonel and the half-pay that up to this moment he had been willing to receive from a government against which he was concerting measures of armed resistance.

Having thus entered the American service, Lee accompanied Washington in his journey to Cambridge, and at every town through which they passed he seemed to be quite as much an object of curiosity and admiration as the commander-in-chief. According to Lee's own theory of the relationship between the two, his was the controlling mind. He was the trained and scientific European soldier to whose care had been in a measure intrusted this raw American general who for