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A Prison without Bars Charles Lee and the Society of Gentlemen Prisoners during the American Revolution James J. Schaefer T he morning air of December 13, 1776, was interrupted with musket fire. A detachment of British dragoons,with intelligence from New JerseyTories, had surrounded an old tavern, owned and operated by the widow White outside Basking Ridge, New Jersey. According to their information White’s tavern, a respectable inn that was once the court seat of Warren County, was lodging their prey. The leaders of the British dragoons, Col. William Harcourt and Banastre Tarleton, had thus surrounded Maj. Gen. Charles Lee, the deserter, the traitor, the opportunistic co-conspirator of insurrection , the man who had been seen on many previous occasions, though never “within the reach of a musket.” This was an opportunity to put a dagger into the heart of the Continental Army’s command structure; an opportunity that bore fruition only after continuous musket fire sent projectiles “thro’ every Window and Door” followed by the threat that the tavern would “be burnt and every person without exception, should be put to the sword.” So, within fifteen minutes of Lee first seeing the dragoons, he appeared in the front doorway, with neither cloak nor hat, surrendering himself as a prisoner of war. “Victoria!” Capt. Ernst von Muenchhausen wrote of the event, “[w]e have captured General Lee, the only rebel whom we had cause to fear.”1 Lee’s situation was of his own making, choosing to move his army through New Jersey slowly as an expression of his discontent over the “damnably deficient ” talents of George Washington and the weakness of his civil counsels. His folly, according to Nathaniel Greene, was actually an intervention of Providence, a sign from a higher being “as if he meant the freedom of America should be established by Americans only.” Though Greene’s words were meant to calm fears in losing a senior officer, they do point to Lee’s quandary as a prisoner of war. Americans generally viewed Lee as a hero, the consummate soldier who possessed the manly, republican virtues of courage, strength, and military prowess. The British, on the other hand, generally regarded Lee as a cowardly, weak, and decadent traitor.The Americans acknowledged Lee’s 74 JAMES J. SCHAEFER status as a gentleman because they saw it in their best interests, while the British accorded him gentleman status only because decorum demanded as much.2 Lee’s military reputation, however, surpassed his reputation as a gentleman . Having spent nearly twenty years in the British Army, Lee achieved the rank of colonel before being placed on the half-pay list. After his career was over in the early 1760s, Lee sold his military expertise throughout Europe before settling in the American colonies in 1773. Within two years, Lee had so impressed his American cousins that he was eventually rewarded with an offer from the Provincial Congress of Massachusetts to become one of the highest ranked officers in the newly formed American army. Unfortunately for Lee, he is best remembered for his cumbersome leadership at the Battle of Monmouth (1778), a scathing letter war with Washington, his subsequent court-martial for cowardice and insubordination, and his public humiliation for being cashiered from the Continental Army. Before his military exile of 1778, however, the ex-British officer had become important enough to the revolutionary movement that his capture caused considerable fear. Ironically, capture confirmed to Lee that he had not only reached his full maturity as a man, but that he had finally reached the upper echelon of a patriarchal system; only in capture did Lee see a break in the way he internalized his frustration with men in positions of authority. This feeling changed as he was exposed to the politics of being a prisoner of war. He became particularly drawn to the manner in which the American civil authority handled his honorable sacrifice as a prisoner of war. At the same time, his capture reconfirmed his status as a man with his old comrades in arms, and he expected his British captors to recognize his military rank and social standing. He anticipated that his captors, guided by the central precept of honor, would make accommodations for his gentlemanly privileges. As he received his privileges, however, Lee had to face repercussions for becoming a rebel and was prejudged by his captors as a pretender to being a gentleman. Lee, like his American counterparts, became the butt of English animosity and...

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