Major General Charles Lee

Correspondence between Major General Charles Lee and George Washington, June 1778

The following letters between Washington and Maj. Gen. Charles Lee concern events surrounding the Battle of Monmouth on 28 June 1778 that eventually led to Lee’s court martial. In the late spring and early summer of 1778 the British pulled out of Philadelphia and the leadership of the Continental army was faced with a dilemma. On the one hand, they could pursue and engage the British forces under Gen. Sir Henry Clinton. If successful, the Americans might succeed in defeating the British presence in America and bring an early close to the war. However, the American troops were tired, underfed, underarmed, and undertrained in the spring of 1778, and therefore this plan was not without considerable risk. On the other hand, the Americans could allow the British to retreat across New Jersey with the expectation that the entrance of the French on the side of the Americans would end the war soon enough.

In a council of war on 24 June 1778, Major General Lee argued against the plan to pursue and engage the British forces and was adamantly in favor of allowing the British to retreat unmolested. It was eventually decided that small contingents of Continental troops should harass the British, but the ineffectiveness of this strategy led Washington to reconsider and seek a more direct confrontation. During fearfully hot weather in the last days of June, American troops sought to engage with British forces as the British left the village of Monmouth Courthouse, New Jersey. The following letters, beginning the day before the engagement, help explain the incidents that led to Lee’s court martial in the months following the battle.

Links to Letters

Images of Charles Lee

Maps of the Battle of Monmouth



Note: the explanatory text accompanying the correspondence between George Washington and Charles Lee presented here is adapted from Victory with the Help of France, volume five of Douglas Southall Freeman’s George Washington, primarily chapters two and three of that volume.

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