LEE, CHARLES | Autograph letter signed ("C Lee"), regarding the Battle of Bunker hill, Cambridge, 20 July 1775

Property from the Eric C. Caren Collection

LEE, CHARLES

Autograph letter signed ("C Lee"), regarding the Battle of Bunker hill, Cambridge, 20 July 1775

2 pages, folio (13 x 8 1/8 in.; 333 x 207 mm). Signed and dated ("Cambridge July 20th 1775"), recipient unknown; lightly browned, some ink erosion, silked. The consignor has independently obtained a letter of authenticity from PSA that will accompany the lot.

"the more we consider the affair of Bunker's Hill the more wonderful it appears."

Unrestrained and reluctant to to credit the American officers at the ongoing siege of Boston and the Battle of Bunker Hill, the tone of the present letter is characteristic of Continental Army Major General Lee.  

"...I am seldom less than twelve hours on horse back. The want of Engineers has occasioned a fatigue to me scarcely credible. I cannot conceive what the Devil put into some of your N. England Gentlemen's heads that you were insufficiently furnish'd with able men of this description. I do not believe there is one capable of constructing an oven..." 

"Had we but uniforms compleat arms more Gentlemen for officers...very little time and pains would render 'em the most invincible Army that have appear'd since the first period of the Roman Republic...the more we consider the affair of Bunker's Hill the more wonderful it appears ⁠— fifteen hundred...disorderly Peasantry without a single office to command them in the most disadvantageous situation imaginable resist and repulse three thousand very good regular troops under the command of the very best officers in the British Service..."

Though Lee mentions that General Washington did arrive on 2 July to take command, the sentiments of his letter remain fundamentally unchanged. During the Battle of Monmouth, Lee clashed with Washington, and the former was subsequently court-martialed, thus bringing his military career to an end.