56 CHARLES LEE 



erty; some were mere selfish schemers, or crack- 

 brained vagrants in quest of adventure. Among the 

 latter one of the most conspicuous was Thomas Con- 

 way. Among the former there were five who attained 

 real eminence, and have left a shining mark upon the 

 pages of history. These were De Kalb and Pulaski, 

 who gave up their lives on the battle-field ; Lafayette 

 and Kosciuszko, who afterwards returned to their own 

 countries to play honourable but unsuccessful parts ; 

 and, last not least, the noble Steuben, who died an 

 American citizen in the second term of Washington's 

 presidency. 



But in the eyes of the generation which witnessed 

 the beginning of the Revolutionary War, none of the 

 European officers just mentioned was anything like 

 so conspicuous or so interesting a figure as the man to 

 whose career I invite your attention this evening; 

 Charles Lee was on the ground here before any of 

 these others ; he had already been in America ; he 

 came with the greatest possible amount of noise ; he 

 laid claim to the character of a disinterested enthusiast 

 so vehemently that people believed him. For a while 

 he seemed completely identified with the American 

 cause ; and as his name happens to be the same as 

 that of an illustrious Virginian family, posterity seems 

 to have been in some danger of forgetting that he was 

 not himself an American. I don't know how many 

 times I have been asked to state his relationship to the 

 Lees of Virginia; and, what is worse, I found in print 

 some time ago, in a history of the town of Greenwich, 

 R.I., the statement that the traitor of Monmouth was 

 father of the great general, Robert Edwafd Lee, who 

 might thus be supposed to have inherited what the 



