THE SOLDIER OF FORTUNE 95 



Washington's aide-de-camp, Colonel Laurens, for 

 whom Hamilton acted as second. 1 In this affair Lee 

 was slightly wounded in the right arm. His venomous 

 tongue now kept getting him into trouble more than 

 ever. He could not hear Washington's name men- 

 tioned without losing his temper. After some time 

 he addressed one of his impudent letters to Congress, 

 and was immediately dismissed from the army. He 

 retired in disgrace to his estate in the Shenandoah 

 valley, and lived there long enough to witness the final 

 triumph of the cause he had done so much to injure. 

 On a visit to Philadelphia he was suddenly seized with 

 a fever, and died in a tavern, friendless and alone, on 

 the 2d of October, 1782. His last words, uttered in 

 delirium, were, "Stand by me, my brave grenadiers!" 

 A scoffer to the last, he had expressed in his will a 

 wish that he might not be buried within a mile of any 

 church or meeting-house, as since his arrival in Amer- 

 ica he had kept so much bad company in this world 

 that he did not wish to continue it in the next. He 

 was buried, however, in the cemetery of Christ Church, 

 and his funeral was attended by the President of Con- 

 gress and other eminent citizens. 



General Lee was one of the numerous persons 

 credited with the authorship of the famous " Letters 

 of Junius," and the way in which this came to pass is 

 worthy of notice for the further illustration it affords 

 of his character. In a letter dated at Dover, Feb- 

 ruary i, 1803, published in the Wilmington Mirror 

 and copied into the St. James Chronicle, London, 

 Mr. Thomas Rodney gave the substance of a conversa- 

 tion between himself and General Lee in 1773. That 



1 id. 283. 



