The British Are Coming: The War for America, Lexington to Princeton, 1775-1777 (The Revolution Trilogy Book 1)

by Rick Atkinson

On Saturday, June 8, as several British warships eased across the bar and reconvened in Five-Fathom Hole, Major General Charles Lee cantered into Charleston with a pack of yapping dogs at his heels and two thousand Continental soldiers from Virginia and North Carolina close behind. Sent by Congress as commander of the newly created Southern Department, Lee, now forty-four, was deemed “the first officer in military knowledge and experience,” in Washington’s recent assessment, although “rather fickle and violent, I fear, in his temper.” Lee intended to prove the commander in chief correct, on all counts. No more flamboyant figure ever served the American cause in uniform, whether he was wearing his hussar’s black dress garnished with a fox pelt and gold-inlaid steel pistols, or his green sherryvallies with leather stripes and buttoned seams, or his Polish general’s costume—bone white, faced in blue, and adorned with the red ribbon and enameled star of the Order of Saint Stanislaus. So slender that he seemed to lack shoulders, he had a receding chin, high forehead, tiny hands, and small, deep-set eyes; to call Lee homely was to insult homely men. “His nose is so large,” a German officer wrote, “that its shadow darkens the other half of his face.” Despite the fancy uniforms, he was habitually unkempt and reputedly owned but three shirts, each in such disrepair that he’d named them Rag, Tag, and Bobtail. The dogs trailed him everywhere, including a favorite Pomeranian called Sp...