reached General Lee’s ear in Westchester, “he was in a towering passion, and said it was a splendid affair for Mr. Howe … to have his sores licked by us,” an artillery lieutenant reported. To Washington, Lee wrote on November 19, “Oh, General, why would you be over-persuaded by men of inferior judgment to your own? It was a cursed affair.” Rumors spread that Washington would be sacked, a prospect not displeasing to Lee, for whom the misfortune of others increasingly served as a whetstone to sharpen his ambition. Concealing his own support for reinforcing Fort Washington, he wrote Benjamin Rush
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