Tag: revolutionary war

Charles Lee: The Alternative “George Washington” You’ve Probably Never Heard Of

History repeatedly demonstrates the difficulties faced by large conventional powers confronting decentralized resistance movements. From the American Revolution to Vietnam and Afghanistan, weaker forces have often offset military inferiority through mobility, dispersion, decentralization, local support, and the avoidance of decisive engagements.

While George Washington and the American Patriots are often credited with defeating the British Empire through asymmetric warfare, Washington arrived at that strategy belatedly and embraced it only partially. His instinct was to fight as a state—with a professional army, centralized administration, and conventional military institutions.

Charles Lee, on the other hand, recognized much earlier that America’s greatest strengths lay in decentralized resistance, militia warfare, and making British occupation prohibitively expensive. The distinction mattered not only militarily but politically, as conventional warfare demanded many of the fiscal and administrative measures that accompanied the Revolution. In reality, Washington gradually moved toward a strategy of exhaustion, avoidance, and attrition, while Charles Lee had recognized from the beginning that America’s greatest military advantage lay in avoiding the sort of conventional contest Britain wanted to fight.

The Continental Congress had the option between both men—George Washington and Charles Lee. In Conceived in Liberty, Rothbard wrote regarding the choice between Washington and Lee, “What Congress decided to do about that army would determine what it would do about the entire Revolution.” These men had entirely different strategies as to how to fight the British and maintain independence. Obviously, Washington was chosen over Lee, however, this article seeks to explore the little-known alternative: What if Charles Lee and his strategy had been chosen instead?

At the outset, a word of caution is necessary. We always have to be careful with speculation from counterfactual history and not overstate unverifiable conclusions. There are limits on the conclusive power of available evidence and there were negatives of Lee’s strategy. Human decisions, unforeseen circumstances, and countless variables make definitive conclusions impossible. Moreover, Lee’s proposed approach was not without risks or drawbacks of its own.

We can, however, examine what did happen, the available evidence, appreciate Lee and the logic behind his proposed strategy, and recognize some of the drawbacks of Washington’s strategy. Such an exercise helps guard against historical determinism—the assumption that the course of events was inevitable—or that Washington’s state-centered approach to warfare was the only realistic option. The American Revolution could have been fought differently. Charles Lee believed it should have been, and his arguments deserve closer examination.

This key decision of the Continental Congress matters because the way a war is fought affects the outcomes. It is the contention of this article that the choice to fight like a state means either losing or winning like a state.

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1775: Putting Tyrants on the Run

April 19 was the 250th anniversary of American militiamen routing the best army in the world. Seven hundred British troops arrogantly came out of Boston early that day in 1775 to seize firearms and gunpowder in Concord, Massachusetts. By the time the tattered remnants of that force escaped back to Boston, hundreds of British troops were left dead, wounded, or captured along the road. The “shot heard around the world” became one of the most dramatic blows against tyranny in modern history.

But the hard truths of the American Revolution are being obscured by Leviathan-loving pundits. Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.—President John F. Kennedy’s court historian and a revered liberal intellectual—declared in 2004, “Historians today conclude that the colonists were driven to revolt in 1776 because of a false conviction that they faced a British conspiracy to destroy their freedom.”

The colonists revolted because they were being bayoneted down the road to serfdom. The British parliament passed law after law trumpeting Americans’ legal inferiority to their foreign masters. The Sugar Act of 1764 resulted in British officials confiscating hundreds of American ships, based on mere allegations that the shipowners or captains were involved in smuggling. To retain their ships, Americans had to somehow prove that they had never been involved in smuggling—a near-impossible burden.

The Declaratory Act of 1766 announced that Parliament “had, hath, and of right ought to have, full power and authority to make laws and statutes of sufficient force and validity to bind the colonies and people of America, subjects of the crown of Great Britain, in all cases whatsoever.” That meant Parliament could never do an injustice to the Americans, since Parliament had the right to use and abuse colonists as it pleased. That law was modeled after an earlier British dictate—the Irish Declaratory Act of 1719. The British were notorious for treating the Irish as bad or worse than slaves. Perhaps the most influential political philosopher in America in the pre-Revolution times was John Locke, who warned in his Second Treatise on Government in 1690: “He who attempts to get another man into his Absolute Power, does thereby put himself into a State of War with him.” Colonists paid fierce attention to Locke’s warning: “Tyranny is the exercise of Power beyond Right.”

Americans felt like they were being hit by a British blockade even before the Brits forcibly shut down the Boston harbor. Britain imposed heavy taxes on imports and prohibited Americans from erecting any mill for rolling or slitting iron; British statesman William Pitt exclaimed, “It is forbidden to make even a nail for a horseshoe.” The Declaration of Independence denounced King George for “cutting off our trade with all parts of the world.”

To enforce heavy tariffs on tea and other items, King George issued “writs of assistance” that let British soldiers “search settlers’ belongings at random to find out who was evading import taxes by smuggling whiskey or tea.” These writs empowered “a civil officer [to] search any house, shop, warehouse, etc.; break open doors, chests, packages… and remove any prohibited or uncustomed goods or merchandise.” James Otis—a lawyer arguing against the writs in a Boston court in 1761—denounced them as “the worst instrument of arbitrary power, the most destructive of English liberty, and the fundamental principles of law” and declared the writs conferred “a power that places the liberty of every man in the hands of every petty officer.” In 1772, the Massachusetts Committee of Correspondence described the writs’ effects: “Thus our houses and even our bedchambers are exposed to be ransacked and plundered by wretches, whom no prudent man would venture to employ even as menial servants…. By this we are cut off from the domestic security which renders the lives of the most unhappy in some measure agreeable.” Colonial opposition against writs, according to John Adams, ignited the flame that led to American independence.

Vermont patriots marched in 1775 against the British Army under a flag depicting a pine tree—a symbol of British tyranny. Because pine was an excellent material for building ships, Parliament banned cutting down any white pine trees—claiming them all for the British crown without compensation. Historian Jonathan Sewall, writing in 1846, claimed that the conflict with Britain “began in the forests of Maine in the contests of her lumbermen with the King’s surveyor, as to the right to cut, and the property in white pine trees.” Historian Robert Albion wrote in 1926: “The royal interpretation of ‘private property’ practically rendered that term nugatory, so…the pines were virtually being commandeered by the Navy.”

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Biden’s Defense Secretary Honors Transgender Individuals for Serving in the Civil War, Revolutionary War

Biden Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin performed some pathetic pandering to the LGBT community during “Pride Month.” He actually implied that transgenders fought in the Civil and Revolutionary Wars.

“Throughout American history, LGBTQ+ citizens have fought to defend our rights and our freedoms, from the founding of our nation to the civil war, from the trenches of two world wars, to Korea and Vietnam, and from Afghanistan to Iraq,” Austin said, celebrating the enduring American values of sodomy and endless war.

“They fought for our country even when our country wouldn’t fight for them. And even as some were forced to hide who they were or to hang up their uniforms,” he continued.

“And today we reaffirm that transgender rights are human rights, and America is safer and better when every qualified citizen can serve with pride and with dignity. Now that’s real progress,” Austin added.

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