Renegade Revolutionary

Honorable Mention for the 2015 Book Award from the American Revolution Round Table of Richmond

Honorable Mention for the 2015 Fraunces Tavern Museum Book Award

In

November 1774, a pamphlet to the “People of America” was published in

Philadelphia and London. It forcefully articulated American rights and

liberties and argued that the Americans needed to declare their independence

from Britain. The author of this pamphlet was Charles Lee, a former British

army officer turned revolutionary, who was one of the earliest advocates for

American independence. Lee fought on and off the battlefield for expanded

democracy, freedom of conscience, individual liberties, human rights, and for

the formal education of women.

Renegade Revolutionary: The Life of

General Charles Lee is a vivid new portrait of one of the most complex and controversial of the

American revolutionaries. Lee’s erratic behavior and comportment, his capture

and more than one year imprisonment by the British, and his court martial after

the battle of Monmouth in 1778 have dominated his place in the historiography

of the American Revolution. This book retells the story of a man who had been

dismissed by contemporaries and by history. Few American revolutionaries shared

his radical political outlook, his cross-cultural experiences, his

cosmopolitanism, and his confidence that the American Revolution could be won

primarily by the militia (or irregulars) rather than a centralized regular

army. By studying Lee’s life, his political and military ideas, and his style

of leadership, we gain new insights into the way the American revolutionaries

fought and won their independence from Britain.