Apr 17, 2012 - Sale 2276

Sale 2276 - Lot 62

Price Realized: $ 9,600
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 5,000 - $ 7,500
WANTS MARINES FOR "ENTRAPPING ARNOLD & HIS BANDITTI" LEE, RICHARD HENRY. Autograph Letter Signed, to Brigadier General George Weedon, discussing the Southern Campaign and Benedict Arnold's raiders. 2 pages, 4to, with integral address leaf; address leaf moderately worn. "Chantilly" [Westmoreland County, VA], 19 February 1781
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Lee begins with celebratory thoughts on Daniel Morgan and the Battle of Cowpens: "I return you my thanks for the most agreeable news that you sent me of our friend Morgan's success. I think that affair will give a favorable turn to the southern war."
Most of the letter is devoted to a more immediate problem: Benedict Arnold's force then on the loose in Virginia. Lee has been urging Congress "for a proper marine force to come quickly & silently into Chesapeake Bay for the purpose of entrapping Arnold & his banditti. . . . What a fine business it would be to take the whole of these people in a season of their highest confidence!"
Lee also recounts the raid by Samuel Parsons on the British in New York, and concludes "We seem to commence this year well, God send that we may proceed & finish as well."