to make an opposition. He ordered some pieces of artillery to be
brought up to defend the pass, and some troops to form and defend the
pieces. The artillery was too distant to be brought up readily, so that
there was but little opposition given here. A few shot though, and a
little skirmishing in the wood checked the enemy's career. The Genl
expressed his astonishment at this unaccountable retreat Mr. Lee
indecently replied that the attack was contrary to his advice and opinion
in council."

In a fit of temper Lee wrote Washington two imprudent letters, expressed
"in terms [so] highly improper" that he was ordered under arrest and tried
by a court-martial, which promptly found him guilty of disobedience and
disrespect, as well as of making a "disorderly and unnecessary retreat."
To this Lee retorted, "I aver that his Excellencies letter was from
beginning to the end a most abominable lie--I aver that my conduct will
stand the strictest scrutiny of every military judge--I aver that my Court
Martial was a Court of Inquisition--that there was not a single member
with a military idea--at least if I may pronounce from the different
questions they put to the evidences."

In this connection it is of interest to note a letter from Washington's
friend Mason, which said, "You express a fear that General Lee will
challenge our friend. Indulge in no such apprehensions, for he too well
knows the sentiments of General Washington on the subject of duelling.
From his earliest manhood I have heard him express his contempt of the man
who sends and the man who accepts a challenge, for he regards such acts as
no proof of moral courage; and the practice he abhors as a relic of old
barbarisms, repugnant alike to sound morality and Christian
enlightenment."

A little later, still smarting from this court-martial, Lee wrote to a
newspaper a savage attack on his late commander, apparently in the belief,
as he said in a private letter, that "there is ... a visible
revolution ... in the minds of men, I mean that our Great Gargantua, or
Lama Babak (for I know not which Title is the properest) begins to be no
longer consider'd as an infallible Divinity--and that those who have been
sacrificed or near sacrific'd on his altar, begin to be esteem'd as
wantonly and foolishly offer'd up." Lee very quickly found his mistake,
for the editor of the paper which contained his attack was compelled by a
committee of citizens to publish an acknowledgment tha