On the previous day, the thirteenth, General Charles Lee, next in rank to Washington, while leisurely resting at a country house at Baskenridge, three miles from his troops, was taken prisoner by a British scouting detachment. It may be of interest to the reader to be reminded, that this Major-General required from Congress an advance of thirty thousand dollars, to enable him to transfer his English property to America, before he accepted his commission, and was disappointed that he was made second, instead of first, in command. When captured, he was in company with Major Wilkinson, a messenger from his old Virginia friend, General Horatio Gates, who had just been ordered by Washington to accompany certain reënforcements from the northern army, to increase the force of the Commander-in-Chief. This Major Wilkinson escaped capture, but the British scouts used his horse for Lee’s removal. On the table was a letter, not yet folded, which the messenger was to convey to General Gates. It reads as follows (omitting the expletives),— BASKENRIDGE, December 13, 1776. MY DEAR GATES: The ingenious manœuvre of Fort Washington has completely unhinged the goodly fabrick we had been building. There never was so —— a stroke. _Entre nous_, a certain great man is —— deficient. He has thrown me into a position where I have my choice of difficulties. If I stay in the Province, I risk myself and my army; and if I do not stay, the Province is lost forever.... Our councils have been weak, to the last degree. As to what relates to yourself, if you think you can be in time to aid the general, I would have you, by all means, go. You will at least save your army. No comment is required, except to state that repeated orders had been received and acknowledged by Lee, to join Washington; but he had determined not to join him, and to act independently with his division, regardless of the orders of his Commander-in-Chief, and of Congress. Two extracts only are admissible. Washington had reprimanded Lee for interfering with the independent command of General Heath, on the Hudson. On the twenty-sixth of November, Lee wrote to Heath: “The Commander-in-Chief is now separated from us. I, of course, command on this side the water; for the future I will, and I must, be obeyed.” On the twenty-third of November, in order to induce New England to trust _him_, and _distrust_ Washington, he wrote the following letter to James Bowdoin, President of the Massachusetts Council: