Calling this letter a "justification" is part of a long tradition of absurdly misclassifying it. A number of later authors have described this as Rawdon's attempt to shift the blame for Hayne's execution onto Nisbet Balfour, but in light of Rawdon's bald statement that "by all the recognized laws of war, nothing was requisite in the case of Hayne, but to identify his person previous to hanging him on the next tree," it hardly seems within the realm of possibility that he considered any shifting of blame to be needed.

It is certainly an attempt at self-defense, not from "blame" for Hayne's execution but rather from Lee's factual errors and his attacks on Rawdon's character and honor. The side of his nature that led him to challenge Richmond drove him to speak out in his own defense, even though he recognized the action as hopeless. Sadly, it accomplished nothing more than providing his enemies with more ammunition to use against him. -- Marg B.

AT SEA, 24th June, 1813.

SIR:--
The letters which you did me the honor to write to me, with the copy of your Memoirs of the War in the Southern Provinces of America, reached me at a time when the arrangements for my immediate embarkation left me not a moment to peruse the work.

I had proposed myself to begin the study of it as soon as we should put to sea; but a farther delay occurred. The box containing the book was accidentally placed in the hold, under such a quantity of other packages, as till lately rendered it impracticable for me to retrieve it.

I must undoubtedly feel flattered by your procedure in writing to me, as well as by the tenor of your letters; and I beg leave to return thanks for your politeness. One consideration alone, the conviction of your not having interiorily credited a particular statement, which you have promulgated on the faith of its currency among your party, could prevent my expressing astonishment, that you should profess any sort of estimation, or offer a complimentary attention toward a person represented in that narrative as capable of an atrocious act. No gentler description would befit the measure ascribed to me in that statement, of sacrificing to any views of general policy, an individual not truly standing within the scope of capital punishment, or even of inflicting that punishment where justly incurred, if public duty did not exact the enforcement.

It is the most disgusting of the circumstances attending civil war, that men, holding themselves aloof from its dangers, always endeavor by virulence and hardihood of imputation against their adversaries, to disguise from themselves and others, the nothingness of spirit which restrains them from taking efficient part in the conflict. The slanders thus raised cannot be met. They acquire substance by uncontradicted circulation, as every successive propagator feels pledged to maintain the verity of the assertion. And when the contest is over, while the successful faction has not either interest or inclination (perhaps not the means) to retract the calumny, the individuals of the subdued party are cautious not to entail on themselves outrage by controverting any charges which their victors may have pleased to fabricate. The misrepresentations thus become articles of political creed; and the most generous mind will be apt, unconsciously, to satisfy itself that it may remain exempt from the necessity of scrutinizing a statement; when the consequences of exposing its inaccuracy, would be to revolt popular prejudice, to incur the appearance of want of ardor in the general cause, and above all to overthrow some favorite position of the person himself. Hence it is, as I think, that you have been led to receive implicitly a representation, which with very little trouble you could have proved to be incorrect.

I well know that your honorable disposition, judging from all I have heard of your character, would not deliberately advance so serious a charge as you have published against me, had you believed it to be erroneous. But to affix the brand of injustice in the execution of Isaac Hayne, was a ground-work necessary for your giving due credit to the gallant devotion which you state to have been displayed by the American officers, in reference to that measure; and you have hence been betrayed into too easy a credence of the recital you were sure to receive from all of the party in Carolina (your only informants), to which the unfortunate man belonged.

The strange want of reflection with which you must have listened to every story palmed upon you, cannot be more strikingly exemplified than in the communications from the town major to the prisoner, which you have retailed. To have supposed the town major capable of informing the prisoner that he was to appear before a board of general officers, you must have imagined a principal staff officer of ours ignorant of that which you, and every man in your army, and every other individual in the province, knew; namely, that we had not a single general officer in South Carolina.

Admitting unfeignedly that much of excuse, I still cannot but feel extraordinary surprise, that when you entered into a long argumentative detail (founded on an assumption quite novel) to prove that the conduct of Hayne ought not to have been treated as guilt, you avoided perceiving he could not be brought within your own hypothesis. Were your position tenable (which your better reflection would hardly contend), that the inroad of a skulking party gives a manumission from every tie of allegiance to the inhabitants of any district through which it passes, your advertence to period, to locality, and to particulars would have satisfied you, that the treason of Hayne could not be so extenuated; and I only wonder how the recollection could escape presenting itself. In truth, you must have indistinctly surmised that there would be a difficulty about the applicability of your principle when you deemed it requisite to urge another vindication; a vindication totally inconsistent with the former, because it acknowledges the criminality which the other denies, and only labors to lessen its degree. I allude to the situation in which you suppose Hayne to have been placed by the proclamation of Sir Henry Clinton. Not having an opportunity to consult any copy of that proclamation, I can only say that I never had the impression of its bearing the sense you ascribe to it, and that I have no remembrance of its being so understood by others. Could, however, that proclamation have had the effect of annulling any of the conditions on the faith of which Charleston was surrendered, it would have stamped indelible disgrace on him who issued it. and would have been deeply disreputable to the country which in that act he represented; but how was it to bear on the case of Hayne? The part which he had to take, as a prisoner on parole under the capitulation, was clear. He had only to repair to Charleston, and surrender himself, till the remonstrance of Congress could be exerted with Sir Henry Clinton, upon so gross an infraction of public faith.

The non-existence of any such reclamation on the part of Congress, whose view would not be restricted to the single case of Hayne, sufficiently rebuts the construction you put upon the proclamation. Still, supposing for the sake of giving you the utmost advantage your assumption (if valid) would claim, that the proclamation did so press upon the unhappy man, I repeat that the fit course for him was to submit himself a prisoner. If from any private considerations he preferred any other alternative, he made his choice with all the obligations inseparable from it, and spontaneously rendered himself liable to all the penalties attached to a breach of those obligations. The slightest inquiry would have satisfied you that all who exchanged the character of prisoner on parole under the capitulation, for that of a British subject, did so voluntarily, in order to enjoy the benefits of disposing of the produce of their plantations, in a lucrative course of trade, not allowed to prisoners. And when you represent Hayne as having plighted only a conditional fidelity, it is wonderful you should not have at once detected the imposition that was attempted upon you, by those who made such an assertion. Where was the British officer to be found, who could have inducement, or disposition, or competence, to allow of a limited oath of allegiance to his sovereign! The tale carried falsity on the very face of it. Your penetration might, therefore, have been expected to see through the flimsy pretext, and to perceive, that this was an excuse which Hayne would naturally make to his former comrades, to mitigate the reproach attached by them to his having taken the oath of allegiance, and to soften the unfavorable construction which he must imagine would, even in their opinions, attend his perfidy under so solemn a compact. But your cause would gain nothing were this observation not irrefragable. Were the possibility admitted of his having established the stipulation to which you allude, it would not alter his criminality. When summoned to bear arms (if he ever were so), he would have to say that he had made a condition, that he abided by the reservation, and that he was prepared to meet any consequence of adhering to it. If, instead of that course, he chose to enter into secret negotiation with the enemy, he did it knowingly under all the peril connected with the act. Nay, had he at once broken his engagement, and repaired to General Greene's army, though it would have been treason, it would not have been treason of so deep and complicated a dye, as that in which he involved himself.

Before I proceed further on this head, it is expedient that a material point should be cleared up to you. You mistake entirely in supposing that the province of South Carolina was under my command. Lieutenant-Colonel Balfour was my senior in the array list; and my provincial rank of Colonel, held for the purpose of connection with the regiment raised by me, did not alter that relation, as the colonels on the provincial establishment were subordinate to the youngest lieutenant-colonels of the line. Sir Henry Clinton, in order to give me the management of affairs in South Carolina, subsequently promoted me, as a brigadier of provincials; but we had no intimation of this till the commission arrived, after I had actually embarked for England; Lieutenant-Colonel Balfour would, therefore, at all events have commanded me. A still more particular limitation of my powers existed. Lord Cornwallis, on intrusting me with the management of the troops on the frontier, had specially allotted the whole track within the Santee, Congaree, and Saluda rivers, to Lieutenant-Colonel Balfour, as commandant of Charleston. Camden had always been reprobated by me as a station; not merely from the extraordinary disadvantages which attended it, as an individual position; but from its being on the wrong side of the river and covering nothing; while it was constantly liable to have its communication with the Interior district cut off. Lord Cornwallis did not consider how much he augmented this objection, often urged by me to him, by an arrangement whence I was debarred from any interference with the district, from which alone I could be fed: the country in front of Camden, as well as that between the Wateree and Broad rivers, being so wasted as to afford nothing beyond precarious and incidental supplies. Fixed at Camden, with seven hundred men (Lieutenant-Colonel Watson's corps never having formed part of my garrison, and the residue of the force with which I encountered General Greene, having been introduced by me into Camden three days after he sat down before it), I was completely dependent on Lieutenant-Colonel Balfour for subsistence, for military stores, for horses, for arms, and for those re-enforcements which were indispensable from the expenditure of men, in the unceasing activity of our service. With his posts at Motte's house, Congaree, and Ninety-six, I had no concern, further than their occasional danger obliged me to make movements for their protection; an assistance which I had peculiar difficulty in rendering to the two former, from the works having unaccountably been so placed as not to command the ferries, through which blunder succors could not be thrown across the river to the garrisons when invested by an enemy. Hence it happened that, on the abandonment of Camden in the hope of saving those posts, and protecting the interior country, I was forced to pass the Santee by the circuitous route of Nelson's Ferry. From this delay arose the circumstance, that on the day after my crossing time river, I received an account of the fall of the two redoubts, pompously denominated Fort Motte and Fort Granby. The event by throwing into your hands the only magazines of provisions in the country utterly incapacitated me from advancing: for, destitute of cavalry to face yours, I must have been unable to glean daily food for my troops; and could not think so lightly of the talents of General Greene, as to indulge the visionary expectation that he would put his fortune to the hazard of a battle, when he might reduce me to the extreme of distress by a policy unattended with risk to himself.

These particulars are not stated so much for the purpose of conveying any information which will be interesting to you in explaining much of the campaign, as to show, that I had not in the interior district, any immediate interest, or any course of management, the interruption of which could excite in me irritation against Hayne, or indeed call my attention to his crime. And you well know there was not any peevish acrimony in our warfare. In fact, I never heard of the insurrection which he instigated, till its suppression was communicated to me by Lieutenant-Colonel Balfour.

The way I came to have any part in the affair was this. When Lord Cornwallis suddenly marched into North Carolina, he wrote to me (then through accidental circumstances at Camden), to assign to me the very unexpected charge of maintaining that post, and the frontier beyond the rivers. In the same letter he entreated me, as a proof of friendship to himself, that I would act cordially with Lieutenant-Colonel Balfour, between whom and me his lordship knew there had been some estrangement. In answer, I assured him, that he might depend on my giving Lieutenant-Colonel Balfour, in every particular, the most zealous support.

Shortly after we had withdrawn from Ninety-six and the upper country, Lieutenant-Colonel Balfour wrote to apprise me, that an insurrection had taken place in the rear of my army, but had luckily been crushed. He stated the imperious necessity of repressing the disposition to similar acts of treachery, by making an example of the individual who had planned, as well as headed the revolt, and who had fallen into Lieutenant-Colonel Balfour's hands. He solicited my concurrence (absolutely ineffective in any other point of view, in a district where I was wholly under his control) that it might vouch to Sir Henry Clinton, with whom he was on ill terms, for the public policy of the measure. On the justice of it, there was not then a conception, that in possibility a question could be raised. I replied that there could be no doubt as to the necessity for making the example, to which I would readily give the sanction of my name.

Collateral circumstances were then unknown to me. Immediately on my arrival at Charleston, application was made to me by a number of ladies (principally of your party) to save Hayne from the impending infliction. Ignorant of the complicated nature and extent of the crime, I incautiously promised to use my endeavors toward inducing Lieutenant-Colonel Balfour to lenity. A petition to be signed by the ladies, was drawn up as a step gratifying to me, by one of the officers of the staff (I believe by Major Barry, the deputy adjutant-general) to serve as a basis for my address to the commandant. When I opened the matter to him he appeared much astonished; detailed to me circumstances of the ease with which I had been completely unacquainted; requesting me to inform myself more minutely upon them; and earnestly begged me to ponder on the effect, which forbearance from visiting such an offence with due punishment (sure to be ascribed to timidity) must unavoidably produce on the minds of the inhabitants. It was a grievous error in me that I did not at once yield to the reasoning, and to the conviction which it could not but impress, instead of still attempting to realize the hope, which I had suffered the ladies so loosely to entertain. I unluckily persevered in the effort to reconcile a pardon with some appearance of propriety. At this time I saw a lady connected with Hayne; I suppose it must have been the Mrs. Perroneau mentioned by you. I frankly told her what had passed between me and Lieutenant-Colonel Balfour, stating the embarrassment in which I found myself, from the enormity of the transgression, and the objections too justly urged, but adding, that, unless there should be intervention from General Greene, I would still try if the difficulty could be surmounted. This point, I understand, was most profligately wrested, as if Lieutenant-Colonel Balfour and I had held forth a sort of implied condition to the unfortunate man, that he should be spared if General Greene did not interfere; and that the latter was thence withheld from exertions which might have been effectual. Lieutenant-Colonel Balfour was never privy to the conversation between Mrs. Perroneau and me; nor could it in any case have been imagined possible, that such a communication should reach General Greene, when the attempt at any correspondence with him would have been a capital offence. It was simply an expression of my fears, that a circumstance might occur which would at once destroy all chance of my being useful. Any interposition on the part of General Greene must have been in irritating terms, and would infallibly have precluded an excuse which I hoped to obtain, and which would afford a decent pretence for a lenity, felt by me to be liable to great and well-founded censure. As a mode of gaining time, I had solicited Lieutenant-Colonel Balfour to have the particulars of the case ascertained by a court of inquiry for my satisfaction, alleging the chance (though I could not really believe the existence of any such), that circumstances might have been distorted by the animosity of Hayne's neighbors. This step, although a court of inquiry was the same form of investigation as had been used in the case of Major André, was an indiscretion on my part; because it afforded a color for perversion, by seeming to imply that there might be a doubt as to the amount of guilt; whereas by all the recognized laws of war, nothing was requisite in the case of Hayne, but to identify his person previous to hanging him on the next tree. Before that court (the proceedings of which were unavoidably thrown overboard with my other papers, when I was taken by the French at sea), he produced documents to establish his claim of being treated as an American officer, but which only more distinctly substantiated his criminal correspondence with the enemy. So that the case, had it admitted of aggravation, would have been made worse by the result of that inquiry. He was, from his correspondence with the enemy, while within our posts, a spy in the strictest sense of the word; and to that guilt was added the further crime of his having debauched a portion of our enrolled militia, at the head of which he menaced with death all persons of the vicinage, who would not join him in arms against us, and actually devastated the property of those who fled from participation in the revolt. Such were the difficulties of the task in which I had improperly entangled myself; I notwithstanding persevered. Mr. Alexander Wright and Mr. Powell (I think his Christian name was Charles), in compliance with my wishes, undertook to try whether a petition for pardon to Hayne might not be procured from a respectable number of loyalists; though they gave me little encouragement to hope success, from even their known and just influence with that body. They first applied to Lieutenant-Governor Bull, who consented to sign the petition, provided the Attorney-General, Sir Egerton Leigh, would do so. The answer of Sir Egerton Leigh was, that he would burn his hand off rather than do an act so injurious to the king's service. Lieutenant-Governor Bull's conditional promise of course fell to the ground, though he subsequently, from some dupery practised upon his age, joined his name with those of certain of your most active and avowed partisans; and not one loyalist of repute could be persuaded to put his name to the petition. There then remained no possible excuse for a remission of the punishment; under which circumstances, it would have been baseness in me toward Lieutenant-Colonel Balfour, and a forfeiture of my plighted assurance to Lord Cornwallis, had I withheld my name from the measure, when, after what had passed, I could but be conscious it was deeply necessary for the public service.

The enterprise which Hayne had planned and achieved when he was intercepted and taken, had an object of singular malignity. I allude to the seizure of Mr. Williamson; and the insulting triumph with which Mr. Williamson was told, that the purpose in capturing him, was to have been hanged in the camp of General Greene, had naturally roused the indignation of all the friends of the British Government. Mr. Williamson, as you know, had been a brigadier-general of the American militia at the time of our invading South Carolina. When the rest of the province submitted, Mr. Williamson also adopted that line, he had not taken up arms against you, nor was he intermeddling in politics, but quietly residing in the neighborhood of Charleston. The attempt, therefore, to carry him off, and to exhibit in his person, a proof that even mere submission to our rule should detail the utmost severity of infliction, caused great ferment in the minds of the loyalists. This was extraordinarily augmented by a dreadful impolicy on the part of the unfortunate prisoner. The number of individuals professedly of your party, to whom the capitulation had given the right of remaining in Charleston, afforded to Hayne a communication most mischievous for him. For those persons, intoxicated by an apparent change of tide in their favor, not only themselves, held the language that the British Government would not dare to execute Hayne, but misled the unhappy man to use the same tone of defiance to the loyalists. To have been swayed by their resentment would have been unworthy; but they had a claim very distinct from that of passion, to a consideration of their opinions, from those intrusted with the conduct of the general concern. When their fortunes and their lives were risked in the cause of Britain, they had a right to demand that the joint stake should be so managed, as to give them their fair chance for success in the contest; and it was obvious, that if in an hour when the highest peril was to be encountered by those who remained faithful, no terrors were to impend over a breach of the sacred ties by which they were individually bound to each other and to government, a premium should in fact be held forth to treachery, and the dissolution of the common interest would be inevitable. If we were to maintain a claim on their fidelity, it could only be by showing a just sensibility for their welfare.

You prove yourself perfectly aware of the nature of the period, and of the urgent pressure under which we labored, when you mention the expectation you were authorized to entertain, that a French army would land in the Southern provinces. We had received from the Secretary of State, an intimation which led us to believe, that Beaufort was its probable destination. Advertence to this contingency, and the necessity of making provision against the event, had materially influenced the conduct of the campaign. It was the reason why, when I undertook the relief of Ninety-six, I was furnished with but barely seventeen hundred men. Even of that force, a principal proportion was composed of Hessians, or of troops just landed from Ireland, so little suited to bear the rapidity of march which our circumstances exacted, that we left numbers of them (very many dead from the heat) along the road. The crisis may be estimated by my being obliged to risk such an enterprise with a strength, on any ordinary calculation, so inadequate to the object. In this exigency, we found ourselves surrounded by defection and treachery on all sides. The perfidy had gone so far, that soon after my crossing the Santee, I had to communicate to Lieutenant-Colonel Balfour the necessity for his immediately disarming a portion of his town militia, designated by me; as I knew from information not questionable, that they were in correspondence with General Greene, and had engaged to seize the gates for him, if he could slip by me, and present himself suddenly before Charleston. In such extremities, those administering the interest of their country (if they were not to bow their heads to the defection, and abjectly sacrifice the important trust reposed in them) had no option but to exert against the mischief that strenuous resistance which their duty required, and the purest justice authorized.

Such, sir, are the real features of a case, which you hold forth in unfavorable contrast with the tenderness of sentiment displayed in the proceedings against Major André! It is not my wish to enter into a discussion of the latter case; and it would be most unfair to doubt the dispositions of General Washington, or the irresistible pressure which rendered them abortive. Yet thus far I must remark. Had there been so much solicitude to save that unfortunate officer as you represent, this ostensible plea might have been advanced for him; That his entering in disguise within your fortress, was by the direction and with the invitation of your officer commanding there. For the guilt of Hayne no shadow of palliation could be found. The story of remonstrance from the British officers to Lieutenant-Colonel Balfour shows how lamentably you were deceived in every respect by the fabrications in the province. That recurrence of the British officers to the commandant, was for the purpose of urging him to secure objects for retaliation, in case of General Greene's carrying into effect his outrageous threat. They needed not to have given themselves the trouble; and though I have no disposition to depreciate the spirit which dictated it, the proffered devotion of your American officers was equally superfluous. General Greene sagaciously comprehended that it was necessary to counteract the impression which the execution of Hayne was calculated to produce. Hence it was his policy to declaim against it as an undue infliction, the repetition of which in any similar case, should be prevented by retaliation. But he was too wise not to know, that the matter would not bear scrutiny, and that it must not for his ends be driven to minute question.

Having mentioned retaliation, let me say, that Lieutenant-Colonel Balfour and I had severally, direct orders from Lord Cornwallis to check by retaliation the merciless severity with which your civil governments treated tine loyalists who fell into their power. With numbers in our hands justly amenable to rigor, each of us had taken it upon himself to dispense with that injunction; not from any doubt of its equity, but from a fear that our obedience would only extend the calamity, and from a hope, that the difference of our procedure would be the best corrective of the inhumanity. So far were the British officers from having such feelings, as the fallacious representations practised upon you have led you to suppose, that I had been informed by particular friends, of the extraordinary dissatisfaction testified by those officers, at the seeming hesitation respecting the fate of Hayne. They viewed it as a feebleness, and a dishonest desertion of the interests which our army was bound to uphold. This sentiment was so strong, that at a dinner which Lieutenant-Colonel Balfour gave to the staff and principal officers on the eve of my embarkation, I thought myself bound in justice toward the commandant, to address the company, to confess that the apparent demur was imputable to me alone, to own that I had sought to find grounds to excuse a remission of the punishment, and to admit that I had been wrong in the endeavour. The acknowledgment was conscientious: and at no period since, has my reflection made me regard myself as otherwise than culpable, in not having at once given the just weight to the considerations, which so imperiously called for the example.

That the punishment of Hayne may appear an unnecessary severity, you state, that at this juncture the British cause was evidently lost in America. The opinion of an enemy, especially of an enemy so zealous and energetic as you, would be no very rational guide for an officer's conduct. There was not at that period any reason for our entertaining such a notion; nor would duty have allowed a relaxation of the exertions, which the trust demanded, upon any personal conception of the sort. No apprehension existed of inability to cope with your joint force, should the French land in South Carolina, though the necessity of keeping the British troops in a position to be readily collected into one body, gave you for the time apparent advantages. Your circumstances were still critical. The situation must not be argued from subsequent occurrences, not then within the foresight of any one; and there were measures which would at once have altered the relative condition of affairs. Had Lord Cornwallis, with his army refreshed, re-equipped, and re-enforced, originally marched from Wilmington to the upper country of North Carolina, the step must have been decisive against you. Its consequences were so clear, that, ignorant of the uncontrollable obstacles, which doubtless must have existed to forbid his lordship's pursuing that policy, we every day expected to hear of his being in Hillsborough.

If, leaving Virginia occupied in self-defence against such a portion of troops as he might think proper to allot for the purpose, he had proceeded to raise and organize the loyalists of North Carolina in your rear, cutting off all your supplies and re-enforcements from the northward, it appeared to us that the destruction of General Greene's army was almost inevitable. We were sufficiently on the watch to prevent a junction between you and any French force that might be handed at Beaufort; and for the ends of co-operation, instructions from Lord Cornwallis would undoubtedly have caused the field army in South Carolina to be put on a footing of efficiency, which it did not possess during my service.

Fortunate it would have been had this movement, so confidently reckoned upon by us, taken place. While it must have so seriously affected General Greene's army, it would have removed Lord Cornwallis from a position, where he was an object for the concentration of force by the Americans and French, and it would of course have precluded that fatal operation. The wisdom of Providence decreed it otherwise; and the judgment of Lord Cornwallis was not left unfettered.

This letter has run into inordinate length; though you will readily understand that I have forborne to dilate on many points connected with the subject. Its prolixity has arisen from the wish to furnish you with full means of forming a sure judgment on the case. Be assured that I have not a suspicion of your having given any color to your narrative, but what you really believed to be the true one. After the promulgation of so invidious a charge against me, I know not how it can be in your power to make me any reparation: but of this I will remain persuaded; that if my statement shall head you to a conviction of your having done me injustice, you will sincerely regret the facility with which you credited representations, so likely to be warped by the interests and the passions of those from whom you received them.

I have the honor, sir, to be your most obedient humble servant,
MOIRA.

Major-General HENRY LEE.

[Source: Henry Lee, The Revolutionary War Memoirs of General Henry Lee, ed. Robert E. Lee. ([1869] New York: Da Capo Press, 1998), pp613-20.]