by Terry Golway
The siege went on. Some twenty thousand men were now gathered outside Boston. They drilled, they dug, they fired into the British lines, and then they drilled and dug and fired some more. From the perspective of headquarters in Cambridge, the endless siege was an administrative nightmare. This large army required a constant and consistent supply of food, clothing, fuel, and munitions. Its disruptive and sometimes disorderly presence tested the patience of neighboring citizens. The troops had been living outdoors for months, which was not so harsh when the weather was warm, but now the New England winter was approaching. Washington was well aware of the warnings written on his calendar. In a letter to Congress on September 21, he noted that the troops were ill-prepared for a winter siege: “So far as regards the Preservation of the Army from cold, they may be deemed in a state of nakedness. Many of the men have been without Blankets the whole campaign and those which have been in use during the Summer are so worn as to be of little Service.” Not only were conditions bound to deteriorate as the year drew to a close, but the army itself would fall apart, too. Enlistments would begin to expire on December 1, and by the end of the year, virtually the entire American force would be free to return home.
Washington was growing weary of the stalemate. Impatient to show Congress and the American people that his army was doing more than simply playing a waiting game, he dispatched Benedict Arnold and a thousand men, including Greene’s old friend Sammy Ward, north to reinforce an invasion of Canada under Generals Philip Schuyler and Richard Montgomery. The campaign was well under way by October.
In Boston, however, all remained as it was when Washington arrived in July. Reports of disease and low morale among the British troops in Boston gave the false impression that time was on America’s side. In fact, with American enlistments about to run out, the opposite was true. Washington concluded that he ought to attack Boston while he still had an army. The twenty thousand Americans were more than double the British force of eight thousand, and they were in better health. The British commander, Gage, had been ordered back to London to explain himself, leaving William Howe in charge of the ravaged garrison. Washington called a council of war in Cambridge on October 18. The topic: an attack on Boston, which Washington had first raised with them some four weeks before.
Greene was one of eight generals who gathered in Washington’s headquarters to discuss the plan. It was a heady experience for the Rhode Islander. Surrounding him were professional soldiers (the Englishmen Charles Lee and Horatio Gates), veterans of the French and Indian War (Artemas Ward, John Thomas, Israel Putnam, and William Heath), and an experienced militia officer (John Sullivan, a major in the New Hampshire militia who had led a raid on Fort William and Mary in New Hampshire in 1775). These were the best and most experienced military men fighting on the rebel side, and there was Greene, yet to see his first battle, seated among them. He was, comparatively speaking, a boy among adults. Voicing an opinion among such company must have seemed an intimidating prospect, especially with the self-assured, confident Lee in the room. Who, after all, was Nathanael Greene to have a seat in such a council? Why, he was a Quaker; he was self-educated; he had never fought a battle in his life!
Washington asked his generals for their advice. Around the room they went. Gates said the proposed attack on Boston was improper. Lee said he was not familiar enough with the men and so considered the plan too risky. Sullivan thought winter would offer a better opportunity. Heath and Thomas said the plan was impracticable. Putnam said he disapproved, at present. Ward was solidly against it.
All were opposed, except for the most junior, most inexperienced general in the room–and the one most eager to impress the commander in chief–Nathanael Greene. Actually, Greene hedged his views, saying that while he regarded the plan as impractical, if the Americans could land ten thousand troops in Boston–Washington’s plan did not specify the size of the assault force–he would support an attack.
The attack did not take place. But a frustrated Washington could not help but notice that with all the military genius, experience, and leadership ability assembled around him, only the junior brigadier general from Rhode Island seemed at all willing to take a chance. Only Nathanael Greene seemed remotely and ever so cautiously on George Washington’s side. Events would soon prove that Washington had taken careful notice of the young general with the slight limp and the earnest manner.
Greene’s assessment of their chances with a landing force of ten thousand was far too optimistic, as he would implicitly concede a few months later, in February, when Washington again pressed for agreement on an assault. Then, Greene would contend that “an attack upon a town garrisoned with 8,000 regular troops is a serious object,” which is exactly what the senior generals had said. He would add, somewhat disengenuously, “I always thought an attack with 20,000 men might succeed,” which not only contradicted his position in October but was more than a little wishful thinking, since the Americans had no more than eighteen thousand troops at the time.
If he seemed a little too eager to please, and if he seemed to contradict himself from time to time, it was perhaps understandable, for he was very much a work in progress. Henry Knox, the young bookseller who was now an artillery officer, said of Greene, “[He] came to us the rawest, the most untutored being I ever met with.” In less than a year, however, Knox said Greene “was equal, in military knowledge, to any General officer in the army, and very superior to most of them.”
But he was more than just a general; he was a rebel, fighting not for territory or for conquest but for ideas–revolutionary ideas. This raw, untutored forgemaster had put on a uniform to help cast aside the old order and create something new and bold. The long siege allowed him time not only to learn about leadership and supplies and tactics but also to reflect on America’s political struggle. And he was not shy about offering his opinions.
To Samuel Ward Sr., an increasingly influential figure in Congress, Greene vented his frustration with what he regarded as the tedious and irrelevant political wrangling in Philadelphia. In October 1775, an impatient Greene told Ward that “people” in camp “heartily” supported “a Declaration of Independence.” The notion of a complete break with Britain was, even at this late hour, hardly commonplace. Many political leaders still believed a peaceful resolution to the conflict was possible, and still regarded themselves as loyal subjects of King George III. Only two months before, Thomas Jefferson confessed he was in favor of reconciliation with the British. Maryland’s lawmakers were on record as opposing independence. And even George Washington referred to Britain’s troops in Boston as the “ministerial” army–meaning that they represented not the king, who still commanded the loyalty of many American patriots, but the corrupt and oppressive cabinet.
Greene, however, seemed to realize that separation was inevitable. Why not make the declaration now? he wondered. And while Congress was at it, why not crack down on the traitors who continued to do business with the enemy? Facing the armed might of the British army, with troops preparing for winter, Greene lashed out at merchants who carried on normal trade with Britain. “I would make it Treason against the state to make any further Remittances to great Britain,” he wrote to Ward. “Stop all supplies to the Ships throughout America. . . . The Merchants in general are a body of People whose God is Gain, and their whole plan of Policy is to bring Publick measures to square with their private interest.”
Greene saw himself, and his fellow officers and soldiers, as the embodiment of republican virtue, sacrificing everything for the sake of liberty. He was none too patient, then, with civilians who seemed less enthusiastic about the cause, and they were numerous. Again, to Ward, he complained about his fellow Americans who put profits ahead of patriotism.
This is no time for geting Riches but to secure what we have got. Every shadow of Oppression and Extortion ought to disappear, but instead of that we find many Articles of Merchandise multiplied four fold their value. . . . The Farmers are Extortionate where ever their
situation furnishes them with an Opportunity. These are the people that I complain mostly of; they are wounding the cause.
In other letters to Ward, Greene showed a grasp of how the rebels in America fit into the larger picture of clashing empires. He urged Ward and Congress to “embrace” France and Spain “as brothers” in the fight against the common enemy, Britain. “We want not their Land Forces in America; their Navy we do,” he wrote.
As the memorable year of 1775 entered its final months, however, Greene and the other American commanders were faced with issues more pressing than extortionate prices and foreign alliances.
Their citizen soldiers were preparing to go home.
With enlistments among the New England soldiers due to expire on December 1, Congress dispatched Benjamin Franklin, Benjamin Harrison, and Thomas Lynch to Cambridge to meet with Washington and his generals. They arrived on the night of October 15 and immediately were briefed on the perilous situation. Greene sat in on the somber discussion between the delegates and Washington, and he found himself paying careful attention to the legendary Franklin, who years before had fallen in love with and vainly pursued Caty’s aunt, Catherine Ray. Of Franklin, Greene wrote, “Attention watched his Lips and Conviction closed his periods,” and he assured Ward that he and the other generals would pay the delegates “every mark of Respect and Attention during their stay.” They remained for four days, during which they heard unpleasant truths. The army was about to melt away, and Washington, the colonies, and Congress would have to recruit and pay for a new army. Otherwise, the siege of Boston would end in a British victory.
The politicians and the generals talked about the very prosaic details of fighting a war: the size of a new army, the costs of feeding, clothing, and supplying the troops, the length of new enlistments, even the size of food rations. They agreed on a sweeping reorganization plan for a new army consisting of twenty thousand troops divided into twenty-six regiments. Greene’s three Rhode Island regiments were melded into two new regiments, the 9th and 11th Continentals. Congress, based on the recommendations of Franklin, Harrison, and Lynch, authorized Washington to begin recruiting new soldiers for one-year enlistments, which would expire on December 31, 1776.
Greene and other generals argued that Washington should offer bounties to troops already on duty who agreed to stay with the army for another year. But Washington refused, arguing that the soldiers already were well paid. Many political leaders sided with Washington, but for different reasons. Offering bounties seemed like a step toward the creation of a professional, standing army. And that smacked of oppressive, militaristic Old World tradition, and not the republican ideal of a citizen army.
Greene, in this case, was very much Old World. He pleaded with Washington for bounties, especially as the new year approached and recruiting yielded disappointing results. He believed bounties would help build an army of seventy thousand, a highly unrealistic number. But without bounties, by early December only a few thousand men had signed up for service beyond New Year’s Eve. And only a small number of those recruits came from Rhode Island, to Greene’s intense mortification. He regularly harangued the Rhode Islanders to put the cause ahead of self, but with disappointing results, even among the officer corps. Of the sixteen second lieutenants in Rhode Island’s regiments, none reenlisted. Rhode Island had been assigned a quota of fifteen hundred recruits, but so few came forward that Greene plunged into despair. To Ward, he wrote: “I fear the Colony of Rhode Island is upon the decline. I was in hopes . . . that ours would not have deserted the cause of their Country. But they seem to be so sick of this way of life, and so home sick that I fear the greater part and the best part of the Troops from our Colony will go home.” He told his brother Jacob that civilians at home ought to “make it disgraceful for any of the [soldiers] to return home.”
In the midst of these anxious weeks, Greene had an opportunity to relax and perhaps even entertain some memories of his increasingly distant youth. A delegation of Quakers from Rhode Island, led by the influential Moses Brown, visited Washington’s headquarters in mid-December, asking for permission to deliver relief for civilians trapped in Boston and running low on food and fuel. Washington was sympathetic but reluctant, explaining that Bostonians fleeing the city reported that smallpox was epidemic. They agreed that Brown should write to General Howe, the British commander, to effect a meeting between the delegation and several Quakers from Boston. Perhaps with a knowing smile, Washington urged Brown to consult with one of the camp’s resident Quaker apostates, Nathanael Greene. (The other was Thomas Mifflin; Brown and his party later met with him, too.)
The Quakers and Greene dined together on the night of December 14. In a journal he kept of his visit, Moses Brown wrote that Greene graciously handled what might have been an awkward occasion. Greene told Brown and the other Quakers that they should abide by their principles, notwithstanding that he had abandoned them, but he added that they should not take sides in the conflict between America and Britain. If they did, “they must Expect to suffer,” he said.
The Quakers and the former Quaker parted on amiable terms, and the delegation went on to distribute assistance to the poor and hungry in and around Boston, with no regard for politics or political allegiances.
As 1775 drew to a close, some ten thousand men had enlisted to serve in 1776, half the troop strength Congress had authorized. Though Greene and other American commanders pleaded with their troops to remain with the army, they were betrayed by bitter conditions. The weather had turned cold, with snow piled in great white heaps on the ground, and firewood became increasingly scarce. Troops were eating their provisions raw because they had nothing with which to build campfires for cooking. Even wooden fences had been broken apart and burned. “Our suffering,” Greene wrote, “has been inconceivable.” In a humane gesture that was becoming one of the hallmarks of his leadership, Greene ordered that sentries be replaced every hour, rather than every two hours, to protect his men from the freezing, windy conditions.
There was news from across the Atlantic as the year drew to a close, and it was equally chilly. Only now were the Americans learning that King George III, in his speech at the opening of Parliament on October 26, had announced that more troops and ships would be sent to the New World to suppress what he called a “desperate conspiracy,” and that he was receiving “the most friendly offers of assistance” to help put a “speedy end” to the revolt. The British navy already had bombarded and burned the town of Falmouth in Maine, a punitive action that shocked the Americans, and now the king himself was saying the rebels could expect more of the same. Those Americans who clung to the belief that somehow George would mediate the crisis rather than take sides against them were stunned. There no longer was any doubt that the king and Parliament were united.
American troops prepared to leave the snow and smoke and smells of their camps around Boston not knowing that yet another bitter blow was about to fall: American soldiers in Canada, suffering in even more extreme conditions, were about to launch what would prove to be a disastrous New Year’s Eve assault on Quebec. The battle cost the life of the promising American commander Richard Montgomery and the freedom of Nathanael Greene’s young friend Samuel Ward Jr., who was captured.
A despondent Greene retired to his tent on New Year’s Eve to write a long letter to Samuel Ward Sr. Neither man knew, of course, that Sammy Ward was in such mortal peril on this frigid night. But Greene knew that first light would reveal a depleted American army, even though some newly arrived militia units from New England had been deployed to fill in gaps on the lines. He told Ward: “We never have been so weak as we shall be tomorrow when we dismiss the old Troops; we growing weaker and the Enimy getting stronger renders our situation disagreeable. However if they Attack any of our Posts I hope [they’ll] be met with a severe repulse.”
Such hopes were little more than wishful thinking. On the morning of January 1, 1776, Nathanael Greene had only seven hundred soldiers in his brigade. His auth
orized troop strength was more than double that number.
Washington chose to ignore what must have been a depressing sight that first day of the new year. His general orders that morning announced that the new army was, “in every point of View . . . entirely Continental.”
His Excellency hopes that the Importance of the great Cause we are engaged in, will be deeply impressed upon every Man’s mind, and wishes it to be considered, that an Army without Order, Regularity and Discipline is no better than a Commission’d Mob; Let us there fore . . . endeavour by all the Skill and Discipline in our power, to acquire that knowledge and conduct which is necessary in War.
To commemorate the occasion, Washington ordered a new flag raised on the hills overlooking Boston. A replica of Britain’s Union Jack decorated the upper left corner, but the flag also bore thirteen stripes on a background of white. From their redoubts guarding Boston, British troops saw the strange banner and cheered. They thought the Americans had surrendered. That, too, was wishful thinking.
Through the first days of January, the old army of provincial militias was replaced by and reorganized as a new Continental army in the midst of the siege. It was, Greene believed, an unprecedented achievement: “We have just experienced the Inconveniency of disbanding an Army within Cannon Shot of the Enimy and forming a new one in its stead, an Instance never before known.” The British never attacked during the transition, which Greene attributed to their faulty intelligence, and recruiting improved dramatically through the first few weeks of the year. On January 4, Greene advised Samuel Ward Sr. that Congress should prepare for outright war, now that the new Continental army was in place.
It is no time for Deliberation, the hour is swiftly rolling on when the Plains of America will be deluged with Human Blood; Resolves, Declarations and all the Parade of Heroism in Words will never obtain a Victory. Arms and Ammunition are as necessary as Men. . . . An Army unequiped will ever feel the want of Spirit and Courage but properly furnished fighting in the best of Causes will bid defiance to the United force of Men and Devils.