by Terry Golway
If the British had realized how painfully weak the Americans were during the winter of 1777, they could have ended the rebellion with an aggressive attack on Morristown. But such an assault was out of the question. General Howe remained understandably shaken after the losses in Trenton and Princeton, and so chose prudence over boldness. Besides, he was having so much fun in New York, a city whose Tories were delighted to play host to the distinguished general.
Though the campaign season ended with Washington’s decision not to attack New Brunswick, neither side hibernated much while in winter quarters. The British and particularly the Hessians near present-day Perth Amboy and New Brunswick continued to terrorize civilians in New Jersey. In mid-February, Greene heard a report that British troops had murdered “two of the Inhabitants . . . because they did not assist them with their Waggons to carry off their dead. One they shot through the Head, the other they kild with a Bayonet.” Those dead British soldiers heaped on wagons offered mute testimony to the American strategy of harassing the enemy’s vital foraging parties–groups of soldiers sent out into the countryside in search of food and supplies. A loyalist judge in New York, Thomas Jones, reported that not “a stick of wood, a spear of grass, or a kernel of corn could the troops in New Jersey procure without fighting for it. ... Every foraging party was attacked.”
Some of these small engagements did not lack for ferocity. One, in mid-April when the armies still were in winter quarters, broke out when Cornwallis attacked an American detachment under General Benjamin Lincoln in Bound Brook, north of New Brunswick. Greene raced from his post in Basking Ridge to Bound Brook, but all was quiet by the time he arrived. He summed up the ebb and flow of the battle by noting, with some humor, that he had had dinner that night in the home of a local merchant named Van Home. Earlier in the day, in the same house, Van Home had shared his breakfast with General Cornwallis. “This,” Greene wrote, “is the State of the War.” It was also the state of their burgeoning relationship, these two very different men thrown together by circumstance and destined to shadow each other for the rest of the war.
According to a letter among the papers of General Anthony Wayne, Greene was involved in a major skirmish on February 8 a few miles west of New Brunswick. An eyewitness to the fighting, a soldier named Craig, told Wayne that a detachment of about five hundred Americans under Greene ambushed a British patrol or foraging party, killing three hundred. That estimate was impossibly high, and there is no mention of the skirmish among Greene’s own letters. It’s possible, though, that a letter recounting the ambush was lost.
Most of Greene’s work during the gray New Jersey winter was devoted to the prosaic tasks of pushing paper, a task he loathed, and supervising the health and well-being of his men and their horses. His desk was filled with reports from foraging parties who prowled the countryside in search of food for man and beast, and from skirmishing parties he deployed “not so much for the annoyance of the Enemy, as to get them acquainted with the Ground and to keep them employed.” After long days spent in his headquarters in the village of Basking Ridge, candles by his desk brightening the winter darkness, he retired each evening to a room in the home of his friend Lord Stirling, who owned a fine mansion surrounded by a magnificent estate, kept neat and lovely thanks to the hard work of Lord Stirling’s slaves.
He also devoted time and energy to army politics, keeping a careful watch over who was promoted to what rank and making sure that his friends received justice. Relations between the army and Congress and state legislatures were tense that winter over such issues as recruitment, promotions, and military strategy. Congress passed a resolution calling on Washington to “totally . . . subdue” the British “before they are reinforced.” The commander in chief stewed over this presumptious and utterly unrealistic request and replied tersely, “Could I accomplish the important objects so eagerly wished by Congress, I should be happy indeed.” He included with his letter a roster of the army, showing that he had but three thousand men to “subdue” the British.
Greene’s turn to be outraged came when he heard a report, which turned out to be false, that Rhode Island was recruiting men for its militia instead of raising new regiments for the Continental army. Greene dispatched an angry letter to Rhode Island governor Cooke that testified to his vision of a strong American union guided by national, rather than regional, interests. “There is not a State upon the Continent whose interest and happiness depends so much on a union with the others as yours,” he lectured Cooke. “You are the most exposed and the least capable of making a separate defence, consequently ’tis your interest to cultivate every measure that may tend to form the union of strength. . . . Where is the State that’s able to withstand the Enemies collective force?”
With political machinations very much on his mind as winter dragged on, Greene took advantage of the lull in combat to renew his correspondence with John Adams. While the letter he wrote to Adams mostly concerned itself with negotiations between the British and American officials over the release of General Charles Lee, who had been taken prisoner by the British, Greene used the occasion to show off his knowledge of military history, hoping either to impress or perhaps even to intimidate the better-educated Adams. In a flourish that spoke more to Greene’s profound insecurity than his self-taught erudition, he told Adams:
I am sensible you have not the most exalted oppinion of your Generals. Who is in fault? Every one would wish to be an Epaminondas, Sertorius or Turenne if they could, but if Nature has refused to crown the sons of America with such choice Gifts, who is to blame, either she or we? We cannot be blameable only as we stand in the way of better men.
Epaminondas was an ancient Greek general; Sertorius, an ancient Roman; and Turenne, a French general from the seventeenth century. Greene, very much aware that he lacked the formal education of his colleagues and peers, went out of his way to show the Harvard-educated Adams that he had read a book or two in his day. In his reply, Adams upped the intellectual ante by saying that he certainly did not expect to find the likes of Epaminondas in the American army because, after all, “in the opinion of Dr. Swift [the famed Irish writer] all the Ages of the World have produced just Six such Characters, which makes the Chances much against our seeing any such.” It’s unlikely Adams knew that Swift was one of Greene’s favorite authors.
The two also sparred, again, over congressional control of promotions. Congress had recently promoted five brigadier generals to the post of major general and had named ten new brigadiers. Greene told Adams, “Your late Promotions will give great disgust to many.” One of those disgusted officers was an ambitious brigadier named Benedict Arnold of Connecticut, who was denied a promotion to major general because his small state already had two such officers. Adams countered by reminding Greene that the “officers of the Army ought to consider that the Rank, the Dignity, and the Rights of whole States are of more Importance than this Point of Honour, more indeed than the Solid Glory of any particular officer.” While Adams’s point was undeniable, it also was unrealistic. Promotions would continue to be a sore point in the American army. The politics of promotions eventually led to Arnold’s infamous desertion and attempted betrayal of West Point in 1780.
In late March, Washington asked Greene to go to Philadelphia to consult with members of Congress personally, another sign of the commander in chief’s confidence in the Rhode Islander. Washington explained to Congress why he had chosen Greene: “[because he] is so much in my confidence, so intimately acquainted with my ideas, with our strength and our weaknesses, with everything respecting the army.” Washington hastened to point out that he could “ill spare so useful an officer at this time.” But spare him he did.
Part of Greene’s assignment was to smooth over some of the resentments that had developed over the winter between the two arms–political and military–of the Revolution. But he also had more specific duties: Washington told him “to impress strongly upon Congress . . . the necessity of keeping the Paymaster regularly s
upplied with the article of Cash; without it, every thing moves slowly on, and many and great disadvantages flow from the want of it.”
Greene had never been in Philadelphia before, nor had he met very many members of Congress. He spent two hours in front of the entire body, answering questions about a range of topics, including the never-ending talks about arranging a prisoner exchange aimed at freeing General Lee from captivity in New York. He then spent two evenings in the company of a committee of congressional delegates, including Samuel Adams. This firsthand view of politics in action was not to his taste. “There is so much deliberation and waste of time in the execution of business before this assembly that my patience is almost exhausted,” he told Washington, who must have allowed himself a brief smile of recognition. The image of the political leaders spending their days debating while his soldiers were hungry, tired, and all too few in number remained with Greene. Several weeks later, he complained that “Congress have so many of those talking Gentlemen among them that they tired themselves and every body else with their long, laboured speeching that is calculated more to display their own talents than promote the publick interest.”
To break up the monotony of politics during his short stay in Philadelphia, Greene allowed himself a tour of the capital’s fortifications; he was alarmed to find them “insufficient.” More satisfying was the sight of the city’s young women. When he returned to Morristown on March 30, he dashed off a letter to his wife, reminding her that it had been “eight long months” since he “tasted the pleasures of domestick felicity.” To further drive home the point, he added: “The young ladies of Philadelphia appear angelick. A few months Seperation more will put my virtue to a new tryal. If you don’t wish to put my resolution to the torture, bless me with your company; that is, providing your health and other circumstances favors my wishes.” While well-intentioned, it was not the most sensitive letter a husband could send to a wife, particularly a wife who, though Greene didn’t know it, had given birth just a couple of days earlier. Greene received the good news soon afterward: he was the father of a baby girl. He and Caty named her Martha Washington Greene.
Pleased though he was by this “second pledge of conjugal affection,” Greene couldn’t erase the memory of those “angelick” young women in Philadelphia. In a letter congratulating Caty on the birth of Martha, Greene casually mentioned that he once again was staying in Lord Stirling’s house, in the company of three young women: the daughters of Stirling and of New Jersey governor William Livingston. He felt duty-bound to inform Caty that these young women were of “distinguished merit: Sensible, polite and easy.” Being in their presence made him long for Caty all the more: “I never wisht more ardently to see you in my life than now. The hours grow tedious and the heart impatient. Fortune is rather unfriendly to afford but a few months enjoyment for several years Marriage. However, I hope fortune has something better in store.”
It did, but not for several months and not until after Caty recovered from a frightening bout of pneumonia, which led to weeks of bedrest. None of Greene’s family members saw fit to inform him of his wife’s condition, leading him to conclude that she was ignoring his letters.
The coming of spring brought mystery. What were the intentions of General Howe, now that the snow and ice had been replaced by budding trees and green grass? Through winter, Nathanael Greene had insisted that the British would be drawn, inevitably, to Philadelphia. They had been so close to the capital at the end of 1776, so close that they sent Congress fleeing to Baltimore. They still had two posts in New Jersey, New Brunswick and Perth Amboy. Moving troops from New York, perhaps across Staten Island, to join the New Jersey garrisons for a march toward the rebel capital seemed like a logical move.
Howe was not without other options, however, as the Americans knew all too well. The Hudson River remained a tantalizing prize. A joint offensive from Canada and New York City retained its potential to split the states in half and allow the British to isolate New England while moving against the mid-Atlantic region.
The Americans had little choice but to wait upon events. Although Greene, at Washington’s request, devised a plan for an attack on New Brunswick, he actually voted against implementing it (as did every other general) during a council of war with Washington on May 2, 1777. The generals agreed that they could not afford to risk an attack against a well-fortified position. While recruitment had improved during the winter, increasing Washington’s troop strength by early spring to slightly more than seven thousand fit for duty, they still were not strong enough for offensive action. So the Americans remained in New Jersey even as the air grew warmer and the days longer. Greene couldn’t understand why the enemy remained listless, just as he couldn’t understand why so few of his fellow countrymen were willing to defend their infant nation. “It is to be regretted,” he said, “that the cause of freedom rests upon the shoulders of so few.” To Caty, he wrote of British delay and American reluctance.
What has kept them in their Quarters we can’t imagine. We have got together a small force although by no means equal to our expectations. . . . O that the Americans were but Spirited and resolute! How easy the attempt to rout these miscreants. ... I am sure America will be Victorious finally, but her sufferings for want of Union and publick Spirit may be great first.
It was Caty’s sufferings, however, that commanded his attention through the spring. He finally learned how sick his wife was in a letter, which has been lost, from Caty herself. On May 3, he wrote:
I was almost thunderstruck at the [receipt] of your letter. How different its contents from my wishes: a lingering disorder of five Weeks . . . and from the present symptoms a confinement of two months longer. Heaven preserve you and bless you with patience and fortitude to support yourself under the cruel misfortune. . . . Oh that I had but wings to fly to your relief. The healing balm should not be wanting to mitigate your pain.
Greene feared that her illness would keep her away from camp until the start of the campaign season, which would put off a reunion until winter, eight months away. He applied a little tenderness–“my Heart mourns the Absence of its counterpart”–and, just for good measure, he tried to arouse a little jealousy. He again mentioned the daughters of Lord Stirling and Governor Livingston, who, as Caty didn’t need to be reminded, shared Lord Stirling’s mansion with the general. Greene told Caty, “You never was among a more agreeable set of young Ladies in your life.”
In mid-May, Greene rode with Knox and several other officers from Morristown to Peekskill, New York, to examine American defenses along the Hudson River south of West Point. He had a hard time keeping his mind on the task at hand–Caty, or more to the point, Caty’s absence, continued to weigh on his mind. After the generals pronounced their dissatisfaction with the river’s defenses and recommended that they be made stronger, Greene set out for Morristown. He wasn’t riding long before he fell from his horse, slicing open his lip and otherwise bruising himself. In that condition, he rode to the New Jersey home of a friend, Abraham Lott, a patriot merchant. There, he heard that Caty had arrived in Morristown. He could hardly believe it! “O, how my heart lept with joy!” he later recalled. Bruised and battered, he got back on his horse and rode to Morristown, only to discover no trace of Caty. He was the victim of faulty intelligence; his wife, in fact, still was home in Rhode Island.
He wrote to her twice the following day, May 20, and told her once again how much he missed her. With soft words and sweet language, he made it clear he wanted desperately to see her, but only if she felt she was well enough for the journey. If she was ready for camp, well, she ought to treat herself to new clothes for the occasion. And if she wanted something in Boston, why, she ought to write to Lucy Knox, who would be happy to send the items to camp.
Had Greene stopped there, Caty no doubt would have been charmed back to full health, especially after reading the line about the new clothes. But Greene could not help himself; he was self-conscious about not only his own lack of education bu
t Caty’s as well. Lucy Knox was a formidable figure, and not simply because she was almost as big as her prodigious husband. Greene told Caty: “But remember when you write to Mrs. Knox you write to a good scholar; therefore mind and spell well. You are defective in this matter, my love, a little attention will soon correct it. ... People are often laught at for not spelling well but never for not writeing well.”
For Nathanael Greene, few things in life were more dreadful than the prospect of being laughed at. Whether Caty was similarly insecure at this stage in her life is uncertain. But her husband’s admonition may not have served history well; Caty’s letters to Nathanael, apparently filled with even more spelling errors than her husband’s, have never been found. She may have seen to it that nobody would laugh at her spelling.
At the time, however, Greene’s willingness to pay for a new wardrobe outweighed his criticism of her spelling. She arrived in his new camp in Middlebrook in June, dressed no doubt in something fine and new, and her husband reacquainted himself with the “pleasures of domestick felicity.”
Caty Greene’s arrival coincided with a first-class row between the Continental army and Congress, a nasty, hasty, ego-driven, and ultimately foolish argument that cost Nathanael Greene his friendship with John Adams and nearly cost him his career.
Tension between the Revolution’s military and political leaders was hardly new, but by late spring, relations were beginning to become even more disagreeable. Greene did nothing to help matters when he sent an undeservedly blunt letter to Adams on May 29 protesting rumors that gout-ridden General Philip Schuyler of New York was about to be elected president of Congress while still holding his commission in the army. That information turned out to be false–Schuyler, who was a delegate to Congress while serving as a general, was not elected president–but Greene’s letter showed how passionately he believed in the separation of politics and the military. Not for the first time, however, his passion was inflamed by bad information, and he did not have the patience or the wisdom to check his facts before launching a misdirected tirade. To Adams, he wrote: