Washington's General

by Terry Golway

  No free people ought to admit to a junction of the Civil and the Military; and no men of good Principles, with virtuous intention, would ask it or ever accept. . . such an appointment. ... I have no objections to General Schuyler as a General, neither have I to his being President of the Congress if he is thought to be the most suitable person for that important post. But he must cease to be a General before he commences [to be] a member of Congress.

  Adams certainly did not need such a lecture, as he politely assured Greene several days later. He, too, thought it was “utterly improper” for General Schuyler to serve in Congress, never mind become its president. Nevertheless, Schuyler resigned neither his commission nor his seat in Congress. Would that he had. Several months later, he was removed from command of the army’s Northern Department after he bungled the defense of Fort Ticonderoga.

  More troublesome was another complaint. A French military officer, Phillippe Tronson du Coudray, had received a commission to serve as a major general in charge of artillery for the Continental army. An American agent in France, Silas Deane, had arranged for du Coudray’s appointment. Greene, protective of his allies as ever, saw du Coudray not only as an unreliable outsider but as a rival to his friend Henry Knox, the army’s current commander of artillery. In the same letter to Adams, Greene condemned the “impropriety of putting a [foreigner] at the head of such a Department” and noted that such a move “will deprive the Army of a most valuable Officer,” meaning, of course, Knox. Once again, Adams was on Greene’s side, echoing his concern about the “danger of entrusting so many important Commands to foreigners” and assuring Greene that du Coudray would have “few advocates” in Congress.

  Greene, ever watchful for the slightest sign of disrespect, was not satisfied. He told his brother Jacob, “Congress and I do not agree in politics; they are introducing a great many foreigners.” He thought such officers would be far more susceptible to “British gold,” never anticipating, of course, the treachery of his native-born friend Benedict Arnold.

  Greene’s grumbling turned to a piercing cry of rage when he learned that du Coudray’s commission had taken effect on August 1, 1776. That meant the Frenchman would be senior to Greene, who had been promoted to major general on August 9, 1776.

  Nathanael Greene, the man who nearly quit the Kentish Guards when soldiers whispered about his limp, was not about to suffer such a slight in silence. And there was no question in his mind that the du Coudray appointment was, in fact, a deliberate personal slight. He instantly dispatched a message to John Hancock, the president of the Continental Congress.

  A report is circulating here at Camp that Monsieur de Coudray, a French Gentleman, is appointed a Major General in the service of the United States, his rank to commence from the first of last August. If the report be true it will lay me under the necessity of resigning my Commission as his appointment supercedes me in command. I beg you’ll acquaint me with respect to the truth of the report, and if true inclose me a permit to retire.

  Greene was not alone in his rage. In separate letters that indicated close collaboration, Generals Henry Knox and John Sullivan also vowed to resign. The three generals apparently did not consult their commander in chief before issuing their threats, which made matters even worse.

  The members of Congress were furious. In fact, they had not approved du Coudray’s appointment, and as Adams already had indicated, many shared Greene’s belief that a foreign officer should not be given such a high-level command. The deal had been struck between Silas Deane, America’s slippery agent in Paris, and du Coudray, but Adams insisted that Congress believed Deane had overstepped his authority in offering the commission. Deane wasn’t much of one for rules anyway. He saw the war, and the secrets he knew, as an opportunity to make money, and so intent was he on this pursuit that he never realized that his business partner, George Bancroft, was a British spy.

  Even though Congress and Greene essentially agreed that the du Coudray appointment was inappropriate, months of suppressed tension between the politicians and the generals exploded in Philadelphia. On July 7, Congress passed an angry resolution directing Washington to tell Greene, Knox, and Sullivan that their letters were “an invasion of the liberties of the people,” indicating “a want of confidence in the justice of Congress.” The politicians demanded that the three generals “make proper acknowledgments” for their “dangerous” interference with congressional powers. The scolding concluded with an invitation to Greene, Knox, and Sullivan to make good on their threats: “[If] any of those officers are unwilling to serve their country under the authority of Congress, they shall be at liberty to resign their commissions and retire.” Adams hoped the generals would take Congress up on the offer, without pausing to consider what such a loss would mean for the struggling army. What’s more, this guardian of republican principles said that if he had his way, there would be “a new election of general officers annually.” A noble sentiment, no doubt, but perhaps not the most efficient way to win a war.

  Adams then wrote a long, sad, and angry letter to his occasional correspondent from Rhode Island. “I never before took hold of a Pen to write to my Friend General Greene without pleasure, but I think myself obliged to do so now upon a Subject that gives me a great deal of Pain,” Adams wrote. He told Greene that Congress had not approved the contract between du Coudray and Deane, and that, like Greene himself, Congress was perplexed that such an offer was made to a foreign officer. But now, he wrote, it “is impossible for Congress even to determine that Deane had no authority to make the Bargain without exposing themselves to the Reflection that their own officers intimidated them into it.”

  Adams properly pointed out that Greene could have written a private letter to himself or any other member of Congress to express his concerns, instead of sending a public letter threatening resignation. Greene indeed was guilty of Adams’s charge of “Rashness, Passion and even Wantonness in this Proceeding.” Adams urged Greene to apologize and declare publicly that he had full confidence in Congress. Otherwise, he said, “I think you ought to leave the service.”

  Greene’s reaction to this dressing-down can be deduced by simply noting that he did not write again to Adams until 1782. Du Coudray eventually entered the Continental army as a captain and, just two months after the controversy, drowned in the Schuylkill River in Pennsylvania.

  As Greene, Knox, and Sullivan issued their threats, the American army remained hostage to the unknowable intentions of His Lordship, General William Howe. Greene remained watchful for a move on Philadelphia. When he heard the British were pulling out of Amboy, he alerted Sullivan, posted in Princeton, that the “Phylistines are upon thee, Samson. Take care of thyself.” In fact, they made no move toward the capital.

  In early July, American troops in northern New York evacuated Fort Ticonderoga rather than fight British forces moving south from Canada under General John Burgoyne. It was a humiliating defeat and led to the dismissal of Generals Schuyler and Arthur St. Clair from command of the Northern Department. Greene thought he was the obvious choice to replace Schuyler or St. Clair. “I can plainly see the General wants me to go but is unwilling to part with me,” Greene told his wife, who was staying with Abraham Lott in his mansion near Morristown. Greene told Caty that he was prepared to go if ordered, but preferred not to because the transfer would separate them once again. Instead of Greene, Horatio Gates and Benedict Arnold were sent north.

  Rumors and speculation led Washington to march, countermarch, and march again through New Jersey as the Americans tried to anticipate either a British expedition up the Hudson River or an all-out assault on Philadelphia. Convinced in early August that the capital was, in fact, Howe’s target, Washington marched the army toward Pennsylvania. Greene understood the symbolism of Philadelphia but questioned the strategy. Philadelphia, he wrote, “must be perserved at all events . . . but in my opinion [it] is an object of far less importance than the [Hudson] River.”

  General Howe did not agree. He
set sail from New York for the capital but confounded the Americans by sailing into Chesapeake Bay and landing at Head of Elk for an overland march toward Philadelphia from the south. Finally, with summer nearly over, the campaign season of 1777 would begin.

  On August 24, the Continental army marched through Philadelphia. Greene, having left Caty in New Jersey with Abraham Lott, marched with the division he commanded, made up of two brigades under the command of Generals John Muhlenberg and George Weedon. It took two hours for the army’s eleven thousand soldiers to parade past citizens and politicians alike.

  Greene didn’t stop marching until he reached Wilmington, Delaware, where he monitored the British landing in Maryland. He was eager for the fight he knew would come soon. “I am in hopes Mr. How will give us a little time to collect,” he wrote, “and then we don’t care how soon he begins the frolick.”

  Mr. Howe gave the Americans two weeks. The “frolick” followed.

  7 The Cries of the People

  Though he could be petulant and sensitive, Nathanael Greene also was an optimist. And that trait, along with his unquestioned loyalty and unrelenting competence, endeared him to George Washington. It was Greene who was eager to support Washington’s plan to assail Boston in 1775 when other generals gravely shook their heads and grumbled their objections. It was Greene who was determined to learn from his mistakes–like Fort Washington–rather than excuse them or blame them on somebody else. And now, as the American army prepared to meet the British as they moved north from Maryland, it was Greene who declared that the troops were in “good health and high Spirits,” prepared to give General Howe “a deadly wound.” Those were the sentiments Washington needed to hear. He had had his fill of dire predictions and gloomy assessments.

  As the Americans set up camp in Wilmington in early September, Greene and Washington and their aides rode forward to have a look at the enemy landing force miles away. Joining them was a young, enthusiastic teenager from France with the unwieldy name Marie Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert du Motier. He became better known by his title, the marquis de Lafayette. Congress had given him another title, that of major general in the Continental army.

  Greene already had made it quite clear what he thought of foreign officers, particularly those with grand titles like major general. The tensions over the du Coudray affair had cost Greene his friendship with John Adams and other allies in Congress. Yet he uttered not a word of protest when the teenage Lafayette showed up in Washington’s camp–as a general! Perhaps Greene believed now was not the time to raise objections to yet another foreign officer. Or perhaps he, like Washington, simply was taken with the young Frenchman’s idealism, enthusiasm, and utter lack of guile. It no doubt helped that Lafayette deferred to Greene, treating him as a mentor rather than as a rival for Washington’s attention.

  Washington, Greene, and Lafayette rode to within two miles of the British lines, but they learned little from their mission. They decided to head back to Wilmington, taking careful note of the terrain between the two camps. The coming battle might well be fought on this unfamiliar ground, so the generals examined its hills, valleys, ravines, and other natural features. While they were absorbed in their inspection, the sky darkened, the winds began to blow, and a storm settled in, forcing them to take shelter in a private farmhouse. There, far from the American lines, Washington, Greene, Lafayette, and a small guard were forced to spend the night–as lightning streaked the sky–hoping no British scouts would stumble upon them.

  After a restless sleep, they returned to Wilmington. Washington immediately gave Greene the task of scouting the countryside for a good defensive position from which to challenge Howe. Greene spent hours in the saddle through the first week in September, reconnoitering, ordering stores to be moved away from the enemy’s anticipated line of march, and trying to keep his temper as he came upon local citizens, some of them Quakers, who clearly and sometimes openly supported the British. The pacifist Quakers, clinging to the dogma that had stunted his intellectual development and deprived him of the education he so sorely missed, especially infuriated him. It was bad enough that they refused to fight for their country; worse, they supported their country’s oppressor. That was unforgivable. Summoning the frustrations of his youth, he fiercely condemned the “villinous Quakers” who, he said, were “employed . . . to serve the enemy.” Some Quakers were placed under arrest. Greene thought more should be.

  Furious as he was with his coreligionists, his heart went out to ordinary citizens, many of them supporters of neither army, whose lives became intertwined with the war despite their neutrality. He passed them as they fled the no-man’s-land between the two armies–dozens of families fleeing their homes and farms, wearily traveling the back roads in search of refuge from war and looting. To Caty, he wrote: “Here are some of the most distressing scenes immaginable. The Inhabitants generally desert their houses, furniture [moving], Cattle driving and women and children traveling off on foot. The country all resounds with the cries of the people.” Looters from both armies added to the distress of these bewildered war refugees. Greene singled out the British, who, he said, “plunder most [amazingly].” In truth, the enemy had no monopoly on lawlessness; Washington’s aide Joseph Reed noted that civilians of all persuasions, Tory, patriot, and neutral, “dreaded the appearance of either army.” To the shame of their officers, American soldiers exploited American citizens, leading a frustrated Washington to issue orders demanding that the troops respect the property of the locals.

  The British began their advance on September 8. When it became clear that they were marching not directly toward the American position but to the west, hoping to turn the rebels’ right flank, Washington roused his army in the dead of night and marched north toward Brandywine Creek in Pennsylvania, a better defensive position. Greene’s division was deployed in the center of the new American line at Chadd’s Ford on the east bank of the creek. The Brandywine was not easy to cross–calling it a creek was an injustice–and Chadd’s Ford, where the water was only knee-deep, was a logical place to expect a frontal attack. Behind Greene’s division was the main road to Philadelphia. The rest of the army was strung out along the Brandywine, protecting other fords. Divisions under the command of Generals John Sullivan, Lord Stirling, and Adam Stephen were to Greene’s right, while a militia unit guarded the American left. A small detachment under General William “Scotch Willie” Maxwell, known for his prodigous drinking, was dispatched across the creek to keep an eye on enemy movements toward the American defenses.

  Greene spent nearly two days without sleep as he prepared his defenses. “I am exceedingly fatigued,” he reported to Caty on September 10. “Last night I was in hopes of a good nights rest, but a dusty bed gave me [asthma] and I had very little sleep the whole night.”

  The morning of September 11 brought a reminder that summer had not retreated from these Pennsylvania fields. It already was hot and muggy when, just after breakfast, word reached the American lines that the British were on the move, headed for Chadd’s Ford under the cover of a smothering fog. Maxwell’s men, directly across from Greene’s position, skirmished with troops under the command of Baron Wilhelm von Knyphausen before falling back across the river. Greene prepared his men for what figured to be a massive frontal assault with the full weight of Howe’s army.

  Morning dragged on, the sun became stronger, but the British did not attack Greene. He rode to Washington’s headquarters to discuss what, if anything, they ought to do. While they were conferring, a messenger arrived with news that British troops had been spotted marching north on the west side of the river, seemingly headed for a crossing above the American right flank. The tactic was familiar enough: Howe had won the Battle of Long Island with precisely the same move–a feint to the center and a massive attack on the flank. Last time, however, Howe surprised the Americans. This time he had been spotted.

  The British commander had divided his army in the face of an enemy that was roughly equal in numbers, a viola
tion of one of the most basic rules of warfare. His risky plan called for a detachment of eight thousand troops under his command to march fifteen miles up the Brandywine, turn the American right, and get behind Washington; then, when the Americans redeployed to face the threat to their rear, Knyphausen would move across Chadd’s Ford with his five thousand troops, squeezing the rebels between the two detachments.

  The Americans, however, had a chance to destroy that strategy by gathering their army quickly and attacking the undermanned Knyphausen across Chadd’s Ford. Washington put that very plan in motion. Greene rode back to Chadd’s Ford and began preparing not the defensive action he had envisioned but an all-out assault. But even as word filtered down to the troops that they were about to cross the river, Greene and the other American generals received new orders from Washington. The assault was off. Headquarters had received contradictory reports about Howe’s movements, and Washington decided he could not risk an attack without precise information. Could Howe have marched along the riverbank to fool the Americans but then retreated back to Knyphausen? Washington had to consider the possibility.

  The Americans stayed in place under the hot sun. All the while, Howe was leading his troops along the river and crossing at an undefended ford above the American line. Early in the afternoon, Washington finally received definitive word that not only was a flanking movement in progress, but the British already were across the Brandywine and ready to assault the American right.