Washington's General

by Terry Golway

  At nine o’clock in the morning on June 24, as the smells of camp breakfast filled the air, Greene trudged to Washington’s headquarters for another council of war. It already was a hot, muggy day.

  Washington told the generals that the British march was so slow he suspected something was wrong. He wanted to attack with the whole of the American army against Clinton’s entire force.

  Charles Lee said he had never heard anything so ridiculous, and he argued that Washington should simply preserve the army until the French arrived, whenever that might be. As Greene listened to Lee’s oration, he became increasingly bitter and angry. Most of the men in the room seemed to agree with Lee, except for Washington’s aide Alexander Hamilton. Greene finally spoke up and gently suggested an alternative: send a detachment of two brigades to support an assault by light troops on the British rear and flanks. The rest of the army would be close enough to support the attack in case this limited battle became more serious.

  The generals chose an even more limited engagement, advising Washington to send only about fifteen hundred men to attack the British flanks. Greene, with reluctance verging on disgust, agreed to the compromise and signed a document with the generals’ recommendations. He believed he was powerless to formally object, as his friend Anthony Wayne did by refusing to sign the recommendation. Greene believed that as a staff officer, and not a field commander, he had no right to raise objections to a battle plan. But that night, still furious with Lee, he returned to his tent to write a personal message to Washington.

  I must confess the opinion I subscribed to ... does not perfectly coincide with my Sentiments. I am not for hazarding a general action unnecessarily but I am clearly of opinion for making a serious impression with light Troops and for having the Army in supporting distance.

  Greene believed the Americans had to seize the opportunity that presented itself just a few miles to the south, near Monmouth Court House. “If we suffer the enemy to pass through [New Jersey] without attempting anything upon them,” he told Washington, “I think we shall ever regret it.”

  Greene was not the only one who held this view. That night, Washington received similar messages from Wayne and Lafayette. Their private arguments persuaded Washington to disregard the formal advice of the war council. The army would swing to its right and march south to move closer to Clinton at Monmouth. Then an American detachment, which grew to five thousand, would attack the British rear guard. Charles Lee would command the assault. Greene would remain with Washington and the main army, temporarily in charge of Lee’s division and ready to move into action if the limited engagement became a general action.

  The day of the assault, June 28, was insufferably hot. Lee’s attack was in trouble after only a few hours, and by late morning, the Americans were in full retreat. Unknown to the Americans, Clinton had reinforced his rear guard with some of his best troops, under the command of the ubiquitous Lord Cornwallis. Though Lee’s retreat may have been prudent, Washington was furious when he learned of it. According to legend, the commander in chief let loose oaths the likes of which his brother officers had never heard, at least not from Washington’s mouth. “Delightful,” said an American general named Charles Scott. “Never have I enjoyed such swearing before or since.”

  Even before Lee’s retreat, Washington ordered Greene to put aside his paperwork and move forward to support the attack. But when Greene learned that Lee was in headlong retreat, he reversed course on his own accord and rejoined the main American line, now threatened by the counterattacking British.

  Greene was deployed on the American right. Cornwallis was marching toward him. It was midafternoon, the temperature was nearly a hundred degrees, and the humidity was unbearable.

  Seven thousand British soldiers charged twelve thousand Americans. What Greene had envisioned as a sizable battle between detachments had become a general action involving the whole of the American army and a large portion of Clinton’s. The British unleashed a furious cannonade, and the Americans replied in kind. Greene and his men held their ground as Cornwallis deployed units from the famed Coldstream Guards along with battle-hardened Hessians and British light cavalry. They charged Greene’s position twice, and twice they were driven back.

  The American line stood firm. Here, during several hours of ferocious fighting under a terrible sun, Steuben’s miracle at Valley Forge took shape in flesh and blood, courage and discipline. Only months removed from the horrors of Valley Forge, the Continental army stood its ground against some of the finest soldiers in the world. By five o’clock, the battle dissolved into sporadic exchanges of cannon fire.

  The two sides had fought to a draw; the British were able to resume their march to New York the following day, and the Americans were too exhausted to pursue. But the Americans nevertheless considered Mon-mouth a victory, for they knew just how far they had come since those terrible days just six months earlier.

  Once they were recovered and rested, the Continental army marched toward the Hudson River to watch over Clinton. Spirits were high, but conditions remained oppressive. “We have suffered considerably by the Heat,” Greene later wrote. “We marched through a Country from Mon-mouth to Brunswick not unlike the Deserts of Arabia for Soil and Climate.” During the march, Greene reverted to his duties as quartermaster general, scouting out campsites, making sure supplies kept up with the march, and attending to an unending stream of paperwork.

  On July 4, the tired and thirsty army camped near New Brunswick, where the second anniversary of American independence was celebrated with a parade and cannon fire. The troops were given extra rations of rum, and there were shouts and laughter in the summer night. The gray, cold, and hollowed-out ghost of Valley Forge had been exorcised.

  The Continental army, and the Revolution itself, were renewed.

  9 “It Wounds My Feelings”

  In his short service as quartermaster general, Nathanael Greene had shown himself to be the right man for the job. The assignment required organization; he was organized. It required an understanding of logistics and supply; he was a businessman. It helped to have a field-level understanding of the army’s needs; he had been in the field since the siege of Boston.

  In one way, however, Greene was poorly suited to the position. Being quartermaster general of the Continental army was a thankless job. But Nathanael Greene liked to be thanked.

  More to the point, Nathanael Greene wished to be recognized–for his service, for his sacrifice, for his competence. The slightest hint of underappreciation was likely to inspire waves of self-pity and occasional threats of resignation. Even while he was considering the quartermaster’s job, when the army still was encamped in Valley Forge, he confided to his brother Jacob and his cousin Griffin that he might quit the army. “It would be agreeable to retire if no injury was to follow to the public,” he told Jacob, “for the Splendor of the Camp is but a poor compensation for the sacrifices made to enjoy it.”

  Hardly the sentiments of a selfless, liberty-loving patriot. But Greene missed his wife; he missed the children he fathered but did not know; he missed the opportunity to make himself wealthy. He wished for recognition but believed he had received only slights. Most recently, he was disappointed that his role in the fighting at Monmouth had been overlooked, just as it had at Brandywine. And Washington had said little or nothing about Greene’s heroic efforts in transforming the quartermaster’s office. But although Greene may have taken this oversight to heart, he did not hold it against the man he worshipped. Often, when he was depressed or feeling sorry for himself, all Greene needed was an acknowledgment, even if unspoken, that he was useful and appreciated. When he felt that way, he rarely complained or indulged in flights of self-pity. There is no question that he was not happy in his new role as the army’s quartermaster general. His duties truly were thankless: he would win no medals for keeping the supply wagons running; he would garner no praise for dealing with skeptical civilian merchants and farmers reluctant to accept Continental curren
cy; he would find no laurels in supervising a sprawling bureaucracy.

  Instead of plotting strategy in Washington’s headquarters, he spent his nights squinting by candlelight at accounts that recorded, for example, the number of axes and blacksmith’s tools and tables and blankets that were in the army’s possession and which states had provided them. A more secure but less ambitious man might have have found this kind of work its own reward, for without such attention to detail, the army would collapse for lack of supplies. But Nathanael Greene–the insecure soldier who walked with a limp; the amateur general among professionals; the self-educated Quaker who corresponded with learned men in camp and in Congress–needed frequent affirmation. It was a quality that, like every other necessity in the Continental army, often was hard to come by.

  The army continued its march toward the Hudson River after celebrating the Fourth of July in New Brunswick. With Clinton safely back in New York City, the Americans once again had to defend against a British move up the strategic river that divided New England from the mid-Atlantic states. Washington’s defensive strategy, however, began to change when he learned in mid-July that a French fleet was off Sandy Hook in New Jersey. Instead of simply guarding against a British offensive, the Americans now had a chance to lay siege to New York. Washington was eager to grasp the opportunity.

  Greene was not at Washington’s side after the army left New Brunswick. He was riding miles ahead of the troops, scouting out possible campsites across the Hudson. Caty, who was pregnant, ill, and at home in Rhode Island, apparently expressed some of her own thoughts on where the army ought to camp. This rare excursion into her husband’s business prompted a reply from Nathanael on July 17.

  You express a strong desire to get the Army on the East side of the [Hudson] River and [you say that] you have political as well as private reasons for it. Your private reasons I can interpret; but your Political ones I cannot divine. You may rest assured that there must be something very very uncommon to prevent my coming home; you cannot have a greater desire to see me than I have you and the Children. I long to hear the little rogues prattle. . . . Although I have been absent from you I have not been inconstant in love, unfaithful to my vows, or unjust to your bed.

  Washington caught up with Greene on the east bank of the river in mid-July, and the two men conferred in Haverstraw. Greene then returned to his assignment. His search was not easy, for the territory was unfamiliar and the weather remained brutally hot. When several days had passed without word from Greene, Washington sent a message to him complaining of “neglect” in the quartermaster’s office. What’s more, Washington wanted to speak with Greene personally before writing to the French admiral Charles d’Estaing about plans for a siege of New York. But he could not do so until Greene returned to headquarters.

  Greene might have taken Washington’s message as a sign of his value to the commander, who seemed to be saying that he could not make important strategic decisions without his favorite general by his side. Instead, he felt the sting of his hero’s disapproval. The chip he carried on his shoulder never felt heavier.

  On July 21, with the army camped, finally, in White Plains, Greene sent a long letter to Washington baring his insecurities and wish for approval in language he had never used before when addressing Washington. At times blunt, at other times self-pitying to the extreme, Greene’s langage was as raw as his wounded ego: “Your Excellency has made me very unhappy. I can submit very patiently to deserved censure; but it wounds my feelings exceedingly to meet with a rebuke for doing what I conceived to be a proper part of my duty, and in the order of things.”

  He explained that he had been meticulous in trying to find the proper location to camp the army, to the detriment of his health. The weather was hot, he pointed out, and he was exhausted. “And here I must observe that neither my constitution or strength are equal to constant exercise,” he wrote, making an observation that seemed to belie his long service at Washington’s side, which if nothing else had been strenuous.

  Your Excellency well knows how I came into this department. It was by your special request, and you must be sensible there is no other man upon Earth could have brought me into the business but you. ... I flatter myself when your Excellency . . . will do me the justice to say I have not been negligent or inattentive to my duty.

  Well into the letter, after a long recitation of his truly extraordinary service to Washington and the nation (“I have never solicited you for a furlough to go home to indulge in pleasure or to improve my interest”), Greene picked at old scabs and unwittingly revealed what hurts and grievances lay behind this extraordinary exercise: “I have never been troublesome to your Excellency to publish any thing to my advantage altho I think myself as justly entitled as some others who have been more fortunate. Particularly in the action of Brandywine.” Nearly a year after the battle, Greene’s emotional wounds were bleeding still.

  In closing, Greene reminded Washington, “[I have] always endeavored to deserve the public esteem and your Excellency’s approbation.” Since it was clear that his work left something to be desired, Greene offered his resignation: “As I came into the quarter masters department with reluctance so I shall leave it with pleasure. Your influence brought me in and the want of your approbation will induce me to go out.”

  Washington, a man not given to displays of private or public emotion, surely was pained to read this almost pitiful letter from a fellow general whose wisdom, dedication, and sheer competence had become so vital to the American cause. He had not meant to offend Greene; what’s more, he hardly needed to read Greene’s recitation of the sufferings and sacrifices he had endured for so long. Washington’s own record on that score was somewhat impressive, too.

  The leadership abilities of George Washington have won praise and admiration through the centuries, but even his fondest admirers will confess that he often seemed aloof and remote. On this occasion, however, Washington chose urgency and intimacy, and perhaps as he calculated, the combination had its intended effect. Greene’s letter had been delivered to his headquarters by messenger; Washington replied to it immediately, even though he was surrounded by staff and had on his desk a pile of letters from the South that required his attention. To his wounded general, he wrote: “I can, and do assure you, that I have ever been happy in your friendship, and have no scruples in declaring that I think myself indebted to your Abilities, honour and candour, to your attachment to me, and your faithful services to the Public.”

  Having written words Greene wished so desperately to read, Washington then reminded him that their friendship “must not debar” frank discussion of the army’s concerns. For several hot, humid July days on the banks of the Hudson River, Washington could find nobody from Greene’s department, nor, in fact, Greene himself. He was not happy and believed he was right to bring this to Greene’s attention. “But let me beseech you my dear Sir not to harbor any distrusts of my friendship, or conceive that I mean to wound the feelings of a Person whom I greatly esteem and regard,” he wrote.

  A little more than two weeks later, on August 3, Washington sent Congress a letter filled with praise for Greene’s transformation of the quartermaster general’s office. “[In] justice to General Greene,” Washington wrote, “I take occasion to observe that the public is much indebted to him for his judicious management and active exertions in his present department. When he entered upon it, he found it in a most confused, distracted and destitute state.” But now, Washington said, the department “has undergone a very happy change, and such as enabled us, with great facility, to make a sudden move with the whole Army and baggage from Valley Forge.” Thanks to Greene’s “method and System,” the army no longer suffered from lack of supplies and organization.

  Greene returned with enthusiasm to his work. Washington had decided not to lay siege to New York, but to launch an assault on a place Greene knew well: Newport, Rhode Island, which the British had seized in December 1776. Greene was given the job of collecting wagons
, teams, and boats to move reinforcements to his home state, where his friend General John Sullivan was in command. The attack would be the first joint Franco-American operation of the war, for the French fleet and its four thousand marines agreed to sail from Sandy Hook to Rhode Island to cooperate with Sullivan’s forces.

  Communications were paramount, and Washington was not happy with the slow speed of messages to and from Rhode Island. Greene, the army’s problem solver, devised a system relying on express riders stationed in four outposts between White Plains and Providence. The problem was fixed.

  Greene’s bruised feelings were on the mend, but he still had a hard time reconciling himself to solving prosaic supply problems while his friend Sullivan was preparing for battle–and in Greene’s home state, no less. Greene believed his place ought to be in Rhode Island, not in White Plains arranging for wagons and for express riders. He lobbied Washington, who by now realized how brittle Greene could be, for a place on the line with Sullivan. It is impossible to know whether Greene’s previous outburst influenced Washington, but the commander in chief suprisingly did not rule out the possibility of Greene leaving his duties as quartermaster general for a chance at glory in Rhode Island. In a letter dated July 23, Greene told Sullivan:

  You are the most happy man in the World. What a child of fortune. The expedition going on against Newport I think cannot fail. ... I wish you success with all my Soul and intend if possible to come home and ... to take a command of part of the Troops under you. I wish most ardently to be with you.

  Washington granted his wish the following day. After an absence of three years, Nathanael Greene was going home to help liberate Newport–and home was precisely where he was going first. His deputy Charles Pettit took over the quartermaster’s department during his absence. He left camp and rode one hundred and seventy miles in three days, arriving at home in Coventry at nine o’clock at night on July 30. For the first time in the young lives of the Greene children, the family was together.