Washington's General

by Terry Golway

  Contributing to his melancholy mood was, as ever, the thought that somebody, somewhere, was criticizing him. “I am [persuaded] I have saved the public Millions of dollars,” he told Rhode Island governor William Greene. “Yet I am told some [think] my merit less than my reward.” When he heard complaints that some of his department’s agents were corrupt, he replied that a “charge against a quarter-master general is most like the cry of a mad dog in England. Every one joins in the cry, and lends their assistance to pelt him to death.”

  “This is a [malevolent] age,” he wrote in one of his last letters from Coventry before returning to Washington’s headquarters in New York. “A season wherein envy, malice and detraction are very predominant.”

  He wished nothing more than to be relieved of this work, which sometimes kept him at his desk past midnight. Accounts from his deputy quartermasters and purchasing agents arrived regularly in his tent, detailing, to cite some examples, the numbers of riding bridles, barrels of tar, reams of writing paper, wooden bowls, canteens, shirts, tomahawks, and other items in various units. He confided to a friend that he hoped to be assigned a command in the South, where the British were preparing to launch an offensive that would lead to the fall of Savannah in late December 1778. A transfer to this newly active theater of the war, he told a friend, “will free me from the disagreeable department I am in.”

  But there would be no relief from the disagreeable department, at least not for some time. Greene dutifully reported to Washington in mid-October and soon was back to reading reports, hectoring politicians about the curse of runaway inflation, and issuing orders for forage, wagons, tools, and the like.

  The war in the North was at a virtual standstill. The main British army was in New York City; the main American army guarded the Hudson River, waiting for the British to make a move. The status quo was more than just a moral victory for the Americans; it was a tangible sign of the army’s resolve and leadership. The defeats of 1776, the disappointments of 1777, and the ordeal of Valley Forge had been terrible, but not fatal. The army had been preserved; it remained in the field, and the Revolution continued. Nathanael Greene understood the simple glory and utter necessity of mere survival.

  By the time Greene returned to Washington, it was time to look for winter quarters again. Memories of his time at home were hard to shake, and he began to entertain hopes that Caty would make her annual visit to winter camp despite her difficult delivery of Cornelia and the infant’s brush with death. Perhaps not surprisingly, Caty was not terribly enthusiastic about the trip. Little Cornelia was only a few months old, and Caty herself was not fully recovered from the baby’s birth. Little George and Martha were just getting familiar with her again after her yearlong absence–she had been home less than six months. And there was no denying the obvious: if she spent another winter and spring in camp, she most likely would return home pregnant again. Her last two deliveries had been difficult and nearly tragic, in that order. She had three children now, the oldest of whom, George, would soon turn three. Hardly a wonder, then, that she seemed less than eager to join Nathanael in camp.

  Greene sensed her reluctance, and he tried his best to sympathize. He desperately wanted her to come–“I am impatient to see you,” he wrote on November 13–but he made a gallant effort to understand why she might choose to stay home with her children. He said he would willingly sacrifice “this pleasure . . . rather than expose you too much in coming to camp.” But it was clear he hoped she would decide otherwise. He urged her to bring little George along to keep both of them company through the winter. And then there was the opinion of little George’s namesake. In a transparent ploy to get Caty on the road from Rhode Island, Greene noted that Washington had been asking about her. “I [dined] yesterday with His Excellency, who enquired very particularly after you and renewed his charge to have you at Camp very soon,” Greene wrote.

  He dispatched the letter by messenger, hoping that if his appeals didn’t work, well, perhaps His Excellency’s just might.

  After a few weeks of scouting central New Jersey, Greene settled on Middlebrook–where he had been quartered briefly the previous year–as the main army’s camp. From there, the army could keep its watch on New York while maintaining reliable supply lines. Greene established his headquarters in a two-story stone house, whose halls were soon filled with the effervescent presence of Caty and the laughter of young George Washington Greene.

  She couldn’t resist. She left Martha and Cornelia with relatives and then set out for New Jersey in early December. The journey was hardly auspicious. The weather turned wet and cold, and the roads were rutted and miserable. Second thoughts about her decision and anxiety about what the next few months might bring must have crossed Caty’s mind, but she could not give voice to her doubts, not with George at her side. She arrived in New Jersey worse for the wear, but George was in good health, as his father was happy to note. “He is a fine, hardy fellow, full of play and merriment,” Nathanael said.

  Play and merriment were the orders of the day at Middlebrook. Unlike the dreadful winter at Valley Forge, Camp Middlebrook was a genuine respite from the war. The general officers and their wives treated themselves to balls and dinners–the contrast with Valley Forge could not have been stronger. One of the most memorable (and certainly most discussed) images from the winter of 1778-79 unfolded during an officers’ dance at Greene’s headquarters, when Washington took Caty Greene’s hand and the two of them swept across the floor. “His Excellency and Mrs. Greene danced upwards of three hours without once sitting down,” Mrs. Greene’s husband noted, apparently without jealousy. “Upon the whole we had a pretty good frisk.”

  At times, however, Greene wondered if Caty should be resting more and dancing less. She was only months removed from Cornelia’s difficult delivery, and her health was delicate in any case. He did his own dance around the subject, but Caty would hear none of it. She had come to camp to dance, and dance she did. Greene bit his lip and dropped the subject. It hurt him, he would later write, to see his wife’s health “bartered away for a few Moments of fleeting pleasure.”

  Caty’s health was not the end of his anxieties. Even as the officers danced with their wives, Greene’s deputies barraged him with letters lamenting the lack of forage for the army’s horses. Other supplies were scarce enough that Washington chose not to concentrate too many soldiers in Middlebrook; they were dispersed in other camps from Connecticut through the Hudson Valley and south through New Jersey. And now, with inflation taking a terrible toll on Continental currency, officers were complaining bitterly about their pay, and citizens were reluctant to sell their produce to Greene’s agents. Greene blamed politicians for some of the distress. For example, Congress banned the use of wheat for forage, arguing that it should be used to feed soldiers and civilians, not horses. Congress also insisted on sending all supplies by land, rather than by river, which Greene preferred because it was cheaper and more reliable. All of this made Greene’s already difficult job even more burdensome. He told John Hancock, “[The] scarcity of Provisions and Forage is not a little alarming. Whether the scarcity is real or artificial I cannot pretend to say; but I believe the Peoples dislike to the currency is one great obstacle to our purchases.”

  It was time for the war’s military leaders to confer with its political leaders. Washington and Greene both went to Philadelphia in late December, thinking they would remain there for a few days. Instead, they remained in the capital and away from Middlebrook for six weeks, conferring with members of Congress on everything from military strategy to officers’ pay to the rapid depreciation of the Continental dollar, which had lost 90 percent of its value in recent months.

  Greene had little patience and even less appreciation for the deliberations of the war’s civilian leaders. “They are [always] beginning but never finishing business,” he complained. Accustomed to the austerity of his Quaker childhood and the rigors of camp life, Greene found the capital’s parties and lavish entertainments
offensive and distinctly nonrepublican–although it appears that he didn’t turn down his invitations with a haughty scowl. Besides, Caty was with him, and she entertained no republican prejudice against a fancy-dress party or a bit of socializing. He said of his stay in Philadelphia:

  We had the most splendid entertainments immaginable. Large Assemblies and Evening Balls. It was hard service to go through the duties of the day. I was obliged to rise early and go to bed late to complete them. In the Morning a round of Visiting came on. Then you had to prepare for dinner after which the Evening Balls would engage your Time until one or two in the morning.

  Displays of plenty offended him. He told his old friend James Varnum that he “dined at one table where there was [a] hundred and Sixty dishes: and at several others not far behind.” A year ago, he and the soldiers were in Valley Forge, where men died because they lacked clothes and food. Now, he was invited to gluttony every night, and that worried him far beyond concerns about waste or equity. “The Growing avarice, and a declining currency, are poor materials to build our Independence on,” he told Varnum.

  Even from afar, Greene continued to run his department, attending to paperwork after his round of parties or, on some days, rising before dawn to write letters and issue orders. And he continued to confer with Washington on strategy: they talked about a possible attack on New York City, an increasingly favorite topic of Washington’s, once the 1779 campaign season began, along with an expedition against Indian tribes who were aligned with the British or Tories in upstate New York and northern Pennsylvania. Greene offered this cold-blooded bit of advice to Washington: “To scourge the Indians properly there should be considerable bodys of men [marching] into their Country by different routes and at a season when their Corn is about half grown.” He added, however, that the “only object” of such an assault “should be that of driving off the Indians and destroying their Grain.” Later that year, Greene would provide the logistical support for such a scourging. Led by General Sullivan, an American expedition attacked and burned forty Iroquois villages and destroyed thousands of bushels of grain.

  Before leaving Philadelphia in early February 1779, Greene brought up the delicate topic of his commissions. He had predicted weeks before that his department’s “amazing expenditures”–made all the more amazing by the currency’s relentless depreciation–would “give rise to many suspicions.” To allay fears of corruption, he proposed that he and his top two deputies, Charles Pettit and John Cox, be paid on a straight salary instead of splitting a 1 percent commission. The annual salary Greene recommended, three thousand pounds sterling for each of them, was so high Congress chose to ignore the proposal.

  Little had been accomplished during the weeks Washington and Greene spent in Philadelphia. The remaining weeks of winter passed in a whirl of less grandiose socializing and dancing in camp. From Greene’s perspective, Congress continued to ignore his requests for more money and more support for the quartermaster’s office. On a return visit to Philadelphia in April, during which he dined with the French minister, Greene once again heard complaints about the money he was making from his commissions. Predictably, this inspired a long letter to Washington.

  I have desired Congress to give me leave to resign as I apprehended a loss of Reputation if I continued in the business. They are not disposed to grant my request at all. But unless they change the system ... I shall not remain long in this business. I will not sacrifice my Reputation for any consideration whatever.

  He reminded Washington why he took over the quartermaster’s office: “out of compasion to your Excellency. . . . Money was not my motive.”

  Greene needn’t have been so defensive with Washington, a man who respected Greene’s honor as much as he valued his advice and treasured his competency. In sadness, Washington replied:

  I am sorry for the difficulties you have to encounter in the department of Quarter Master, especially as I have been in some degree responsible in bringing you to it. Under these circumstances I [cannot] undertake to give advice, or even to hazard an opinion on the measures best for you to adopt. Your own judgement must direct.

  If Greene resigned, Washington said he would recommend him as commander of the American army in the South. The British were on the march there, following up their victory in Savannah by capturing Augusta, Georgia. The American commander in the South, General Benjamin Lincoln, was rumored to be suffering from an old leg wound sustained during the Battle of Saratoga.

  Lincoln, however, required no replacement. And even if he did, Congress, not Washington, made such appointments. And Congress was not particularly fond of Nathanael Greene at the moment.

  Not long after Greene left Philadelphia for a second time and returned to Middlebrook, a large British and Hessian detachment moved north out of New York City and captured the posts of Stony Point and Ver-planck’s Point along the Hudson River. Fearing a long-expected British move up the river, Washington announced in late May that the army would move from Middlebrook to a more active position in northern New Jersey and the Hudson Valley. Greene was sent north to find a suitable site for a new camp. In a letter to Caty from New York, Greene gently suggested that the time had come for Caty and George to return to Rhode Island. “[It] would be for your advantage to set out soon; as the Roads would be growing worse every day,” he wrote. “I don’t wish by any means to hasten your [journey]; but only to state facts and leave you to consult your pleasure.”

  She had been reluctant to come to camp, and now she seemed reluctant to leave. She was pregnant again, which meant she would soon have four children aged four and younger. Her state of mind can only be guessed at, but her husband offered a hint in a letter to his cousin Griffin Greene. “Mrs. Greene is on her way Home,” he wrote on June 18, 1779. “I ... recommend her to your particular Notice, care and attention. Her situation will be rather disagreeable, which will render a little soothing necessary. Her mind is delicate and she feels sorrow with severity.”

  She left without saying good-bye, at least in person. Nathanael Greene remained in the Hudson Valley as Caty gathered little George and began the journey back to Rhode Island, apparently filled with sorrow. But what could have made her so sad? Camp had been a joy, but perhaps that was the problem. The whirl of parties was over; the long dances with George Washington, attracting the envious stares of the other wives, were just a memory. Now she was returning to domestic reality, with the annual ordeal of childbirth awaiting her–although she might not have realized it, since she was only several weeks into her pregnancy.

  The march to a new camp in New Windsor, New York, was carried out with great efficiency, even though Greene complained that the “Teams are failing and the Waggons breaking hourly. . . . The Waggons [are] loaded with women and lazy Soldiers.” Still, Greene had the army in place and prepared to defend the Hudson River by mid-June. Once again, Greene had carried out his prosaic and tiresome duties with great efficiency and competence.

  Washington expected nothing less of his reluctant quartermaster general.

  10 “O, This War!”

  Though Nathanael Greene pined for military glory and the fame that came with it, there was little to be had in the North. The war between Clinton’s main army and Washington’s had been reduced to a series of skirmishes and sideshows, of marches and countermarches, and of abandoned plans to break the stalemate. The British held New York and Newport; the Americans, Boston and Philadelphia. Clinton had entertained designs on Boston, Washington continued to plan an attack on New York, but in the end, neither could summon the required resources, communications, and coordination.

  The French and British navies fought engagements in the West Indies, members of a British peace commission (which included the two Howe brothers) tried in vain to broker a settlement, and partisan militias roamed the swamps and forests of the South. But for the main American army in the North in 1779, there was little to do but watch and wait and march when it was told to march.

  The lull allowed Green
e to attend to his personal and business affairs, which were not unrelated to his duties as quartermaster general. As he had already indicated quite openly, his commissions were “flattering” to his “fortune.” Greene’s biographer Theodore Thayer estimated that he received about one hundred and seventy thousand dollars in commissions during his tenure as quartermaster. But with the Continental dollar in free fall, Greene quite naturally looked for opportunities to invest those commissions before they became worthless.

  In April 1779, Greene formed another business association, becoming a partner with the army’s commissary general, Jeremiah Wadsworth, and Barnabas Deane, who hailed from a prominent merchant family. To shield himself from accusations that he was using his military service to build a private fortune, Greene kept his involvement with Barnabas Deane secret–as did Wadsworth. “[It] is my wish that no Mortal should be acquainted with the persons forming the Company except us three,” Greene told Wadsworth. “I think it is prudent to appear as little in trade as possible. For however just and upright our conduct may be, the World will have suspicions to our disadvantage.” Greene used codes when he wrote to Wadsworth and Deane about company business.