Washington's General

by Terry Golway

  Even more horrifying than the state of the army was the war’s special brutality in the southern backwoods: neighbors were pitted against neighbors, Americans fighting Americans, civilians slaughtered, homes and farms burned. Greene told Samuel Huntington, president of the Continental Congress, that the “whole country is in danger of being laid waste by the [patriots] and [Tories], who pursue each other with as much relentless fury as beasts of prey. People . . . are frequently murdered as they ride along the road.”

  He continued to harangue local officials for supplies and men, and asked Washington to act on his behalf with governors and other civilian leaders. His years as quartermaster general were not in vain, because they taught him a vital lesson that he was now acting upon: he knew he needed supplies before he could fight. It took him only a few days to realize that the southern army’s deputy quartermaster, Captain Joseph Marbury, was not cut out for the job. “The Gentleman ... is a very honest young man but his views have been confined to mere Camp issues.” Greene would need somebody like himself, who knew how to feed and supply an army on the move. He found that person in a young colonel named Edward Carrington. And he appointed the equally competent William Davie as commissary general. Both men were experienced battlefield officers who were new to the rigors of supply. But Greene was not a man who necessarily placed a premium on experience–how could he? He valued talent and competence, and got both in his two main supply officers.

  Part of a commander’s job, as he had learned under Washington, was diplomacy. Although Greene had not earned a reputation for that particular art form, as any member of Congress might testify, he was conciliatory and patient with his officers and troops. He smoothed over jealousies based on promotions, he continued to reach out to militia commanders, and he looked after the health and welfare of his soldiers. With such tactics, he slowly rebuilt the morale and the discipline the army would need in the test that lay ahead.

  But morale and discipline fed nobody. And neither did the countryside around Charlotte. To eat, and to survive, meant moving the army.

  On December 16, 1780, Nathanael Greene made one of the most audacious decisions of the war. On his own, without consulting a council of war or local commanders, he decided to divide his army in the face of Cornwallis’s stronger force. Greene and the bulk of his army would march southeast, into South Carolina, to a camp near Cheraw Hill along the Pee Dee River. A detachment of about six hundred men under Daniel Morgan would march from Charlotte to the southwest, along the Pacolet River in South Carolina.

  The tactic defied all the laws of warfare. Military manuals insisted that a weaker general should never divide his troops when confronted by a stronger opponent capable of smashing the whole, never mind two weakened units. Even more extraordinary was Greene’s disposition of his troops: one hundred and twenty miles would separate his camp from Morgan’s, with Cornwallis between them.

  He justified the maneuver as follows: If the British attacked him, they would leave their forts in South Carolina vulnerable to Morgan. If they attacked Morgan, Greene would be free to move against Charleston or other British strongholds. Dividing the army also reduced the pressure on logistics, for it would be easier to supply two small, widely dispersed forces than a single army concentrated in one camp.

  He ordered Morgan to keep Cornwallis’s left flank busy and to buoy the morale of patriots in the western backcountry of South Carolina, who would be heartened to see an American show of force in a state under virtual British occupation. But he did not expect much more of Morgan’s men. They were too weak, he said, to make any “opposition of consequence.”

  He underestimated Daniel Morgan.

  There would be no winter camp for Caty Greene this year, not with her husband on the march in the South, so she relieved her boredom and anxiety with frequent trips to Newport, now populated with thousands of French soldiers since the British departed. She delighted in their company, and they in hers, for Caty was vivacious and didn’t particularly care if her behavior raised a judgmental eyebrow. Several of the French officers she befriended in Newport took her up on an invitation to visit her in Conventry. One, a soldier named Claude Blanchard, must have taken Caty by surprise, for he noted that there was no bread in the house when he arrived. Blanchard was equally surprised to note just how desolate the Greene homsestead and its surrounding property were. “There is not a single fruit-tree, not even a cabbage” on the property, he wrote. “Another countryhouse is pretty near, inhabited by two ladies who compose all the society Mrs. Greene has.”

  Sensitive to Caty’s anxiety, Washington himself wrote to her, offering his headquarters as a conduit for letters between the Greenes: “If you will entrust your letters to my care, they shall have the same attention paid to them as my own.” Gestures like this one help explain the fierce loyalty and affection both Greenes held for Washington.

  Though her admirers saw only her soft side, Caty could be just as ferocious an antagonist as her husband. In early 1781, she received a letter from Deborah Olney, the officer’s wife who had confronted Washington so memorably at Morristown, accusing her of fabricating the story and spreading it around. Caty replied in a fashion that no doubt made her husband proud. “I will not be so impolite as to charge you with telling fals[e]hoods but your memory must be very perfidious,” she told Mrs. Olney. “As to your tearing out the [General’s] Eyes I heard nor said nothing . . . but you did say you would tear out his [hair]–and I can bring sworn evidence to the truth of it.” This is one of the very few extant letters of Caty’s, and while it is, in fact, filled with the spelling mistakes that mortified her husband (such as vertues rather than virtues and parciallity instead of partiality), it isn’t much worse than her husband’s.

  As for Nathanael, he, too, was taking pains to make sure that Caty would not become overanxious as word filtered north about the plight of the southern army. “I am posted in the Wilderness, on a great river, endeavoring to reform the army and improve its [discipline],” Greene wrote to Caty from his new camp on the Pee Dee. He described an almost idyllic life: “[The] weather is mild and the climate moderate, so much so that we all live in [tents] without the least inconvenience.” He said that he and his brother officers were spending their days “recapitulating the pleasures and diversions of Morristown.” If the men were indeed reveling in the memories of the previous winter’s camp, they certainly were choosing their stories carefully. Memories of the constant snow, the near starvation, the suffering and privation certainly would not have made for pleasant discussion over a campfire.

  Greene was trying to assure his worried wife, for his words bore little relation to reality. The march from Charlotte to Cheraw on the Pee Dee took place in anything but “mild” weather. It rained for days, turning the roads to mud and the journey into an ordeal. Inevitably, food supplies were low, and the troops fanned out into the countryside to find something, anything, to eat. When they finally arrived in Cheraw, the troops were only somewhat better off. Falling back on his youthful study of the Old Testament, Greene wrote to Morgan, “Our prospects with regard to provisions are mended, but this is no Egypt.”

  In other letters, his descriptions of his situation were even more pointed. The very same day he wrote his lighthearted letter to Caty, December 29, Greene sent a very different message to General Robert Howe, one of the several former commanders of the Southern Department: “When I left the Northern Army I expected to find in this Department a Thousand Difficulties to which I was a Stranger in the Northern Service, but the Embarrassments far exceed my utmost [apprehension], nor can I find a Clue to guide me through the Complicated Scene of Difficulties. I have but a Shadow of an Army.”

  Lord Cornwallis soon decided to be rid of this shadow. He told one of his field commanders, Lord Rawdon–the man who had so cheerfully described British rape on Staten Island in 1776–that he believed Greene was too weak to “attempt any thing.” Cornwallis, on the other hand, was about to be reinforced with fifteen hundred troops under
the command of General Alexander Leslie, and a British invasion force under the turncoat Benedict Arnold was on its way from New York to bring the war to Virginia. The time was right to take the offensive in the Carolinas. If he destroyed his divided enemy, Cornwallis could march north to link up with Arnold and complete the British reconquest of the South. Still, he was wary of his frequent antagonist. He would later write: “[Greene is] as dangerous as Washington. He is vigilant, enterprising, and full of resources–there is but little hope of gaining an advantage over him. I never feel secure when encamped in his neighbourhood.” With that in mind, Cornwallis asked Rawdon to keep a close watch on the American’s movements. Rawdon didn’t see the need for such caution. He assured Cornwallis in a letter dated January 11: “I have so many persons watching Greene, that I think he cannot make any movement without my receiving early notice of it.”

  To further restrict Greene’s movements, Benedict Arnold and his fifteen hundred troops moved against the southern army’s supply depots in Virginia in early January. Arnold carried out his orders with relish and soon sent Governor Thomas Jefferson and the state’s legislature fleeing from Richmond. Greene now had to keep a wary eye on events in Virginia, for Arnold’s army posed a potentially deadly threat to the southern army’s scanty supplies and vital land lines of communication with Washington. Steuben tried to reorganize the shaken Virginia militia and Continentals until reinforcements from the North arrived–that is, if Washington could find any to spare. The increasingly anxious commander in chief knew he could hardly stand by while Greene faced the prospect of being caught between Arnold (to the north of Greene’s position) and Cornwallis (to the south). He eventually rounded up some Continentals and sent them, with Lafayette at their head, southward. But Greene would need a good deal more help as the British moved in for the kill. Washington focused his attention on the French fleet, anchored in Newport, Rhode Island. If the French could be persuaded to sail to the South . . .

  For the moment, though, he could offer Greene only an expression of confidence. “Amidst the complicated dangers with which you are surrounded,” Washington wrote, “a confidence in your abilities is my only consolation. I am convinced you will do everything that is practicable.” Given Greene’s worship of his commander in chief and his hunger for recognition, such words must have brightened his outlook, even as Washington reminded him that the cause itself depended on Greene’s little army.

  In the backcountry of western South Carolina, a poorly supplied Daniel Morgan believed his position was becoming untenable. He asked Greene’s permission to move into Georgia, but Greene, fearing any change in the brittle status quo, urged him to remain in South Carolina. He also advised Morgan to fight only when necessary.

  Cornwallis offered no such advice to his aggressive cavalry commander, Banastre Tarleton, who was eager to find and crush Morgan. In fact, Cornwallis encouraged his subordinate, sending him reinforcements and telling him, “If Morgan is ... any where within your reach, I wish you to push him to the utmost.” Cornwallis decided not to wait for Arnold to build up his forces in Virginia, consolidate his gains, and then turn south to squeeze Greene in a pincer movement. He believed he could crush the weak and divided southern army now. And so, in mid-January, Tarleton set out with some eleven hundred of Britain’s best troops in search of Daniel Morgan’s ragged band of six hundred Continentals and a few hundred militia. Meanwhile, Cornwallis would be free to attack Greene; in the face of his divided enemy, Cornwallis divided his own force.

  On January 13, Greene dispatched a jaunty message to Morgan: “Col. Tarlton is said to be on his way to pay you a visit. I doubt not but he will have a decent reception and a proper dismission.”

  Three days later, with Tarleton at his doorstep and a river to his rear, Morgan decided to make a stand near the North Carolina border in a place called Cowpens, so called because it had been used as quarters for cattle. It was an odd choice for the American commander–the area was wide-open, practically inviting Tarleton’s cavalry to gallop through the American position with swords flailing. But Morgan decided he would rather stand and fight, even in such a position, than be attacked on the march.

  On the morning of January 17, Morgan deployed his men in three lines and gave them very specific instructions, crafted to take advantage of his strengths and, at the same time, to concede his weaknesses. His forward line consisted of about a hundred and fifty sharpshooters. They were militiamen, prone to run away at the first sign of trouble. Morgan brilliantly incorporated this inevitablility into his order of battle: the sharpshooters were to fire twice–from fifty yards–and then retreat. A second line, made up of militia under the command of Andrew Pickens, would do likewise. Morgan told them to aim for Tarleton’s officers.

  After the men on the second line did their damage, they would fall back and re-form as a third American line of defense, positioned on high ground, prepared for the final British push. In reserve, ready to counterattack as the British moved forward, were American cavalrymen under William Washington. “Just hold up your heads, boys,” Morgan told his troops, “and then when you return to your homes, how the old folks will bless you, and the girls kiss you for your gallant conduct.”

  It was a brilliant plan, and its influence on Greene would prove to be profound.

  After a four-mile predawn march, the most feared British commander of the war, Tarleton, and his crack troops assailed the American position just before seven o’clock on the morning of January 17. What followed was nothing short of a military miracle. Morgan’s sharpshooters fired a deadly volley at Tarleton’s overconfident cavalry, forcing them to fall back. The sharpshooters then filed out of the forward position, as Morgan had planned.

  As the British cavalry re-formed, Tarleton’s infantry marched toward the second line, manned by Pickens and his troops. The Americans waited until the British were nearly at point-blank range, fired two devastating volleys, and then retreated. Washington’s cavalry charged the British right and then circled around the British rear. Tarleton assailed the right flank of Morgan’s third and final line of defense, but his men were driven back.

  After an hour of intense fighting, hundreds of British troops put down their weapons and surrendered–their discipline utterly broken. A stunned Tarleton retreated.

  The British casualties were appalling: of their eleven hundred troops, they lost one hundred killed, more than two hundred wounded, and six hundred captured. By contrast, only a dozen Americans were killed and about sixty wounded.

  Cowpens was a spectacular American victory and an unmitigated disaster for the British. A minute before Tarleton sent his troops toward Morgan, the American cause in the South seemed as hopeless as it had ever been. An hour later, all had changed. Cowpens transcended mere casualty figures; it gave heart to the region’s patriots, and it stunned loyalists. Greene was extremely conscious of public opinion and perception, understanding that patriot civilians would be more inclined to join local militia or the Continental army if the cause did not seem lost. Cowpens showed that it was not.

  Several days passed before Greene received a message from Morgan, dated January 19: “The Troops I had the Honor to command have been so fortunate as to obtain a compleat Victory over a Deatchment from the British Army commanded by Lt. Colonel Tarlton.” Greene was delighted but also relieved; Morgan had taken a huge gamble and, in fact, had ignored Greene’s plea to avoid combat. But, as Greene indicated in a letter to Washington, the brilliant victory at Cowpens could not mask the huge difficulties the American army still faced. Greene was worried, too, that the politicians who controlled money and supplies–however scarce and few–might be inclined to relax after hearing about Cowpens. Greene told his friend James Varnum that the “Army is in a deplorable condition; and not withstanding this little success, must inevitably fall [prey] to the enemy if not better supported. . . . Don’t imagine that Lord Cornwallis is ruined: for depend upon it, the Southern States must fall, unless there is established a well appointed A
rmy for their support.”

  Greene was right about Cornwallis–he was far from finished. Enraged by the British defeat at Cowpens, he was newly determined to crush his enemy. The Americans still were divided, but he was reinforced. Along with twenty-five hundred troops, Cornwallis set out in search of Morgan, who was retreating toward North Carolina. After finishing off Morgan, he would turn his attention to Greene. To speed his pursuit, he ordered his troops to burn all their excess baggage, wagons, and provisions. Even the army’s rum was thrown aside, the unkindest sacrifice of all. The British would now move faster, but they would have to live off the land–a circumstance Greene surely would have advised against. Legend has it that when Greene heard that his formerly well-supplied nemesis had so rashly put a torch to his precious cargo, he smiled, perhaps for the first time since assuming his command. “Then he is ours!” he said.

  Greene decided he must reunite his army or face disaster. After giving orders for his wing to march toward Salisbury, North Carolina, he set out to meet with Morgan on his own, with only a handful of men to protect him. He was alarmed when Morgan sent a dire message, describing himself as “emaciated” and saying that he was growing “worse every hour.” Plagued by painful back ailments and rheumatism, Morgan hinted in his message that he could no longer function in the field–and this, with Cornwallis gaining ground on him.