Washington's General (24 page)

Nathanael Greene was given command of this massive foraging operation, upon which hundreds of lives and perhaps even the army itself depended. It was not a command for the faint of heart, because it would require brutal tactics when sweet persuasion failed. Even the most stouthearted friend of American liberty was bound to resent soldiers, however well behaved, hauling off livestock and crops at the point of a gun, tendering only a piece of paper promising payment at some future time. And it was, after all, winter for civilians, too. They had worked a fine harvest in the fall and had planned to enjoy the fruit of their labor through the hard months until spring. The requirements of the Continental army did not enter into their plans.

The forced impressment of private property figured to be a public relations nightmare for the starving American army. From the day he marched off to Boston with the Rhode Island Army of Observation, Nathanael Greene was sensitive to the importance of public opinion, especially in a war fought in the name of democracy. The army's virtues, he had often said, reflected the virtue of the cause. But now necessity collided with virtue, and Greene had no choice but to put aside his ideals
and hope for the best. Much of the foraging operation would take place in areas known for their unenthusiastic Quakers and outright loyalists. At least the Americans would make no new enemies when they showed up at those farmhouses.

Greene and his party of several thousand soldiers moved out of camp and into the countryside almost immediately, and just as quickly he discovered the endless complications of supplying an army. There were not enough wagons to cart whatever they might find, and they were receiving little cooperation from their fellow Americans, who were concealing their wagons from Greene's men. Other farmers pleaded with Greene to leave them alone. He told Washington on Feburary 15, “[The] Inhabitants cry out and beset me from all quarters, but like Pharoh I harden my heart.” His men had caught two civilians transporting provisions to the British; Greene ordered them whipped with a hundred lashes “by way of Example.”

The example was not intended just for other civilians. He, too, sought to set an example for his subordinate officers. They had no taste for this cruel business, but Greene told them that they had little choice, that they too had to harden their hearts. He told his men that he would punish “the least neglect with the greatest severity.” His instructions to Colonel Nicholas Biddle, the army's commissary general of forage, were equally blunt: “You must forage the Country naked,” he wrote. Greene knew that stripping the countryside of forage for civilian horses and livestock would create a new set of problems for civilians. It was bad enough that the soldiers took their feed, but what of the animals left behind, doomed to starvation? Greene had a solution. He told Biddle that “to prevent [civilian] complaints of the want of Forage we must take all their Cattle, Sheep and Horses fit for the use of the Army.”

When his men brought back little from their initial forays, Greene expanded the reach of the party, showing a command of details and logistics that clearly made an impression on the commander in chief back at headquarters in Valley Forge. Greene ordered a detachment to Lancaster County to round up a hundred wagons. He expanded foraging operations
into Bucks County. Confronted with evidence that civilians continued to conceal stock and wagons from his soldiers, Greene promised Washington that “examples shall not be wanting to facilitate the business.” When patriotic appeals and promises of future payment failed, the lash would have the final word. Greene took no pleasure in this work–the “business I am upon is very disagreeable,” he wrote–but he regarded it as a grim necessity. “God grant that we may never be brought into such a wretched condition again,” he wrote to Washington.

After five days of exhausting work, he was able to send a bit of good news back to Valley Forge from Bucks and Chester counties, whose residents, he noted, were not the most cooperative.

I sent on to Camp yesterday near fifty Head of Cattle. I wish it had been in my power to have sent more, but the Inhabitants have taken the alarm and conceal their stock in such a manner that it is very difficult finding any. They have done the same with their Waggons and Harness. Our poor fellows are obliged to search all the woods and swamps after them and often without success. I have given orders to give no receipts for everything they find concealed and to notify the people accordingly.

Greene's unsentimental, even cold-blooded, methods were having an effect. By February 20, Colonel Biddle reported that he had forty wagons filled with provisions. General Anthony Wayne, whom Greene dispatched across the Delaware into New Jersey, found a good supply of livestock and also burned supplies of hay that seemed destined to fall into the hands of British foraging parties from Philadelphia. The army's improving fortunes apparently softened Greene's heart just a bit, for when a civilian named Nathan Sellers pleaded for the return of his only horse, a mare, Greene agreed, after Sellers promised to keep the horse from the British.

Greene was back in camp in late February after eleven days of
arduous and ruthless labor. The supplies he brought back eased the situation in Valley Forge a bit, but conditions still were appalling. Greene told Knox what he found when he returned.

The troops are getting naked, and they were seven days without meat and several days without bread. Such patience and moderation as they manifested under their sufferings does the highest honor to the Magnanimity of the American Soldiers. The seventh day they came before their superior officers and told their sufferings in as respectful terms as if they had been humble petitioners for special favors. . . . Happy relief arrived from the little collections I had made and some others, and prevented the Army from disbanding.

Greene's contribution to the army's survival at a critical moment, and the unquestioned zeal with which he acted on Washington's orders, did not go unnoticed at headquarters. Washington, encircled by enemies even within the army itself, knew he had no more loyal general than Nathanael Greene, and surely none more capable of executing orders, no matter how distasteful. There was no issue more pressing at the moment than the army's ability to feed and clothe itself. Greene's foraging mission did, in fact, provide relief, but larger supply problems remained. Greene told Knox that the army was still in danger of starving.

The supply system had become bogged down in congressional and army politics, and the results were deadly. Soldiers continued to die–the body count at Valley Forge would reach twenty-five hundred–and others were deserting for want of food and clothing.

The army needed a quartermaster general, a man who understood the logistics of supply and who was tough enough to take on unpleasant assignments. The army did not need a quartermaster general like Thomas Mifflin, who was glad to rid himself of the dull work of supply to devote himself to the work of undermining the commander in chief.

Congress had been considering General Phillip Schuyler as the army's new quartermaster general, but a committee from Congress visiting the
army at Valley Forge agreed with a conclusion Washington had reached: Nathanael Greene was the only man for the job. Washington had come to treasure Greene's competency, but that was not the only virtue that recommended him for the vital post. Greene also was devoted to Washington, and that loyalty was never more important than now, with other generals and politicians seemingly plotting against him. Greene's background as a businessman didn't hurt, either; he was a problem solver, a man who understood how to find supplies and move them from one point to another. And that, in a nutshell, was the job of a quartermaster general. He was responsible for purchasing, transporting, and distributing a breathtaking array of supplies, everything from tents to canteens to nails to saddles. Although the purchasing of food came under the power of the commissary general, and that of clothing was the responsibility of the clothier general, the quartermaster general was in charge of transporting those supplies as well. When the army moved, the quartermaster was in command of the march, which meant that he had to establish supply posts along the route, become familiar with the terrain (for the location of sources of water and forage, among other things), and scout possible sites for new camps.

Washington broached the subject of this immensely complex job directly with Greene, telling him that future supply disasters were inevitable unless somebody familiar with the army's needs accepted the unglamorous but urgent assignment. These were not words Greene longed to hear. He knew what Washington said was true, but he also knew that he had not joined the army to become a staff officer pushing paper behind the lines. He wished for fame on the battlefield. As he later told Washington, “Nobody ever heard of a quarter master in history.” He told Knox that he had no desire to be “taken out of the Line of splendor.” He had visions of his friends gaining the laurels he dreamed of. To his friend General McDougall, he complained, “All of you will be im-mortallising your selves in the golden pages of History while I am confined to a series of [drudgeries] to pave the way for it.”

Besides, the job promised only frustration, as members of Congress conceded when they said the next quartermaster general would face “the
Confusion of the Department, the depreciation of our Money and the exhausted State of our Resources.” One could hardly imagine a less attractive proposition.

The pressure from Congress and Washington at least offered Greene a chance to negotiate, and he took full advantage. He asked that he retain his title of major general, with a vague understanding that he would have a place on the battlefield, rather than behind the lines, when campaign season resumed. Congress agreed, although with the caveat that Greene would no longer command a division. He asked Congress to name two trusted friends, Charles Pettit and John Cox, as his top deputies. Pettit, a lawyer and an accountant in civilian life, would be in charge of the department's books. Cox, a merchant, would supervise the department's purchases and would monitor stores of supplies. Congress agreed to this request, too.

The obstacles fell, one by one. Ultimately, though, what mattered most to Greene was Washington's wishes. As he weighed his decision, seeking the advice of his many friends in the service, he consistently cited Washington's desire–his need–to have a competent, trusted friend as quartermaster. After all they had been through, with the war nowhere near victory, Greene simply could not say no to Washington.

So, in March, he said yes, although with great misgivings. He confessed, “[I am] vexed with myself for complying,” but believed he had no choice, for Washington and civilian leaders were at him “Night and Day.”

Until Nathanael Greene took the job, the quartermaster general of the Contintental army had worked not at Washington's side but in Philadelphia and, more recently, in York. Thomas Mifflin, who had served as quartermaster twice since 1775, had none of Nathanael Greene's prestige, access to the commander in chief, and field-level knowledge of the army's needs. From the moment when Greene accepted the job, the quartermaster general's office was transformed from a staff job to one of the army's most influential positions–simply because it was Nathanael Greene, confidant of Washington, who held it.

The post was not without its attractions. Although Greene had offered
to work for his salary as a major general, his two assistants demanded much more, arguing that they were giving up private business interests and shouldn't suffer financially for their patriotism. Congress compromised by offering Greene, Cox, and Pettit a 1 percent commission, to be divided as they wished, on all goods or services they ordered for the army. Such an arrangement would never be allowed in a professional army of the twenty-first century, but it was quite legal and even customary in the eighteenth century. Greene's predecessor, Mifflin, also had received a commission on the department's purchases.

Greene, though he considered himself as pure a patriot as any American, was not above considerations of money and profit even in the course of performing his duty. He continued to maintain his interest in the family company and often sent his brothers business advice. He had concluded that the fledgling American nation valued money above all else, and if he were to make anything of himself in the new nation he was trying to create, he would have to be rich as well as a patriot. “Money becomes more and more the Americans' object,” he told his brother and business partner Jacob. “You must get rich, or you will be of no consequence.”

Nathanael Greene intended to be a man of consequence. But as he contemplated his new life as a quartermaster, he saw nothing that would help him achieve his ambitions, or his personal happiness. Quite the opposite, in fact. In another bout of his periodic self-pity, he complained to another brother and business partner, William:

I have spent but a short hour at home since the commencement of the War. ... I am wearing out my constitution and the prime of life. It is true I shall have the consolation of exerting my small abilities in support of the Liberties of my Country, but that is but poor food to subsist a family upon in old Age.

With no attempt to hide his bitterness, he added that he could hardly count on the thanks of his fellow countrymen; “publick gratitude,” he wrote, “would be a novelty in modern politicks.”

Those harsh words came from a man who had sacrificed everything for the sake of his country, and, admittedly, for a chance at fame and glory, a man whose marches through the American countryside took him to places where other Americans actively worked against him, or hid their supplies from him, or simply didn't care whether the cause lived or died. Time and again, in private moments as he wrote or dictated letters in his quarters, he spoke of his disappointment with his fellow countrymen. How could they not care about liberty? How could they spy for the British? How could they believe they had no stake in the stuggle of the army that fought in their name?