Washington's General (32 page)

The resolution failed.

It was clear that Greene had alienated too many people in Philadelphia. “I feel my self. . . soured, and hurt, at the ungenerous . . . treatment of
Congress,” he told Joseph Reed, the president of the Pennsylvania legislature. “[I believe] it will be impossible for me to do business with them, with proper temper; and besides I have lost all confidence in the justice and rectitude of their intentions.” Angry and disgusted, he left the capital on April 10 and returned to the snow and cold of Morristown. He summed up his dark thoughts in a letter on April 15.

I have been among the great at Philadelphia and have a worse opinion of the issue of our cause than ever. Never was there a people that employed themselves so much about trifles. Their whole policy is a chapter of new expedients, and long debated upon little matters of form. . . . Our treasury is empty. The business of finance is in a doubtful way. Public credit is lost, and National confidence expiring. Our Army [is] small and still upon the decline and little or no prospect of having it recruited this Spring.

In a letter written in code to his friend Wadsworth, Greene offered his opinion of the Revolution's political leaders: “Truth and righteousness is of no account with these [people].”

More than ever, politics, criticism, and paperwork dampened his fervor for the cause. Truth and righteousness could not be found in political debates, in spreadsheets, or in budgets. They could be found only on the battlefield, where Nathanael Greene belonged.

At Valley Forge two years before, springtime had brought both relief from the weather and pride in the army's astonishing transformation thanks to Baron von Steuben's winter-long training. Spring at Morris-town, however, brought only continued misery, and not all of it was related to the snow that remained on the ground into early April. The Greenes suffered a personal blow when Caty's brother, Simon, died at age twenty-nine on Block Island. Caty remained in camp after receiving the bad news.

Meanwhile, the Continental dollar's inexorable decline meant that as never before, merchants, farmers, and citizens refused to sell their goods to the quartermaster's department or to the commissary general. Food and other daily supplies continued to dwindle; long-term provisions for the coming campaign were nonexistent. Some soldiers had not been paid in months. Not that it mattered, for their meager pay could buy precious little at a time when a pair of shoes in Philadelphia cost twenty-five dollars, and a hat and a simple suit of men's clothes cost two thousand dollars in Boston. “Our distress,” Greene wrote, “is [beyond] description.”

There was no escaping the tension and anxiety in camp, even when officers and their wives gathered for modest social outings. At one such party in one of the officer's quarters, an earnest Rhode Islander, George Olney, apparently objected to the drinking of his colleagues, including Greene. To show his disapproval of this frivolity, Olney turned on his heel and retreated to the more sober company of the officers' wives in another room. Fueled by drink, the officers dispatched an expeditionary force with orders to return Olney to his rightful place with the men. The women put up a stubborn resistance, and reinforcements–in the form of none other than the commander in chief himself–were called in. Washington grabbed hold of a wrist belonging to Deborah Olney, the fugitive officer's wife. Mrs. Olney was as stern a soul as her husband. Rather than go along with the joke, she let loose with a verbal cannonade that left everyone in the room speechless. To the commander in chief, she said, “Let go of my hand or I'll pull every hair out of your head!” Jaws dropped. The words hung in the hair. The joking, the horseplay, the welcome respite from the winter's privations–all came to a sudden end. The officers and their wives quietly went their separate ways.

The deprivation continued, even after the snow and ice were long gone. On May 25, two regiments from Connecticut decided to take matters into their own hands. Starving and poorly clothed, they marched out of camp and made it known that they planned either to seize what they could from the locals or to simply return home. The army was on the verge of mutiny, but, to the credit of the troops, it was halfhearted at best. Officers reasoned with the soldiers, and they returned to camp,
with little harm done. Still, it was an ominous development. Greene confided to the governor of Rhode Island, William Greene, that he feared discontent would “run through the whole line like wild fire.”

Even worse news, if that could be imagined, arrived in camp a few days later: the American garrison in Charleston under Benjamin Lincoln, a force of nearly three thousand Continentals and two thousand militia, had surrendered. It was by far the most devastating defeat of the war, surpassing even the loss of Fort Washington in 1776. American hopes had just been revived with reports that the French were sending a large fleet and more than six thousand troops to help their erstwhile ally. But now this–a terrible, devastating surrender of the southern army, even as the main army continued to suffer in Morristown.

The Hessian commander who was left to watch over New York in Clinton's absence, General Wilhelm von Knyphausen, now had his eye on a victory of his own. Even as Clinton was preparing to return to New York, leaving Cornwallis to continue to prosecute the southern strategy, Knyphausen was planning an attack on New Jersey, reckoning that the demoralized, poorly supplied main American army could be smashed or badly damaged after its horrendous winter camp. The Hessian was no stranger to Greene, for he had led the successful assault on Fort Washington and had been arrayed across from Greene's division at the Battle of Brandywine. The son of a Prussian colonel, Knyphausen, like Greene's antagonist Lord Cornwallis, was a symbol of Old World militarism and privilege, a representative of a way of life the American rebels wished to banish from their continent.

Five thousand British and Hessian troops crossed from Staten Island into Elizabeth Town, New Jersey, on June 6 and advanced inland toward the town of Connecticut Farms. There they met surprisingly stiff resistance from New Jersey militia. (Knyphausen had been told that the state's militia were on the verge of mutiny and would likely switch sides if attacked.) The patriot show of force was not in Knyphausen's battle plan. Frustrated, the British and Hessians burned farms and civilian homes and killed Hannah Caldwell, the wife of a prominent Presbyterian clergyman named James Caldwell, who also served as one of Nathanael
Greene's deputy quartermasters. Reports of British atrocities spread through nearby villages, and men who might have been inclined to stay at home instead grabbed their firearms and turned out to join local militia units.

Knyphausen's unexpected movement attracted the attention of Washington and Greene, still in their winter camp in Morristown. They assumed Knyphausen's assault was a distraction, and that Clinton would soon arrive back in New York and launch a new offensive up the Hudson River.

Whatever Clinton's intentions, Washington decided he must confront Knyphausen, and he chose his quartermaster general to lead an assault on the Hessian general on the night of June 8. Though Greene's reaction is not recorded, he must have been delighted. Not so many months ago, he had argued that he was automatically entitled to battlefield command despite his job as quartermaster. Washington, to his chagrin, disagreed. But now, as Washington prepared the first assault of the new campaign season, Nathanael Greene had a command.

And then it began to rain. The assault was called off–although it didn't matter. Knyphausen, puzzled and frustrated, began withdrawing back to Elizabeth Town that night.

The Hessians would bear watching, and Greene was deployed to a position in the Watchung Mountains overlooking Springfield to keep an eye on the enemy. As he left Morristown to travel south on an aging saddle horse, Caty and baby Nathanael departed camp for their northerly journey to Rhode Island. Greene bought a secondhand carriage to accommodate the little family and their luggage, but even then, it was a brave man who purchased a used vehicle. Warned that the carriage required a close inspection, Greene ordered some repairs before he dared put Caty and their son aboard. They were on their way home by mid-June, with Caty bearing instructions from her husband to pay a social call on the wife of his friend (and her future admirer) Colonel Jeremiah Wadsworth. Greene believed Caty's visit would strengthen his friendship and business relationship with the prosperous Wadsworth. “Society,” he explained to Caty, is “bound together by many ligaments, tho
affection is the great [tie].” Wadsworth, he added, “loves you as much as he respects me.”

The fleet bearing General Clinton and his thousands of troops was spotted sailing past Sandy Hook and into New York Harbor on June 17. Knyphausen and his Hessians remained in Elizabeth Town, near Newark. Washington summoned Greene back to Morristown to discuss how the Americans might counter the anticipated British offensive, likely to consist of a thrust into New Jersey and a large movement up the Hudson toward West Point.

The map of the New York-New Jersey region had become much more complicated, indeed. And the Americans were correct in believing that Clinton was intent on following up his victory in the South with a move against Washington in the North. Although Clinton was not pleased to learn that Knyphausen had crossed into New Jersey on his own accord, he decided to make the best of it. Reinforced with British troops, Knyphausen was ordered to advance toward Springfield. Clinton then made preparations to move north, as the Americans anticipated, to see how Washington responded.

This was more than routine maneuvering. If Knyphausen could lure Washington into battle in New Jersey, Clinton would be free to make a dash for West Point, overwhelm the garrison there, and–finally–assert British control over the Hudson. It was hard to imagine how the Americans could survive such a blow so soon after their southern army had surrendered in Charleston.

Greene never doubted what the British strategy must be. Still, there was a chance Clinton might yet bluff an assault on West Point, draw the Americans toward the river, and then countermarch south, cross into New Jersey, and attack Washington from the rear. These marches involved thousands of men, hundreds of wagons, and tons of supplies, yet, given the stakes, they were sublimely delicate. Indeed, Washington's response was subtle. He and the bulk of the army moved north on June 22, headed for Pompton, New Jersey, and a position close enough to
West Point that he could respond to a threat, but not so commited that he exposed his rear to a surprise assault. He left Greene behind in Springfield to counter Knyphausen's threat.

Hours after Washington's departure, a nervous American spy who had been monitoring the British force in Elizabeth Town arrived at Greene's headquarters. The spy, Greene observed, was “in great trepedation.” He reported that General Clinton was putting his army in motion to move north. “Their object,” Greene told Washington, “is to ... prevent your getting into West Point.” Greene put his troops on alert, telling them that they should be prepared to move “at a moment's warning.” But when there was no further word of troop movement–Greene didn't know it, but the British were slow in moving out–he wondered if the spy actually was a British agent intent on confusing him.

Just after dawn on the morning of June 23, Greene received word from his scouts that Knyphausen was marching in his direction. The Hessian commander had six thousand troops, vastly outnumbering Greene's collection of a thousand regulars and perhaps two thousand or so militia. From his headquarters in Bryant's Tavern just west of Springfield, Greene quickly scrawled a message to Washington–“The Enemy are out and on their march towards this place in full force”–and then hastily organized his defenses. He placed General John Stark, a veteran who was one of the heroes of Bunker Hill, and several militia units in the high ground of the Watchung Mountains to guard his flanks. Then he took up his position behind the line in Springfield.

The British attacked in two columns, one led by Knyphausen marching along Galloping Hill Road toward the American right, the other under General Edward Mathew on Vauxhall Road on Greene's left. Knyphausen's group would assault Greene's main force, and Mathew's would try to turn Greene's left flank. By eleven o'clock, Knyphausen's men had advanced through Greene's front line of defenses in Connecticut Farms and Vauxhall Road and were approaching a bridge that crossed the Rahway River and led into Springfield. Greene had barely placed his men in position to guard the roads and bridge when Knyphausen's men appeared. The town erupted in fire and smoke as both forces opened up
with artillery. A Rhode Island regiment under Colonel Israel Angell fiercely contested the bridge before retreating in good order.

Greene sent another urgent message to Washington, who was about fifteen miles away and could hear the sounds of Knyphausen's artillery: “The Militia to our aid are few and that few are so divided as to render little or no support.”

Greene realized that Mathew was trying to turn his flank and gain access to the Hobart Gap, where Galloping Hill Road led to Chatham and Morristown. To counter this threat, Greene delayed and retreated, and then delayed and retreated some more, until he had fallen back past Springfield and onto the high ground of Short Hills. Washington, in the meantime, reversed course when he heard of Greene's retreat, ordering the main army to march toward Morristown. Clinton, who had, in fact, sent troops upriver toward the Hudson Valley, made no move to support Knyphausen and soon called off the operation and returned to New York City.

After Greene fell back to the hills, the British-Hessian assault stalled and then halted completely. “Being thus advantageously posted, I was in hopes the Enemy would have attempted] to gain the [heights],” Greene wrote. They did not. Instead, they put Springfield to the torch and then retreated to Elizabeth Town. The Americans had suffered more dead, fifteen to fourteen for the British, but the number of British wounded was higher, seventy-four to fifty-nine Americans.