Washington's General (45 page)

The Indian commission appointment, though declined, and his membership in the Cincinnati indicated that Greene could have a place among the new nation's leaders. But his personal finances remained his first concern. Creditors continued to bombard him with bills run up by Hunter, Banks, and he received little help from Congress. In the fall of 1784, after a bitter summer that saw half his crops ruined in a hurricane, Greene rode from Rhode Island to Virginia to confront John Banks in person. He was too late. He informed his lawyer in Charleston, “I arrived and found John Banks dead and buried.” He asked his lawyer to file a claim against Banks's estate.

It wasn't just money woes that dogged the hero of the southern campaign. Victory and freedom apparently were not enough to convince some soldiers to forget or forgive old resentments. While visiting Mulberry Grove in the spring of 1785, Greene was confronted by a former officer named James Gunn, who challenged Greene to a duel over a disagreement the two men had had in 1782 regarding a horse. (Gunn believed he was entitled to a new horse courtesy of the Continental army and so helped himself to one. An enraged Greene demanded that Congress intervene, and, to Gunn's chagrin, it sided with Greene.)

Proud men did not easily ignore or decline such challenges at the
time, but Greene did. Washington congratulated him for defying convention. He told him that his “honor and reputation” were enhanced by “the non-acceptance of [Gunn's] challenge.” Undeterred, Gunn promised to kill Greene without the careful rituals of the duel Greene would not fight. Greene began carrying a pistol with him at all times.

Peace, for Nathanael Greene, was more elusive than he had ever imagined.

Mulberry Grove, Greene's plantation in Georgia, finally was ready for the family. “The prospect is delightful and the house magnificent,” Greene wrote of the estate. “We have a coach house and stables, a large . . . kitchen, and a poultry house. Besides these are several other buildings convenient for a family.” The main house was a fine two-story Georgian building with a library. In the late summer of 1785, Greene left behind the South's heat and humidity and sailed to Rhode Island to collect his wife and children. Together, they would sail back to their new home and their new lives.

Heartbreak waited on him. While he was gone, Caty had given birth to their sixth child, conceived during a short visit to Rhode Island in late 1784. Named for her mother, baby Catherine developed a terrible cough during the summer. She died despite Caty's loving but futile care.

Still in mourning, the family left Rhode Island for the last time in October. After a short stay in Savannah, they rode out to their new home in November. Though his financial troubles persisted and he still feared for his reputation because of the Banks affair, Nathanael Greene at last allowed himself a sense of contentment. His wife and children were with him, and they seemed happy. In April 1786, Greene offered an idyllic word portrait of his new life.

It is a busy time with us. We are planting. We have upwards [of] sixty acres of corn planted, and expect to plant one hundred and thirty of rice. The garden is delightful. The fruit trees and flowering shrubs form a pleasing variety.

We have green peas almost fit to eat, and as fine lettuce as you ever saw. The mocking-birds surround us evening and morning. The weather is mild, and the vegetable kingdom progressing to perfection.

Wartime friends were frequent visitors. Anthony Wayne lived nearby, following Greene's example by moving from the North–in his case, Pennsylvania–to the South. Several onetime aides and fellow officers also lived in the vicinity. But Greene's pleasant portrayal of life as a gentleman farmer in the pleasant southern spring was not complete. Privately, he continued to fear for the future. “I am overwhelmed with difficulties and God knows when or where they will end,” he admitted to Henry Knox. Greene petitioned Congress to relieve him of the debts owed to John Banks's creditors, and friends like Knox were agitating on his behalf.

All the while, tragedy and setback continued to stalk his doorstep. He lost fifty barrels of rice in a fire, and another forty-five sank in an accident on the Savannah River. Worse yet, in April, Caty–returned to her familiar state of pregnancy–fell, and she went into labor. The baby was premature and died soon after birth.

About two months later, the Greenes paid a social call on the general's former aide Nathaniel Pendleton in Savannah. They stayed the night and then set out for Muberry Grove the following day, June 12. It was a brutally hot day, more like August than late spring, but when they stopped at a friend's house for lunch, Greene insisted on inspecting his friend's plantation.

Hours later, he complained of a headache. He went to bed, but his condition only worsened. His doctors decided that Greene was suffering from sunstroke, and they bled him. Of course, their efforts were in vain. As Greene slipped in and out of consciousness, friends like Wayne and Pendleton rushed to see him, joining Caty at his bedside.

As the southern sun rose on June 19, Major General Nathanael Greene died in the company of his wife and friends. He was forty-four years old, still deeply in debt, still worried about the future prospects of
his children. Anthony Wayne, his wife's future lover, was distraught. “My dear General Greene is no more,” he told a friend. “Pardon my scrawl; my feelings are but too much affected, because I have seen a great and good man die.”

Word quickly made its way northward. Richard Henry Lee, who resumed his political career in Congress, immediately sent word to Washington. “Your friend and second, the patriot Greene, is no more,” he wrote from Philadelphia. “Universal grief reigns here. How hard is the fate of the United States to lose such a man in the middle of life! Irreparable loss!”

Washington grieved, not only for the man who had served so capably by his side but also for Caty, for his friend's children–including his namesake–and for his country. He told Jeremiah Wadsworth, Greene's friend and business partner, that he mourned “the death of this valuable character, especially at this crisis, when the political machine seems pregnant with the most awful events.”

Lost was a voice for unity and purpose at a time when sectional and state differences threatened the young Republic. Lost was a war hero who, despite his proclaimed distaste for politics, certainly figured to play a prominent role in guiding the nation through its infancy. “The sudden termination of his life,” Alexander Hamilton said, deprived the country of a “universal and pervading genius which qualified him not less for the Senate than for the field.”

Had he lived, Greene very likely would have joined Hamilton in arguing for a strong, centralized government, for he had seen firsthand the weaknesses of the American confederation during the war: the inability of Congress to raise money for nothing less than national independence; the chaotic supply system that varied from state to state; the petty jealousies that poisoned relations between North and South. Washington would probably have chosen him as secretary of war, an honor that went instead to Henry Knox. His name surely would be better known today had he lived to help his peers in the shaping of the great American experiment.

Instead, on June 20, 1786, the body of this self-made, self-taught soldier and leader was brought to Savannah for a state funeral and burial.
Flags were ordered to half-mast, and the city shut down as the funeral procession moved slowly through the streets.

Nathanael Greene died deeply in debt, and years would pass before Congress finally forgave the money owed to John Banks's creditor. Caty personally lobbied Washington, Knox, and other friends to intervene with Congress, but even that action wasn't enough. Caty eventually lost the South Carolina plantation, Boone Barony, to settle other debts left over from the war years.

In his will, Nathanael Greene spoke of the education he so sorely missed and wished to provide his children. They were the words of an eighteenth-century man who believed in the American idea of merit and hard work, not hereditary privilege.

As I am convinced that the happiness of my children will depend . . . [on] their education, it is my last will and earnest request . . . that they will attend in a particular manner to the improvement of their understanding. As I hope my sons will come forward and take an active part in the affairs of their country, their education should be liberal. My daughters should not be left [behind] . . . but above all things let their morals be attended to.

A few weeks after Greene's death, Congress, the body that Greene so often criticized for its inaction, formally proclaimed its grief at the passing of a hero, and in fine, moving words, it authorized construction of a suitable monument to him. The statue of Nathanael Greene was unveiled in Washington, D.C., in 1877, nearly a hundred years after his death.

Nearly thirty years ago, scholars at the Rhode Island Historical Society and the University of North Carolina began publishing the vast and widely scattered correspondence of Major General Nathanael Greene. Twelve volumes have resulted, with one more to come. The bulk of the following citations are from this source–
The Papers of Nathanael Greene,
abbreviated
PNG
–and give the relevant volume and page numbers.

Other abbreviations used here are:

The Quaker General

    6    “for God's sake”: Hamilton,
The Papers of Alexander Hamilton,
2:420-21.

Back home with the Greene family:
PNG,
6:323-25.

“Poor Girl”: Ibid., 6:391-92.

If, he told John Mathews: Ibid., 6:335-36.

    7    “I commit this important Post”: Ibid., 6:347-49.

“I shall be happy”: Ibid., 6:350-51.

“Our felicity is not perfect”: Ibid., 6:304-6.

“I declare”: Ibid. “O, sweet angel”: Stegeman and Stegeman,
Caty,
49.

    8    “Who will that person be?”:
PNG,
6:380.

“Perhaps I should have gone”: Ibid., 6:385.

    9    “It is my wish”: Ibid. He wanted to return home: Ibid., 6:396.

  10    He composed a “my dear Angel” letter: Ibid., 6:397-98.

“Though I do not write much”: Ibid., 6:404-6.

  11    “Could I leave you happy”: Ibid., 6:415-16.

A Downright Democracy

  14    “My Father”:
PNG,
1:46-50. Nathanael Greene's descriptions of his father and his childhood are all from this letter to his friend Samuel Ward Jr.

  16    He wrote to the earl of Dartmouth: Bartlett,
Records of the Colony of Rhode Island,
7:182-84.

In fact, in a survey of five Rhode Island Towns: Lovejoy,
Rhode Island Politics and the American Revolution,
16-17.

  17    The colony's charter . . . gave Rhode Island residents: James,
The Colonial Metamorphoses in Rhode Island,
50.

In reality, England interfered: Lovejoy,
Rhode Island Politics and the American Revolution,
75.

The colony's charter promised: James,
The Colonial Metamorphoses in Rhode Island,
50.

  19    “You dance stiffly”: George Washington Greene,
The Life of Major General Nathanael Greene,
1:28. Hereinafter cited as Greene,
Life.

  20    “I lament”:
PNG,
1:46-50.

  21    Often, according to George Washington Greene: Greene,
Life,
1:14.

  22    “Which one?”: Ibid., 1:20.

  23    “All government without the consent of the governed”: van Doren,
The Portable Swift,
193.

  24    Parliament ordered: Knollenberg,
Origins of the American Revolution,
142.

A Rhode Island merchant soon reported: Ibid., 181.

The document emphasized the importance of molasses: Simister,
The Fire's Center,
14-15.

  25    When the
Squirrel's
commander: Lovejoy,
Rhode Island Politics and the American Revolution,
36.

  26    Furthermore, he wrote: Bartlett,
Records of the Colony of Rhode Island,
6:422-23.

A special supplement:
Newport Mercury,
Oct. 28, 1765.

  27    Ward played the role: Ibid., Nov. 18, 1765.

Governor Ward informed London: Lovejoy,
Rhode Island Politics and the American Revolution,
120.

  28    Greene very likely wrote the petition:
PNG,
1:9-10.

  29    In his letters: Nathanael Greene's reading habits are discussed at length in Greene,
Life,
1:22-39.

  30    “To pursue Virtue”:
PNG,
1:23-25.

  31    “Study to be wise”: Ibid., 1:26-28.

The Making of a Rebel

  
33
    Rhode Island authorities: Bancroft Collection, documents relative to Rhode Island, NYPL.

He complained: Simister,
The Fire's Center,
44.

The merchant vessel
Fortune: PNG,
1:33.

“If you do not go into the cabin”: Greene,
Life,
1:29-30.

  34    In a letter to his friend Sammy Ward: Ibid., 26-27.