Washington's General (8 page)

Given his personal and family connections to Rhode Island's political leaders, Nathanael Greene clearly was not an unknown quantity. His influential friends and relations surely knew of his intense interest in military affairs and his patriotism. Perhaps his performance in the Kentish Guards also recommended him. Whatever the case, just six months after he was considered a “blemish” on the good appearance of the Kentish Guards, Nathanael Greene was given an army and the title of general.

Greene's commission ordered him to “resist, expel, kill and destroy” any enemies who might invade or assault America, “in Order to preserve the interest of His Majesty and His good subjects.” Even at this late date, America's enemies did not include King George III, at least not in the eyes of all but the most advanced radicals. Men acting in the king's name, men like Gage and the government's ministers, were the enemy–but not the king himself.

Greene spent the next few weeks organizing his army, arranging for
supplies, and conferring with his officers. By late May, he was on his way toward Roxbury, near Boston, to choose a campsite for his army. The Rhode Islanders were preparing to join other patriots in laying siege to General Gage's hated troops now trapped inside Boston.

He left Caty behind in Coventry, telling her to rely on his brothers and their families for support. Caty was just beginning to feel the effects of her first pregnancy, and now her husband was off to war.

From the forests, farms, and towns of New England marched men bearing muskets, rifles, axes, and a grievance, heading for the outskirts of Boston to join a fledgling army poised to challenge the finest soldiers in the world. They gathered in a semicircle around the port city, cutting off the British from communications and supplies by land. These New Englanders were acting on their own accord, for there had been no national call to arms, no formal declaration of hostilities. They heard only an appeal from the Massachusetts Committee of Safety, which issued a cry for help in defending “our wives and children from the butchering hands of an inhuman soldiery.”

General Gage knew it would be a mistake to underestimate these hostile Americans. He suspected, however, that his superiors in London might make that very mistake. After news of the skirmishes in Lexington and Concord reached Britain, the Irish-born politician and writer Edmund Burke spoke for many in Parliament when he complained that
Crown troops had conducted a “most vigorous retreat” in the face of “feeble Americans.”

Feeble
was not the word Gage used in describing his opponents. True, the Americans were poorly equipped, and their leaders were middling militia commanders at best. Still, the British commander understood that the men gathered on the hills outside Boston were motivated, brave, and dangerous. “The rebels are not the despicable rabble too many have supposed them to be,” he wrote. In fact, he said, they possessed an “uncommon degree of zeal and enthusiasm.” Knowing that many skeptics in Britain would cite the unimpressive American performance during the French and Indian War, Gage warned that this war would be different. The Americans “never showed so much conduct, attention and perseverance as they do now.”

Presiding over the siege was a heavyset merchant and militia commander named Artemas Ward, a veteran of the French and Indian War. Ward, no relation to the powerful Ward family of Rhode Island, was not the most inspiring or charismatic of figures, not the kind of leader who could turn a collection of militiamen, adventurers, and smooth-faced teenagers into an army. Still, he was the best available officer, in the judgment of the political radicals of Massachusetts.

Nathanael Greene reported to Ward's headquarters on May 23,1775, and immediately offered to serve under the senior general's command. On the face of it, Greene's gesture might not seem so extraordinary. Ward, after all, held the seemingly explicit title of commander in chief. But his authority formally extended only to troops from Massachusetts. The Rhode Island troops technically were an independent army, accountable only to Greene and to the colony's political leaders. As militia from other New England colonies dug in outside Boston, there was no attempt to coordinate a common supply system or command structure, no sense that the troops were part of a unified army. Each colony jealously guarded the independence of its militia.

In one of his first acts as a professional soldier, however, Nathanael Greene rose above the petty, parochial pride that would often be the bane
of this fledgling army. Greene realized, far earlier than most of the Revolution's political leaders, that this would be a national struggle, requiring strong, centralized leadership. In placing his troops under the command of an officer from Massachusetts, Greene in an instant swept aside local and regional distinctions for the good of a common cause and foreshadowed his arguments on behalf of strong national government and a standing army of professional soldiers. To his bitter frustration, however, the young nation's political leaders were skeptical of both.

After his consultations with Ward, Greene and his troops were assigned to the right wing of the besieging army in Roxbury, under the immediate command of Major General John Thomas of the Massachusetts militia. Greene scoured the area near Jamaica Plains to locate a suitable camp for his army and found one in the former estate of a onetime governor of Massachusetts, Francis Bernard. Its sixty acres of fields and hills lay behind a large pond, a perfect defensive location. Greene told Thomas that the pond would protect his troops from a surprise frontal assault, and that a hill to the rear of his position would allow “a most excellent post for observation.” Greene had yet to fight his first battle, but it was already clear that his self-education in military science had not been in vain.

Soon after establishing camp, Greene appointed the Reverend John Murray as the Rhode Island army's chaplain. Chaplains were common among the intensely religious New England units–their fiery sermons would soon become the object of some curiosity when troops from other regions joined the siege–but the likes of Reverend Murray were not. He was the American founder of Universalism, a creed that shocked the rock-ribbed congregationalists of Massachusetts. Greene had met Murray in 1772 at James Varnum's home after the minister delivered a sermon in Newport. Greene's onetime tutor, Adam Maxwell, also was acquainted with the clergyman. Neither Greene nor his friends seemed offended by Murray's heretical beliefs, including his insistence that there would be no eternal punishment in the hereafter, and that salvation was available to all people.

It is hardly surprising that Rhode Island in general and Nathanael
Greene in particular would find a place for such an unconventional clergyman in the colony's army. Murray's clerical colleagues were less welcoming, however, and the reverend's presence in camp became something of a minor scandal as the siege wore on. But Greene's support for Murray never wavered; in fact, two years later, he came to Murray's defense when critics questioned not only the clergyman's theology but his political allegiance as well. Murray was accused of spying for the British, a charge that prompted Greene to write a public letter describing the reverend as an “honest man and a good Christian.” The latter assessment was a good deal more controversial than the former.

Greene himself often sounded like a New England moralist as he attempted to turn his Rhode Islanders into a disciplined fighting unit. The behavior of his troops, most of them backwoodsmen and farmers–not the pious Quakers or eager college students of his youth–shocked him. They certainly exhibited no working knowledge of the Ten Commandments, particulary the proscription against taking the Lord's name in vain. This virginal general, his military record as yet devoid of combat, his experience of command limited to the employees of Nathanael Greene & Company, had read of the glories of military conquest but knew precious little about the raucous life of a common soldier in the field. In his orders on June 4, 1775, Greene told his officers to “Supress as much as [possible] all Debauchery and Vulgar Language Inconsistent with the Character of Soldiers.” Vulgar language? Inconsistent with the character of soldiers? The troops must have had a good laugh.

Greene, however, saw his soldiers as the living symbols of American liberty. Their fellow citizens were likely to judge the righteousness of the cause by the righteousness of the troops, and Greene was determined to be righteous, indeed. But he had his hands full: the Rhode Island troops already had earned a reputation as first-class swearers. A soldier from Connecticut camped near the Rhode Island contingent in Roxbury wrote that his ears were “filled with the most shocking oaths . . . the tremendous name of the great God is taken at the most trifling occasions.”

Some of the Rhode Islanders were equally enthusiastic drinkers. One
of them, a soldier named Peter Young, was hauled before a court-martial after getting drunk. His superiors testified that Young behaved “in a very indecent and contemptuous manner, damning the man that confined him [and] throwing his hat about the guard-house.”

All of this horrified Greene. He believed that the fledgling rebellion would succeed only if the American civilian population supported the soldiers fighting in their name. Debauchery and vulgar language were more than breaches of military discipline; potentially, they were public relations disasters. As the siege dragged on, Greene continued to keep a tight watch over the behavior of his troops.

Meanwhile, as a sign of just how serious the standoff had become, three of Britain's top generals, Henry Clinton, William Howe, and John Burgoyne, landed in Boston in late May. Impatient with General Gage's conservative approach, they were determined to break the siege as quickly as possible. The very idea of American amateurs holding some eight thousand of His Majesty's crack soldiers hostage was unthinkable! Burgoyne could hardly believe it. “Let us in,” he said of himself, Clinton, and Howe, “and we'll soon make elbow room!”

Late May and early June found Nathanael Greene shuttling between military drills in Roxbury and political consultations in Rhode Island. The colony's Committee of Safety, which included Greene's older brother Jacob, retained civilian control over the army and was given ambiguous authority over supplies. Appropriating money for gunpowder and blankets was one thing; getting them to the troops was quite another task, and an exasperated Greene complained that the legislature had devised “no mode of supply.”

On June 2, as he prepared to leave Providence for Roxbury, Greene composed a note to Caty. He would have been happy, he wrote, if he “could have lived a private life in peace and plenty.” But, he said, “the injury done my Country . . . calls me [forth] to defend our common rights, and repel the bold invaders of the Sons of freedom. The cause is the cause of God and man.” Furthermore, he wrote, “[I am] determined
to defend my rights and maintain my freedom or sell my life in the attempt.”

What Caty thought of her husband's fervent patriotism is anybody's guess, since her letters have not been preserved. But Nathanael's pledge to “sell” his life for the good of his country surely frightened her. The peaceful little world of her aunt and uncle's homestead and the splendid isolation of her childhood home on Block Island had left her unprepared for war and the prospect of becoming a general's widow at the age of twenty. She was singularly untaught in the domestic skills expected of most colonial housewives. Her formidable aunt and surrogate mother, Catherine Ray Greene, had made sure that young Caty learned French but was less concerned that she learned how to prepare meals or mend a pair of trousers. Aunt Catherine's legacy had made Caty a more interesting character, but her in-laws came to regard her as useless in the practical business of running a household. Nathanael's brother Jacob and his wife, Peggy, moved in with Caty and took over the house. Caty was not pleased, but there was little she could do about it.

When Greene returned to camp on June 3, he discovered that the Rhode Island troops had taken advantage of their commander's brief absence. Discipline had broken down; so had the supply system. Some of the troops had disabled their muskets and were preparing to march home. The men in charge of the commissary had been attacked, and they, too, were about to desert. Morale was abysmal. Greene quickly restored order and cracked down on rowdy behavior–he persuaded the Massachusetts legislature to ban the sale of alcohol inside the camp–as well as lax soldiering. He found that many captains and other junior officers were reluctant to impose discipline on their troops, “some through Fear of offending their Soldiers, some through Laziness and some through Obstinancy.” This simply would not do. “I have warned them of their Negligence many times,” he wrote. And, he promised, he would “break them.”

The orders flew off his desk. Soldiers considered physically unfit were forced to undergo an extra hour of daily exercise, from ten to eleven o'clock in the morning. Regiments paraded regularly, soldiers received
crash courses in weapons training, and officers were told to keep a strict account of their unit's ammunition. For the sake of martial appearance and good morale, no soldier without shoes was allowed on the parade grounds, and officers were expected to keep their uniforms neat and clean. Greene led by example, rising early, inspecting his troops, attending to the dozens of prosaic details that come with command, and working in his tent long into the night. “My task is hard and my fatigue great,” he wrote to brother Jacob. “The numerous Applications you cannot conceive of unless you were present to behold the Round of Business.” Such leadership was not lost on his men. Despite the discipline, tedium, and grunt work, Greene soon reported, “[My] officers and Soldiers generally are well Satisfied, nay I have not heard one complaint.”

Within weeks, Greene was beginning to see further progress. While the Rhode Islanders remained, in his words, “raw” and “irregular,” he concluded that they were better disciplined and better organized than most militia units. Other observers shared that opinion. Samuel Ward Sr., the onetime governor of Rhode Island and a delegate to Congress, heard nothing but praise for Greene's troops. A clergyman named William Emerson, the grandfather of Ralph Waldo Emerson, was similarly impressed when he came upon the Rhode Island camp during a tour of the patriot fortifications. While most of the troops resided in “slapdash housing made of stone and turf,” Emerson told his wife, one group lived in “proper tents . . . and looked like the regular camp of the enemy.” These, he wrote, were the Rhode Islanders.