Washington's General (10 page)

Greene took a liking to Lee, which spoke well of the Rhode Islander's open mind, for Lee was not easy to like. He was not much of one for personal hygiene, even by the standards of an army camp in 1775. His crude manner was more suited to backwoods Virginia than to the affluent circles he had frequented in his native England. Educated in Switzerland and literate enough to quote from the classics, he nevertheless repelled many members of his social class and station with his profanity and rude references.

He dubbed his headquarters “Hobglobin Hall” and once shocked Abigail Adams, who was visiting Lee, by insisting that she shake the paw of one of his dogs. Abigail's husband, John Adams, preferred to overlook Lee's personality tics because the general was, beyond doubt, a walking, swearing, publicity coup: an English general converted to the American cause. He also was the most experienced officer in the American army, having fought in the French and Indian War and as a soldier of
fortune in the Polish army. True, Adams wrote, Lee was “a queer creature,” but it was important to “forgive a thousand whims for the sake of the soldier and the scholar.”

Greene certainly would have agreed with Adams. The Rhode Island brigadier had yet to witness his first battle, whereas Charles Lee had fought many battles, as he was more than happy to point out. Greene had always sought out the company of men better educated than he, eager to learn from them what he had not learned as a young adult working the family forge. Lee was his latest mentor, and although Greene left little record of their consultations together, it's easy to imagine him listening attentively as the loquacious Lee expounded on his martial conquests, some of which may actually have been true.

Certainly, Lee's stories were more exciting than the reality of camp life as the siege continued through summer. Lee's tales were full of danger and glory, real and imagined; the siege of Boston was about boredom and court-martials and worse. Greene reported to Governor Cooke in early August: “Our troops are now very sickly with the Dysentery. There was about a Week of exceeding hot Weather, [which] brought on this distemper, but they are now getting better, and from the change of aid and the healthy situation we [are] posted in, I hope we shall recover a perfect state of health very soon.”

In what may have been a related development, Greene found that his men had become less than diligent about digging proper latrines, so that soldiers had little choice but to “Void [their] Exerment about the fields.” Camp was foul enough already, with its acrid haze and dubious food and lack of clean clothing. Dictating an order to an aide who, like many others on both sides of the conflict, spelled phonetically, Greene noted that the health “of the Camps is greatly Dangred by these Neglects” and so “it is Recomended to the ofisers of the Several Ridgments to put do attention” to the digging and maintaining of proper latrines. Greene had yet to prove himself on the battlefield, but there was little doubt that he grasped the importance of war's less glamorous essentials: supply, logistics, discipline, and the health and morale of the rank and file.

While the Americans suffered through the fetid summer in the high
ground around Boston, conditions in the British-occupied city were a good deal worse. The civilian population decreased from seventeen thousand to fewer than seven thousand, and Greene was receiving reports from deserters and exiles about the deplorable state of affairs, including an outbreak of smallpox, for soldiers and the public alike. Greene summarized his intelligence from Boston in a letter to Governor Cooke: “Provisions bad, and [fuel] scarce, and ... no harmony among the Troops. . . . Many of the People that [come] out are real Objects of pity, their suffering has been exceeding severe, especially among the poorer sort. Great Violence is done to the cause of humanity in that Town.”

Violence, though not particularly great, was no stranger in the American camps. As the patriot lines moved closer to British forward positions, the long summer days often were punctuated with sniper fire–the two lines were within shooting distance of each other at some points–and periodic shelling. These exchanges did little damage and actually broke up the monotony of the siege. The green American troops took to chasing unexploded cannonballs as they rolled through the lines. But not all such skirmishes were without effect. In late August, Augustus Mumford, a member of the Kentish Guards who had joined Greene when he marched to Boston, was decapitated by a cannonball while digging entrenchments. Greene was devastated. In more than three months of siege and gunfire, he had lost no friends, indeed, no Rhode Island soldier had died, until now. He and Caty knew poor Mumford, and the loss was so powerful that Greene dispatched his friend Colonel Varnum to Rhode Island to break the news personally to Mumford's widow. Greene also sent a letter to Caty, who was four months into her pregnancy, to offer her some measure of comfort and reassurance. Addressing his wife as “My Sweet Angel,” Greene wrote:

The fears and apprehensions for my safety, under your present debillitated state, must be a weight too great for you to support. We are all in the hands of the great Jehovah, to him let us look for protection. I trust that our controversy is a
Righteous one, and altho many of our friends and rellatives may suffer an untimely fate, yet we must consider the evil Justified by the Righteousness of the dispute. Let us then put our confidence in God and recommend our souls to his care. Stifle you own grief my sweet creature and offer a small tribute of consolation to the afflicted widow.

In late September, Greene's former tutor, Adam Maxwell, arrived in camp with an urgent message from Henry Ward, the secretary of Rhode Island and brother of Samuel Ward Sr. Henry Ward had come upon a letter written in code and intended for British officials in Boston. Suspecting treachery, he sent the letter to Greene via Maxwell, urging the general to bring it to Washington's attention. Similarly alarmed, the American general tracked down a Boston woman who had tried to deliver the letter to the British. After interrogation, the woman revealed the letter's author: her lover, Dr. Benjamin Church, a onetime member of the Massachusetts Provincial Congress and the colony's Committee of Correspondence, a noted patriot orator, and the chief physician in the American camp. He also was a British spy. The Americans brought in two cryptologists, who broke Church's code and discovered that the letter contained information about American positions and troop strength.

Greene wrote back to Ward to thank him for his alert actions: “The Author is found. You cannot guess who it is. It is no less a man that the famous Doctor Church.” The famous doctor got off with a relatively easy sentence. He was driven from the colony, jailed for two years, and then sent into exile in the West Indies.

The siege went on. Some twenty thousand men were now gathered outside Boston. They drilled, they dug, they fired into the British lines, and then they drilled and dug and fired some more. From the perspective of headquarters in Cambridge, the endless siege was an administrative nightmare. This large army required a constant and consistent supply of food, clothing, fuel, and munitions. Its disruptive and sometimes disorderly presence tested the patience of neighboring citizens. The troops had been living outdoors for months, which was not so harsh
when the weather was warm, but now the New England winter was approaching. Washington was well aware of the warnings written on his calendar. In a letter to Congress on September 21, he noted that the troops were ill-prepared for a winter siege: “So far as regards the Preservation of the Army from cold, they may be deemed in a state of nakedness. Many of the men have been without Blankets the whole campaign and those which have been in use during the Summer are so worn as to be of little Service.” Not only were conditions bound to deteriorate as the year drew to a close, but the army itself would fall apart, too. Enlistments would begin to expire on December 1, and by the end of the year, virtually the entire American force would be free to return home.

Washington was growing weary of the stalemate. Impatient to show Congress and the American people that his army was doing more than simply playing a waiting game, he dispatched Benedict Arnold and a thousand men, including Greene's old friend Sammy Ward, north to reinforce an invasion of Canada under Generals Philip Schuyler and Richard Montgomery. The campaign was well under way by October.

In Boston, however, all remained as it was when Washington arrived in July. Reports of disease and low morale among the British troops in Boston gave the false impression that time was on America's side. In fact, with American enlistments about to run out, the opposite was true. Washington concluded that he ought to attack Boston while he still had an army. The twenty thousand Americans were more than double the British force of eight thousand, and they were in better health. The British commander, Gage, had been ordered back to London to explain himself, leaving William Howe in charge of the ravaged garrison. Washington called a council of war in Cambridge on October 18. The topic: an attack on Boston, which Washington had first raised with them some four weeks before.

Greene was one of eight generals who gathered in Washington's headquarters to discuss the plan. It was a heady experience for the Rhode Islander. Surrounding him were professional soldiers (the Englishmen Charles Lee and Horatio Gates), veterans of the French and Indian War (Artemas Ward, John Thomas, Israel Putnam, and William
Heath), and an experienced militia officer (John Sullivan, a major in the New Hampshire militia who had led a raid on Fort William and Mary in New Hampshire in 1775). These were the best and most experienced military men fighting on the rebel side, and there was Greene, yet to see his first battle, seated among them. He was, comparatively speaking, a boy among adults. Voicing an opinion among such company must have seemed an intimidating prospect, especially with the self-assured, confident Lee in the room. Who, after all, was Nathanael Greene to have a seat in such a council? Why, he was a Quaker; he was self-educated; he had never fought a battle in his life!

Washington asked his generals for their advice. Around the room they went. Gates said the proposed attack on Boston was improper. Lee said he was not familiar enough with the men and so considered the plan too risky. Sullivan thought winter would offer a better opportunity. Heath and Thomas said the plan was impracticable. Putnam said he disapproved, at present. Ward was solidly against it.

All were opposed, except for the most junior, most inexperienced general in the room–and the one most eager to impress the commander in chief–Nathanael Greene. Actually, Greene hedged his views, saying that while he regarded the plan as impractical, if the Americans could land ten thousand troops in Boston–Washington's plan did not specify the size of the assault force–he would support an attack.

The attack did not take place. But a frustrated Washington could not help but notice that with all the military genius, experience, and leadership ability assembled around him, only the junior brigadier general from Rhode Island seemed at all willing to take a chance. Only Nathanael Greene seemed remotely and ever so cautiously on George Washington's side. Events would soon prove that Washington had taken careful notice of the young general with the slight limp and the earnest manner.

Greene's assessment of their chances with a landing force of ten thousand was far too optimistic, as he would implicitly concede a few months later, in February, when Washington again pressed for agreement on an assault. Then, Greene would contend that “an attack upon a town garrisoned with 8,000 regular troops is a serious object,” which is
exactly what the senior generals had said. He would add, somewhat disengenuously, “I always thought an attack with 20,000 men might succeed,” which not only contradicted his position in October but was more than a little wishful thinking, since the Americans had no more than eighteen thousand troops at the time.

If he seemed a little too eager to please, and if he seemed to contradict himself from time to time, it was perhaps understandable, for he was very much a work in progress. Henry Knox, the young bookseller who was now an artillery officer, said of Greene, “[He] came to us the rawest, the most untutored being I ever met with.” In less than a year, however, Knox said Greene “was equal, in military knowledge, to any General officer in the army, and very superior to most of them.”

But he was more than just a general; he was a rebel, fighting not for territory or for conquest but for ideas–revolutionary ideas. This raw, untutored forgemaster had put on a uniform to help cast aside the old order and create something new and bold. The long siege allowed him time not only to learn about leadership and supplies and tactics but also to reflect on America's political struggle. And he was not shy about offering his opinions.

To Samuel Ward Sr., an increasingly influential figure in Congress, Greene vented his frustration with what he regarded as the tedious and irrelevant political wrangling in Philadelphia. In October 1775, an impatient Greene told Ward that “people” in camp “heartily” supported “a Declaration of Independence.” The notion of a complete break with Britain was, even at this late hour, hardly commonplace. Many political leaders still believed a peaceful resolution to the conflict was possible, and still regarded themselves as loyal subjects of King George III. Only two months before, Thomas Jefferson confessed he was in favor of reconciliation with the British. Maryland's lawmakers were on record as opposing independence. And even George Washington referred to Britain's troops in Boston as the “ministerial” army–meaning that they represented not the king, who still commanded the loyalty of many American patriots, but the corrupt and oppressive cabinet.

Greene, however, seemed to realize that separation was inevitable.
Why not make the declaration now? he wondered. And while Congress was at it, why not crack down on the traitors who continued to do business with the enemy? Facing the armed might of the British army, with troops preparing for winter, Greene lashed out at merchants who carried on normal trade with Britain. “I would make it Treason against the state to make any further Remittances to great Britain,” he wrote to Ward. “Stop all supplies to the Ships throughout America. . . . The Merchants in general are a body of People whose God is Gain, and their whole plan of Policy is to bring Publick measures to square with their private interest.”