Washington's General (33 page)

Greene's strategy and tactics had been superb, and although Spring-field was not a major battle, it was an important victory: Knyphausen's retreat did not stop until he was back in New York. New Jersey was cleared of British forces for good. And Greene had been given a chance to display his flair for the battlefield, a talent he believed was wasted on the chores of the quartermaster's department. In his general orders, he bragged to his troops that “old Knyp” had been beaten so badly he took out his frustrations by burning Springfield “savage like.”

Had Mr. Knyphausen's temerity prompted him to advance to the Short-Hills, we query if he would have led on another
division of German boors to accomplish his satanic designs again.

Clinton had bungled his opportunity to seize the moment–and the Hudson. But he had another move to make, one Greene could not have anticipated. He was corresponding with the American commander of West Point, General Benedict Arnold.

Greene rejoined Washington in northern New Jersey, thrilled by his triumph over Knyphausen and resolved to reclaim his position as a military strategist and battlefield commander. He had been quartermaster for more than two years, and the service had been miserable. Furthermore, it was getting worse. With the states now responsible for supplies, the department was more chaotic and coming under more criticism than ever before.

Washington shared Greene's frustration. He warned Congress that the army “can no longer drudge on in the old way.”

And Nathanael Greene had had enough of drudge work. In late July, Congress announced a reorganization of the quartermaster's department, which decreased its staff and salaries and nearly eliminated departments that oversaw forage and the supply of wagons. Greene immediately resubmitted his resignation, this time in language that Congress could not ignore. In a letter dated July 26, he said that the reorganization plan was so flawed that overseeing it would be a “physical impossibility,” in part because Congress had fired his best assistants. He referred more than once to Congress as the
administration,
a loaded term that most Americans associated with the British ministry and its hated ways. He continued:

It is unnecessary for me to go into the general objections I have to the plan. It is sufficient to say that my feelings are injured. . . . My rank is high in the line of the Army; and sacrifices on this account I have made, together with the
fatigue and anxiety I have undergone, far overbalance all the emoluments I have derived.

Delegates in Congress rose to condemn the insolent quartermaster general. Joseph Jones, a member of Congress from Virginia, complained bitterly that Greene's letter “lessened” him “not only in the opinion of Congress but ... of the public.” Henry Laurens asked Richard Henry Lee, “What can have tempted him to treat Congress with sneer and sarcasm?”

There was talk in Congress of not simply accepting Greene's resignation as quartermaster but ousting him from the army entirely. Congress retained such powers over army personnel and would exercise them shortly by naming Horatio Gates as the new commander of the shattered southern army, with no input from the commander in chief.

At headquarters, Washington thus far was but an anguished bystander to this awful spectacle. At this vital hour, with the South in disarray and the northern army locked in a bitter stalemate, he hardly needed delegates in Congress denouncing the man who had so ably served him for so long. Then again, Greene had not shown Washington proper deference in choosing this moment to lash out at Congress. Greene and Congress were acting as though they were engaged in a personal feud, not a war upon which their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor depended.

Wearily, the commander in chief finally sent a message through Jones, asking Congress to reconsider any plans to “suspend” Greene “from his command.” Several days later, Congress named Colonel Timothy Pickering, a critic of Washington's, as the new quartermaster general. There was no further movement against Greene, and he agreed to serve–without commissions–in his hated job until the new man learned the system.

On August 16, 1780, the new commander of the southern army, Horatio Gates, was annihilated near Camden, South Carolina. It was the second catastrophe in four months in the South. Gates suffered two thousand casualties–his entire force numbered about fifteen hundred Continentals
and two thousand militia–and once he retreated, he did not stop until he was two hundred miles from the battlefield.

Gates had spent the years since Saratoga basking in the glow of that famous victory, but he was, in fact, an ineffectual general who had gotten lucky once, but only once. His leadership in the South was dreadful, for he stumbled into a general action–the very sort of battle both Washington and Greene had learned to avoid in the North–without careful preparation. His army was starving and ill-prepared for another major battle; indeed, his own staff was stunned to learn that Gates was intent on attacking Cornwallis only a month after his arrival in the South. When Gates estimated his strength at about seven thousand, a horrified colonel pointed out that the correct figure was more like three thousand. Gates replied, in essence, that the precise number really didn't matter. It is one of the war's ironies that Washington's two worst major generals were the two British-trained professionals, Charles Lee and Horatio Gates.

The disaster at Camden made Lord Cornwallis master of the Deep South. And it was clear he had no intention of stopping there. Morale thoughout the country plummeted, and so did discipline. During a foraging expedition in northern New Jersey, several soldiers under Greene's command rampaged through civilian homes and farms with shocking violence. Two soldiers fired at local citizens. Greene's distress was obvious in a report he sent to Washington: “The . . . plunder and violence is equal to anything committed by the Hessians. ... I think it would have good effect to hang one of these fellows in the face of the troops without the form of a [trial].” With Washington's approval, Greene ordered the hanging to proceed.

The incident shook him profoundly. He believed that such outrages were the province of the enemy, not of patriotic soldiers fighting for their liberty. He could not understand how troops fighting for such a cause would degrade their uniform and that cause. He began to question his optimism. “There is so much wickedness and viliany in the World and so little regard paid to truth, honor and justice that I am almost sick of life,” he told Caty. On September 7, 1780, he confesssed further anxieties to his friend Benedict Arnold. “We are starving here for want of provisions,”
he wrote from his camp in New Jersey. “Our Troops don't get one days meat in four. This can't hold long, what is to become of us?”

Perhaps the French could help. On September 17, Washington set out from headquarters in Bergen County for a conference in Hartford, Connecticut, with French general Jean Rochambeau and Admiral Charles Ternay. “In my absence,” Washington told Greene, “the command of the army devolves upon you. ... I leave the conduct of it to your discretion.”

Greene was temporary commander in chief for no more than twenty-four hours when he heard news that a British fleet of ten ships had been spotted off Sandy Hook, sailing for New York. He dispatched a message to Washington, still en route to Connecticut. Washington told Greene to put the army in motion toward Tappen, New York, to help fortify Arnold and West Point in case the British made a move up the Hudson.

The army broke camp at ten o'clock on the foul, chilly morning of September 20 and marched through Bergen County and the lower Hudson Valley, its vast forests turning from green to orange, red, and gold. The army arrived in Tappen after a slogging march of three days, and Greene settled into what he assumed would be a quiet few days filling in for George Washington. A package containing new shirts and a poem from Caty arrived on September 22, and it provided a welcome distraction from the war's declining fortunes and the miserable weather. “I will venture to say there is no mortal person more happy in a wife than myself,” he told Caty. He then broke the news that he was nothing less than the temporary commander of the American army. “This makes me a great man for a few days,” he wrote.

His mood darkened, though, even as he wrote. The frustrations of the summer, his quarrels with Congress, the disasters in the South, the lack of discipline among the troops–these were burdens he could no longer shoulder. “What puppies and pygmies men are. . . . Many of us are the dupes of knaves and the tools of folly. O this war! I wish to God it was over!”

At nine o'clock on the morning of September 25, Greene issued orders for a series of complicated drills involving the whole army except
for “the sick and camp guards.” Regiments from New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania gathered on a makeshift parade ground as Greene watched from an observation point. The troops wheeled left and right, right and left, responding to signals from a fieldpiece mounted on a nearby hill.

Greene was pleased. The men moved smartly and with pride. Not for the first time in the war, the troops had lifted Greene's spirits and allowed him to forget the politicians, the Tories, and the critics.

Hours later, after night fell, an exhausted express rider bolted into camp with an urgent message for General Greene. It was a letter from Alexander Hamilton, a member of Washington's traveling party. “Arnold has fled to the Enemy,” the message read.

Arnold? The hero of Saratoga? The man to whom Greene had confided his anxieties, who seemed so sympathetic? Benedict Arnold?

West Point clearly was in danger, and perhaps it was too late. Greene ordered the Pennsylvania regiments to march south in anticipation of a surprise assault. He ordered the rest of the army to be prepared to move on the “shortest notice.”

After a sleepless, anxious night, Greene prepared his morning orders for September 26. The news about Arnold's treachery was shocking, but Greene was far from dispirited. Indeed, he seemed almost exhilarated by the close call, by the capure of Arnold's middleman, Captain John Andre, and by the quick work of his troops in responding to the threat. He would soon tell his wife that far from being demoralized, he was renewed with fighting spirit. The discovery of Arnold's treason before it could be brought to fruition, he told Caty, “appears to have been providential, and convinces me that the liberties of America are the object of divine protection.”

He broke the news to his troops. “Treason of the Blackest dye was yesterday discovered,” he told them. “General Arnold, who commanded West Point. . . was about to deliver up that Important Post into the hands of the Enemy. Such an event must have given the American cause a deadly wound if not a fatal stab.” On this dark day, Nathanael Greene saw light: this was a sign of the enemy's desperation, he said, because
they had been forced to try with “Bribery and Corruption what they cannot accomplish in a manly way.”

Nathanael Greene was Washington's choice to preside over John Andre's court-martial, which took place in a church in the village of Tappen. On October 1, the tribunal found that Andre had acted “in a private and secret manner” behind the lines–in other words, he was a spy and therefore was condemned to death.

But what kind of death would it be? Andre asked to be shot as a soldier rather than be hanged like a common criminal. Many of the American officers were inclined to grant Andre's request, for he carried himself with courage and eloquence. Greene, however, insisted that the court had no choice. Andre, he said, was “either a spy or an innocent man. If the latter, to execute him in any way will be murder; if the former, the mode of his death is prescribed by law.”

Andre was hanged in Tappen, New York, on October 2.

Less than two weeks later, on October 14–an hour of mortal peril for the country and the Revolution–Nathanael Greene was appointed commander of the Southern Department of the Continental army after Gates's monumental failure in South Carolina. Washington notified John Mathews, a young member of Congress from South Carolina, about Greene's promotion.

“I think I am giving you a general,” wrote Washington. The thought must have cheered Mathews, who was an ally of Greene's. Then, however, the young politician read Washington's caveat: “[But] what can a General do, without men, without arms, without clothing, without stores, without provisions?”

That was Nathanael Greene's assignment: stop the British, save the Revolution, and do it without men, arms, clothing, stores, and provisions.

The war in the South would be like nothing Nathanael Greene experienced in the North, where the campaign season traditionally came to a close as the days shortened and temperatures fell. In the South there would be no winter's respite from the ambitions of Lord Cornwallis and his eight thousand troops. Greene would not have the luxury of methodically rebuilding his pitifully small force of a thousand Continentals and slightly more militia. He would have to be prepared to fight through the winter, with the beaten, ill-equipped remnant of an army.

Very few of the rules Greene had learned on the battlefields of New Jersey and Pennsylvania would apply to his new command. The southern war would, by necesssity, emphasize improvisation and mobility, for traditional set-piece battles had led to the American disasters in Savannah, Charleston, and Camden. Greene already was formulating an unconventional campaign employing guerrilla tactics of hit and run, never risking the all-or-nothing battle that might end the war. He had learned under Washington the importance of keeping soldiers in the field, for in
that way, this army of rebels might win by losing, slowly and methodically draining the enemy until he tired of bloody sacrifice. Greene outlined his unconventional strategy to Washington, saying that he planned to equip a force of about a thousand infantry and eight hundred cavalry, supplemented by local militia. “I see but little prospect of getting a force to contend with the enemy upon equal grounds,” Greene wrote, “and therefore must make the most of a kind of partizan war.” Washington recognized the genius of the plan–and its necessity. “I [entirely] approve of your plan for forming a flying army,” he wrote Greene on November 8.