Washington's General (40 page)

Ninety Six, a village surrounded by an impressive stockade, owed its name to its location, believed to be ninety-six miles from the British frontier posts to the west. By Greene's reckoning, Tories outnumbered patriots by five to one in the area, and they considered the fort a visible sign of Britain's commitment to their defense.

The fortress was designed to impress: ditches, bunkers, and a fearsome set of sharpened tree trunks–called an abatis–protected the stockade from sudden assault. Greene arrived outside Ninety Six on May 22 with thoughts of assaulting the fort. One look at the defenses convinced him and his chief engineer, Thaddeus Kosciuszko, otherwise. Instead of attacking, he decided to lay siege to Ninety Six, despite the absence of proper siege equipment. He was not optimistic. “[The] fortifications are so strong and the garrison so large and so well furnished that our success is very doubtful,” Greene told Lafayette.

Greene's pessimism was well-founded. From the beginning of the siege, the fortress and its defenders proved too strong and too wily for the American attackers. After more than a month of digging approaches to the stockade's main fort, and paying a price for each inch in blood and exhaustion, Greene learned that his nemesis, Lord Rawdon, had been reinforced with two thousand troops in Charleston and was marching to relieve Ninety Six.

Greene decided to attack the fort in hopes he could bring the siege to a quick end before Rawdon arrived. On Monday, June 18, Greene's men opened fire on the post from two sides. But the Tory defenders shrewdly counterattacked with fixed bayonets, fighting Greene's men hand to hand in the ditches outside the fort, with the Continentals getting the worst of it. Greene saw that the assault was hopeless, and ordered a retreat. The following day, Greene and his men called a halt to their siege and marched away from Ninety Six, ever watchful for the approach of Rawdon and his reinforcements.

Once again, Nathanael Greene was retreating in the face of the enemy,
deprived yet again of that victory he so desperately desired. He vented his frustrations in a letter to Congress: “It is mortifying to be obliged to leave a Garrison so near reduced, and I have nothing to console me but a consciousness that nothing was left unattempted that could facilitate its reduction.” Still, he was able to tell Congress his effort was not in vain: “Had we not moved this way this Country would have been inevitably lost, and all further exertions would have failed.” In fact, while Greene was overseeing the failed siege of Ninety Six, Marion captured the British post at Georgetown on May 29, and Lee and Pickens forced the surrender of Augusta on June 5. And, in a pattern that was becoming all too familiar to the British in the South, even Greene's setback at Ninety Six advanced the American cause. Rawdon's men suffered terribly in the South Carolina heat and humidity during their two-hundred-mile march from Charleston. And when they arrived, finally, at Ninety Six, they did not stay long. Rawdon decided the post could not be held, and so it was evacuated and burned. The Tory defenders along with their families and friends were ordered to march back to Charleston with the main British army.

July was no time to be marching through South Carolina. The summer weather was cruel and sickening, exempting nobody. The young and promising Rawdon became so ill he was forced to retire when he reached Charleston. Greene briefly considered attacking Rawdon's numerically superior force but wisely chose to let circumstances be his best ally. While the British and Tories suffered on their way back to Charleston, Greene marched to the shade and repose of a region south of Camden called the High Hills of the Santee, near the confluence of the Santee, Congaree, and Wateree rivers. The name alone suggests the comforts Greene's men enjoyed while their enemies battled heat, humidity, and deprivation. The American camp was on high, cooler ground above the rivers, away from the mosquito-infested swamps in the Carolina lowlands–just the place for a camp that would, for six weeks, serve as a summer equivalent of winter quarters.

The respite offered Greene an opportunity not only to rest his
exhausted troops but to reflect on the astonishing turn of events in the South since the Battle of Guilford Court House just four months earlier. Since then, the seemingly unbeatable British had been more than simply stopped; they had been forced, in a series of small-scale actions, to retreat from the interior, holding only a small band of territory extending from Charleston, South Carolina, to Savannah, Georgia. Their posts in the backcountry were gone. Their allies, the Tories, were demoralized and in disarray. The Continentals and the militia had captured three thousand enemy troops since March. Cornwallis had been forced to move his operations to Virginia, while his successor, Rawdon, was broken in health and spirit, destined to be captured at sea while en route to England.

This reversal of American misfortunes in the South had been achieved with minimal resources, which Washington himself acknowledged in a letter to Greene dated June 1. “The difficulties which you daily encounter and surmount with your small force add not a little to your reputation,” Washington wrote. Those words brightened Greene's day.

The victory at Cowpens, the race to the Dan, the strategic victory of Guilford Court House, the invasion of the lower South, the brilliant successes of the southern militia–all achieved with a ragamuffin army–won for Nathanael Greene the reputation he had dreamed of as a rebellious Quaker schoolboy. He had won nothing, and yet, he had defeated everything that the British and fortune had thrown at him. He was realistic enough to know that he had been beaten time and again; he was shrewd enough to know that the defeats didn't matter. He told his old friend Jeremiah Wadsworth:

Our army has been frequently beaten and like a Stock Fish grows the better for it. Lord Cornwallis, who is the modern Hannibal, has rambled through [a] great part of the Southern States, and his Tour has [sacrificed] a great number of Men without reaping any solid Advantages from it, except that of distressing the poor Inhabitants.

With his legendary ability to hear with astonishing clarity the most muffled criticism, Greene noted that the painter and patriot John Trumbull had criticized him for being unable to conduct a “timely retreat.” But what would people like Trumbull say now? Greene told Wadsworth:

I hope I have convinced the World to the contrary; for there are few Generals that [have] run oftener, or more lustilly, than I have done. But I have taken care not to run too far; and commonly have run as fast forward as backward, to convince our Enemy that we were like a Crab that could run either way.

Greene hardly needed to defend himself, even with at least a hint of humor. His campaign had few critics; indeed, Lafayette told him: “Your popularity is now to the Highest pitch. You are the general every Body [speaks] of, and every one prides in your Maneuvres.”

Caty Greene, restless in Rhode Island, was eager to join her husband in the South. Her husband was determined to keep her away.

Even in his new camp in the High Hills of the Santee, where the Americans enjoyed water, shade, and a respite from fighting, Greene knew that the South was no place for a civilian who didn't have to be there. Caty Greene had been at his side during the bitter winter camps in Valley Forge and Morristown; she, along with Martha Washington, Lucy Knox, and others had seen firsthand the suffering and deprivation of war. But the South in the summer of 1781 was very different from the North of winter camp. Tories and patriots continued to assail each other with the special ferocity of a civil war. Even though Greene's army had forced the surrender of enemy forts and had persuaded Rawdon to withdraw to Charleston, the roads, swamps, and forests of the Carolinas and Georgia held dangers Caty could not imagine.

In a letter to his wife, Greene told her what to expect on the long journey from Rhode Island to South Carolina, which “would require a guard to secure you from the insults and villiany of the Tories.” He continued:

South Carolina and Georgia have been the seat, and are still, of a hot and bloody war. Therefore you would have had no resting place in this country. . . . Besides, the hot season of the year would have made sad havock with your slender constitution. It is true our separation has been long and my wishes are equally strong with yours for a happy meeting. . . .

I wish I was there with you, free from the bustle of the World and the miseries of war. My nature recoils at the horrid scenes which this Country affords, and longs for a peaceful retirement where love and softer pleasures are to be found. Here, turn which way you will, you hear nothing but the mournful widow, and the plaints of the fatherless Child; and behold nothing but houses desolated, and plantations laid waste. Ruin is in every form, and misery in every shape.

Caty remained in Rhode Island.

In Virginia, the marquis de Lafayette was in the midst of a campaign that was as bloody and dangerous as Greene's camp in South Carolina was peaceful and safe. Even as the British in the Deep South were retreating from the interior, Cornwallis and Tarleton were on the loose in George Washington's home state. Civil administration collapsed, and it seemed possible that after Greene's successes in the lower South, Virginia might well fall under British occupation.

The embattled state was technically part of Greene's Southern Department, but he was nearly powerless over these events hundreds of miles away. He desperately wished to help Lafayette, who had become a friend despite their difference in age–and despite Greene's public criticism of foreign-born Continental officers. The Frenchman won Greene's affection in much the same way young Sammy Ward had years earlier: he eagerly sought out Greene's advice and deferred to him as a wise and experienced mentor. That surely was the best way to Greene's often insecure heart. Lafayette made it clear he was not a threat to his elder's
seniority, referring to himself as “Your Lieutenant” and taking care to note that under Greene's command he was becoming “So wise a Man.”

In the summer of 1781, the British were on the verge of smashing the Frenchman and foiling Greene's strategic victories in the Carolinas and Georgia. If Cornwallis, Arnold, and more British reinforcements under General William Phillips crushed resistance in Virginia, they could march their combined force into North Carolina and possibly restore, yet again, the lower South to British rule. Greene knew how much was at stake in Virginia and again contemplated leaving the Carolinas to take personal command in that state. In the end, however, he helped his friend Lafayette in the only way he could: Though he desperately needed reinforcements for his own troops, he chose not to move Continentals from Virginia to the Carolinas. And he stayed in constant touch with Lafayette, advising him to avoid, “if possible, a general action.”

Lafayette followed Greene's advice–and made sure Greene knew it–but in early July, he found himself perilously close to the general action Greene had told him to avoid. Cornwallis and his seven thousand troops had lured the Americans into battle near Green Spring by offering as bait what appeared to be only the British rear guard. In fact, the entire British army lay in wait. Lafayette was able to withdraw in good order, but it was a close call.

A month later, Cornwallis marched to Yorktown. With its access to the sea, he thought it would make a fine new base from which to continue the war in Virginia.

On August 21, Washington and Rochambeau left New York and marched their troops south, toward Yorktown.

Nathanael Greene's men had rested and fortified themselves for six weeks in the High Hills of the Santee. Now, Greene believed, they were ready to resume the war. Reinforcements in the form of a few hundred Continentals and local militiamen increased Greene's little army to a little more than two thousand. The British had continued to suffer in the lowlands after venturing out of Charleston following Rawdon's
departure. Greene received reports indicating that the British regulars, equal in number to the Americans and now under the command of Rawdon's successor, Alexander Stewart, were ill and demoralized. If Greene attacked, he could force Stewart back into Charleston, leaving Greene ready to face Cornwallis–never far from Greene's strategic calculations–if His Lordship somehow slipped out of Virginia and marched south.

Although the two opposing camps were separated by less than twenty miles, Greene could not march directly toward Stewart, for summer rains made river crossings difficult. So Greene marched north toward Camden and then south toward Stewart's camp, near the village of Eutaw Springs along the Santee River, northwest of Charleston. The British were camped nearby in an open area.

The American march was leisurely and undetected. As it was under way, Lafayette sent a letter to Greene with unbelievable news from Virginia: The French fleet, he reported, had sailed safely into Chesapeake Bay, isolating Cornwallis from the sea. And Washington and Rochambeau were on their way!

Greene ordered his troops to cook one day's provisions and allowed them a gill of rum on September 7. They were seven miles from the British position near Eutaw Springs. At four o'clock the following morning, the men roused themselves from sleep, lined up in one of four columns, and marched toward the enemy.

Greene placed his militiamen, troops from North and South Carolina, in the front, along with Lighthorse Harry Lee's legion. Francis Marion and Andrew Pickens were with the militia up front. Behind the militia were Greene's Continentals, including some men in the Maryland and Virginia regiments who had been marching with him since the winter. The order of battle by now was familiar: militia up front, with orders to fire and fall back, with the more reliable Continentals behind them.

The British didn't realize that Greene was so close, a tribute to the American general's careful planning. Stewart later noted that Greene's troops patrolled the “by-paths and passes through the different swamps,” making intelligence work difficult. Civilians in the area kept
quiet, too, although they must have seen Greene and his men marching toward the British camp.