Washington's General (6 page)

Lieutenant Dudingston would put an end to this kind of insolence.

Dudingston and the
Gaspee
arrived in Narragansett Bay in early 1772, and Rhode Island's merchants quickly discovered that he was a man who meant business. He disdained the tradition of presenting his commission to Rhode Island's governor. He demanded that all ships lower their colors in tribute as they passed the
Gaspee.
Vessels of all sizes were subject to search, and Dudingston's well-armed crew made sure that their searches were thorough.

Dudingston had nothing but contempt for the colony and its merchants. He complained that Rhode Islanders acted as if “they have every right to carry on” their illicit trade “without interuption.” He was not wrong. But he was determined to change the way this irrascible colony conducted its business affairs. On February 17, 1772, he seized an opportunity to make his point.

The merchant vessel
Fortune
was anchored in Narragansett Bay, its hold filled with fourteen hundred gallons of rum, a hogshead of brown sugar, and forty gallons of “Jamaican spirits.” At the vessel's helm was Rufus Greene, a young cousin of Nathanael Greene and his brothers. The firm of Nathanael Greene & Company owned the
Fortune.

An officer from the
Gaspee
set out from the mother ship and boarded the
Fortune,
instructing Rufus Greene to retreat into the cabin while the vessel was searched. Greene asked the officer under whose authority he was acting. “If you do not go into the cabin, I'll let you know,” the officer replied. The officer's drawn sword indicated the source of his authority,
and Rufus Greene was hustled off toward the cabin, where he was roughed up and thrown against a chest of drawers. The
Gaspee
towed Greene's ship into Newport Harbor.

Dudingston decided to send the
Fortune
and its cargo to Boston, where an Admiralty Court–and not a local jury–could decide its fate. By law, however, the case should have been tried in Newport, but Dudingston decided that this was one evasion of the law that the Crown would support.

Word of the
Fortune's
seizure and of the rough treatment cousin Rufus suffered quickly made its way to Conventry. Nathanael Greene was furious. He put aside his pining for Nancy Ward and his endless exercises in self-improvement to win some measure of justice and compensation for what he regarded as an act of officially sanctioned piracy. In a letter to his friend Sammy Ward, Greene wrote that he was in pursuit of a “Searover,” or pirate, who had taken “a quantity of Our Rum and carried it round to Boston (contrary to the Express words of the Statute).” The “illegality of [the] measure,” he went on, “created such a Spirit of Resentment That I have devoted almost the whole of my Time in devising and carrying into execution measures for the recovery of my Property and punishing the offender.”

Those measures would include a lawsuit against Lieutenant Dudingston himself, demanding that he compensate the Greenes for their losses. The case of
Greene v. Dudingston
became a legal sensation in Rhode Island, a notable act of defiance, and indicated that Nathanael Greene was emerging from his forge and his library to take an active role in his times. The suit forced Dudingston to spend months evading Rhode Island officials, who were authorized to arrest him as part of the Greene family's complaint.

Even as Nathanael Greene prepared his case, the
Gaspee
became the terror of Narragansett Bay through the spring and summer of 1772. Dudingston and his crew not only harassed all manner of vessels but regularly raided farms and businesses. Dependent on seaborne trade, Rhode Island's economy suffered as Dudingston's aggressive searches
and willingness to open fire on uncooperative vessels made the very act of entering Narragansett Bay a dangerous proposition. One prominent Rhode Islander and a future member of the Continental Congress, Henry Marchant, described Dudingston as a “very dirty low fellow” who ordered his crew “to commit many Outrages upon the Possessions and Property of the Inhabitants on Shore.”

Rhode Island's governor, Joseph Wanton, dispatched a letter of protest to Dudingston's immediate superior, Admiral John Montagu, who was based in Boston. The admiral defended Dudingston and then issued a blunt warning to Wanton: “I am ... informed the people of Newport talk of fitting out an armed vessel to rescue any vessel the King's schooner may take carrying on an illicit trade,” Montagu wrote. “Let them be cautious [about] what they [do] for as sure as they attempt it and any of them are taken I will hang them as pirates.”

Wanton's written reply was simple and utterly in keeping with Rhode Island tradition: “I do not receive instructions for the administration of my government from the King's Admiral stationed in America.”

Lieutenant Dudingston's aggression continued into late spring. On June 9, 1772, the
Gaspee
fired a shot across the bow of the merchant ship
Hannah
in Narragansett Bay. The
Hannah's
captain, Benjamin Lindsay, chose defiance rather than surly compliance. He decided to try to outrun the
Gaspee.
Dudingston immediately gave chase, but this time his zeal betrayed him. Lindsay moved into shallow waters off Namquit Point, and the
Gaspee
ran aground. Lindsay and the
Hannah
got away and sailed for Providence. When the
Hannah
arrived in port, Lindsay spread the news: the hated Dudingston and his despised ship were stuck and vulnerable in shallow water about six miles away.

The city's leading citizens and merchants convened that night in a tavern to plan Rhode Island's revenge on the
Gaspee.
They dispatched a man with a drum to parade up and down the town's streets to spread word of the
Gaspee's
misfortune and recruit volunteers for an attack. Sixty-four citizens turned out at the wharf and set out in longboats before midnight, headed toward the stricken warship. They were spotted
as they approached the
Gaspee,
and soon Lieutenant Dudingston appeared on deck, armed with a pistol. He asked the intruders in the longboats to identify themselves.

A voice replied: “I am the sheriff of the county of Kent, God damn you! I have got a warrant to apprehend you, God damn you!” The sheriff, Abraham Whipple, had been trying to serve Dudingston with papers since Nathanael Greene and his brothers filed their lawsuit, naming the lieutenant as a defendant.

The sheriff demanded that Dudingston surrender. Dudingston declined. A shot rang out, hitting Dudingston in the groin. The Providence men quickly boarded the
Gaspee
and overpowered its crew. One of the raiders asked the wounded Dudingston if he planned to “make amends” for the rum he had seized from the
Fortune.
A medical student in the boarding party dressed the lieutenant's wound, and Dudingston and his crew were herded into small boats and taken to shore. Humiliated, they could only watch as the Providence raiders put their warship to the torch. By morning, the
Gaspee
was a smoking hulk.

Once again, Rhode Islanders had committed an outrage against the Crown, and British officials and even the king himself were furious. The secretary of state in charge of American affairs, Lord Hillsborough, resigned, and Lord Dartmouth replaced him. His Majesty ordered a royal commission to investigate the crime and bring those responsible to justice. Some British officials, including Massachusetts governor Thomas Hutchinson, believed that a few hangings would remind Rhode Island of the price of insubordination.

Samuel Adams, the Boston rabble-rouser who was closely monitoring events in Rhode Island, regarded the
Gaspee
insurrection as a glimpse of what was to come. “I have long feared this unhappy contest between Great Britain and America would end in rivers of blood,” he wrote to Rhode Island's deputy governor, Darius Sessions. “Should that be the case, America, I think, may wash her hands in innocence.” In the meantime, Governor Wanton had little choice but to issue a proclamation on June 12 offering a reward of one hundred pounds “to any Person or Persons who shall discover the Perpetrators of the . . . Villainy.” King
George personally raised the amount of the reward to five hundred pounds two months later.

As was the custom in Rhode Island, the Perpetrators remained at large. The reward went unclaimed. But Rhode Island authorities did catch up with at least one criminal suspect. Three days after the attack on the
Gaspee,
the Kent County sheriff arrested Lieutenant Dudingston as he lay in a hospital bed. The arrest allowed the case of
Greene v. Dudingston
to proceed in court.

The
Gaspee
affair was a milestone in Nathanael Greene's life. His letters, which had been apolitical until now–the correspondence contains no reference to the Boston Massacre in 1770 or its aftermath–soon were filled with condemnations of Britain's rule in America. He continued to press his case against Dudingston, eventually winning a judgment of about three hundred pounds sterling. It's not certain whether Greene actually received the money from Dudingston, but there's no question that the family business could have used it. In August 1772, the Greenes' forge in Coventry burned to the ground. It was a financial and personal disaster. One bright morning just after the fire, Nathanael sat amid the ruins and read a letter from his friend Sammy Ward. He replied quickly, describing the scene around him: “I was surrounded with Gloomy Faces, piles of Timber still in Flames, Heaps of Bricks dasht to pieces, Baskets of Coal reduced to ashes. Everything seemed to appear in Ruins and Confusion.” The calamity, coming even as
Greene v. Dudingston
was being argued in Kent County courts, had a terrible effect on Nathanael. He suffered through an asthma attack that kept him nearly sleepless for four nights, leading to an inflammation in one of his eyes. He even despaired of his surroundings. “If Coventry ever was tolerable, it has now become insupportable,” he wrote. And once again, his thoughts turned to Sammy's sister, who remained beyond his reach. He told her he would stop writing if that was what she wished, but he desperately wanted to continue their correspondence. Their letters offered Nathanael hope, however dim, of a future with Nancy.

His morbid self-absorption gave way to engagement and fury when Greene heard rumors that he had been identified as one of the leaders of
the
Gaspee
raiding party. The royal commission hearing evidence in the case interviewed one of the
Gaspee
crew members, who said that he recognized a man “named Greene” among the raiders. If there was, in fact, a man named Greene among the
Gaspee
boarding party, most likely it was Rufus, the captain of the ill-fated
Fortune.
But beyond the question of his innocence, Nathanael Greene had good reason to fear being named as a suspect in the affair. He had heard further rumors claiming that
Gaspee
suspects would be transported to London for trial.

Of his accuser, Greene said, “I should be tempted to let the Sunshine through him if I could come at Him.” Again, as with the seizure of the
Fortune,
Greene transformed his personal travail into a political epiphany. Questions of freedom and liberty no longer were distant or merely academic. They now were unavoidable; they affected him, and, he realized, they affected all other Americans as well.

He told Sammy Ward that the
Gaspee
commission was “Justly Alarming to every Virtuous Mind and Lover of Liberty in America.” If the commission succeeded in tempting witnesses “to Perjury,” he wrote, “this Court and mode of Trial. . . will naturally Affect all the other Colonies.” He went on to condemn the colony's General Assembly, which had not vigorously protested the commission's work, as a “Pusillanimous Crew and betrayers of the Peoples Liberties.”

Although he now feared for the liberties of his fellow colonists and had reason to resent the power and prerogatives of the Crown, Nathanael Greene–like most Americans–was not prepared for radical solutions to their complaints. The king remained a popular figure in America, and Britain's tax and revenue policies were blamed on Parliament and the king's ministers. Greene himself still honored Rhode Island's connection to the mother country. His favorite horse, a stallion, was named Britain.

His connection to his faith was undergoing a similar transition. He was becoming ever more impatient with what he regarded as the irrational and anti-intellectual cant of his late father's brand of Quakerism, and yet he had not broken completely with the traditions of his childhood. But Nathanael's occasional appearances at the Quaker meetinghouse in
East Greenwich, near the family homestead in Potowomut, did nothing to persuade him that he was making a mistake as he drifted away from his father's faith.

One such meeting featured a particularly pompous and long-winded minister whose sermon inspired only cynicism from Nathanael as he sat in the congregation, wishing he were somewhere else. The minister's talk, Greene wrote, was “so light that it evaporated like Smoke and left us neither the fuller nor better pleased.” Indeed, the experience, and perhaps his never-ending search for a bride and companion, left him “in the dumps . . . brooding over mischief and hatching Evils.”

Greene's impatience with conventional religious practice was not confined to criticism of Quakerism. He lashed out when the colony's clergymen protested the performance of a play called
The Unhappy Orphan.
Stage performances were prohibited under Rhode Island law, and a holy ruckus followed the play's debut. “Priests and Levites of every Order [cry] out against it as a subversion of Morallity and dangerous to the Church,” Greene wrote. But he took the side of the actors, one of whom he knew.

It was not entirely surprising that Nathanael Greene eventually found himself suspended from the Quaker meetings for an infraction of their code of behavior. The suspension was ordered in July 1773, and for years, historians stated that it was a punishment for Greene's having attended a military exercise of some sort. Such activity, it was assumed, constituted a breach of Quaker pacifism. More recently, however, Greene scholars have argued persuasively that the suspension was related to Nathanael's appearance at a public house or some other disreputable place. The official record states that Greene and one of his cousins, Griffin Greene, were punished for having been seen at “a Place in Coneticut of Publick Resort where they had No Proper Business.” Historians for decades assumed that the “Publick Resort” was a military parade, but the editors of Greene's published papers note that the phrase was used at the time to describe alehouses and the like. Given Greene's convivial personality (at around this time, he attended a friend's wedding and wound up celebrating the occasion for several days), not to mention
his clear disregard of Quaker tenets, it is not hard to picture him enjoying himself in an alehouse.