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Washington's General

Nathanael Greene and the Triumph of the American Revolution

Holt Paperbacks, January 2006
ISBN: 978-0-8050-8005-6, ISBN10: 0-8050-8005-8,
6 1/8 x 9 1/4 inches, 368 pages, Includes twenty black-and-white illustrations,
Trade Paperback, $19.99

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Categories and Subcategories

See All Categories History United States: Colonial to 1860

He was an unlikely warrior, even in an army of inexperienced officers and citizen soldiers. The Quaker with a pronounced limp, Nathanael Greene surprised fellow patriots by rising quickly to become George Washington's favorite soldier and heir apparent. Other generals could claim a deeper knowledge of strategy and tactics, but none possessed his foresight and ingenuity or his organizational skills.

Unjustly humiliated for the loss of New York early in the war, Greene demonstrated the ability to turn defeat into victory in countless engagements. Yet it wasn't until he replaced Horatio Gates, the failed commander of the southern army, and formulated an unconventional campaign employing hit-and-run guerrilla tactics that his true military genius became apparent. Gates—a traditional general of the old school—had spent the two years since Saratoga basking in the glow of that famous victory. In the meantime, he had stumbled into a series of catastrophes until finally his entire army—1,500 Continentals and 2,000 militia patriots—was annihilated at Camden, South Carolina, in the summer of 1780. Benedict Arnold's stunning treason followed a month later to deliver a near-fatal blow to the rebel cause.

Greene knew that the lessons learned under Washington on the battlefields of New Jersey and Pennsylvania would not apply in the South. Instead of risking conventional battles with Cornwallis's superior army, Greene kept his smaller field forces of Continentals and militia, cavalry and lightly outfitted infantry in constant motion.

His was a partisan campaign, and its success depended upon local support. His unorthodox strategy was to win by surprise attacks and hasty retreats, which cut the enemy's supply lines until the British leaders tired of hunger and bloody sacrifices.

In one of the most audacious decisions of the war, Greene divided his army, separating Daniel Morgan's nimble troops from his own by 120 miles, with Cornwallis's army between them. The gamble paid off handsomely: the victory that followed not only stunned the British, it gave heart to southern patriots. Conscious of doubts among many southerners about the Revolution, Greene believed civilians would be more inclined to join the Continentals if the cause seemed winnable. Greene's unconventional campaign sealed the bargain, and the way was prepared for the final victory at Yorktown less than a year later.

Terry Golway's bold new book, drawn from field documents, letters, diaries, and other sources, takes full account of the scope of Nathanael Greene's remarkable accomplishments, returning the forgotten patriot to his proper place in American history.

Praise

"If George Washington was the one indispensable man in our Revolution, Nathanael Greene was surely Washington's one indispensable general. In a spirited, wholly engrossing narrative, Terry Golway summons this underappreciated figure back from the mists and puts the living man before us with all his crotchets, self-pity, self-doubt—and the tenacious, high-hearted optimism that more than once saved his infant republic."—Richard F. Snow, editor in chief, American Heritage

"Washington's General does justice to this remarkable man. It is both informative and entertaining, and written in a lively style that reflects the best characteristics of history for the educated layman. Golway clearly admires his subject, but he doesn't overlook Greene's flaws."—Mackubin T. Owens, New York Post

"While researching and writing a book about George Washington, I concluded that Nathanael Greene was the most underappreciated great man in the War for Independence, and that he deserved a modern biography that told his incredible story. Now here it is. Washington once said that if he went down in battle, Greene was his choice to succeed him. Read this book and you will understand why."—Joseph J. Ellis, author of His Excellency: George Washington

"[An] elegant new biography."—Carl Rollyson, The New York Sun

"New York Observer columnist and editor Golway rescues a Revolutionary War hero from oblivion, and deservedly so. Nathanael Greene was a Rhode Islander who mysteriously earned a promotion from private to general of militia almost overnight, and who otherwise embodied a bundle of contradictions: he was a nominal pacifist who excelled at warfare, a pious man who was fond of a visit to the alehouse, 'a walking incongruity: a self-taught child of the Enlightenment, dressed in the unadorned black garb of a Quaker.' When textbooks mention him at all, they tend to cast Greene in a saintly light, whereas Golway accords him all the usual human failings. Among other things, the man wasn't above politics; he grumbled about George Washington's failings as a commander and lobbied hard for position, especially against rival general Horatio Gates, though he skillfully depicted himself as being the unwilling recipient of rank and honor. And he was also, Golway hints, not above earning a dollar here and there by helping mercantile relatives to gain access to lucrative army contracts. Greene also had positive qualities, however, that more than matched his shortcomings, one being sheer bravery; he uncomplainingly turned up in the thick of important battles, such as the Continental victory at Trenton and defeat at Germantown, and at the end of the war his mere appearance on the battlefield, apparently, was enough to send his British foes into flight. Greene had a simple view of the war: 'We fight, get beat, rise, and fight again.' That persistence wore down royal forces in the South, with the last battles of the Revolutionary War. At places like Cowpens, the Dan River, Guilford Courthouse, and Eutaw Springs, Greene met everything the British threw at him, and if he lost many battles, he at least kept up a fight that would have been all too easy to abandon. [This book is] a fitting and welcome monument to a surprisingly complex actor in early American history."—Kirkus Reviews

"Nathanael Greene's historical fame arises from his thwarting of Britain's southern campaign in 1780–81 during the War of Independence. Since the appearance of the previous comprehensive biography more than four decades ago, scholars have collected and published Greene's papers, a project that works to this author's advantage in giving an intimate impression of Greene's qualities, both positive and negative. Much of his correspondence to his wife survives (though hers to him doesn't), enabling Golway to narrate Greene's performance in the battles and campaigns of the war, in most of which he participated. Before the war, Greene was apparently politically inert but became radicalized over British depredations that damaged his Rhode Island enterprises. Although Golway is always attentive to Greene's personal interests (and alludes to Greene's possible embezzlement while quartermaster general of the army), Greene did acquire a nationalist outlook and in fact relocated to the South after the war, albeit to become a slaveholding plantation owner. In a solidly sourced, evenhanded portrait, Golway gives readers a Greene with faults but also with the military strengths on which George Washington relied."—Gilbert Taylor, Booklist

"Through thorough research, Golway, who has written for American Heritage, makes Greene's numerous and complex accomplishments accessible, committing few excesses of patriotism (and fewer of psychobiography). From the Revolution's earliest stages, Greene was appointed commanding general of the Rhode Island contingent in the Patriots' siege of Boston; Golway shows him as one of Washington's most trusted subordinates, with a mixed record as a field commander and a good one as a very reluctant quartermaster-general (a job that made making bricks without straw look simple). In the war's darkest days, in late 1780, Greene was appointed commander in the Southern theater, where the British had nearly swept all before them. Without ever winning a major battle, Greene, Golway shows, kept his army in the field, supported Patriot militias and suppressed Tory ones, undercut British logistics, eventually forced Cornwallis north to Yorktown, and besieged Charleston. Along the way he married and had a lively family life, became a slave-owner (through owning land in Georgia) and then died of sunstroke and asthma. Golway makes a convincing case that Greene should be better known."—Publishers Weekly

About the Author(s)

Terry Golway

Terry Golway, longtime student of eighteenth-century American history, is a frequent contributor to American Heritage, The Boston Globe, and The New York Times. His previous books include So Others Might Live, The Irish in America, For the Cause of Liberty, and Irish Rebel. He is a columnist and city editor of the New York Observer, and lives in Maplewood, New Jersey.