Washington's General (15 page)

One of Greene's tasks in New Jersey, in addition to strengthening Fort Lee and overseeing the construction of a new barracks, was the reorganization of the army's hospitals, which he found in a wretched state. He wrote directly to John Hancock, the president of Congress, demanding more medicine for suffering soldiers who “exhibit a Spectacle shocking to human feelings.” Hospitals were too small for the number of sick and wounded, and some regimental surgeons “[couldn't] be trusted with the necessary Stores”–it was rumored that they were using the army's supplies for private purposes. As was the case in Boston and Long Island, Greene continued to look after his sick and wounded troops, not only out of humanity but because he understood that their suffering brought down morale among healthy soldiers.

Greene also spent time studying maps of New Jersey, the vital link between New York and Philadelphia. Anticipating the worst, a march through the state toward the capital, he organized supply depots in several towns, including Princeton and Trenton, along a possible line of retreat. This was precisely the kind of foresight and organization that so
impressed Washington. Other generals had leadership abilities, other generals understood strategy and tactics, but Greene knew how to get things done.

His diligence brought him into the interior of New Jersey, where Continental soldiers stood guard over vital bridges and scoured the countryside looking for deserters. During one such trip, Greene sought to cross a bridge on the Hackensack River in the New Jersey Meadowlands but found his journey blocked by a Continental soldier named Kilpatrick. An Irishman who had been serving in the British army in Boston until he defected to the American cause, Kilpatrick was singularly unimpressed by the stranger with a slight limp. The soldier summoned Corporal Adlum. “Here is a gentleman who says he is General Greene,” Kilpatrick said, gesturing toward the gentleman and sizing him up. Kilpatrick reminded Adlum that they had orders to stop anybody “that had the appearance of a soldier.” Kilpatrick didn't realize how flattered Greene must have felt to be judged as having the appearance of a soldier–a far cry from what his colleagues had said about him in the Kentish Guards! Greene amiably produced a letter attesting to the fact that he was, indeed, General Greene, and an embarrassed Kilpatrick allowed him to pass. Greene seemed to appreciate the soldiers' professionalism, even more so when they stood at attention and presented arms when he returned during several other excursions. Greene became so familiar with the guards that he soon was asking them about local conditions: Were there loyalists in the neighborhood? Were supplies readily available in case of an emergency? Unlike the aristocratic generals across the Hudson River, Nathanael Greene did not consider the troops below his station. Many years later, Adlum recalled that Greene remembered him when they crossed paths in camp, and often spoke with him.

Greene's command expanded in mid-October, when Washington was forced to withdraw from Harlem Heights after a British landing at Throgs Neck, in what is now the Bronx, threatened to trap the Americans on Manhattan. With Washington headed for White Plains, Greene inherited the garrison at Fort Washington, just across the river from Fort Lee.

The American generals believed Fort Washington was unassailable, even with the rest of the army to the north and west. The fort's two thousand troops could disrupt British communications from one end of the island to the other and could menace British warships attempting to sail north up the Hudson River. What's more, with Fort Washington in American hands, the British would have to leave sizable forces on Manhattan, rather than throw their whole might in pursuit of the retreating Washington. And if the American troops were threatened, Greene believed the garrison could easily be evacuated across the river to New Jersey.

Greene saw Fort Washington as a second Bunker Hill. If the British attempted to attack this strongpoint built more than two hundred feet above the river, they would be punished as they were punished on that bloody day in June in Charlestown. He was not alone in this view. In late October, the fate of Fort Washington became the topic of much discussion and controversy among Washington's generals. Among those who believed the fort should be held was General Charles Lee, recently arrived from his victory in Charleston. Washington himself wasn't much help: though his instincts suggested that the fort's troops could be better used elsewhere, he hesitated. Greene convinced him that he could sell the British another hill at great expense.

Greene crossed the Hudson River regularly through late October and early November as an attack on Fort Washington seemed likely. He alerted Washington to one potential problem at the fort: if the Americans were forced to withdraw from the fort's extensive outer defenses to make a stand inside the fort itself, it wasn't large enough to accommodate all the troops. Nevertheless, Greene reinforced the fort and its outer defenses with a thousand more soldiers, increasing troop strength to nearly three thousand.

The possibility of an assault increased after the British attacked Washington in White Plains and, after an indecisive standoff, General Howe withdrew back to Manhattan.

The guns of Fort Washington opened fire on the night of November 5 as three British warships attempted to slip past the American defenses.
While the ships were damaged, they managed to get upriver, mocking the American defenses. When Washington received this disturbing news, it awakened his reservations about defending the fort named in his honor. Although he had told Greene, “Pay every attention in your power and give every assistance you can” to Fort Washington, now he dispatched quite another message. “If we cannot prevent Vessels passing up,” he asked, “what valuable purpose” could Fort Washington serve? “I am therefore inclined to think it will not be prudent to hazard the Men and Stores at [Fort] Washington, but as you are on the Spot, [I] leave it to you to give such Orders as to evacuating [Fort] Washington as you judge best.”

But Greene had no intention of ordering an evacuation. The fort's commander, Colonel Robert Magaw, told Greene that if the British tried to besiege the fort, he could hold out until December. Greene decided to hold his ground and tempt the British into disaster. “I cannot conceive the garrison to be in any great danger,” Greene wrote to Washington. “The men can be brought off at any time.”

Nevertheless, after marching south from White Plains, Washington arrived at Fort Lee on November 13 and was surprised to discover that Greene had not acted on his suggestion to evacuate the fort. Still, Washington hesitated as he heard reassuring words from Greene, prompting Washington's aide Joseph Reed to complain of his commander's “indecisive mind.”

In White Plains, where Washington had left him with more than five thousand troops, General Charles Lee seemed anything but indecisive. He wrote to Reed that defending Fort Washington would be a huge mistake. He made no mention of his arguments in favor of the fort's defense several weeks before. And, in a letter to Greene on November 11, Lee said nothing about his new doubts about the fort. Instead, he simply asked that Greene return the horse and sulky he had borrowed; more remarkably, Lee boldly asserted, “My friend Howe has lost the Campaign.” A few days later, however, Lee adopted an entirely different tone in his letter to Reed: “I cannot help expressing my concern that General
Greene has reinforced [the fort]. I should have been rather pleased had he called off a considerable part of the garrison.”

Lee issued his warning on November 16. It was too late.

General Howe sent ten thousand troops forward to attack Fort Washington's three thousand defenders. Greene and the Americans had not anticipated that the British commander would hurl such a large force at the garrison. At about one o'clock on the afternoon of November 15, a British officer carrying a white flag marched toward the American defenses with a drummer at his side. He had a message from Howe: surrender or die. Colonel Magaw said he was prepared to fight to the last man. When Greene received word of the ultimatum, he crossed the river for an urgent conference with Magaw and other officers. He recrossed the river late at night and kept his thoughts to himself.

The following morning, Greene, Washington, and two other officers were climbing into rowboats that were to take them from Fort Lee to Fort Washington when they heard a tremendous roar from the opposite shore. The British assault on Fort Washington had begun. The fort's outer defenses came under a fierce bombardment by land and by sea. The generals hurried across to the scene of the action, landed at the foot of the craggy palisades upon which the fort was built, and were escorted to the top. They found themselves in what Greene would later call “a very awkward situation.” Awkward, indeed–the British already were pressing in on all sides. Shells were blasting great gaps in the American defenses, and British and Hessian troops were advancing from three directions. Washington, Greene, and Generals Israel Putnam and Hugh Mercer were caught in the middle of this impending catastrophe.

Amid the smoke, noise, and chaos enveloping the American position, Greene urged Washington to leave immediately and volunteered to remain behind to command the desperate defense of Fort Washington. Putnam and Mercer did likewise. Washington was in imminent danger of death or capture; either one surely would have ended the Revolution.

Washington agreed, but he persuaded his generals to come with him. They made their way down to the shore by an old path, and they were rowed away as the British pressed forward.

They left behind nearly three thousand men. Within a matter of hours, nearly all of them were made prisoners–the rest were dead or wounded–and most of the prisoners would later die terrible deaths in foul, suffocating prison ships anchored off present-day Brooklyn. Fort Washington surrendered. It was the worst defeat of the war so far.

And it was, to a large extent, Nathanael Greene's fault.

Ultimately, Washington had to take the blame, for he had arrived at Fort Lee in plenty of time to overrule Greene and order an evacuation before the British attacked. But he didn't. And while Washington accepted responsibility, the loss was so bitter he could not help but remind Congress that he had taken bad advice, advice given him by Nathanael Greene. Neither man knew that days before the attack, an American officer had deserted to the British and told them all he knew about the fort's defenses.

Washington had to break the disastrous news to Congress in a letter the morning after. In it, he did not spare Greene, noting that he had instructed the young general “to govern himself by Circumstances. . . . General Greene, struck with the Importance of the Post, and the Discouragement which our Evacuation of Posts must necessarily have given, reinforced [Colonel] Magaw.”

Greene was distraught. Had Washington fired him on the spot, historians very likely would have judged the action understandable and perhaps even necessary. Greene was, after all, little more than an amateur playing at war, and Fort Washington had shown the danger of taking advice from such a man. Nobody was quite sure why he was a general in the first place; he had no experience, no expertise, and little more than a schoolboy's enthusiasm for the idea, although not the reality, of war. It had been a mistake to place him with such a trust. Yes, his intentions were good, and he was competent enough as an administrator, but as a strategist?

Nobody rose to Greene's defense. In fact, the duplicitous General Lee heaped scorn on Greene's injured reputation. “Oh, General,” Lee
wrote to Washington, “why would you be overpersuaded by men of inferior judgment to your own?” Lee tersely informed Washington that he would not honor Greene's recommendations for promotions among the Rhode Island troops under Lee's command. He claimed that other officers accused Greene “of partiality to his connections and townsmen, to the prejudice of manifestly superior merit.” Some of those Greene recommended, Lee said, “were wretched.”

If Greene believed he no longer had a friend in the world, he was not entirely mistaken. Washington's aide Joseph Reed, a presumed ally of Greene's, joined the whispering campaign against him, telling Lee that the fort's loss was Greene's responsibility. Greene poured out his heart to Henry Knox, one officer who most certainly had not abandoned him, in a letter the day after Fort Washington fell: “I feel mad, vext, sick and sorry. Never did I need the consoling voice of a friend more than now. Happy should I be to see you. This is a most terrible Event. Its consequences are justly to be dreaded.” Characteristically, he asked Knox to tell him “what is said upon the Occasion.” If Knox knew what was being said, one can only hope that he spared his friend. His reply to this heartrending letter has not been found.

Washington, although eager to make it clear that he was simply listening to bad counsel, did not fire Greene. To his credit, he kept the young general at his side, understanding that there were more battles to fight, knowing he would need every good man he could find. He did not protect Greene from criticism, but he declined the chance to make him a public scapegoat.

With Fort Washington in enemy hands, Fort Lee was useless. In addition to three thousand men, the fort held enormous stores of ammunition, foodstuff, tools, and muskets. All would have to be removed to some other place in New Jersey. A lethargic evacuation, hampered by a lack of wagons, was under way on the morning of November 20 when Greene was awakened from his sleep with electrifying news. General Charles Cornwallis, a brilliant young officer, and six thousand troops had landed
in New Jersey about six miles north of the fort. Their orders were to finish off Greene.

In Lord Cornwallis, Nathanael Greene was about to meet an antagonist who was everything the Rhode Islander was not, a symbol of the Old World of privilege who now sought to crush troops under the command of a New World general who represented the triumph of merit over blood. Cornwallis was a graduate of Eton, the English finishing school for highborn military officers, a politician, a onetime aide to King George III, and a veteran of Britain's campaigns on the Continent.