Washington's General (20 page)

As Greene, Knox, and Sullivan issued their threats, the American army remained hostage to the unknowable intentions of His Lordship, General William Howe. Greene remained watchful for a move on Philadelphia. When he heard the British were pulling out of Amboy, he alerted Sullivan, posted in Princeton, that the “Phylistines are upon thee, Samson. Take care of thyself.” In fact, they made no move toward the capital.

In early July, American troops in northern New York evacuated Fort Ticonderoga rather than fight British forces moving south from Canada under General John Burgoyne. It was a humiliating defeat and led to the dismissal of Generals Schuyler and Arthur St. Clair from command of the Northern Department. Greene thought he was the obvious choice to replace Schuyler or St. Clair. “I can plainly see the General wants me to go but is unwilling to part with me,” Greene told his wife, who was staying with Abraham Lott in his mansion near Morristown. Greene told Caty that he was prepared to go if ordered, but preferred not to because the transfer would separate them once again. Instead of Greene, Horatio Gates and Benedict Arnold were sent north.

Rumors and speculation led Washington to march, countermarch, and march again through New Jersey as the Americans tried to anticipate either a British expedition up the Hudson River or an all-out assault on Philadelphia. Convinced in early August that the capital was, in fact, Howe's target, Washington marched the army toward Pennsylvania. Greene understood the symbolism of Philadelphia but questioned the strategy. Philadelphia, he wrote, “must be perserved at all events . . . but in my opinion [it] is an object of far less importance than the [Hudson] River.”

General Howe did not agree. He set sail from New York for the capital but confounded the Americans by sailing into Chesapeake Bay and landing
at Head of Elk for an overland march toward Philadelphia from the south. Finally, with summer nearly over, the campaign season of 1777 would begin.

On August 24, the Continental army marched through Philadelphia. Greene, having left Caty in New Jersey with Abraham Lott, marched with the division he commanded, made up of two brigades under the command of Generals John Muhlenberg and George Weedon. It took two hours for the army's eleven thousand soldiers to parade past citizens and politicians alike.

Greene didn't stop marching until he reached Wilmington, Delaware, where he monitored the British landing in Maryland. He was eager for the fight he knew would come soon. “I am in hopes Mr. How will give us a little time to collect,” he wrote, “and then we don't care how soon he begins the frolick.”

Mr. Howe gave the Americans two weeks. The “frolick” followed.

Though he could be petulant and sensitive, Nathanael Greene also was an optimist. And that trait, along with his unquestioned loyalty and unrelenting competence, endeared him to George Washington. It was Greene who was eager to support Washington's plan to assail Boston in 1775 when other generals gravely shook their heads and grumbled their objections. It was Greene who was determined to learn from his mistakes–like Fort Washington–rather than excuse them or blame them on somebody else. And now, as the American army prepared to meet the British as they moved north from Maryland, it was Greene who declared that the troops were in “good health and high Spirits,” prepared to give General Howe “a deadly wound.” Those were the sentiments Washington needed to hear. He had had his fill of dire predictions and gloomy assessments.

As the Americans set up camp in Wilmington in early September, Greene and Washington and their aides rode forward to have a look at the enemy landing force miles away. Joining them was a young, enthusiastic
teenager from France with the unwieldy name Marie Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert du Motier. He became better known by his title, the marquis de Lafayette. Congress had given him another title, that of major general in the Continental army.

Greene already had made it quite clear what he thought of foreign officers, particularly those with grand titles like major general. The tensions over the du Coudray affair had cost Greene his friendship with John Adams and other allies in Congress. Yet he uttered not a word of protest when the teenage Lafayette showed up in Washington's camp–as a general! Perhaps Greene believed now was not the time to raise objections to yet another foreign officer. Or perhaps he, like Washington, simply was taken with the young Frenchman's idealism, enthusiasm, and utter lack of guile. It no doubt helped that Lafayette deferred to Greene, treating him as a mentor rather than as a rival for Washington's attention.

Washington, Greene, and Lafayette rode to within two miles of the British lines, but they learned little from their mission. They decided to head back to Wilmington, taking careful note of the terrain between the two camps. The coming battle might well be fought on this unfamiliar ground, so the generals examined its hills, valleys, ravines, and other natural features. While they were absorbed in their inspection, the sky darkened, the winds began to blow, and a storm settled in, forcing them to take shelter in a private farmhouse. There, far from the American lines, Washington, Greene, Lafayette, and a small guard were forced to spend the night–as lightning streaked the sky–hoping no British scouts would stumble upon them.

After a restless sleep, they returned to Wilmington. Washington immediately gave Greene the task of scouting the countryside for a good defensive position from which to challenge Howe. Greene spent hours in the saddle through the first week in September, reconnoitering, ordering stores to be moved away from the enemy's anticipated line of march, and trying to keep his temper as he came upon local citizens, some of them Quakers, who clearly and sometimes openly supported the British. The pacifist Quakers, clinging to the dogma that had stunted his intellectual development and deprived him of the education he so sorely missed,
especially infuriated him. It was bad enough that they refused to fight for their country; worse, they supported their country's oppressor. That was unforgivable. Summoning the frustrations of his youth, he fiercely condemned the “villinous Quakers” who, he said, were “employed . . . to serve the enemy.” Some Quakers were placed under arrest. Greene thought more should be.

Furious as he was with his coreligionists, his heart went out to ordinary citizens, many of them supporters of neither army, whose lives became intertwined with the war despite their neutrality. He passed them as they fled the no-man's-land between the two armies–dozens of families fleeing their homes and farms, wearily traveling the back roads in search of refuge from war and looting. To Caty, he wrote: “Here are some of the most distressing scenes immaginable. The Inhabitants generally desert their houses, furniture [moving], Cattle driving and women and children traveling off on foot. The country all resounds with the cries of the people.” Looters from both armies added to the distress of these bewildered war refugees. Greene singled out the British, who, he said, “plunder most [amazingly].” In truth, the enemy had no monopoly on lawlessness; Washington's aide Joseph Reed noted that civilians of all persuasions, Tory, patriot, and neutral, “dreaded the appearance of either army.” To the shame of their officers, American soldiers exploited American citizens, leading a frustrated Washington to issue orders demanding that the troops respect the property of the locals.

The British began their advance on September 8. When it became clear that they were marching not directly toward the American position but to the west, hoping to turn the rebels' right flank, Washington roused his army in the dead of night and marched north toward Brandywine Creek in Pennsylvania, a better defensive position. Greene's division was deployed in the center of the new American line at Chadd's Ford on the east bank of the creek. The Brandywine was not easy to cross–calling it a creek was an injustice–and Chadd's Ford, where the water was only knee-deep, was a logical place to expect a frontal attack. Behind Greene's division was the main road to Philadelphia. The rest of the army was strung out along the Brandywine, protecting other fords. Divisions under
the command of Generals John Sullivan, Lord Stirling, and Adam Stephen were to Greene's right, while a militia unit guarded the American left. A small detachment under General William “Scotch Willie” Maxwell, known for his prodigous drinking, was dispatched across the creek to keep an eye on enemy movements toward the American defenses.

Greene spent nearly two days without sleep as he prepared his defenses. “I am exceedingly fatigued,” he reported to Caty on September 10. “Last night I was in hopes of a good nights rest, but a dusty bed gave me [asthma] and I had very little sleep the whole night.”

The morning of September 11 brought a reminder that summer had not retreated from these Pennsylvania fields. It already was hot and muggy when, just after breakfast, word reached the American lines that the British were on the move, headed for Chadd's Ford under the cover of a smothering fog. Maxwell's men, directly across from Greene's position, skirmished with troops under the command of Baron Wilhelm von Knyphausen before falling back across the river. Greene prepared his men for what figured to be a massive frontal assault with the full weight of Howe's army.

Morning dragged on, the sun became stronger, but the British did not attack Greene. He rode to Washington's headquarters to discuss what, if anything, they ought to do. While they were conferring, a messenger arrived with news that British troops had been spotted marching north on the west side of the river, seemingly headed for a crossing above the American right flank. The tactic was familiar enough: Howe had won the Battle of Long Island with precisely the same move–a feint to the center and a massive attack on the flank. Last time, however, Howe surprised the Americans. This time he had been spotted.

The British commander had divided his army in the face of an enemy that was roughly equal in numbers, a violation of one of the most basic rules of warfare. His risky plan called for a detachment of eight thousand troops under his command to march fifteen miles up the Brandywine, turn the American right, and get behind Washington; then, when the Americans redeployed to face the threat to their rear, Knyphausen would
move across Chadd's Ford with his five thousand troops, squeezing the rebels between the two detachments.

The Americans, however, had a chance to destroy that strategy by gathering their army quickly and attacking the undermanned Knyphausen across Chadd's Ford. Washington put that very plan in motion. Greene rode back to Chadd's Ford and began preparing not the defensive action he had envisioned but an all-out assault. But even as word filtered down to the troops that they were about to cross the river, Greene and the other American generals received new orders from Washington. The assault was off. Headquarters had received contradictory reports about Howe's movements, and Washington decided he could not risk an attack without precise information. Could Howe have marched along the riverbank to fool the Americans but then retreated back to Knyphausen? Washington had to consider the possibility.

The Americans stayed in place under the hot sun. All the while, Howe was leading his troops along the river and crossing at an undefended ford above the American line. Early in the afternoon, Washington finally received definitive word that not only was a flanking movement in progress, but the British already were across the Brandywine and ready to assault the American right.

As Washington moved to counter the threat, Greene was ordered to stay in place in case Knyphausen made a move to support Howe. The battle was joined at about four-thirty in the afternoon. Greene could do nothing but listen to the distant report of musket fire and the bellow of artillery as he stood guard over Chadd's Ford.

After forty-five minutes of intense combat, troops under the command of General John Sullivan were in disarray. Greene received an urgent order from Washington: he was to march with one of his brigades to reinforce Sullivan. Greene fairly leaped into action, ordering General Weedon's brigade of Virginians to follow him and leaving General Muh-lenberg's Pennsylvania brigade to keep watch at Chadd's Ford. Greene and his men marched four miles in forty-five minutes, arriving at the battlefield at about six o'clock and just in time to prevent Sullivan's retreat from becoming a rout. He later told a friend, Henry Marchant:

When I came upon the ground I found the whole of the troops routed and retreating . . . and in the most broken and confused manner. I was ordered to cover the retreat, which I effected in such a manner as to save hundreds of our people from falling into the enemy's hands. Almost all of the park of artillery had an opportunity to get off. . . . We were engaged an hour and a quarter, and lost upwards of a hundred men killed and wounded. I maintained the ground until dark, and then drew off the troops in good order.

While Greene's account is short on humility and self-deprecation, it squared with other accounts of the battle's climactic sixty minutes. Greene's arrival and the cool, competent manner in which Weedon's troops covered Sullivan's retreat and effected their own stopped the British from possibly enveloping the American army. Opposing Greene's men were troops under the command of Lord Cornwallis. His Lordship and Greene were getting quite familiar with each other.

The Battle of Brandywine ended with the Americans falling back on the road to Chester after suffering about twelve hundred casualties. (One of them was the marquis de Lafayette, who was wounded.) The British suffered about ninety dead and nearly five hundred wounded. The Americans surely had been beaten, but they had not been destroyed. Indeed, they had fought hard and well, and by doing so denied Howe the crushing victory he had hoped to earn.

Greene saw nothing in this defeat to temper his enthusiasm. Even as the Americans retreated, he was eager to strike the British. The performance of the troops, particularly those of his division, convinced him that another battle with Howe would have quite a different result, and the sooner, the better. “I expect the next action to ruin Mr. How entirely,” he told Caty. “You may expect to hear of another Action in a few days. Our troops are in good health and high Spirits and wish for action again.” Their high spirits may have had something to do with a reward from Congress: fresh rations of rum.