Washington's General (35 page)

Greene immediately sent a message to Francis Marion, whom he had never met: “Your Services in the lower Part of South Carolina . . . have been very important and it is my earnest Desire that you continue. I like your Plan of frequently shifting your Ground. It frequently prevents a Surprize and perhaps a total Loss of your Party.” He confided to Marion that he wished to immediately recruit spies–“the Eyes of an Army”–to keep tabs on Cornwallis. Marion was not used to such gracious treatment from Continental generals, and it left a strong impression: here was a general who respected the work of the militia. Ironically, of course, Greene had been a strong critic of the militia. But now he had no choice but to ingratiate himself with men who had continued to resist the British offensive even after the regular Continental army fled.

The troops in Charlotte offered their new commander little to inspire confidence. In describing the “condition of this army, if it deserves the name of one,” Greene told Washington: “Nothing can be more wretched and distressing than the condition of the troops, starving with cold and hunger, without tents and camp equipage. Those of the Virginia line are literally naked, and a great part totally unfit for any kind of duty.” He was furious with Jefferson for Virginia's neglect of its soldiers. (Each state was responsible for supplying its regiments.) He sent the governor a blistering letter, telling him that “it is impracticable to preserve Discipline when Troops are in Want of every Thing. . . . [Be] assured that you raise men in vain unless you clothe, arm and equip them properly for the field.”

Meanwhile, Continental troops from Maryland had complaints of another sort. Not long after Greene took over from Gates, Maryland's
officers presented him with a petition charging that the state's political leaders were offering bonuses and promotions to men who joined the state regiments–as opposed to Maryland's regular Continental regiments. As a result, the officers said, their most experienced colleagues and troops were leaving Continental service and joining the state militia, leaving the Maryland line dangerously undermanned. The Marylanders' complaints, though valid, only added to Greene's logistical, strategic, and political headaches. He did his best to mollify the officers, whose men made up the heart of Greene's little army, telling them, “[While the] subject you write upon is delicate . . . [as] an officer I feel for you.” He promised he would put in a word for them with Maryland's governor. Within a few months, Greene himself would be complaining about the “want of officers in the Maryland line.”

Even more horrifying than the state of the army was the war's special brutality in the southern backwoods: neighbors were pitted against neighbors, Americans fighting Americans, civilians slaughtered, homes and farms burned. Greene told Samuel Huntington, president of the Continental Congress, that the “whole country is in danger of being laid waste by the [patriots] and [Tories], who pursue each other with as much relentless fury as beasts of prey. People . . . are frequently murdered as they ride along the road.”

He continued to harangue local officials for supplies and men, and asked Washington to act on his behalf with governors and other civilian leaders. His years as quartermaster general were not in vain, because they taught him a vital lesson that he was now acting upon: he knew he needed supplies before he could fight. It took him only a few days to realize that the southern army's deputy quartermaster, Captain Joseph Marbury, was not cut out for the job. “The Gentleman ... is a very honest young man but his views have been confined to mere Camp issues.” Greene would need somebody like himself, who knew how to feed and supply an army on the move. He found that person in a young colonel named Edward Carrington. And he appointed the equally competent William Davie as commissary general. Both men were experienced battlefield officers who were new to the rigors of supply. But Greene was not a man who necessarily
placed a premium on experience–how could he? He valued talent and competence, and got both in his two main supply officers.

Part of a commander's job, as he had learned under Washington, was diplomacy. Although Greene had not earned a reputation for that particular art form, as any member of Congress might testify, he was conciliatory and patient with his officers and troops. He smoothed over jealousies based on promotions, he continued to reach out to militia commanders, and he looked after the health and welfare of his soldiers. With such tactics, he slowly rebuilt the morale and the discipline the army would need in the test that lay ahead.

But morale and discipline fed nobody. And neither did the countryside around Charlotte. To eat, and to survive, meant moving the army.

On December 16, 1780, Nathanael Greene made one of the most audacious decisions of the war. On his own, without consulting a council of war or local commanders, he decided to divide his army in the face of Cornwallis's stronger force. Greene and the bulk of his army would march southeast, into South Carolina, to a camp near Cheraw Hill along the Pee Dee River. A detachment of about six hundred men under Daniel Morgan would march from Charlotte to the southwest, along the Pacolet River in South Carolina.

The tactic defied all the laws of warfare. Military manuals insisted that a weaker general should never divide his troops when confronted by a stronger opponent capable of smashing the whole, never mind two weakened units. Even more extraordinary was Greene's disposition of his troops: one hundred and twenty miles would separate his camp from Morgan's, with Cornwallis between them.

He justified the maneuver as follows: If the British attacked him, they would leave their forts in South Carolina vulnerable to Morgan. If they attacked Morgan, Greene would be free to move against Charleston or other British strongholds. Dividing the army also reduced the pressure on logistics, for it would be easier to supply two small, widely dispersed forces than a single army concentrated in one camp.

He ordered Morgan to keep Cornwallis's left flank busy and to buoy the morale of patriots in the western backcountry of South Carolina,
who would be heartened to see an American show of force in a state under virtual British occupation. But he did not expect much more of Morgan's men. They were too weak, he said, to make any “opposition of consequence.”

He underestimated Daniel Morgan.

There would be no winter camp for Caty Greene this year, not with her husband on the march in the South, so she relieved her boredom and anxiety with frequent trips to Newport, now populated with thousands of French soldiers since the British departed. She delighted in their company, and they in hers, for Caty was vivacious and didn't particularly care if her behavior raised a judgmental eyebrow. Several of the French officers she befriended in Newport took her up on an invitation to visit her in Conventry. One, a soldier named Claude Blanchard, must have taken Caty by surprise, for he noted that there was no bread in the house when he arrived. Blanchard was equally surprised to note just how desolate the Greene homsestead and its surrounding property were. “There is not a single fruit-tree, not even a cabbage” on the property, he wrote. “Another countryhouse is pretty near, inhabited by two ladies who compose all the society Mrs. Greene has.”

Sensitive to Caty's anxiety, Washington himself wrote to her, offering his headquarters as a conduit for letters between the Greenes: “If you will entrust your letters to my care, they shall have the same attention paid to them as my own.” Gestures like this one help explain the fierce loyalty and affection both Greenes held for Washington.

Though her admirers saw only her soft side, Caty could be just as ferocious an antagonist as her husband. In early 1781, she received a letter from Deborah Olney, the officer's wife who had confronted Washington so memorably at Morristown, accusing her of fabricating the story and spreading it around. Caty replied in a fashion that no doubt made her husband proud. “I will not be so impolite as to charge you with telling fals[e]hoods but your memory must be very perfidious,” she told Mrs. Olney. “As to your tearing out the [General's] Eyes I heard nor said
nothing . . . but you did say you would tear out his [hair]–and I can bring sworn evidence to the truth of it.” This is one of the very few extant letters of Caty's, and while it is, in fact, filled with the spelling mistakes that mortified her husband (such as
vertues
rather than
virtues
and
parciallity
instead
of partiality),
it isn't much worse than her husband's.

As for Nathanael, he, too, was taking pains to make sure that Caty would not become overanxious as word filtered north about the plight of the southern army. “I am posted in the Wilderness, on a great river, endeavoring to reform the army and improve its [discipline],” Greene wrote to Caty from his new camp on the Pee Dee. He described an almost idyllic life: “[The] weather is mild and the climate moderate, so much so that we all live in [tents] without the least inconvenience.” He said that he and his brother officers were spending their days “recapitulating the pleasures and diversions of Morristown.” If the men were indeed reveling in the memories of the previous winter's camp, they certainly were choosing their stories carefully. Memories of the constant snow, the near starvation, the suffering and privation certainly would not have made for pleasant discussion over a campfire.

Greene was trying to assure his worried wife, for his words bore little relation to reality. The march from Charlotte to Cheraw on the Pee Dee took place in anything but “mild” weather. It rained for days, turning the roads to mud and the journey into an ordeal. Inevitably, food supplies were low, and the troops fanned out into the countryside to find something, anything, to eat. When they finally arrived in Cheraw, the troops were only somewhat better off. Falling back on his youthful study of the Old Testament, Greene wrote to Morgan, “Our prospects with regard to provisions are mended, but this is no Egypt.”

In other letters, his descriptions of his situation were even more pointed. The very same day he wrote his lighthearted letter to Caty, December 29, Greene sent a very different message to General Robert Howe, one of the several former commanders of the Southern Department: “When I left the Northern Army I expected to find in this Department a Thousand Difficulties to which I was a Stranger in the Northern Service, but the Embarrassments far exceed my utmost [apprehension],
nor can I find a Clue to guide me through the Complicated Scene of Difficulties. I have but a Shadow of an Army.”

Lord Cornwallis soon decided to be rid of this shadow. He told one of his field commanders, Lord Rawdon–the man who had so cheerfully described British rape on Staten Island in 1776–that he believed Greene was too weak to “attempt any thing.” Cornwallis, on the other hand, was about to be reinforced with fifteen hundred troops under the command of General Alexander Leslie, and a British invasion force under the turncoat Benedict Arnold was on its way from New York to bring the war to Virginia. The time was right to take the offensive in the Carolinas. If he destroyed his divided enemy, Cornwallis could march north to link up with Arnold and complete the British reconquest of the South. Still, he was wary of his frequent antagonist. He would later write: “[Greene is] as dangerous as Washington. He is vigilant, enterprising, and full of resources–there is but little hope of gaining an advantage over him. I never feel secure when encamped in his neighbourhood.” With that in mind, Cornwallis asked Rawdon to keep a close watch on the American's movements. Rawdon didn't see the need for such caution. He assured Cornwallis in a letter dated January 11: “I have so many persons watching Greene, that I think he cannot make any movement without my receiving early notice of it.”

To further restrict Greene's movements, Benedict Arnold and his fifteen hundred troops moved against the southern army's supply depots in Virginia in early January. Arnold carried out his orders with relish and soon sent Governor Thomas Jefferson and the state's legislature fleeing from Richmond. Greene now had to keep a wary eye on events in Virginia, for Arnold's army posed a potentially deadly threat to the southern army's scanty supplies and vital land lines of communication with Washington. Steuben tried to reorganize the shaken Virginia militia and Continentals until reinforcements from the North arrived–that is, if Washington could find any to spare. The increasingly anxious commander in chief knew he could hardly stand by while Greene faced the prospect of being caught between Arnold (to the north of Greene's position) and Cornwallis (to the south). He eventually rounded up some
Continentals and sent them, with Lafayette at their head, southward. But Greene would need a good deal more help as the British moved in for the kill. Washington focused his attention on the French fleet, anchored in Newport, Rhode Island. If the French could be persuaded to sail to the South . . .

For the moment, though, he could offer Greene only an expression of confidence. “Amidst the complicated dangers with which you are surrounded,” Washington wrote, “a confidence in your abilities is my only consolation. I am convinced you will do everything that is practicable.” Given Greene's worship of his commander in chief and his hunger for recognition, such words must have brightened his outlook, even as Washington reminded him that the cause itself depended on Greene's little army.

In the backcountry of western South Carolina, a poorly supplied Daniel Morgan believed his position was becoming untenable. He asked Greene's permission to move into Georgia, but Greene, fearing any change in the brittle status quo, urged him to remain in South Carolina. He also advised Morgan to fight only when necessary.

Cornwallis offered no such advice to his aggressive cavalry commander, Banastre Tarleton, who was eager to find and crush Morgan. In fact, Cornwallis encouraged his subordinate, sending him reinforcements and telling him, “If Morgan is ... any where within your reach, I wish you to push him to the utmost.” Cornwallis decided not to wait for Arnold to build up his forces in Virginia, consolidate his gains, and then turn south to squeeze Greene in a pincer movement. He believed he could crush the weak and divided southern army now. And so, in mid-January, Tarleton set out with some eleven hundred of Britain's best troops in search of Daniel Morgan's ragged band of six hundred Continentals and a few hundred militia. Meanwhile, Cornwallis would be free to attack Greene; in the face of his divided enemy, Cornwallis divided his own force.